Complete Works of Kenneth Grahame

by Kenneth Grahame

  The blotter by now is probably pre-’salvage’, but the kingfisher to this moment ‘balances it’ with his beak turned to the study wall. How delightful it would be if all our drabnesses and dullnesses and monotonies and usefulnesses could be ‘balanced’ by anything so gay and so heartening as a kingfisher.

  Once Mouse made an attempt to depict the depth and height of his love for his father. And gave as an illustration the huge Christmas-tree ‘where all the Daddies in the whole of the world was hung on its branches. And if I could cut down the Daddy I wanted the most it would always be my own Daddy that is now that I would cut down every time. Because I know he is the best Daddy in the whole world.’

  So here are some of the ‘Listener’s’ sayings and doings, and I think you will concede that he, and he alone, could have helped in the sayings and doings of what he would have considered those of his fellow creatures. In his sight these were all capable of any adventure, goodness, or villainy that they manifested. And that such thousands, and indeed millions, of other children have been enchanted by the denizens of the River and ‘Wild Wood’, is largely due to the resolute child who vetoed his bedtime stories being interrupted, even by a visit to another enchanter, namely, the sea, with its many adjacent delights, so well known and loved by him. And this determination led to the Letters that according to promise were furnished week by week during the boy’s absence, by the Author of The Wind in the Willows.

  Quite recently a friend, as she has now become, related to me how her first impression of Kenneth came to her on the veranda of the celebrated ‘Hotel Julia’ at Pont Aven in the south of Brittany. He had just arrived there, and while his luggage was being taken up to his room, waited outside to get a glimpse of his new surroundings. But he himself was soon surrounded by a group of small Breton boys who had already induced him to tell them a story which they were drinking in with avidity, while he stood looking far away over their heads and charming them as the song of a hitherto unknown bird might. And there could have been but little more comprehension in this case for the reason that the children — barely of school age — would, although Kenneth spoke French, not yet have mastered that language and only knew their native Breton which even French people living in Brittany for half a lifetime do not understand.

  He was a reserved man in conversation, but so eloquent as a relater that he turned the merest fantasy into actuality. His own version of the story-teller’s magic appears in this his own poem, called ‘Christmas’, which is descriptive of a wonderful Christmas-tree designed by himself.

  A large pine stood in the embrasure of a window on a square carpet of dried beech leaves strewn with a sparkling, frost-like powder. The tree which towered to the ceiling was topped by a brilliant silver star, beneath which a blonde waxen angel revolved slowly, emitting a tinkling tune supposed to come from the silver trumpet which one hand pressed against her rosy mouth. From the point of each branch depended an icicle wrought in crystal. Then there were highly coloured objects of all sorts, magenta and yellow, monkeys on sticks, pop-guns, in the same vivid tints, pears, apples, and other fruits with one violently yellow cheek and the other (presumably the one that had encountered the sun) a glowing red — the whole illuminated by the pink candles ‘twinkling bashfully’ — and with the heavenly scent of a pine forest.

  CHRISTMAS

  The Day is drawing nigh when Trees

  Shall rustle in the Parlour breeze;

  And Pines and Firs shall wave indoors,

  Scattering their needles on the floors.

  Then we will wander ‘neath the boughs

  That whisper in the scented house;

  And, looking up for Stars, shall see

  Pink Candles twinkle bashfully!

  O noble Steed, with Rider red!

  O Ark that sailest overhead!

  Dolls in the branches blossoming,

  Whence Trumpets, Drums and Sabres swing!

  Strewn on the Carpet’s sward so green

  Strange gold and silver fruits are seen;

  While from a Box sweet tinklings flow,

  Like Robin fluting in the snow!

  And then — the Story-Teller comes!

  — Let fall the Trumpets, hush the Drums!

  Wolves in the street may howl and wait —

  The Camp Fire glows within the grate!

  Round it we Pirates, Scouts, and Trappers

  (Hugging our Presents in their wrappers)

  Spell-bound, in semicircle snug,

  Drink the enchantment, on the rug!

  The mention in the poem of ‘Robin fluting in the Snow’ reminds me that Kenneth was intimate, not only with moles, but even more so with robins. He tamed one every season on the instructions of Lord Justice Fry, who was a great naturalist. He told us that no robin, however ascetic in his habits, could resist dried currants and was linked by gratitude to the purveyor thereof. This proved to be absolutely correct in the case of robin after robin. Sir Edward Fry himself had one robin which consumed up to fifty currants in a day. But ours never became so gluttonous as that, though one of them used to sit on the branch of a tree overlooking the avenue whereby Kenneth reached the gate of exit. This very practical bird would then whir its wings close to Kenneth’s face, till he produced from his waistcoat pocket a matchbox containing the desired delicacy. The robin of the moment became so devoted to his benefactor that he would sit on his hand to eat a meal of three courses: a currant, a crumb, topping up with a fragment of cheese, and he would take what appeared to be a siesta on his shoulder or foot after his hearty meal. This intimate relationship continued till one day, when the robin appeared with a crimsoning waistcoat and a flushed face, after which he became a family man and retired from human companionship to that of his wife and family.

  I have just bethought me that lovers of Kenneth Grahame’s books may like to know something more of their writer. And as this Preface consists of matter hitherto unpublished, I append a personal appreciation by Clayton Hamilton, then a professor of English Literature at a great American University, which gives the explanation of his selection of children and animals as his favourite subjects: —

  I

  No other place on earth could be farther in feeling from the English countryside than the Grand Canon of the Colorado, in the State of Arizona.

  Several years ago, I visited the Grand Canon of the Colorado. Having seen it, I am relieved of any desire to see it again. It is the most gigantic chasm in the surface of the earth and is, of course, impressive because of its immensity. Its ever-changing multi-coloured irridescence is fantastically beautiful. But it is a lonely place, devoid of any human interest. Nobody, in historic or in prehistoric times, has ever lived in the Grand Canon. Though many of its pinnacles and buttes take on at times the look of towered castles, they have been sculptured only by uncounted centuries of wind and show no touch of mortal hands. That dizzying immensity is empty of all human memories and offers nothing to stimulate the sense of drama or romance.

  Yet my visit to the Grand Canon was not wasted; for, in the midst of that stupendous loneliness, I met a human being.

  Perched upon the edge of the great chasm, at the outset of Bright Angel Trail, I found a little bookshop. Its stock in trade consisted mainly of picture-books descanting on the beauties of Arizona and New Mexico and the sort of fiction which celebrates the great open spaces where men are men. Yet, in the very middle of the centre table, isolated in that place of honour, I was startled to discover a copy of The Wind in the Willows. Impulsively I picked it up; and, with a suddenness that might possibly have been interpreted as rude, I said to the proprietor: ‘What, in the name of heaven, is this doing here?’

  She was a quiet woman, with grey hair. Her answer, as I learned a little later, was completely logical, though, at the moment, it scarcely seemed to fit the question. ‘I am very pleased to meet you,’ she remarked.

  She then went on to tell me that in 1908, when The Wind in the Willows had just been given to the world, she had bee
n a saleswoman in Chicago, at McClurg’s, and that then and there she had registered a vow that if ever she should have a bookshop of her own there must always be a copy of that classic in the place of honour. ‘It helps me to retain my self- respect,’ she added, ‘while I am selling to the daily tourists at El Tovar the sort of fiction that they read in Pullman cars.

  ‘I have another motive also, which you, of course, will understand. It is rather lonely here in Arizona. Most of the people who drift into my shop are merely tourists — you know the type. But I can always tell a real person by the look that comes into his eyes when he sees The Wind in the Willows in the centre of my table. I do not need to ask his name or anything about him; but I know at once that he is one of the elect, who love the loveliness of words. You, for instance, are the first real person who has come here in three months and seventeen days. That is why I said at once that I was pleased to meet you.’

  This encounter in itself was surprisingly exciting; but it took on an added tensity when I told her: ‘I know Kenneth Grahame personally. Some years ago, I spent a week-end at his farm in Berkshire. We still exchange letters now and then. I shall write to him about you.’

  She looked upon me with an expression that was almost tremulous. ‘Then, you have actually shaken hands with Kenneth Grahame?’

  ‘Not once, but many times.’

  She wavered towards me with a thrilling hesitance, like one envisaging a vast adventure. ‘Would you mind,’ she asked, and then the strengthened impulse swept her forward. ‘Would you mind if I grasped you by the hand?’

  This was on the edge of the Grand Canon of the Colorado, at the outset of Bright Angel Trail. No other place on earth could be farther in feeling from the English countryside.

  II

  In the spring of 1910 I moved to London, in order to prepare my little volume, On the Trail of Stevenson, under the admonitory eyes of Sidney Colvin, Edmund Gosse, and Andrew Lang. I had hoped that one of Stevenson’s friends would be able to introduce me to Kenneth Grahame; and I was both disappointed and surprised when each of them told me in turn that they had not seen him in a dozen years. It appeared that upon resigning his secretarial position at the Bank of England he had retired to a farm in Berkshire; he rarely came to town, he never went anywhere or saw anybody — he had adopted, in effect, the life of a recluse. Each of them — particularly Andrew Lang — spoke very highly of Kenneth Grahame, not only as an artist but also as a person, and gave voice to an expression of regret that they never saw him any more. Thereupon I wrote to Kenneth Grahame and sent him a copy of a review of The Wind in the Willows which I had written when the book was first published in this country. By return mail I received a cordial invitation to come down to Berkshire for a weekend, penned with that meticulous chirography which looked as if it had been graven on a copper plate.

  He lived in a farm-house known ancestrally as Boham’s, in the hamlet of Blewbury, adjacent to the railway station of Didcot, in Berkshire. As I jogged down in the dilatory train, his elaborate address attuned itself to the rhythm of the wheels and moved me to the composition of a series of preposterous couplets, such as:

  Boham’s, Blewbury, Didcot, Berks,

  Fell in the sea and was bitten by sharks.

  One is not at one’s keenest on a railway journey.

  At Didcot, on the railway platform, Kenneth Grahame stood awaiting me. He was very tall and very broad — a massive figure, but with no spare flesh. At that time he was fifty years of age. His hair was white, but his face was almost beatifically young, and he had the clear and roseate complexion of a healthy child. He was dressed in knickerbockers, a soft shirt, and a baggy coat of tweeds. One could see at a glance that he was one of the rare people in the world who look like themselves. I felt a desperate necessity to say something unimportant; and I told him how the rhythm of the railway wheels had churned his long address within my mind to jiggery. I reminded him that an American poetess, that season, had just won a prize at Stratford- on-Avon for her play, The Piper, and suggested that

  Boham’s, Blewbury, Didcot, Berks,

  might serve as an appropriate address for

  Josephine Preston Peabody Marks.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ he countered; ‘and

  At Boham’s, Blewbury, Didcot, Berks,

  She would wake in the morning and listen to larks.’

  That was our introduction to each other.

  Boham’s was a brick farm-house, with a heavily thatched roof; it dated from early Tudor times. The latest proprietor had deftly managed to introduce such modern excrescences I as a bath-tub and electric lights without disturbing the historic atmosphere of the ancient edifice. He said to me a little later: ‘In England, we may choose from any of a dozen different centuries to live in; and who would select the twentieth century when he might live more simply in the spacious times of great Elizabeth?’

  Certainly life seemed spacious as we sat in the little courtyard, surrounded by the rural erections of that ancient Saxon whose name had happened to be Boham. By comparison, it seemed a little cramped when we went indoors for meals. The household consisted only of Mrs. Grahame (Elspeth) and a lovely little boy whose face was like a Maxfield Parrish illustration. I believe that the actual name of the little boy was Alastair; but, in the household, he was known familiarly as Mouse. Even with the addition of myself, the company did not constitute a crowd; and yet, before the second day was finished, I became aware of a delicate and somewhat strange phenomenon. It was simply, but emphatically, this — that Kenneth Grahame was not at home beneath a roof. Indoors, he would lapse into a silence that might endure an hour, for — as I observed with gratitude — he felt no social compulsion whatsoever to keep talking in the presence of a visitor; but, as soon as we started out upon a ramble across country, he would break into an easy current of cheery conversation.

  I had known, of course, for years that all of Kenneth Grahame’s work had been posited upon the opening stanza of that great Ode of Wordsworth which is one of the saddest, as it is one of the wisest, utterances of mankind.

  It was, therefore, not merely for information that I asked him why he had written mainly — almost only — about children and about animals. I cannot, of course, report his words with absolute fidelity; but I can recover at least the gist of his reply.

  ‘The most priceless possession of the human race is the yonder of the world. Yet, latterly, the utmost endeavours of mankind have been directed towards the dissipation of that wonder. Everybody seems to cry out for a world in which there shan’t be any Santa Claus. Science analyses everything to its component parts, and neglects to put them together again. A barefoot boy cannot go wading in a mountain stream without being told that he must no longer spell the fluid that sings trickling round his feet by the age-old school-house lettering of W-A-T-E-R, but must substitute, for the sake of scientific exactitude, the symbol H2O. Nobody, any longer, may hope to entertain an angel unawares, or to meet Sir Launcelot in shining armour on a moonlit road. But what is the use of living in a world devoid of wonderment? You have quoted Wordsworth: “It is not now as it has been before.” But the poet began by reminding us that “There was a time”.... It is that time which I have attempted to recapture and commemorate in Dream Days and The Golden Age.

  ‘Granted that the average man may live for seventy years, it is a fallacy to assume that his life from sixty to seventy is more important than his life from five to fifteen. Children are not merely people: they are the only really living people that have been left to us in an over-weary world. Any normal child will instinctively agree with your own American poet, Walt Whitman, when he said: “To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”

  ‘In my tales about children, I have tried to show that their simple acceptance of the mood of wonderment, their readiness to welcome a perfect miracle at any hour of the day or night, is a thing more precious than any of the laboured acquisitions of adult mankind...

  ‘As for animals, I wro
te about the most familiar and domestic in The Wind in the Willows because I felt a duty to them as a friend. Every animal, by instinct, lives according to his nature. Thereby he lives wisely, and betters the tradition of mankind. No animal is ever tempted to belie his nature. No animal, in other words, knows how to tell a lie. Every animal is honest. Every animal is straightforward. Every animal is true — and is, therefore, according to his nature, both beautiful and good. I like most of my friends among the animals more than I like most of my friends among mankind. Do you wonder at that?... Come, and let me show you.’

  Thereupon he led me on a ramble to all the other farms in Blewbury and introduced me individually to each of the domestic animals of that rural district. During the course of these social calls upon innumerable horses, dogs, cats, pigs, cows, rabbits, hens, and sheep, I was reminded of the lament of Andrew Lang that he never saw Kenneth Grahame any more.

  This particular adventure culminated in Grahame’s declaration that his favourite among all animals was the domestic pig. With an almost childish sense of triumph, he took me, as a climax, to a formal meeting with his favourite sow; and, as we leaned upon the ancient railings of the pen, he descanted upon the virtues of the grunting individual before us in language as eloquent as that which he had used erstwhile in writing to celebrate the beauties, in The Magic King, of Coralie and Zephyrine.