Few books elicit passionate praise like The Wind in the Willows. Defining the story is difficult, as it is both action-packed and yet nothing at all happens. The appeal is assuredly the characters, who are rich and vibrant, placed in a textured landscape of resplendent beauty. The level of sophistication offered by the characters—a cast of river and woodland creatures including Mole, Ratty, Mr. Toad, and Badger—is possible only through Kenneth Grahame’s unparalleled grasp of the English language.
Grahame was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. His mother’s death when he was just five coupled with his father’s alleged dipsomania led to Grahame’s living with his grandmother, Granny Ingles, in a rundown, sprawling manor called The Mount. Grahame and his three siblings had ample time to roam and explore the Quarry Woods and River Thames, which is believed to be the inspiration for Grahame’s unforgettable writing about the river life.
From this, that fertile ground of literary genius that is isolation, boredom, and the great outdoors, Grahame grew into an excellent student at St. Edward’s School Oxford. According to some sources, Grahame was eager to attend Oxford University but was instead sent into the banking profession. The Bank of England Museum notes that Grahame was Secretary of the Bank from 1898 to 1908.
Imagining a man of such linguistic agility confined to the bureaucracy of banking is difficult. On the other hand, perhaps the dull routines would be a predictable backdrop against which genius would be free to invent. Think of the poet Wallace Stevens crafting his verse amid the steady hum of office work. It may not be a coincidence that The Wind in the Willows was published the same year Grahame left the bank and he did not write a much to speak of in the 24 years of his life that followed.
Yet, it seems Grahame’s tenure in dull work was not all happiness and predictability. In 1903, someone entered the bank and discharged a weapon, firing three times at Grahame and missing. Grahame’s retirement in 1908 was ostensibly for reasons of ill health, but there is rampant speculation that disagreement with the bank director, Walter Cunliffe. Whatever the cause, his time at the bank seems to be occasionally tumultuous.
An exhibition at the Bank of England Museum was described thus: “Among the items on display are Grahame’s vivid resignation letter, written just four months before the publication of ‘The Wind in the Willows’, which identifies the mental pressures which he cited as his reason for resigning, as well as letters from the Bank’s doctor who gave a contradictory assessment of Grahame’s mental health.” After reading the verbal sparring of Mr. Toad that grew out of the imagination of the banker in question, one knows the resignation letter must be fierce.
Opening the book to a page at random reveals passages well worth quoting at length. Here is one choice paragraph taken from the chapter entitled “Dolce Domum”:
As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that he was an animal of tilled field and hedgerow, linked to the ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings, the cultivated garden plot. For others the asperities, the stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their way, to last for a lifetime.
There are also the poems that have become stand-alone works studied by school children, including “Duck’s Ditty” and “The Song of Mr. Toad.” Selecting quotable passages from the unabridged work is like drinking from a firehose.
The ambiance of the river life and the Wild Wood is cozily British with a cast of characters who have no greater concern than tucking into a delicious feast and whiling away hours with good friends and good stories. Mole escapes a workaday world underground to emerge into the tutelage of Ratty, learning about and adapting to life on the river. A chance stumbling upon Badger’s house while lost in the Wild Wood brings the river creatures into the homey domicile of the woodland. And, of course, there is the outrageous adventures of Toad Hall and swaggering Toad who, incomprehensibly but so believably, brings the animals into contact with the human world, stealing motorcars and impersonating a washerwoman.
In the middle of it all is a mystic vision, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” and continual temptations to turn away from the magic music of the river that forms the lifeblood of the cozy world. A bit like Brambly Hedge, The Wind in the Willows transports the reader to a better world, one spared of harshness and unpleasantries endured in ours. There is never any shortage of food or lack of adventure. Toad’s misadventures are always comic, and the certainty of delicious, warm treats and hot tea always await.
Like many of the best stories, Grahame was inspired to tell the stories as bedtime entertainment for his son, Alastair, who came to a very sad end. Surprisingly young children will sit through the lyrical, mesmerizing passages of The Wind in the Willows despite the fact that a fairly educated adult would need to have a dictionary handy to understand every word. But of course, you don’t have to understand each and every word to enjoy a wonderful story, which is how children devour stories so far beyond their powers of complete comprehension. In this way, the adult reading The Wind and the Willows can have a taste of being a child again, riding along with a story, trusting the beauty and excellence to the author, uncertain of the details but enthralled by the experience.
What Grahame conveys through his inimitable writing are characters more real than the real world, truly larger than life. Among the esteemed people who have come to love Grahame’s characters is President Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote that he “read it and reread it, and have come to accept the characters as old friends.” It was Roosevelt who brought the book to the United States by convinced Scribner to publish the work stateside.
AA Milne also loved The Wind in the Willows, adapting the story into the play Toad of Toad Hall. Milne suggested the work could be a reliable “test of character,” saying, “one does not argue about The Wind in the Willows.” According to Milne, “The young man gives it to the girl with whom he is in love, and if she does not like it, asks her to return his letters. The older man tries it on his nephew, and alters his will accordingly.”
Now, more than a hundred years after its original publication, The Wind in the Willows is also a family legacy for many. Illustrator Michael Hague wrote about his grandmother, born in 1908, the same year the book was first published. He wrote, “The book was her father’s favourite, and indeed became hers as well. My grandmother passed a love of “Willows,” as she refers to it, on to her daughter, my mother, and so when the story reached me it had already claimed three generations. It soon captivated its fourth generation in me. Very soon it will be my two daughters’ turn to be caught in Toad’s spell.”
Whatever you say about The Wind and the Willows, it has won passionate praise and ardent love from those who value its riches. The child who chooses Grahame’s great work as his favorite book may grow to appreciate fine poetry and write with a magisterial calm. But, of course, that’s not the reason to pick up the book. You should read it with children simply because it is such a good story. If the reading is accompanied by the outdoors and fine foods, all the better.
