When we came back to the thatched-roof farm-house — known ancestrally as Boham’s — I noticed that three or four of Maxfield Parrish’s coloured illustrations for The Golden Age were hanging on the walls of the living-room. I said something about the illustrator. Thereupon I learned that Kenneth Grahame had never laid eyes on Maxfield Parrish. When he found that I had met the artist, he asked me eagerly: ‘Tell me — but I am almost afraid to ask — does he look — does he look like the sort of man who ought to paint such pictures?’
‘Maxfield Parrish,’ I replied, ‘is one of the handsomest men in the United States. He has a beautiful face, especially in profile. He looks exactly as any lover of his works would wish.’
‘I am glad, I am very glad to hear you tell me that,’ said Kenneth Grahame. ‘People really ought to look like themselves. Keats did, and so did Shelley. But so few of them do, so few of them do.’
And out of a slight corner of an eye, I looked upon a face that was beatifically young beneath its coronal of silver hair, a great head poised upon a frame that might be called heroic; and I listened to the cadence of a voice that contained the music of larks in the morning air.
‘You have spoken truthfully,’ I said.
IV
The Berkshire landscape, although generally level, was diversified here and there by hummocks which had been heaped up by the Danes — heaven knows how many centuries ago — and were known in that locality as barrows. One day we were sitting on the summit of a Danish barrow, to take the wind and talk without disturbance of a roof.
‘I have come here to pick a quarrel with you,’ I began. ‘The Golden Age, if I remember rightly, was published in 1896, and Dream Days in 1898. At any rate, I recall that I flunked a college examination in 1899 when I was asked to write a dissertation (in general) about English Prose and insisted upon writing, instead, a dissertation (in particular) on Kenneth Grahame. Then ten years elapsed — ten years — before the publication of The Wind in the Willows. That ten years was too long. We were told, of course, that you were busy at the Bank of England: but that excuse no longer holds. My quarrel with you is precisely this: I cannot wait another decade for another book from you. Don’t keep me waiting. I mean this very simply, however silly it may sound. I happen to be gifted — or cursed — with an obsolescent sense that formerly was called an ear. English prose is English prose, and has been, ever since Sir Thomas Browne. But R. L. S. is dead. You, and only you, remain alive — to make majestic music to the ear in a period that has become eye-minded and tone-deaf. I do not really wish to quarrel with you. I ask only that you shall give me, very quickly, something more to read; and, when I say that, I mean, of course, to read aloud.’
Upon the windy summit of the Danish barrow, an appreciable silence passed before the large man with the boyish face said anything at all. At last he spoke, seriously and almost carefully; again I give his meaning but not his exact words.
‘What you have said has touched me very deeply, because I know it is sincere. And yet, I doubt very much if I shall ever write another book.... A certain amount of what a countryman of yours called life must go into the making of any page of prose. The effort is enormous.’
‘But everybody praises you,’ I interjected, ‘for your graceful ease.’
‘A sentence that is easy to read may have been difficult to put together. Perhaps the greater the easiness in writing, the harder that task in composition. Writing is not easy: I need not tell you that. There is always a pleasure in the exercise; but, also, there is always an agony in the endeavour. If we make a formula of those two motives, I think we may define the process. It is, at its best, a pleasurable agony.
‘I am not a professional writer. I never have been, and I never will be, by reason of the accident that I don’t need any money. I do not care for notoriety: in fact, it is distasteful to me. If I should ever become a popular author, my privacy would be disrupted and I should no longer be allowed to live alone.
‘What, then, is the use of writing for a person like myself? The answer might seem cryptic to most. It is merely that a fellow entertains a sort of hope that somehow, sometime, he may build a noble sentence that might make Sir Thomas Browne sit upward once again in that inhospitable grave of his in Norwich.
‘But language — before this ancient world grew up and went astray — was intended to be spoken to the ear. We are living now in an eye-minded age, when he who runs may read and the average person glimpses his daily reading on the run. What is the use, any longer, of toying with the pleasurable agony of attempting stately sentences of English prose? Apart from you and myself, who sit alone upon this ancient barrow, there are not more than six men in the United Kingdom who have inherited an ear for prose. I would set Austin Dobson at the top of the list; he is endowed with a delicate and dainty sense of rhythm. Rudyard Kipling knows his King James Bible, and that means very much — now that John Ruskin had passed away. But, tell me, in your country, is there any one at all who still entertains an ear for English prose?’
I mentioned one. His name — till then unknown — was Brian Hooker.
‘And all that agony, for half a dozen readers.’
‘The lovers of The Wind in the Willows have been counted by the thousands,’ I objected. ‘All of them are eagerly awaiting another book by the same author.’
‘They liked the subject-matter,’ he replied. ‘They did not even notice the source of all the agony, and all the joy. A large amount of what Thoreau called life went into the making of many of those playful pages. To toil at making sentences means to sit indoors for many hours, cramped above a desk. Yet, out of doors, the wind may be singing through the willows, and my favourite sow may be preparing to deliver a large litter in the fullness of the moon.’
V
The month of July, in 1932, was a time of grievous trouble in the world. The Prime Minister of Great Britain was presiding over a conference at Lausanne which had to do with international finance. Other leaders of the English- speaking world were busy at Geneva in a conference which had to do with armaments. The United States were noisy with politics and all of the absurd tumult incidental to the initiation of a Presidential campaign. The newspapers were crowded with accounts of meaningless excursions and alarums.
In these circumstances, little attention was attracted by a simple item of news which was telegraphed to the Associated Press on the date of the sixth of July. It read:
‘Kenneth Grahame died to-day, at Pangbourne, on the Thames, at the age of seventy-three.’
I doubt if anybody took the trouble to deliver this dispatch to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of Great Britain. I am certain that no one hauled the British ensign to half-mast, in Westminster or Geneva or Lausanne. And yet it is a truth that, on that day, the translators of the King James version of the Bible, seated at an eternal council-table, admitted to their fellowship the last great master of English prose, and that Great Britain lost the loveliest of all her living souls.
This account of Kenneth Grahame’s ways and even words from the other side of the Atlantic throws further light on his love of children and animals.
These returned his love in fullest measure.
Two small brothers always spoke of him as the ‘Sugar- Man’, and on their mother asking them, Why? — as she never knew he gave them any sweets — replied: ‘Because he is the very sweetest man we ever knew!’ And if he were out, when they came to visit us, they would shed tears of disappointment.
Even strange children always selected him out of any crowd to ask the way, or inquire the time, and the little village scholars would volunteer ‘to say their pieces’ to him.
Now this was the more remarkable because, as a villager said to me: ‘Mr. Graham never laid himself out to please any one. He rarely even spoke to any one. Yet, see how we all loved him.’
And animals had just the same liking for and confidence in him. Shepherds’ dogs, notoriously devoted exclusively to their masters, would break away to bestow a furtive lick
on Kenneth’s hand, and a mother-cat, when leaving for some expedition, would carry in her infant progeny and deposit them round Kenneth’s ankles for safe keeping during her absence.
So no wonder that he was on a familiar footing with all the living creatures he encountered.
He had wonderfully keen sight and could recognize afar off any bird by its flight, note, or plumage, and it was not only their aspect or sounds that he knew, but their habits and customs.
He walked into people’s hearts, and there are locked hearts as well as locked doors, and even the latter proved no barrier to him, for he was admitted without effort and found himself in the midst of every sort of adventurous scene.
There is a fairy-tale of which I was often reminded by this power of his; that in order to gain access through some secret gate, its key must be sought by the ensuing method- first, a nameless city had to be discovered, then a hidden locality situate in that town. There a stable would stand, and within it a black steed in an oaken stall, concealed in one ear whereof was a golden key on a green silken string. This was the open-sesame to so many closed doors.
And Kenneth appeared to possess this golden key, so carefully concealed from most mortals.
Sometimes we found ourselves the only ‘outsiders’ at a bandit’s trial in Sicily, carefully guarded by armed soldiers standing behind our chairs, or in the more peaceful scene of a ball in Brittany in honour of a quite unknown peasant’s wedding; or again in an actual stable as mysteriously hidden as the one in the fairy-tale where was placed to be secure from touts or would-be poisoners, the ‘favourite’ for the great Palio race at Siena. I have no idea how any of these happenings came about, save for the medium of that magic golden key.
To go back to the Palio. The horse, or rather, the mare, we had seen did win the race, that race which has been run (save for the period of the last war, and probably of this one) since the days of Michelangelo, who designed the exquisite costumes for its pageantry.
We then had a further secret adventure in being present at the great open-air supper given in honour of the winner, ‘Lola’. This is traditional and was held in the hilly side- streets of Siena, at a series of tables as long as the streets themselves, decorated with flowers, and lighted by lanterns. At one end of the principal table stood Lola, with a necklace of green apples round her highly groomed neck, tied with multi-coloured ribbons.
All this we viewed from the windows of the parish priest’s dwelling, where we too and a goodly company were regaled on biscuits from china bowls and delicious golden wine in blue Venetian glasses. Here, hovering above the scene, we saw every detail of the feast below — the twinkling lights, the sturdy company — and heard the speeches, songs, and applause.
The guests below were mostly what might be called slum-dwellers, that is to say, the workers of Siena resident in the district named ‘Onda’ or the Wave, which ran the winner in that year’s Palio.
This brings to my mind that late on the night of the race- day we were returning to Florence by car, not being able to get accommodation in Siena itself, and as it was just at the time when the Socialists held sway, we were warned that by driving such a long distance after midnight we should in all probability be shot at sight, and at our first hold-up on the way we thought this prophecy was about to be fulfilled. But all the crowd wanted was the information as to which contrada (region) of Siena had won the Palio, and when we told them it was Onda they let us proceed. This question was asked us at least twenty times in towns and villages on our way, but after the first alarm we knew it was only their sporting instinct that made them arrest us in order to hear the earliest possible news of so great an event.
As has been said in the foregoing pages, Kenneth Grahame was a born teller of tales, and what a story he could have made out of the Palio in its own inimitable language!
But he rarely related any stories save of his own inventing. The following verses by Algol serve to show that this gift of his — so fully recognized whilst he was a dweller in this world — even followed him into another.
Light as a wind-blown feather
The trailing buttercup floats;
Once more it is perfect weather
For messing about in boats.
But no sound stirs in the rushes
That harbour the light-foot clan,
And a passing shadow hushes
The whispering pipes of Pan.
He has crossed a wider river
Than otter or vole can swim,
And the Master of Life, the Lover
Of Beauty has welcomed him;
And the children that dwell in glory
Have captured a gentle soul;
They are crowding round for the story
Of Ratty and Toad and Mole.
Ever, while spring winds follow
The summons of northing suns,
And in river and hill and hollow
Life flutters and swims and runs,
Ever, while snowy pillows
Lure to an oft-turned page,
We will read The Wind in the Willows,
Dream Days and The Golden Age.
As Algol in these verses tells of ‘the children who dwell in glory’ crowding round Kenneth for a tale, it may be interesting to trace something of his own childhood as well as the early stages of the book. So here is some account of the schooldays when he himself was no older than the children dwelling in glory: —
Reprinted from St. Edward’s School Chronicle, July 1932
In 1868 there entered the little school in New Inn Hall Street a small boy of ten. He stayed seven years at the School, moved with it in 1873 to Summertown, and for four terms, 1874-5, was Senior Prefect. He got his XV Colours and Second XI Colours, and was prominent in the Debates. In No. 5 of the Chronicle appears what is probably his first effort in print — a schoolboy essay of twenty-five lines on ‘Rivalry’, with a note from the Editor that it is printed to encourage care in essay writing. It must be admitted that it shows no promise of the exquisite prose that was to be in later years the delight of thousands. It was not till 1890 that he appeared in print again, in The Headswoman. Few know it even now. He allowed us to print an extract from it in No. 400 of the Chronicle. His fame began with Pagan Papers (1893), in which appeared the first sections of The Golden Age (1895), which drew out Swinburne’s famous phrase ‘well-nigh too praiseworthy for praise’, and crowned his special place among the elect. Dream Days followed, with something of the usual fate of a sequel (we missed Edward, who had gone to school); but it deserved better luck, for ‘The Twenty-first of October’ and ‘Its Walls were as of Jasper’ (what a title!) contain some of his very best. Read the description of October which runs through the former. Ten years of silence followed, and then came The Wind in the Willows. It was coldly received by his critics, and its sale was slow at first. When I bought my first copy in Malvern, the bookseller remarked that he had wondered when he would sell a copy. Yet it is now, I suppose, his best-known work. When it reached the children they loved it at once.
The fact is that the earlier books were about children, but not written for children. Their elders did not see the point, and the children did. But the appeal of the ineffable Mr. Toad was irresistible, and that perfect gentleman the Water Rat, the inexorable Mr. Badger, and dear, simple old Mole were all in the picture. But quite apart from the delightful fun, the book contains what I think is Kenneth Grahame’s best. ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ is a masterpiece. I want to cry with delight when I read it. ‘Wayfarers All’ is almost as good. But these are perhaps for the elders, not for the children. The Toad chapters, when I read them to the Lower Third, always met with clamorous demands for more.
We are the happy possessors of one jewel that I think no one else has. When I was making up the jubilee number of the Chronicle in 1913, I wrote to Mr. Kenneth Grahame, and he most kindly sent me ‘The Fellow that Walks Alone’, as yet unpublished. It is true ‘K. G.’ Read it and judge for yourself.
But, as The
Times remarks, his place among the ‘rare few’ is secure.
C.
Thus far this glimpse into the early days of his life. And at its close the letter sent to The Times by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch:
A PERSONAL TRIBUTE
Sir, — In the obituaries of Kenneth Grahame one misses (though friendship may be exacting) full recognition of his personal charm and the beauty — there is no other word — of his character. This, of course, could be divined in his books, few, yet in their way surely classical; but he avoided publicity always, in later years kept deeper retirement under a great sorrow; and so, perhaps, as these books must by their nature have attracted many readers towards a further intimacy of which he was shy, a word or two about him may be acceptable to them and pardonable by his spirit. One does not, anyhow, wish to go out of this world without acknowledging one of the best things found in it.
He came to these parts and to this house (from which he was afterwards married) a little more than thirty years ago; convalescent from a severe illness. Lazy afternoons at sea completed his recovery and made me acquainted with a man who combined all enviable gifts and yet so perfectly as to soften all envy away in affection. Noble in looks, yet modest in bearing; with flashes of wit that played at call around any subject, lambent as summer lightning, never hurting, and with silences that half-revealed things beyond reach of words, he seemed at once a child and a king.
Withal he was eminently a ‘man’s man’ and keen on all manly sports: a man, too, who — as Secretary of the Bank of England — knew much of practical affairs and could judge them incisively if with amusement, while his own mind kept its loyalty to sweet thoughts, great manners, and a quiet disdain of anything meaner than these. I must remember him as a ‘classical’ man, perfectly aware of himself as ‘at best a noble plaything of the gods’, whose will he seemed to understand through his gift of interpreting childhood.
Complete Works of Kenneth Grahame Page 66