“Invest that ready money of yours! So far as I can see, it will have grown into a pretty fortune long before another book of my verse has crawled out of the inkpot. For which, on the whole, I am rather sorry—though, you see, even you will be the gainer.”

Wry admission of the slow pace of verse-writing, with a humorous nod to the publisher’s profit · Letter to a publisher, 1906 (quoted in the 1927 Poems foreword)

• Humour
• Poetry
• Writing

“I never could understand why men should be so insanely set on their first-born being a boy. This of ours, I am glad to say, is a girl. I should have been pleased either way, but as a matter of fact I wanted a girl. I don’t know why, but somehow with a girl one feels that one has provided against the disillusionment, the discomfort, the homelessness of old age and of mental and physical decrepitude.”

Affectionate preference for a daughter as a safeguard against the loneliness of later life · Letter (published in The Invisible Playmate, 1894)

• Age
• Children
• Family

“East and West tradition is the same: they have ever been a race of plaguey, adorable, impish, angelic, indistinguishable, unique little creatures; radiant as the dawn, changeable as April; the dewy flower of humanity.”

Affectionate summary of the universal charm and mischief of children · Digression on the Small People, Children’s Sayings (1900)

• Beauty
• Childhood
• Tradition