And once more, in 1929, he discusses those ‘Foreign Rights’, so negligible to most authors but which, to Kenneth Grahame, had become and were continuing to be, such very practical matters:
‘Before I received your kind letter of the 18th, I had frankly suspected — and no doubt you suspected — that the account that had so shocked me had been a piece of quite laudable if mistaken departmental over-zeal, which had somehow escaped the eye of the Capitoline Jove. But when I read your classic periods, so firm yet so tender, I wilted, I sagged, I crumpled. I shed bitter tears. I finally collapsed on the floor, a sodden heap of misery. As I lay there, however, I found myself murmuring something, but very soft and low, so that it should not reach your ears. Something like this: “Alas, yes, how true it is, and how well I know it, that there are publishers who claim 50% on Foreign rights, and others who ask 100, and many who will demand 150, and then ask for a little bit more for ‘all their trouble’, ‘“but —
‘“but —
(here I became almost inaudible)
Since when — (I was now only whispering) —
Since when have — Ltd., based their practice on the tenets of Messrs. B-r-bb-s & Co?”
‘Then I shed a few more tears.
‘Then I rose to my feet and washed and had some light refreshment — the first for days.
‘So now that is all over, and I will try and be good, and I will try and not do it any more. And I am ever so glad that you couldn’t have heard a word of those awful sentiments I murmured to myself as I lay crying on the floor. But —
‘(No, I won’t begin again. I have sworn it.)
‘All the same —
‘No, the end of the page is in sight, and I am not going to get on to a new one. At least, I will turn over a new leaf, of course, for I have said so already. But not a new leaf of this letter.
‘BECAUSE - IF- I -DID- O this unruly typerwriter! It all comes of using a Blick. Common little beasts, Blicks. I ought to get something high-class and toney and expensive.
“-BUT — HOW — CAN — ¥OU — IF” — There he goes again! He must be stopped.
‘Yours finally and very truly,
‘KENNETH GRAHAME’
The Wind in the Willows was the final corner of Kenneth Grahame’s four books. By the majority of his readers it is the best beloved of all. I believe that it will five when The Golden Age, already dated, is dead. For children to-day do not of necessity see their elders as The Opposition. But The Wind is artless and nursery-ageless and it, probably, is the work by which its author would best wish to be remembered. For since that long ago day when the Kings of the East came to the manger, bringing with them their gold and frankincense and myrrh, surely all men, Kenneth Grahame among them, give of their heart’s best only when they give to a child.
CHAPTER IX. ALASTAIR
ALASTAIR GRAHAME was born at 16 Durham Villas, Campden Hill, on the 12th of May 1900. He was a big baby and, curly-haired as Hyacinthus, a hair-brush was the first gift that came to him from a friend. He sat up, took notice and developed rapidly. He was christened Alastair and no more because his father held that one name was enough for any man. He was the only child of his parents. And though it is easy to think of the one adored child of a gifted father as a little creature of somewhat different clay to the rough-and-tumble members of a nursery tea-table-for-six, there can be small doubt that Alastair Grahame was of that rare infancy who come, we cannot know why though we humbly presume that it is for some high purpose, and who, that purpose achieved, the experience perhaps gained, must go again to the work that, elsewhere in the scheme of things, doubtless awaits them. Marjorie Fleming, the lovely little familiar of Sir Walter Scott, was of this elfin-celestial sort. And, in fiction, Du Maurier’s Martia, the young daughter in whom a father’s rare genius became an actual living thing, is another of the same short-lived, beloved leaven.
In a chapter of this book I have told how Alastair, a little night-gowned boy, was the inspiration of A Wind in the Willows, a happy birth that has since taken its happiness with it into a million night nurseries. Perhaps this alone was sufficient to have compelled Mouse (for so his friends named him) to come to Campden Hill? Who shall say? Not I anyhow.
And of him and of his short life I, who never knew him, must borrow the words of others to tell.
Of Ms personal appearance when, I suppose, he was about five years old, Miss Smedley says, in her Crusaders: ‘He was an unusually attractive child, beautiful and gallant, with thick dark hair cut straight across his forehead and bright calm eyes.’ And Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch exclaimed, on being introduced to the baby Alastair, ‘Never be afraid for a boy with a head shaped like his.’
His governess, Miss Naomi Stott, writes of her first meeting with Alastair when he was about the age at which Miss Smedley has described him: ‘We were to meet for the first occasion and it was near bedtime. He was not yet six. He had had a devoted nurse, but she had gone. Would he resent the change? However he had been prepared and, when he saw that his bath was being got ready as usual by the fire and that his mother’s own maid, a special friend of his, was collecting the towels, the stranger greeted him, took off her hat and began reading a Pink Book (one of Stead’s penny treats). Alastair approached. He was at once eager to listen and to look and seemed unaware that he was being undressed and that it was time for his bath. I was often to notice afterwards how reasonable he was and, in sickness and health, how entirely fearless under all circumstances. He never shirked anything however disagreeable it might be to a child of his imaginative and highly strung nature. He was entirely unselfish. He was entirely straightforward. He was a gay and a happy little boy, always laughing and playing. He loved to put his hand against a running tap and see the water squirt. For this on one occasion I had to punish him. A few moments later his mother asked him to choose a birthday present for me. He said, at once, “a brooch, no, two brooches so as she can have one for Sunday”. He was like that, there was never a petty spirit in him. He lived a great deal in an imaginary land of his own making. He called it “Puppyland where it is never silly to be silly”. In that land lived his band of brigands and his dog Kaa who (to shock me I fancy!) drank only blood and, “what do you think he likes best to eat?” Mouse asked me. I said that I did not know. “An angel,” said Mouse in a voice that was half a whisper. For all his love of fun he respected the dignity of others and once, at Littlehampton, left his seat because the funny man in a beach-troupe was knocking another about. He loved animals and would never want to catch crabs, shrimps or butterflies. He loved flowers but did not want to pick them. He was quick of repartee. For instance once, (we were in a hurry to get out between showers) I noticed that he required a new bootlace. “Quick,” said I, “take out the old one.”
“I suppose, like the Devil, you have but a short time,” said Mouse. He was a bit of a mystic too, a strange thing in so young a child. On one of my early days with him he saw a picture of Our Lord in a Holland Street shop. Mouse pointed it out to me. “That is my Friend,” he said, “the Carpenter. When I was ill (he had had appendicitis) He came to see me and sometimes I go and talk to Him.” On another day he said to me, “Death is promotion.” I told his father what Mouse had said for I thought it possible that the child (Mouse could not then read) might have heard him say something of the kind. But Mr. Grahame assured me that neither he nor Mrs. Grahame had ever spoken to Mouse about death. Mouse was a most considerate host and once when a little girl of two stayed with us for a night he showed her Caldecott books and invited her to sit up for supper. Though to me he pretended, “Why should a bachelor have a babe thrust on him? Take care that I do not hear it in the night.” He was a most generous child and I still have a copy of The Old Wives Tale which he bought for me because he heard me say that I should enjoy a story “about sisters”. I knew Mouse all his short life. Once, as a big Etonian, he said to me: “Scratch us, we are all barbarians but it happens that I prefer curios and they prefer cricket bats.” Nevertheless, he
was always interested in cricket, he was a horseman and an excellent boy in a boat. The first time he went hunting he was “blooded” and so proud was he that he would not wash his face till bedtime came. He had, as a child, a vocabulary beyond his years and his speaking voice was one of noticeable beauty. Of the former a girl, much older than he, said to him once, “You are only a baby who has swallowed a dictionary.” When we went to Cookham Dene Mouse edited (the literary instinct was strongly alive in him) a magazine of his own called The Merry Thought. He was never at a loss for a story or a rhyme. Sometimes his parents contributed to The Merry Thought, sometimes literary friends of Mr. Grahame would send a poem or an article.
‘You ask me how I best remember Mouse. I have so many memories. But perhaps as clearly as any I see him as a young schoolboy. It is after the Grahames went to Blewbury on the Berkshire downs. It was Christmas eve and there was a party for the village in the big barn at Boham’s. Mouse had been put up to sing and he stood on a table, under a storm-lantern from the lambing-fold, swung to a rafter. He was a tall young thing and if I say that he was beautiful you won’t misunderstand me? He stood in the light, round him in the shadow sat the party, Newgate fringes and gaiters, shepherds, gamekeepers and carters, men and women of the down country. Mouse piped as sweetly as a thrush:
“Like silver lamps in a distant shrine
The stars are sparkling well
Now a new Power has come to the
Earth A match for the armies of Hell;
A Child is born who shall conquer the foe
And the armies of wickedness quell.”
‘I think I remember that best of all.’
Alastair had, from the earliest age, a certain delicate sarcasm. And a dislike of being kissed. I am told that, at the age of three and on a railway journey, he was continually urged by his nurse to ‘see the pretty lambs’ or other objects of the flying landscape. Presently the travellers caught sight of the sea and Nannie made haste to call attention to the ‘pretty ships Alastair said, ‘Oh, Nannie, do leave the boats in the water, they look very well there.’
An example of the latter prejudice is given by Mr. Anstey Guthrie in his appreciation of Alastair. Yet later, on the west coast of Scotland, when his parents asked three Highland fisher girls (who had never seen the inside of an hotel) to take tea with them at ‘The Duke’s Arms’, Alastair, on his own initiative, kissed with ceremony each departing guest and handed her a sprig of white heather. The spokeswoman of the party, the lass who ‘had the English’, (the other two had not) assured her host later that ‘to be kissed by so fine a gentleman and the son of so fine a gentleman was just the honour of our lives and of all our lives to come’.
Alastair was, as Miss Stott says, entirely straightforward. As a four-year-old, some treat depending on his having ‘been good’ all day, he was asked whether or no this had been the case. He made the qualified reply: ‘Yes, but there was a good deal of vulgar eating and arms on the table.’
‘Why is there trouble in the world?’ he asked one day. He was a very small boy then.
He was no respecter of ancient lineage. To enjoin the virtue of perseverance upon him in some particular task he was reminded that he was by descent, connected with Robert the Bruce. ‘I am interested but not impressed,’ he said.
At Eton he was reproached by his ‘Dame’ because he did not talk to his neighbours at table. Alastair inquired, ‘How can I talk to people whose powers of conversation lie only in their elbows?’
Among this brilliant little child’s letters to his parents I find his earliest letter of all. It reads thus:
‘DEAR MUM, — I have been thinking. — A. GRAHAME’ And to his father, at about the same time, he writes:
‘DEAR DADDY, — We received the toad letter. I will send you a story. The ship, the Dragon, started at 10 from Portsmouth on a Friday and it was such a fine day that every body forgot that it was unlucky. — From your affectionate MOUSE
The magazine to which Miss Stott refers seems to have appeared at no stated dates but as and when the editor-proprietor thought to make an issue. It was published in holograph and its circulation seems to have been limited to one copy at a time and that copy for the family circle at Mayfield, Cookham Dene. The Merry Thought continued to appear at intervals until Alastair went to a private school. I quote, from its entertaining pages, a contribution by Kenneth Grahame, wherein, I am told, none of the characters are fictitious:
BERTIE’S ESCAPADE
I
IT was eleven o’clock on a winter’s night. The fields, the hedges, the trees, were white with snow. From over Quarry Woods floated the sound of Marlow bells, practising for Christmas. In the paddock the only black spot visible was Bertie’s sty, and the only thing blacker than the sty was Bertie himself, sitting in the front courtyard and yawning. In Mayfield windows the fights were out, and the whole house was sunk in slumber.
‘This is very slow,’ yawned Bertie. ‘Why shouldn’t I do something?’
Bertie was a pig of action. ‘Deeds, not grunts,’ was his motto. Retreating as far back as he could, he took a sharp run, gave a mighty jump, and cleared his palings.
‘The rabbits shall come too,’ he said. ‘Do them good.’
He went to the rabbit-hutch, and unfastened the door. ‘Peter! Benjie!’ he called. ‘Wake up!’
‘Whatever are you up to, Bertie?’ said Peter sleepily.
‘Come on!’ said Bertie. ‘We’re going carol-singing. Bring Benjie too, and hurry up!’
Peter hopped out at once, in great delight. But Benjie grumbled, and burrowed down in his straw. So they hauled him out by his ears.
Cautiously they crept down the paddock, past the house, and out at the front gate. Down the hill they went, took the turning by the pillar-box, and arrived at the foot of Chalkpit Hill. Then Benjie struck.
‘Hang it all,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to fag up that hill to-night for any one!’
‘Then I’ll bite you,’ said Bertie. ‘Choose which you please.’
‘It’s all right, Bertie,’ said Peter. ‘We’re none of us going to fag up that hill. I know an easier way. You follow me.’
He led them into the chalk-pit, till they stood at the very foot. Looking up, it was like the cliffs at Broadstairs, only there was no band at the top and no bathing-machines at the bottom.
Peter pulled out a large lump of chalk and disclosed the entrance to a long dark little tunnel. ‘Come on!’ he said, and dived in; and the others followed.
II
They groped along the tunnel for a considerable way in darkness and silence, till at last they saw a glimmer of light; and presently the tunnel ended suddenly in a neat little lift, lit up with electric light, with a seat running round three sides of it. A mole was standing by the door.
‘Come along there, please, if you’re going up!’ called the mole sharply.
They hurried in and sat down. ‘Just in time!’ said Peter.
‘Any more for the lift?’ cried the mole, looking down the tunnel. Then he stepped inside smartly, slammed the door, pulled the rope, and they shot upwards.
‘Well, I never!’ gasped Bertie. ‘Peter, you do know a thing or two, you do! Where — what — how—’
The lift stopped with a jerk. The mole flung the door open, saying ‘Pass out quickly, please!’ and slammed it behind them. They found themselves standing on the fresh snow, under the open starlit sky.
They turned round to ask the mole where they were, but the lift had vanished. Where it had been there was a square patch of grass free from snow, and in the middle of the patch was a buttony white mushroom.
‘Why, we’re in Spring Lane!’ cried Bertie. ‘There’s the well!’
‘And here’s Mr. Stone’s lodge, just in front of us!’ cried Peter.
‘Splendid!’ said Bertie. ‘Now, we’ll go right up to the house, and sing our bewitching carols under the drawingroom windows. And presently Mr. Stone will come out, and praise us, and pat our heads, and say we’re
dern clever animals, and ask us in. And that will mean supper in the dining-room, and champagne with it, and grand times!’
They hurried up the drive, and planted themselves under the windows. Then Bertie said, ‘First we’ll give ‘em “Good King Wenceslas”. Now then, all together!’
‘But I don’t know “Good King Wenceslas”,’ said Peter.
‘And I can’t sing!’ said Benjie.
‘Well, you must both do the best you can,’ said Bertie. ‘Try and follow me. I’ll sing very slow.’ And he struck up.
Peter followed him, as best he could, about two bars behind; and Benjie, who could not sing, imitated various musical instruments, not very successfully.
Presently they heard a voice, inside the house. It was Mrs. Stone’s, and she was saying ‘What — on — earth — is — that — horrible caterwauling?’
Then they heard another voice — Mr. Stone’s — replying: ‘It sounds like animals — horrid little animals — under the windows, squealing and grunting. I will go out with a big stick, and drive them away.’
‘Stick! O my!’ said Bertie.
‘Stick! Ow, ow!’ said Benjie.
Then they heard Mrs. Stone again, saying, ‘O no, don’t trouble to go our, dear. Go through the stable yard to the kennels, and LET — LOOSE — ALL — THE — DOGS.’
III
‘Dogs, O my!’ said Bertie.
‘Dogs, ow, ow!’ said Benjie.
They turned tail and ran for their lives. Peter had already started, some ten seconds previously; they saw him sprinting down the carriage-drive ahead of them, a streak of rabbit- skin. Bertie ran and ran, and Benjie ran and ran; while behind them, and coming nearer and nearer, they could hear plainly Wow — wow — wow — wow — wow — WOW!
Complete Works of Kenneth Grahame Page 87