THE LAST YEARS
picture being used for this purpose.’ Rackham wrote on this letter, in ink, and in a firm hand, that he had agreed to the proposal for a fee of ten guineas and an appropriate acknowledgement.
In June an old friend, the poet and wood-engraver T. Sturge Moore, sent him a kindly letter full of gossip about mutual acquaintances of their student days, and telling him the latest news of the Art-Workers’ Guild. ‘I was very glad to learn that you enjoy respites from exhaustion sometimes long enough to let you get on with the work you have on hand,’ wrote Sturge Moore; ‘I hope you can enjoy the light and heat and that they will help you to stave off exhaustion.’ It was a fine summer, and once, while he was lying in the garden, Rackham said to his nurse: ‘How nice it would be if I could die here under the trees!’
Slowly, the drawings for The Wind in the Willows neared completion. The last drawing of all to be finished was that of Rat and Mole loading their boat for the picnic (see page 147). Rackham’s daughter remembers his great exhaustion and the extreme difficulty he had in getting it done. When he had, as he thought, finished it, he suddenly discovered that there were no oars in the boat. Barbara tried to persuade him that this was a detail that did not matter, but he insisted that everything must be right, and with great labour he altered the drawing and put in the oars. After he had done this, he lay back in bed and said: ‘Thank goodness, that is the last one.’ And so it proved in every sense.
Arthur Rackham died on 6th September 1939, a few days before his seventy-second birthday. His ending, like his whole life and the strong clear strokes of his pen, had been gallant and true. He had finished his work, and he had made ready his boat for a journey.
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