But the connection between her and the more senior Elsie remains a mystery. So thin that she refused to be photographed, and no longer respectably dressed, she huddled in old cardigans and hand-knitted stockings. 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. The Wind in the Willows. A. Milne as Toad of Toad Hall (1929). 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. 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. This website uses cookies to help us give you the best experience when you visit our website. Dennison avoids labels with a subject hard to know. Children's Author. But by the time Kenneth entered the wide world, the royal blood had long diluted. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March 1859 in Edinburgh. Roald Dahl. Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) was not born in a dark and lowly little house. Head of Zeus, 288pp, £18.99, Lyndall Gordon is the author of “Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World” (Virago), This article appears in the 09 November 2018 issue of the New Statesman, Revenge of the nation state, How nature reclaims the places humans have abandoned. He now rests with his wife and son in … Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh in 1859, the third of four children in a well-to-do family living in Castle Street. Verso: Stamp: Prepared by Windsor and Newton, 38 Rathbone Place, London Dennison thinks that the children were too small to find comfort in one another (a precursor to Kenneth’s adult estrangements from his siblings). Dennison’s bold criticism stands out in a biography that is scrupulously just to its subject. Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March 1859 and was orphaned by the time he was five years old. 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. Yet hard on the march, as it were, was a fantasist with toys scattered around his study and a doll drawer. 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…. 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). Portrait (3570), © National Trust Images © National Trust Collections Registered Charity No. Nature touched Grahame deeply; people did not. It is a story that adults have enjoyed as much as children. Get the New Statesman’s Morning Call email. Initially, sales were poor. It seems that the picture was at Dorneywood as late as 1959 when a book on Grahame was written and the painting was illustrated. With the arrival of spring and fine weather outside, the good-natured Mole loses patience with spring cleaning. Verso: Pencil on canvas: 266 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. Kenneth Grahame, like his son, was never to feel the carefree happiness his book. no bottom left: [3? Grahame’s only child, Alastair (known as “Mouse”), was born in May 1900, ten months after his marriage. The passing appeal of a female circus performer with a rounded, earthy body and a fantasy about a chambermaid in a pink-spotted frock suggest, says Dennison, “boyish lust”. When Grahame added marriage to his set of conformities, his heart wasn’t in it. 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. 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. 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. 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. Cunningham was an attorney for the Court of Scotland in Edinburgh. Women were out of it, although Elspeth Thomson, at 37, took herself down to Fowey, ready to enter Grahame’s space. With this in view, she destroyed papers that might contradict her myths, one of which was that she had inspired The Wind in the Willows. So there’s the sum of Kenneth Grahame’s divided life: two wrecked people out of a family of three plus one endearing book. 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: … The Wind in the Willows was adapted for the stage by A. 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. 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). Only gradually does Dennison allow the facts to add up to something twisted, even dangerous to any human being who ventured too close. 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. 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. Dennison avoids labels with a subject hard to know. Where Eliot could confide (to Lytton Strachey) that as a clerk at Lloyds Bank he was “sojourning among the termites”, Grahame was at the top of his game as secretary to the Bank of England, and even more so when he drilled with a volunteer London Scottish regiment. Children's Author. Few would guess that its author, Kenneth Grahame, was a tortured soul. Kenneth Grahame (West side:) To the beautiful memory of Kenneth Grahame husband of Elspeth and father of Alistair who passed the river on the 6th. A head-and-shoulders portrait of the future wife of Kenneth Grahame, author of 'The Wind in the Willows' (1908) whom she marrried in 1899. 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. Kenneth Cranham (born 12 December 1944) is a Scottish film, television, radio and stage actor. His face remained “beatifically” young with the rosy complexion of a healthy child. Furthermore the portrait was identified as being of Elsie Thomson (1862-1946), who later married Kenneth Grahame of ‘The Wind in the Willows’ (1908) fame in 1899. It was apparently seen hanging there in 1959. Lyndall Gordon’s books include “Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World” (Virago), Eternal Boy: The Life of Kenneth Grahame 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. Dennison has reason to be annoyed with Elspeth for the biography she oversaw after Grahame’s death in 1932. Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 8, 1859. 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 Instead the child turned to the Thames, surrounded by willows at the bottom of the garden. 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. Elspeth lived until 1946. The result is a sensitively probing and nuanced portrait that makes sense of the darker character furled in the dreamer. Children's Authors. First Name Kenneth. of July 1932 leaving childhood & literature through him the more blest for all time And of his son Alistair Grahame Commoner of Christ Church 1920 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. It was not a disguise, not like that of Eliot in his banker identity complete with bowler hat and rolled umbrella. 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. 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). Dr. Seuss. She was also the step-daughter of John Fletcher Moulton, barrister and sometime Liberal MP. Mole “trailed a paw in the water and dreamed long waking dreams” while Ratty thinks “poetry-things”. My daughter found the book a bit slow until it got to the adventures of absurdly puffed-up Mr Toad. Women in Grahame’s works are dreamlike – fairies, princesses, enchantresses – not people to know. 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). This “toy-soldiering”, it appears, was not fake. 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. Should he be excused as pathetically self-protective like Mr Casaubon, who disappoints his ardently willing wife, Dorothea, in Middlemarch? He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films. Matthew Dennison 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. Pisces. When the First World War came, his authoritative moustache (almost as thick as Lord Kitchener’s in the finger-pointing poster saying “Your Country Needs You”) prompted his appointment as commanding officer to a non-combatant regiment. Trying to rouse himself, all he could think of to hearten his bride in his pre-wedding letter is that he means to “exhaust” her. 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. Contents Kenneth Grahame, the third child of Cunningham and Bessie Grahame, born in Edinburgh at 32 Castle Street on 8th March 1859. Her only surviving letter to Grahame does put him on the spot for a forgotten overture. We learn not to dislike him for paleness – he can’t help that, and Dorothea herself comes to pity her husband as a poor, lamed creature – but George Eliot does point to the unloveliness of wilful oblivion. Kenneth Grahame charmed readers with The Wind in the Willows – but his personal life left tragedy in its wake. 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. Kenneth Grahame, Writer: The Wind in the Willows. They got together for rambles, with Grahame dressed like a countryman in tweed breeches and shapeless jacket. What is strange in this case is not the mismatch between private and public lives. Managed by: Alison Liddell Muller (Griffiths) Last Updated: January 26, 2017 Kenneth Grahame was a Scottish author best known for writing the children’s book The Wind in the Willows. Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His frequent reminders of the blows Grahame suffered will speak to rational minds. She was the daughter of Robert William Thomson (1822 -1873), the inventor of the pneumatic tyre and the first floating dock, and his wife, Clara Hertz. Fathering was another narrative that ended badly when Mouse, born blind in one eye, squinting and quirky, could not adapt to the dominant group. Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 8, 1859. The Kenneth Grahame Literary File consists of 150 photographs (147 photographic prints and 3 nitrate negatives), including portraits and snapshots of Grahame, his son Alastair, his wife Elspeth, and various other people. 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. But Grahame himself did go there, and more: he shaped himself to the Wide World. 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. His father virtually abandoned his children to relatives, and Grahame was sent to boarding school in Oxford at the age of nine. 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. He was found on the railway line at Oxford – one of his father’s enchanted places. Childhood illness left Grahame with respiratory problems that followed him throughout his life. A scholar has said that popular children’s story ‘The Wind in the Willows’ can be read “as a gay manifesto”.