Evening star., 1932-07-26
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

Kenneth Grahame surely had hap
py literary fate.
It was his prerogative to build q
reputation on three volumes, contain
ing exactly the sort of thing he liked
to write.
While he was in no sense what one
thinks of today as famous author,
he was a successful one, especially in
the hearts and minds of those who read
and loved his THE Golden Age" Dream
Days" and The Wind in the willows. y
These stories and sketches Of child
hood are the sort of thing being done
today by another Englishman, A. A.
Milne, whose delightful books are to
this generation what Andersen's Fairy
Tales" were to former in way.
A great deal of honest fun has been
poked at Milne, because many feel that
he is a superior playwright. and has
gone off on literary tangent in writ
ing his childhood fancies and frolics.
Kenneth Grahame, living and writing
in less sophisticated age, never suf-
fered from such structures. Those who
wanted to read his books did so, and
those who did not simply left them
alone. There IS great deal to be said
for that so-called Victorian age, after
all.
Grahame passed out of the world the
other day in London as quietly as he
had lived and written.
He did not suffer from the inceSsant
striving and strain which has been the
worldly portion Of so m~ny writer's of
all kinds.
Consider some of the worlds famous
authors" who no sooner saw one book
safely in the press. and properly pre-
sented to the public. than they had to
begin upon another, whether they
wanted to or not.
The public was ripe. and must be
struck at once, lest good thing" get
away.
The result of this, long before the age
of frenzied finance, was a sort Of
frenzied writing.
Is 1t possible to look upon the many
novels Of Charles Dickens in any other
light?
The ball. once started rolling, had to
be kept on the move.
The amazing thing is that the quail
ity Of the resulting product could have
been kept as high as the great Charles
undoubtedly kept it.
He paid for it, however.
It is impossible to look at the por-
traits of Dickens taken late In life with
out realizing that here was harassed
man.
The Sternness in that bewhiskered
visage Is not altogether, one may feel
sure, due to the traditional force Of
English ideas and ideals reacting on a
serious, although essentially humorous,
mind.
The fun in the Dickens disposition
was driven out, no doubt, by the inces-
SAINT labor of preparing those gigantic
stories. Domestic factors were only a
portion.
We would not postulate the theory
that If he could have reduced the num-
Der by half he would have written
novels twice as good as those which the
world knows and loves.
There Is no such mathematics as
that in life.
in its own despite; Charles Dickens
wrote many novels because it was
profitable for him to do so, and he
was tied up by contracts with his
publishers to do so.
But there is room in the world for a
1eisurely writer, such as Kenneth
Grahame, and for all the writer's, OF all
nations, who write well In addition to
their other tasks
Happy are such men II they can
gain something of literary reputation
on few good books.
In the first place, it may be presumed,
by any reader, that they have written
exactly the sort of thing which their
bent Of mind and heart dictated.
They have written what they wanted
to write, perhaps, in a different sense
from that of the master writer's who
wrote so many books.