In the spring of 1899, recovering from an almost fatal attack of pneumonia (Kenneth and Mr. Kipling, his late colleague on the National Observer, were both at death’s door of the same ailment at the same moment), he went to Cornwall to recuperate.
About this time he became engaged to marry Elspeth, the elder of the two gifted daughters of Mr. R. W. Thomson, of Edinburgh. Of Miss Thomson, a friend who knew her before and after marriage, writes: ‘Elspeth had a happy indifference to the lesser conventions of the social world and her gift of imagination and intelligent sympathy enabled her to follow her husband’s mind and give him, throughout his life, an ideal companionship.’ And Kenneth, writing of his engagement to his old friend Miss Bradley, daughter of the celebrated Dean of Westminster, says:
‘DEAR MISS BRADLEY, — Elsie refuses to have anything to do with an engagement ring of any sort. And I respect unconventionality of any kind too much to even protest. But I do feel strongly that there ought to be a ring in the business somewhere — to appease the gods — and circumstances seem to mark you out for it clearly. So I hope that you will not refuse to accept the one I send along with this. It is of no value, unless it will sometimes remind you of a friendly action — and if you do friendly things you must put up with being reminded of them.
‘Yours most sincerely,
‘KENNETH GRAHAME’
Miss Bradley says that her father was devoted to Kenneth ‘and recognized in him a master of English prose. Not least did he appreciate his boyish mind. The regard was mutual. Together they would sit, old churchman and young banker, and quote their favourite passages from the classics or else the younger man would listen to reminiscences which went far back into the first half of the nineteenth century.’
Kenneth’s uncle, the Reverend E. J. Hawkins (father of Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins), writing to Kenneth upon his engagement, adds to his congratulations this wisdom: ‘Marriage involves a constant exercise of the art of living well with an equal, living with superiors or inferiors is easy in comparison. I hope that it will be the happy gift of you both to perceive and do this.’
In July of the same year after (he writes), ‘an operation, carbolic and a certain weary wallpaper’, the parties were married at Fowey where Kenneth was completing his convalescence.
The bachelor establishment at Kensington Crescent was taken over by Miss Sarah Bath — who preferred not to be at the call of one of her own sex — and Mr and Mrs. Grahame went to live at 16 Durham Villas, Campden Hill.
There a boy was born to them in May 1900. And it was at this time that Kenneth became the friend of Graham Robertson, the playwright and artist, who writes of him thus:
‘He was then in Durham Villas, Campden Hill and I in Argyll Road, just round the corner; a two-minutes’ walk lay between us and the path soon became well worn.
‘His special room in No. 16 was most characteristic; it looked like a nursery. Books there were certainly, but they were outnumbered by toys. Toys were everywhere intriguing, fascinating toys which could hardly have been conducive to study and may have accounted to some extent for their owner’s very occasional literary output.
‘As his house was full of toys so was mine full of dogs, and we each found the other’s surroundings quite normal and satisfactory.
Any one who wants to know Kenneth Grahame may still find him in The Golden Age and Dream Days, the eternal boy, keenly alive to the beauty and wonder of the world around him, yet shy of giving expression to the strange happiness that bubbles up within him. In those long ago days when we saw much of each other, I always felt that, with all the frankness and jollity of his boyishness, there was also the boy’s reticence and half-unconscious withdrawal into himself; and then again, beyond the boy, was a man known by few, remote, but very much to be reckoned with.
I was but touching the fringe of a great personality. As we were such near neighbours, he would happen in casually to dinner or later in the evening, and though we often spoke hardly more than did the somnolent dogs couched at our feet, yet memory seems to give me back hours spent in long and intimate conversation. We never wrote to each other, but I always felt that I had his friendship and it was very precious to me.
‘He had a marvellous gift of silence. We all know the old rustic who said, “Sometimes I sets and thinks and sometimes I just sets.” Kenneth Grahame had reduced “just setting” to a fine art. He would slowly become part of the landscape and a word from him would come as unexpectedly as a sudden remark from an oak or a beech. He could not have been thinking, because a silent thinker is, socially speaking, quite as disturbing to serenity as a motor cyclist. No, he was “just setting”; in other words he was on the threshold of Nirvana; his brain was receptive but at rest, a great peace was with him and about him and his companion was drawn into it.
‘Animals loved him. They felt safe with him, and indeed his presence ever brought a sense of security, like the shelter of a hill or the shadow of a great tree. His quiet strength soothed and sustained.
‘My trio of Bobtail Sheepdogs accepted him at once as a friend and welcomed him with effusion whenever he appeared; and on one of them, called Portly, he conferred immortality by giving his name to the lost baby otter in The Wind in the Willows. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said to me, “but I must call him Portly because — well, because it is his name. What else am I to call him?”
‘Dogs were a great link between us and we shared other enthusiasms, chief among them, perhaps, a love for the work, pictorial and poetical, of William Blake; and my rather comprehensive collection of Blake’s drawings may have lured my neighbour into a neighbourliness that otherwise might have taken longer to develop.
‘Another tie was our mutual interest in Fairyland, upon the manners and customs of which country we could both speak with authority; and we would discuss the points of view, proclivities and antecedents of its inhabitants with all the passionate earnestness displayed by really sensible people when speaking of Latest Quotations, Lunch Scores or Cup Finals.
‘For us the Folk of Fairy Tale were genuine historical characters and we always tried to enter sympathetically into their feelings, but I remember that we sometimes found the morals of the virtuous heroes and heroines, though much insisted upon, not a little complicated and perplexing. For example, in one well-known story, the Good Girl, having been extra good, received a visit from an angel who agreed to grant her three wishes.
‘“I should like to become as beautiful as the day,” said the Good Girl — and small blame to her. “Certainly,” said the angel. “And,” continued the Good Girl, warming to her work, “I should like my sister to become as ugly as the devil.” The angel booked this order without comment. “And I should like to go to Heaven when I die,” added the Good Girl — just in time. Luckily the wishes were limited to three, or the unpopular sister might have been dispatched to quite a different address.
‘But it was a little puzzling — the angel seemed perfectly satisfied with the Good Girl. Perhaps angels were more easily satisfied in those days, and certainly the sister had been rather trying. Still — we were really quite worried about it.
‘Later, when a play of mine, Pinkie and, the Fairies, was put on at “His Majesty’s” I induced Kenneth to bring his little son to the dress rehearsal, which was, in reality, a big children’s party. We were both interested to note the effect produced upon the child by Ellen Terry, who was dutifully trying to play an elderly part; and, on being questioned, Mouse delivered himself thus, “I should have liked her very much if she had been Cinderella or the Fairy Queen, but she was only an Aunt.” But so saying had he not glimpsed the Fairy Lady under the dull disguise of every day?
‘As the author of The Golden Age was the greatest living authority upon Aunts, and as my play dealt somewhat daringly with the same subject, I was naturally much wrought up by his presence at the performance and enormously relieved when he expressed approbation. And I really think he enjoyed himself — anyhow, he said less than ever afterwards, which I kn
ew to be a good sign.
‘I had hardly ever, before then, met Kenneth Grahame amongst a crowd, we had nearly always been alone together, and I remember, as he came towards me through the press, realizing how distinct he was from the people round him. There was something not abnormal, but super-normal in his presence — he was the slightest bit over life-size (any painter will know what that means) — there was a splendour about him that was both of the body and the spirit. He was a being of a different race, or perhaps a throwback to what our race may have been before it became stunted and devitalized. It was the impression of a moment, but I never forgot it. His good looks I had hitherto taken as a matter of course — it seemed natural that the writer of such books should look like that — but, as I then saw him, towering above his fellows, his beauty took on a new significance, showing him as the lost Arcadian, the wanderer from the Country of the Young, one who had looked into the eyes of Pan and listened to the Piper at the Gates of Dawn.’
In May 1906, the Grahames left London and took, at Cookham Dene, a furnished house beside the Thames. Once again, was there, A living river at the door A nightingale in the sycamore.
CHAPTER VII. ‘THE OLD LADY’
KENNETH GRAHAME entered the service of the Bank of England in 1878 on the nomination of Mr. William Lidderdale, a director, who later became Governor of the Bank.
The service of The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street is a good service and its fairly plentiful rewards are the safe and humdrum rewards of beaurocracy. That is to say they offer a moderate man security for himself and his family and allow him a financial peace of mind. And banking hours are easy when compared with those of other professions. So, on the whole, Kenneth Grahame, a man without the itch of personal ambition, found himself suited to his employment. Other spheres he might have preferred — grave scholarship and gay, ‘the line of festal light in Christ Church hall’ — but here he was and here he was content to be. Throughout his life he was a man who did the work his hand had to do with thoroughness and distinction. He passed the Bank’s entrance examination with honours and, for the English essay set by the examiners, he obtained full marks — a thing without example before his day, or after it, in all the Old Lady’s years. The essay had India for a thesis and though its success is still recalled the actual screed no longer exists.
In that ‘private ledger’ (to which I have referred before now) I find this young philosophy of a virtuous apprentice towards his work and his play:
‘A certain old clerk in one of the pay departments of the Bank of England used to spend his yearly holiday in relieving some turnpike man of his post and performing all the duties pertaining thereto till recalled to Threadneedle Street. This was vulgarly supposed to be an instance of slavery to one’s accustomed work — of “pay and receive” — and spoken of pityingly. But that man doubtless knew what he wanted, knew one way of seeing Life. And what better way? And if all he was good for was to pay and take payments at least he recognized the fact, accepted it, boldly built thereon and went for it in its best shape.’
Nevertheless, the first occupation of the young clerk’s leisure hours was the mastery of shorthand. This achieved, he joined the volunteers and occupied himself further with social work in the East End. Miss Evelyn Lidderdale, at whose father’s house on the Thames Kenneth and Roland Grahame were, as young men, frequent visitors, remembers going with a sister to see those fine London Scots drill in Hyde Park. The ladies went in a double perambulator with a dual chaperoning of nurses, whereof one, a Scotch woman of character, had formerly been nurse to the two tall warriors to-day the object of the excursion. Kenneth had become a sergeant and presently, recognizing his admirers, ordered a complimentary charge to be made upon the perambulator. His platoon, flourishing its muskets, therefore advanced with leaps, bounds and loud cheers. The two objectives in the perambulator were enchanted. Not so their guardian who thought that her Master Kenneth had ‘gone gyte’. ‘Mighty me,’ she muttered, ‘I must save the young leddies.’ And she upset the perambulator, upset the whole ‘rickmatick’, over the low railing. However, her particular soldiers picked up its contents who were more enchanted than ever.
Later Kenneth Grahame made, as we know, the acquaintance of Dr. Furnivall and, to his other off-time occupations, was added an interest in the conduct of the New Shakespeare and Browning Societies — Browning who had been, so nearly, a Bank of England clerk even as Kenneth was. And presently Kenneth Grahame began, as we know too, to dispatch those little ‘literary meteorites’ to here and to there in the district of Fleet Street. Miss Lidderdale remembers him in those days. ‘Very silent unless you got him to yourself and encouraged him to talk. Then he spoke most entertainingly and was a delightful and a witty companion. He never spoke of himself, but he was always so kind and so interested in what you were interested in. At that time I was interested in writing and Kenneth was most helpful and encouraging and, I do believe, happier even than I when an essay of mine gained a first prize.’
The young man himself, I imagine, while he enjoyed his Bank work and recognized that no fun can equal the fun of really High Finance and that Romance walks in Threadneedle Street as truly as she wanders by ‘the stripling Thames at Bablock-Hythe’, yet carried another province, that of Saturn, in his heart of which he says:
‘This is an over-surveyed age, and rarely now are atlases to be found containing those broad buff spaces so dear to our youth, unbroken by the blue of any lake, crawled upon by no caterpillar mountain ranges; wherein you might rear a dozen clamorous cities of magic, and yet leave room for a prairie or two, a Sahara, and a brand-new set of Rockies. But there are kingdoms yet to discover, and golden realms that await their Marco Polo. Every one of these children, who are going about the business of life so absorbedly, with such small regard for us big fellows coming and going vaguely, out of focus, on the edge of their horizon, has got a particular one of his own, shimmering with barbaric pearl and gold, pleasantly elastic as to its boundaries. You may be quite sure of this; and you may be equally sure of another thing — that you shall never enter in. Whatever the extent of his usual confidences, this gate is sternly shut.
‘The reason why? Well, perhaps mainly shamefacedness. The thing as seen by him would appear to you, he knows well, too incredibly fantastic. Possibly he would be laughed at — the sort of criminal dock in which a child most dreads to stand. In any case he lacks the language for the task. The expression of the commonest sentiments is apt to gravel him; how much more the voicing of these nebulae — as impossible a business as if he were bidden to sing in colour, or to paint in odours gathered from the garden. But, above all, to reveal would be in some sort to break the spell; and this is his own treasure, his peculiar possession — perhaps the only thing he has got which is altogether and entirely his very own. Even with each other, children do not usually share their kingdoms. To be sure, a fellow-feeling in kingdoms is a rare fine thing — the only thing, perhaps, really worthy the name of sympathy; and kingdoms blossom and expand so splendidly under a judicious dual control. But the risk is too great — the risk of jeers, rebuffs, sheer incapacity to understand — to make such confidences common.
‘These kingdoms, it should be well understood, are no casual resorts, but exist side by side with the other life evident to the grosser visual rays, occupying at least a fair half of actual existence. At regular periods, the child steps deliberately out of the present tangibility into his property over the border; and again, when his time is up, steps just as deliberately back. In continuity, in ordered procession of facts, the thing goes on with just the same regularity as that other routine of baths, bread-and-butter, lessons and bed; and is about as near a thing to a fourth dimension as can be found in actual working order.
‘Cases will vary, of course, with dispositions and temperaments. Some wealthy and enviable mites run three or four kingdoms at once, of differing qualities and capabilities, keeping them all going together, as a juggler sustains half a dozen oranges in mid-air. Others
there are, of more fickle nature, who periodically abandon their kingdoms for fresh conquests in a newer Spain. The lion and the lizard keep those forgotten courts, wherein they were wont to disport themselves during church-service. The owl hoots and the wind blows chill through those vast buildings of yester-year, a short time since so full of song and laughter. They themselves, forgetful ones, are up and away across the virgin prairies of another land, unrepresented in Europe by any ambassador. But, as a general rule, the kingdom is colonized in the earliest possible days of subconsciousness — undergoes alterations, of course, extensions, re-peoplings, as time goes on and experience teaches lessons — but remains practically the same kingdom, always there, always handy to step into, up to a time when one would blush to be suspected of such a possession. At what specific date indeed, dare one fix the terminus? Cataclysmal periods arrive, and shake us, and pass, and the kingdom endures. There is the fateful moment, for instance, when one “goes into tails At school they nip for the first coat-tail. Nips are the direful penalty, and with nips comes much besides. Yet the kingdom often remains, surviving nips, dignities, and responsibilities. Other portentous changes succeed — I will not enumerate them; with which of them can one say the kingdom vanishes? One wakes up some day and finds it gone. Yet who can name the date of the eclipse?
Complete Works of Kenneth Grahame Page 82