Planksters, how are you?
Spring is springing and the birds are singing!
I’ve gushed before at the heart-warming illustrations of Chris Dunn’s version of Kenneth Grahame’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’ (Wind in the Willows Blog Post) – it’s a story I love, so when I happened upon ‘Eternal Boy - The Life of Kenneth Grahame’, by Matthew Dennison, I dived in with abandon!
It’s the story of a Scottish daydreamer, creative, and fantasist, struggling to live with unresolved childhood trauma.
Aged only five when his mother died, he and his siblings were removed from their grief-stricken, alcoholic father whose care was deemed inadequate, and sent to live in the English village of Berkshire with their maternal grandmother and uncle.
At fifteen, his brother, Willie, died from pneumonia, and thirteen years later, with no attempted contact from his father, Grahame received news via telegram of his death in France.
Grahame had dearly wanted to study at Oxford University, however, this dream was dashed by his uncle and guardian who didn’t share the dream and refused to pay. So, aged nineteen, Grahame reluctantly joined the Bank of England as a clerk where he stayed for the next twenty-nine years, rising to the dizzy heights of ‘Secretary of the Bank of England’.
Not a very cheerful tale, I know, and unfortunately for Grahame, things only got worse.
His marriage at the age of forty was an unhappy one, and following the premature birth of their only child, Alastair, (nicknamed, ‘Mouse’) his wife, Elspeth, suffered a nervous breakdown.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, Alastair, who was blind in one eye and had many emotional troubles of his own, died on a railway track four days before his twentieth birthday. The death was recorded as accidental, however, as Dennison writes; ‘the position of the body and the nature of its injuries suggest suicide’.
However, amid a life filled with darkness and tragedy, Grahame imagined a fantastic world by the riverside, peppered with the characters we have grown to know and love, including Mole, Ratty, Badger, and Toad (apparently, inspired by his son!) Initially written as letters to Alastair in the summer of 1907, the short stories were later fleshed out and eventually published. It was interesting to read that Grahame, by that time already a very successful published author, had The Wind in the Willows rejected (I know!) and, when it did come out, it was met with unfavourable reviews (I know!!) Thankfully, the public loved it and several reprints were required! (Phew!)
Grahame’s biography is a sad tale, beautifully written by Dennison, and gives a fascinating insight into the man behind an incredible classic.
A recommended read, Planksters!
With a swift bite from a large raw onion, followed immediately by a swig of cold nettle tea from a flask, through real tears, I remain yours sincerely, Thalamus Plank.
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