THE LAST YEARS
The pair sat in the studio for a long while, talking vaguely of what he might do. In a desultory fashion, Macy eventually threw out the suggestion: ‘What about The Wind in the Willows?’
Macy then saw Rackham much moved. ‘Immediately a wave of emotion crossed his face; he gulped, started to say something, turned his back on me and went to the door for a few minutes.’ When he came back he explained that for years he had ardently wished to illustrate the book, and had always regretted that he had refused the invitation of Kenneth Grahame and his publishers nearly thirty years before. He welcomed the opportunity offered him by Macy with open arms, insisting that he must illustrate The Wind in the Willows before The Crock of Gold. As he was determined to take his time, a contract was prepared by which Rackham agreed to deliver the drawings to the Limited Editions Club in the spring of 1938.
That Rackham’s last subject in book-illustration (for so it proved) should have been one in which he took especial pleasure, and of which he made an outstanding success, demonstrates a kind of poetic justice not commonly found. ‘It’s a splendid book, isn’t it!’ he had written to the Simon children in 1909 (see pages 82–3). To him and countless others it had remained a splendid book; and it is now all the more splendid for later generations because its text can be read side by side with Rackham’s entrancing river scenes and the most sympathetic studies of the small animals that he ever achieved. There is a mellow grace, a gentle wisdom, an affectionate humour in these drawings that make them the perfect farewell.
It is a strange paradox, but one revealing of the man and his character, that these last drawings should have been perhaps the144
