Just then flew down a monstrous crow
As black as a tar-barrel,
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.
Kenneth saw, however, that this was the moment for capturing one of the disputants, and, as the robin flew off, closed his hand on the mole.
What happened to the casus belli, ‘deponent sayeth not’. But he probably disappeared down the convenient hole, left ready by the mole, to his own late dinner. Kenneth returned to the house carefully and kindly carrying the mole, which he intended to detain for the night, in order to show it to the boy, who had already been banished from the waking world — and the laws as to recalling him thereto were of the Medes and Persians. But the mole’s resting- place had also to be considered. So Kenneth found a small hamper, lined it with tufts of grass, where possibly worms might be lurking in case the mole fancied a snack during the night, or an early breakfast, put the lid on very carefully, and a heavy iron weight on the top of that, and left the temporary prison on the grand piano, for fear it might get overset by a stray cat if left beneath it, and went off to put on his socks and shoes, and his coat, before proceeding to his belated dinner.
Next morning early, he thought he would take the mole in to show it to the boy. The lid and its fastening appeared to be intact. The heavy weight was still in place. But the occupant was gone. Vainly Kenneth searched in every cranny of the basket, and then called Mrs. Blunt, our dear old housekeeper, to know if she had opened the mole’s ‘lock-up’. She gave a violent start and said: ‘No, sir. I never saw no mole, nor touched it — but I did kill a young rat with my broom this morning very early, just as he was making for the back door.’ Now this was the more surprising, as Mrs. Blunt was not only country-born and bred, but the daughter of a gamekeeper, so must have been familiar with both rats and moles at some time in her history. But she was getting old and near-sighted. The really amazing thing was how that mole — though used to heaving mounds of earth up with his very strong shoulders — could have moved the fastened lid with its heavy weight super-imposed, and yet left the whole thing in statu quo. But anyhow he was gone, and not only from the basket, but from a much wider environment, namely the world itself.
We know there are skilled trappers of moles with special apparatus for their work. But to capture a full-grown one with one’s bare hand is unusual. So Kenneth was disappointed, and ‘Bluntie’, on being told the purpose for which he wanted the mole, namely, to please the tiny boy, to whom she was devoted heart and soul, sought to make up for her tragic mistake by saying to Kenneth: ‘Oh, but, sir, couldn’t you just make the mole into a story for Master Alastair, and I know then he would see it as plain as plain, and how I know is, that when Nanny goes out after his bath and lets me fold up his little clothes, and put the room straight, I listen to your stories and know how real they are to Master Alastair. I am there in my cap and apron, and you know I am big and solid, but I am not real to him, I am not there at all, even though the floor creaks beneath my weight. But the least little thing in the story, even if it were light as a bird or a butterfly, is there in the room with him, and for me too, as you tell it. And I only wish that Nanny would go out every night, instead of once in a blue moon, so that I could listen to more of those wonderful stories. So, if you could just tell him a story about the mole, I feel it would come alive again and go on being alive, and that I had not killed it, which I am so dreadfully sorry about.’
And he was a story-teller.
But without the Listener, depicted (page 26) in the act of listening (most eloquently) to the enchantment, for enchantment he was ‘drinking’ in from the ‘story teller’ as his father himself put it in his own poem recorded in this preface under the title of ‘Christmas’ — but for Alastair, alias ‘Mouse’, there would never have been either Toad, Mole, Badger, Otter, or Ratty — or indeed any of that august company — for the story would never have been told in the absence of such a listener. As ‘Q’ wrote of him in a Memorial published in the Oxford Magazine: ‘Above all, he was gentle: to animals quite instinctively so, a young image of St. Francis. (Yet I must not say instinctively, remembering that one of the loveliest books of our time, The Wind in the Willows, is based on letters written to amuse him.) To all his elders and to the poor he bore himself with the sweetest of courtesy. On whatever else he might have improved, his high manners were his own, and absolute.
These manners went far deeper than the surface, and were based on the complete understanding of, and sympathy with, human beings of every class in life, from the highest to the lowest. One day, when he was very small, he asked why the sweep never came to tea. ‘You are always having people to tea, but you never have the sweep.’ Not wishing to disturb his sense of ‘equality and fraternity’, we said he might not care to come. But the boy replied that if he did not like it, he needn’t come again. ‘Well,’ we continued, ‘you see, he might not be interested in what we were talking about.’
‘But couldn’t we talk about what he is interested in, or anyway we could listen to him, and I know he is most interesting, because he has told me things I didn’t know before, and which I always want to know now, about how the wind gets into the chimney, and when it can’t get out again, it’s a prisoner between the sky at the top and the fire burning at the bottom, so it moans and cries because it doesn’t know how to get free. And I told him one thing he didn’t know, and that was about the storks sitting up on the edge of chimneys to see what’s happening in the rest of the world.’
Quite in desperation as to any excuse proving valid for not asking the sweep to tea, we mentioned that he might prefer to drink out of his saucer if the tea were too hot.
‘Oh, well,’ said the boy, ‘couldn’t we all drink out of our saucers — at least my mug hasn’t got a saucer, but I could sort of pretend it had.’
Many years afterwards I was wont to be present at the breakfast-table in the kitchen where I acted as hostess to our very delightful sweep who, leaving his home at crack of dawn, was glad of hot buttered toast and strong tea after completing his ministrations to our chimneys. And he certainly told me ‘things I didn’t know before and which I always want to know now’, for he, when not ‘in black’, was an expert gardener, and certainly I was never able to tell him anything that he did not know about that. The smell of soot vanished in the clarity of his utterances regarding the blossom on young apple-trees, and what it portended, and many other kindred subjects fraught with fragrance and beauty. I learnt later that this many-sided sweep was also an expert in ‘ballroom’ dancing, but this topic was never broached between us, frequently as our talks were renewed.
It is true that in the early part of Mouse’s life we resided in a hamlet on the Berkshire downs, where the aristocracy, in the absence of Squire, Doctor, or other Eminences, was represented by race-horse trainers, farmers, shepherds, and a sprinkling of stable lads who sometimes sang in the choir, so that Mouse really did know the people ‘in their habits as they lived’, and his goodness ‘quite unprompted’ to the poor and the old was very understanding. He made up from his own very exiguous pocket-money a Christmas fund for the bestowal personally by him of ‘baccy’ for the old men, tea and snuff for their opposite numbers, the old women, people who, as he said, every one had forgotten, and sweets for babies who, as he put it, no one had begun to remember. He often said: ‘A fellow can’t help being old, and a baby can’t help being young, so I don’t think they should be blamed for either.’ Though we were only renters, and even then without more land than our own little garden, and even new-come owners of great Estates in those regions were never given the title of Squire, Alastair was always known by the appellation of ‘The Young Squire’.
And here I must stray from the Downs to Scotland, where, opposite to the Isle of Skye was a tiny port where herrings were cleaned, cured, and kippered. The Cleaners being girls from a neighbouring island whence came a group of three fast friends, only one of whom ‘had the English’. This was
Mary, the others being Kate and Dolly. They were stalwart and splendid specimens, especially Dolly, whom Kenneth called ‘The Duchess’, as he said she ought to marry some effete Duke in order to revitalize the race. They were most picturesquely dressed in tarpaulin jackets, short skirts of Same stuff, sea boots, and coloured kerchiefs over their wonderful hair — the whole outfit bespangled with shining herring scales.
Behind each of these experts stood three separate barrels, into which with never a glance over their shoulders, as each herring was cut and cleaned they unerringly pitched the fish in the three grades of their sizes. This ‘leger de main’ so fascinated us that we often watched it together with its charming exponents, and by the aid of Mary, the interpreter of the group, got to know them quite well. And as they were always ‘terrible for tea’, we sometimes took them a joint packet from the ‘Mairchant’.
From the Mairchant’s, that forerunner of the ‘Universal Provider’ which in the Scottish village of the days before trains, buses, and any conveyance indeed other than a carriage and pair, or a carrier’s cart, sold everything from ‘Conversation-Sweeties’ to fishing tackle, cartridges, and complete sets of ‘oilies’ for fishermen, to say nothing of mouse-traps and cheese to bait them with. Everything tasted and smelt of everything else, but natheless ‘the Mairchant’s’ was an enchanting spot in village life. Mary, who had Gaelic allocutions ‘to’ her English, would say: ‘Now how did you know that Mary was so fond of her tea?’
When we were about to depart, we asked these girls if there were anything we could do for them that might give them pleasure, and after many blushes and much hesitation, they said (through Mary) that what they would like best of all would be to see the inside of our ‘Hotel’. Now this was merely a wooden shack which might pass muster as a hostelry during its brief two months’
‘season’ — with a veranda surrounded by shingles, without so much as the intervention of a pot of flowers between it and the beach. However, as these girls had never been anywhere, save on their own island and this herring port, and probably pictured the interior of the hotel as sumptuous, we said ‘certainly’ and made a date with them for tea there.
They arrived punctual to the moment, but unrecognizable in black stuff dresses, long-skirted and tight-bodiced after a fashion that might have originated in the days of their grandmothers; their splendid hair piled up formally on the tops of their heads instead of curling in the sea breeze as it escaped beneath their coloured kerchiefs; their lovely complexions tinted by the sea air and the exertions of their labours, now alternating between the hot blushes of embarrassment and the pallor caused by the anxiety of unaccustomed surroundings. Their only ornaments were huge pebble brooches, ‘Sunday’ was writ large all over them, and indeed their demeanour could not have been quieter and less animated had they been actually in church. Each had brought her knitting ‘to give her a countenance’, and kept her eyes glued to it, and at the sound of the dressing bell for dinner they sprang to their feet, and almost in a whisper bade us good evening.
Now this was Alastair’s first visit to Scotland, let alone to so remote a part of it, so he could have had no preconceived notions as to the dwellers in those regions who differed, of course, greatly from those on the Downs. Yet he knew absolutely how to take these islanders, for as each of them said good-bye he kissed her very gravely on the cheek, and from somewhere and somehow produced a sprig of white heather handed with a courtly bow. He did not, of course, know Gaelic, but he spoke without words a language they all understood, for next day when he was out of earshot watching a boat come ashore and Kenneth and I were conversing as best we could with Mary, Kate, and Dolly, now radiant with smiles and picturesque and handsome as ever in kerchief, tarpaulins, and sea boots enlivened with the sparkle of herring scales, Mary said: ‘Never shall we forget yesterday, that so great a gentleman, and the son of so great a gentleman should have kissed us went right into our hearts and will stay there as long as ever they beat.’
Now the strange thing about the boy’s embodying all his kindness, courtesy, and sympathy towards these girls in one kiss was that from his infancy he certainly was no conveyor of kisses, and greatly objected to being kissed. Once when he was ‘very very young’ and some visitors came up to the nursery to see him, he kept running up and down full tilt from wall to wall, and on being afterwards questioned as to this behaviour, said: ‘Well, I thought if I kept moving very fast all the time they were there they couldn’t kiss me.’ But in the case of those fisher girls the kiss he gave was a sacramental sign of friendship, and the only way of expressing it.
Animals were always, not only his equals, but in many cases he considered them his superiors, and he truly appreciated their strength, their instincts, and their charm. Once when he was about four years old we were driving through Windsor Park and some one chanced to say, ‘What a pity that the deer should nibble away at those branches and injure the trees. If there were only some way of stopping it.’
‘But there is,’ said Mouse; ‘you could put up a printed Notice asking them not to.’ He never doubted but that the deer were quite as capable of reading notices as the other visitors to the Park.
One day some one was saying of his cherished cat that it was only a very ordinary one, not being of Persian or other high lineage. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Alastair, ‘‘cos I expect he’s just one of Nature’s pussy cats,’ showing that he did not admit social distinctions even in the animal kingdom, nor permit his darling pussy to be relegated to the ranks of the ‘scum de la scum’, instead of the ‘creme de la creme,’ where he had hitherto placed him. But it was an ingenious way of applying the well-known saying to his feline friend, and rescuing him from an invidious position.
He was promised, as a treat when very tiny, that he should visit the Zoo, and also see the House of Commons, which he took an interest in. The Zoo coming first on the taxi’s itinerary, as we stood at the turnstile a mixed roar reached our ears, very mixed, as animals do not have the Esperanto language to their credit, but each speaks his own. Alastair said excitedly: ‘I know this is the House of Commons because I can hear their voices.’ And, of course, there are times when the House of Commons is credited with being a Bear Garden.
The pony he rode, the dogs he knew and loved, cows — every sort of creature he met with were all his friends, and he theirs. He feared none, and would say to his Nursery Governess: ‘Come on, never mind the cows, and if there’s a bull, haven’t I got a stick?’
Before he could really speak there was a terrible thunderstorm, and I sent our devoted old housekeeper up to the nursery to see how he was getting through it. She returned with the news that ‘Baby says he rather likes the growling’. Indeed, I never knew him fear anything of a material nature. He loved to hear the wind blowing of a night, and the first time he slept alone in his night nursery was asked if he minded being by himself, and replied: ‘Not if you’ll go away and shut the door,’ and on being further questioned as to whether he would mind being in the dark, said: ‘Not if you’ll put out the light.’
Once Kenneth was letting off parlour fireworks, and
Mouse went and stood beside him at the table, only to be told to come away at once as they were very dangerous. ‘Then, said he, ‘if it is dangerous I must be by Daddy’s side.’
So he was a ‘Listener’ and an eager one. It was not every story-teller who could enlist his admiration. As a very little child, when his Nurse was trying to point out objects from the window of the railway carriage, he said to her in grave rebuke: ‘Nanny, do leave the boats in the sea ‘cos they look very well there, and you have dragged the lambs and other things in through the carriage windows.’ Another time he asked her what she had been reading out of the paper about Next of Kin, and what was it? She said: ‘Why, your nearest and dearest,’ and Mouse said gravely: ‘Then I suppose in my case the next of kin is the canary.’ He had a very great vocabulary and always had the good sense to attach to any word which he knew at all any meaning connected wit
h it in his own mind, so one day he was asked if he could explain what a Connoisseur was, and said: ‘Yes, the people who drink Rowntree’s cocoa,’ because that beverage had been commended to connoisseurs.
But he knew how to use very simple words, too, to the best effect, for when he could just write, he scribbled some verses in pencil which for sheer simplicity of language and construction are rather hard to beat, so few words are used and so much meaning conveyed in them.
Once I met a Fellow
A’coming down the road,
A truss of straw all yellow
Was all that bumpkin’s load.
His hair, too, was all yellow
The colour of his load,
That poor and plodding Fellow
A’coming down the road.
The other day in walking round Kenneth’s study, looking up at a high shelf full of beautiful old Italian china, Morgan tiles, Hispano-Moorish platters, old Capo di Monte figures, and what not of rare and lovely specimens of the ceramic arts, I espied with its back turned to the room a rudely executed image in coloured pottery. Now all the other objects on that shelf had been collected by Kenneth on his early visits to Italy when his years were few, his taste was great, and his means very small, and he had carried them back to England in a string bag to adorn his many homes ever after. So I could not conceive how Kenneth had become possessed of such a primitive object as this modern and elementary kingfisher. I could see what had led to its survival — namely, that it was masked by its more splendid neighbours on that ceiling-wards shelf and thus had escaped the disintegrating process of dusting. But still wondering how it came there, there flashed into my mind the words of a very small boy: ‘I balanced the blotter with a kingfisher.’
I didn’t quite understand these cryptic words which were further explained to me by his saying: ‘I don’t know a bit if Daddy likes blotters, and I don’t know what they were invented for, ‘acause you can always dry your writing in the fender by the fire, or on the window-sill in the sun, and if your fingers gets smudgy you can rub them on the carpet ‘acause carpets is much better than towels for wiping your hands on. But I do know quite well what kingfishers was invented for, just to please Daddy. And the other day Daddy and me saw two kingfishers sitting on the edge of a pigsty, and Daddy just danced with delight. He said it was very unnerusual to see two kingfishers together even on the branch of a tree, let alone on the edge of a pigsty. And as he likes pigs very much and kingfishers very much, I expect he was pleased to see them so near together. But if we’d seen two blotters together I don’t think he would have danced at all. And that is why I thought I’d better balance the blotter with a kingfisher.’
Complete Works of Kenneth Grahame Page 64