On August 27, 1914, in London, I made this note in a
memorandum book: "Met Arthur Ransome at_____'s;
discussed a book on the Russian's relation to the war in the
light of psychological background--folklore." The book was
not written but the idea that instinctively came to him
pervades his every utterance on things Russian.
The versatile man who commands more than respect as the
biographer of Poe and Wilde; as the (translator of and
commentator on Remy de Gourmont; as a folklorist, has
shown himself to be consecrated to the truth. The document
that Mr. Ransome hurried out of Russia in the early days of
the Soviet government (printed in the New Republic and
then widely circulated as a pamphlet), was the first notable
appeal from a non-Russian to the American people for fair
play in a crisis understood then even less than now.
The British Who's Who--that Almanach de Gotha of
people who do things or choose their parents wisely--tells us
that Mr. Ransome's recreations are "walking, smoking, fairy
stories." It is, perhaps, his intimacy with the last named that
enables him to distinguish between myth and fact and that
makes his activity as an observer and recorder so valuable in
a day of bewilderment and betrayal.