But by the time Kenneth entered the wide world, the royal blood had long diluted. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films. Drawing on telling quotes from Grahame’s works, Dennison’s book more than meets the challenge of a walled-off man. Daughter of Robert William Thomson (Inventor) and Clara Thomson Wife of Kenneth Grahame (Author) Mother of Alastair Grahame Sister of Col. Sir Courtauld Greenwood Courtauld-Thomson; Winifred Hope Thomson (Artist) and Capt. Banking on Mr. Toad will see Kebbel as Grahame and Headey as his wife Elsie, while Brian Blessed (Flash Gordon) is set to portray Grahame’s friend Frederick James Furnivall. Kenneth Grahame charmed readers with The Wind in the Willows – but his personal life left tragedy in its wake. Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 8, 1859. Grahame, his wife and their son lived in Cookham Dean, Berkshire from 1906 though the author spent much of his time during the week at his London home which he sshared with Walford Graham Robertson. At first they lived in Ardrishaig while a … This portrait was once thought to be a portrait of Dorothy Trevor Daintree (1888 – 1965) who purportedly gave the picture to the Trust and, based on stylistic evidence, it was attributed to William Blake Richmond (1842 – 1921). Banking On Mr Toad will use private archives to explore Kenneth Grahame’s unconventional relationship with his wife Elspeth and his career at the Bank of England. In a book on homosexuals in the 19th century, Graham Robb includes Kenneth Grahame, though among the “pre-sexual”. Kenneth Grahame Popularity . Kenneth Grahame found solace from a joyless life with Ratty and Toad, says Ysenda Maxtone Graham Ysenda Maxtone Graham Saturday October 20 2018, 12.01am , The Times The picture is said to have been given by Dorothy Trevor Daintree, a medical graduate and the 'gracious and energetic English lady' who worked at Tripura missionary hospital in 1945. Kenneth Grahame, Writer: The Wind in the Willows. Grahame’s future wife was very much a part of “society”, a competent organiser of social events, and possessed a strongly romantic, non-conformist streak – something which manifested itself on the day of her wedding at St. Fimbarrus, Fowey in 1899. The book was popularised by adaptation for the stage (AA Milne’s Toad of Toad Hall in 1929, a staple of school plays), a television version in 1984 and more recently a musical by Julian Fellowes. This was one of the first portraits exhibited by Dicksee at the Grosvenor Galleries in 1882. Until then, Elspeth with her poodle and lady’s maid, and writing occasional verse, had filled a role as her stepfather’s hostess to eminent men like Tenniel (illustrator of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, who once sent Elspeth a Valentine), Tennyson, Campbell-Bannerman and the Asquiths. When he was a little more than a year old, his father, an advocate, received an appointment as sheriff-substitute in Argyllshire, at Inveraray on Loch Fyne. He dropped out of Rugby School after six miserable weeks of what boys called “ragging” but was in fact bullying, then dropped out of Eton after a year. Yet hard on the march, as it were, was a fantasist with toys scattered around his study and a doll drawer. In the early years he lived with his family in the Western highlands. The Wind in the Willows was adapted for the stage by A. I have, however, shown a photograph of it to a Victorian expert, Christopher Newall, who thought that it might be by Sir William Blake Richmond (1842 - 1921) -named from his father's late friendship with Blake), and this has been conformed by the author of the work in progress on the artist, Simon Reynolds It is signed and dated 1881, the year Dicksee was made an Associate of the Royal Academy. His father James Cunningham Grahame could trace his roots to Robert the Bruce. When Grahame added marriage to his set of conformities, his heart wasn’t in it. ... sources. His lasting fiction The Wind in the Willows (1908) was less successful at first, rejected by publishers and reviewers, who wanted a third volume of Olympians stories, not an animal fantasy. Grahame's father, Cunningham, a Scottish lawyer, reacted to his wife's death by drinking himself into a stupor from which he never really emerged: … Dennison thinks Elspeth partly to blame for leaning on a man who should not have married. First Name Kenneth. Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Recto: Inv. Mole “trailed a paw in the water and dreamed long waking dreams” while Ratty thinks “poetry-things”. Grahame gamely took on these expected narratives, supplemented by the “toy-soldiering”, but then, at the peak of his public success, he began a narrative he could not manage. She, with her sister, Winifred, and their brother, Courtauld, gave their home Dorneywood to the National Trust in 1943 for exclusive use of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He died in 1932 aged 73 and was buried in the same grave as Alastair. Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March 1859 in Edinburgh. The divide in Grahame goes back to Inveraray on Loch Fyne in the west of Scotland. But the Frank Dicksee expert, Simon Toll, got in touch with the Trust in 2013 and told us of the existence of the signature of this Victorian artist and its date on the picture, based on original photographic sources when the painting was exhibited at the Grosvenor Galleries in 1882. With the arrival of spring and fine weather outside, the good-natured Mole loses patience with spring cleaning. The enduring popularity, Dennison suggests, lies in nostalgia and an appeal “to the instinctive conservatism of small children who hanker to preserve their particular worlds intact”. In the end this book peels back actions to reveal a phenomenon that may not be all that uncommon: an “eternal boy” who cannot grow up yet manages to appear a specimen of manhood who ticks all the boxes. Born In 1859. Dennison’s bold criticism stands out in a biography that is scrupulously just to its subject. Obviously, in the context of Oscar Wilde’s disgrace, men of that time had to be very, very careful, and Grahame was cautious enough to cease writing for The Yellow Book, the aesthetic journal publishing what were regarded as writers of dubious morality. Kenneth Grahame, like his son, was never to feel the carefree happiness his book. Get the New Statesman’s Morning Call email. It’s a boys’ club, much like Grahame’s outdoorsy chums who did not try one another with intimacy. His father virtually abandoned his children to relatives, and Grahame was sent to boarding school in Oxford at the age of nine. A photograph of the picture taken soon after its exhibition shows that it is signed and dated which is only just visible now; the picture was unframed by National Trust's painting conservator, Tina Sitwell, in April 2013 and its presence confirmed. Whilst holidaying with his wife in May of 1907, Kenneth Grahame wrote the first of fifteen letters to his son and ended it with mention of Toad, a fantastical character recently introduced to seven-year-old Alistair‘s bedtime stories, in part to better teach him right from wrong. It was the heyday of divided lives, from the strange case of Jekyll and Hyde (1886) to the double voice of J Alfred Prufrock (1915), shifting from timorous lover to daring prophet. A. Milne as Toad of Toad Hall (1929). Born in 1859 #15. This “toy-soldiering”, it appears, was not fake. Elspeth complained of sex to Emma Hardy, the neglected wife of the poet, who replied that “hundreds of wives” found themselves disappointed when it came to love. I am at present staying in a little island known as England, of which you may have heard… Nothing doing here at present, England is a dull little place!” Such sportive retorts could have spurred his father to go on with what was to prove Grahame’s only full-length fiction. Elspeth lived until 1946. There Grahame and another writer, Arthur Quiller-Couch (known as “Q”), liked “to mess about in boats”. What is strange in this case is not the mismatch between private and public lives. And yet a routinely brutal public school, St Edward’s in Oxford, which he entered at the age of nine and a half, and later, fellow bankers at the Treasury, provided traditional groups in which Grahame did more than function; he flourished. There, in 1864, when Kenneth was five, his mother Bessie died, and his father, once a clever young advocate in Edinburgh but already on a downhill course, collapsed in alcoholic grief. Her only surviving letter to Grahame does put him on the spot for a forgotten overture. These stories were collected in The Golden Age (1895) and its sequel Dream Days (1898). In later years his nostalgia for this setting, as he knew it between the ages of five and seven (when they moved away), lies behind The Wind in the Willows. She was also the step-daughter of John Fletcher Moulton, barrister and sometime Liberal MP. Eventually, and with reservations, Methuen & Company accepted the book on the basis of royalties and without an advance. When Kenneth was barely a year old his father obtained the post of Sheriff of Argyll and the family moved from Edinburgh to Argyll. Dennison has chosen instead to tell a compassionate story of a boy so damaged by a loveless upbringing as to be incapable of sustained adult attachment. no bottom left: [3? His mother died in 1864, after which Grahame and his three siblings were raised by their uncle, living first in Berkshire and then Cranbourne, England. A scholar has said that popular children’s story ‘The Wind in the Willows’ can be read “as a gay manifesto”. At Dorneywood until at least 1959; given by Dr Dorothy Trevor Daintree (1888 - 1965), Verso: Label on back Alastair Laing: All my efforts to find out where this portrait came from - and thus, perhaps, the sitter's identity, have proved fruitless. Children's Author. Grahame’s only child, Alastair (known as “Mouse”), was born in May 1900, ten months after his marriage. The result is a sensitively probing and nuanced portrait that makes sense of the darker character furled in the dreamer. Sir William Blake Richmond KCB (London 1842 – London 1921), artist Here is what can happen to a child removed from domestic affection, “institutionalised” too young in a public school, and then compelled to give up natural longings for adventure and higher education to join the London branch of the family law firm, followed by a gentleman-clerkship in the Bank of England. The reminders are necessary because the blows, as they happen, are oddly unmoving. Buy Kenneth Grahame: An Innocent in the Wild Wood Main by Prince, Alison (ISBN: 9780571253708) from Amazon's Book Store. Sir Frederic Leighton, Lord Leighton PRA (Scarborough 1830 – Kensington 1896) (22), Elspeth 'Elsie' Thomson, Mrs Kenneth Grahame (1862-1946) (1) Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland Location of death: Pangborne, Berkshire, England Cause of death: unspecified Remains: Buried, St. Also known for his short story, The Reluctant Dragon (1898). So thin that she refused to be photographed, and no longer respectably dressed, she huddled in old cardigans and hand-knitted stockings. Dennison has reason to be annoyed with Elspeth for the biography she oversaw after Grahame’s death in 1932. This information comes courtesy of Simon Toll. His favourite place was the stretch of the Thames between Marlow and Pangbourne; also Fowey, the town clinging to a coastal hillside in Cornwall, looking down on a patch of blue. It is to be expected, as TS Eliot put it: “Our lives are covered by the currents of action.” Indeed, in Grahame’s children’s classic, The Wind in the Willows, Ratty, the Water Rat, shuns the Wide World beyond the Wild Wood. It makes sense that the Trust should have this painting as the sitter; her sister, Winifred; and their brother, Courtauld, gave their home Dorneywood to the National Trust in 1943 for use by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (just as Chequers was given by Viscount Lee for use of the Prime Minister). She was a favourite of Sir John Tenniel, who wrote her annual valentines, and a friend of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. By continuing to use this website, you consent to our use of these cookies. Kenneth Grahame. Initially, sales were poor. Kenneth Grahame, (born March 8, 1859, Edinburgh, Scotland—died July 6, 1932, Pangbourne, Berkshire, England), British author of The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of the classics of children’s literature.Its animal characters—principally Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad—combine captivating human traits with authentic animal habits. The illustrator EH Shepard catches this idyll to perfection. Only gradually does Dennison allow the facts to add up to something twisted, even dangerous to any human being who ventured too close. Kenneth Grahame Is A Member Of . In a book on homosexuals in the 19th century, Graham Robb includes Kenneth Grahame, though among the “pre-sexual”. Unpicking the myths, Dennison balances regard with disturbing facts. Nature touched Grahame deeply; people did not. Loyalty to caste and suppression of the masses are at the heart of its patrician creed. A moving biography of Kenneth Grahame, author of the children's classic The Wind in the Willows, and of the vision of English pastoral life that inspired it. Marriage to the predatory Elspeth Thomson, when both seemed destined for the single life, was a shared fantasy of invented truth. Pisces. This involvement gave a vulnerable and otherwise distanced boy a rare access to Grahame’s dreaming self. There are also views of various places in England and Scotland, including Blewbury, Pangbourne, Inveraray, and Loch Fyne. For Casaubon never considers his effect on his wife when he rebuffs an affectionate gesture with an act of formal courtesy, placing a chair for her to seat herself at a safe distance. Kenneth Grahame, the third child of Cunningham and Bessie Grahame, born in Edinburgh at 32 Castle Street on 8th March 1859. 205846, Sir Francis Bernard (Frank) Dicksee, KCVO, RA (London 1853 – London 1928), Sir William Blake Richmond KCB (London 1842 – London 1921), Sir Frederic Leighton, Lord Leighton PRA (Scarborough 1830 – Kensington 1896), Elspeth 'Elsie' Thomson, Mrs Kenneth Grahame (1862-1946). First Name Kenneth #33. Childhood illness left Grahame with respiratory problems that followed him throughout his life. Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 8, 1859. His letters to his bride-to-be are skittish, locked in a childish lingo that pretends to amuse but really serves as a “screen” against intimacy. Kenneth Grahame Fans Also Viewed . We meet the creatures of the riverbank as Ratty introduces Mole to an “intoxicating” drift in a boat. Kenneth Grahame died at his home 'Church Cottage' in Pangbourne, Berkshire county, England, on 6 July 1932, at the age of 73. So there’s the sum of Kenneth Grahame’s divided life: two wrecked people out of a family of three plus one endearing book. Elspeth complained of sex to Emma Hardy, the neglected wife of the poet, who replied that “hundreds of wives” found themselves disappointed when it came to love. Author Born in Scotland #23. Children's Author. Sir William Blake Richmond KCB (London 1842 – London 1921) (1) The sitter and her sister donated Dorneywood to the National Trust in 1943 with their brother Lord Courtauld-Thomson of Dorneywood as part of the Dorneywood Settlement. He was found on the railway line at Oxford – one of his father’s enchanted places. What she loved were Shepard’s “cosy, wintry” illustrations of Ratty and Mole lost in the snow of the Wild Wood and finding a haven with the burly Badger, where they toast their toes at his hospitable fire. ]58, Sir Francis Bernard (Frank) Dicksee, KCVO, RA (London 1853 – London 1928), artist This had been obscured by the current frame but on closer examination, in red paint on the top left hand corner, it is signed and dated 1881, the year Dicksee was made an Associate of the Royal Academy and of which he was later to become President. Another is a political reading of The Wind in the Willows: This is an aggressively conservative book and its targets include socialism and any form of faddishness or craving for novelty, Toad’s weakness. Kenneth Grahame (8 March 1859 – 6 July 1932) was a British writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of the classics of children's literature. Here, listening, was a boy often away from home, who at 11 wrote to his father: “I hear that you have taken advantage of my absence to make a bolt for France. Contents Roald Dahl. There were prizes and promotion. Grahame's father was appointed Sheriff-Substitute of Argyllshire in 1860, and the family moved to Inverary. It is triumphantly an exercise in denial, written within a decade of the First World War at a moment when death duties, agricultural slump and left-wing political philosophies had begun an onslaught on inherited privilege…. This portrait of 19-year-old Elsie Thomson, who later married Kenneth Grahame of ‘The Wind in the Willows’ (1908) fame, is exquisitely executed. Instead the child turned to the Thames, surrounded by willows at the bottom of the garden. Cunningham was an attorney for the Court of Scotland in Edinburgh. Ominously, there is a pale stag in the tapestry of the room Mr Casaubon assigns to his bride. Dennison avoids labels with a subject hard to know. We have to understand the reasons why this child developed so extreme a version of an escapist self. Portrait (3570), © National Trust Images © National Trust Collections Registered Charity No. Matthew Dennison Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. Verso: Stamp: Prepared by Windsor and Newton, 38 Rathbone Place, London Contemporary opinion saw Grahame as “a man’s man”. When he was five, his mother died of puerperal fever, and his father, who had a drinking problem, assigned care of Kenneth, his brother Willie, his sister Helen and the new baby Roland to Granny Ingles, the children's grandmother, in Cookham Dean in the village of Cookham in Berkshire. Matthew Dennison shows us a somewhat similar feat: the co-existence of a fancy-free “eternal boy” and a public conformist throughout the double life of Kenneth Grahame. It seems that the picture was at Dorneywood as late as 1959 when a book on Grahame was written and the painting was illustrated. 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