described meandering adventures of the mild nature,
The Wind in the Willows has an intrinsically English flavor, The characters are happy to live their ordinary lives with only a hint of interest in the wider world.
Too strong of an adventurous spiritedness is considered uncouth, Such hearty frivolity as Toad's is frowned upon to the utmost!
Unfortunately this goes for the author, too.
Kenneth Grahame's plots are not terribly gripping due to their lack of depth, He seems pleased rather to spend the time describing a pleasant boating holiday down the river.
If it wasn't for the scenes with the Wonderful Toad, the Fantastic Toad there would be very little excitement indeed.
However, it is the bond of friendship and the love of homely pleasures that entices us to read on.
I gave itstars, because I liked The Wind in the Willows, No more and no less, and let's keep it as nice and cozily close to uncontroversial as that, shall we
Having first read this so many years ago, I found myself revisiting it with joy and some incredulity that it's still seen as a children's book.
It's sublime the poetry of the prose the descriptions of the natural world the sly PG Wodehouse humour, and most of all the jewellike clarity of that very little world: the Riverbank the Wild Wood the World Beyond a kind of blur on the distant horizon.
The characters are marvellous: combining some wonderful comic dialogue which I can't help hearing in Alan Bennett's voice with some genuinely terrific insights into: addiction, alcoholism and male midlife crises Toad depression Rat and anxiety Mole.
Most of all, what's striking to me is the essential kindness of it all: there's drama, but of a special sort: there's conflict, but a conflict that is resolved through quiet discussion, good sense and understanding.
And of course, there's friendship the kind of real, satisfying friendship that we all hope for, but that few of us ever find.
In a way it's what THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING might have been, if Sam and Frodo had spent their lives messing about on the river with Bilbo and Gandalf, instead of having to fight the minions of darkness.
Reading it is good for the soul: perhaps even more so as an adult than it was when I was child.
It reminds us that, even in the darkest of times, there are simple pleasures to be had that however dark our future may seem, friendship and love can carry us through.
An Edwardian children's book that ends with the reimposition by force of the traditional squirearchical social order on the upstart lower orders as represented by Weasels, Stoats and Ferrets.
It is a through introduction to traditional British conservatism, of the Country Life rather than the Economist variety, for children with a side order of mild paganism.
As such is an unwitting counterpoint to sitelinkThe Ragged Trousered Philanthropists,
As with sitelinkHow to Read Donald Duck, once you look at it and shrug off the view that it is just a children's book then the values on show are not so nice.
What is it that readers are asked to feel nostalgia for
This was published in, before Lloyd George prepared his People's Budget in/, before The Parliament Act ofand at the same time as women were agitating for the vote.
There are the The Wind in the Willows's Weasels, Stoats and Ferrets so take up your cudgel to uphold Merrie Olde England and our ancestral rights to under occupied manor houses and the freedom to behave with some reckless abandon!
Alternatively we have the nostalgia of sitelinkThe Leisure Class, our heroes are people who don't have to work, who are so different from ordinary people that they don't even have to be human any more and who can indulge themselves as they see fit save for the inexplicable unreasonableness of the law.
Ultimately it is what is, as we all are, in this particular case a homoerotic fantasy in which all the men and boys can go off and live an upper middleclass life as animals by the river banks without having to deal with the consequences of that decision, the women will still be prepared to do the washing and the ironing apparently, and indeed woe betide the creature that tries to interrupt this way of life.
The only duty is to one another, infringement of privilege punishable by violence, For all its emphasis on nature and the river, it is a very inward looking book.
It is a closed off world, the industrial, urban society with a market economy is literally populated by a different species.
There are few things quite as curious and peculiar as the stories people would like children to delight in.
Some of the best childrens classics have started with an adult inventing stories to tell to a child.
“Alices Adventures in Wonderland”, “Winnie the Pooh”, “Peter Pan” and even “Watership Down” all began this way, as did many others.
The Wind in the Willows is another such, Like them, it is a novel which can be read on many levels, and arguably has a hidden subtext.
And like some others, its writing was prompted by a family tragedy,
Kenneth Grahame had already established himself as a talented writer, and had considerable literary success in thes.
He regularly published stories in literary magazines, These stories about a family of parentless children, were collected in one volume called “The Golden Age” in.
He followed this up inwith “Dream Days”, a sequel, which was even more successful, and established him as a writer with a special insight into childhood.
“Dream Days” itself included another childrens story, “The Reluctant Dragon”, Throughout his career, he had published childrens books and a memoir of childhood, He was successful and wellknown, well before The Wind In The Willows was even thought of.
Kenneth Grahame had a child of his own, Alastair, to whom he felt very close.
He used to tell his son fanciful stories about wild animals who lived by the nearby river, and in the “Wild Wood”.
When Alastair was about four years old, Kenneth Grahame would tell “Mouse” his nickname for Alastair bedtime stories about a toad.
And whenever the two were apart, his father would write more tales about Toad, Mole, Ratty and Badger in letters to his young son Alastair.
Kenneth Grahames own childhood at this age however, was far from rosy, He had been born in, in Edinburgh, His father was aristocratic a failed lawyer, who loved poetrybut who loved vintage claret even more.
The drinking became worse when Kenneth Grahames mother, Bessie, died soon after she had given birth to his brother, Roland.
Kenneth was just, when he and his three siblings went to live with their grandmother, There they lived in a spacious but dilapidated home with huge grounds, by the river Thames, and were introduced to the riverside and boating by their uncle, who was a curate.
We can clearly see echoes of his childhood in The Wind in the Willows.
His grandmothers decrepit house, “The Mount” has transmogrified into the huge mansion, “Toad Hall”, and the book is redolent with riverside and boating scenes.
Kenneth Grahame was forced to move to and fro between the two adults, when the chimney of the house collapsed one Christmas, and shortly afterwards their father tried to overcome his drinking problem and took the children back to live with him in Argyll, Scotland.
This brief sojourn only lasted a year before they all returned to their grandmother, where Kenneth lived until he went to an Independent school in Oxford.
Whilst there he had the freedom to explore the old city as well as the upper reaches of the River Thames, and the nearby countryside.
All this comes into The Wind in the Willows,
The young Kenneth did well at school, and dreamed of going to university, He was actually offered a place at the prestigious Oxford University, and was set for high academic honours, but it was not to be.
The family finances had dwindled so much that his father wanted him go into a profession straight from school.
Kenneth Grahame was therefore forced straight into work at the Bank of England, and duly worked there for thirty years, gradually rising through the ranks to become its Secretary.
In, the year The Wind in the Willows was published, he took early retirement.
As a young man in hiss, Kenneth Grahame was a contemporary and friend of Oscar Wilde.
Although married, and having a home in Berkshire, during the week he shared a London home with the painter and theatre set designer, Walford Graham Robertson.
Both were very involved with the gay community, whose leading light at the time was Oscar Wilde.
Another connection with the gay community was through Constance Smedley, a family friend who helped with the publication of The Wind in the Willows.
A year later she was to marry the artist Maxwell Armfield, who himself was gay,
It seems very possible that Kenneth Grahame was gay, despite having a wife and child.
This was a time when homosexual acts were still illegal, The novel can be read as having a gay subtext, and passages such as the description of the ancient Greek god of the wild, Pan, are quite sensuous, with descriptions of his “rippling muscles”.
One academic, Professor Hunt, the emeritus professor in English and childrens literature at Cardiff University, suggests that the works were manifestations of a life which Kenneth Grahame longed for.
Whether this is conscious or not, it is noticeably “a story of maleness and male companionship”, with hardly a female in sight.
The only exceptions are the washerwoman, the barge woman and the jailers daughter, All of these are secondary characters, and perhaps even more significantly, they are human, not animal.
It is the animals in this story who are the wellnuanced, fully developed characters the humans are merely stock types, who fill some of the minor roles.
Yes, Badger is the wise teacher, mentor or parent figure, and one who is looked to for leadership, but he has his own quirky faults.
His speech is described as “common” he excitedly want to get his “grub” food.
And amusingly, both Rat and Mole end up very confused as Badger insists, “I want to learn em, not teach em!” when they are discussing teaching a lesson chastening them.
Despite his success, and eligibility as husband material, Kenneth Grahame remained awkward in the company of the opposite sex.
Only when he wasdid he marry Elspeth Thomson, a woman who was devoted to him.
Kenneth Grahame however, in a strange echo of James M, Barrie, remained distant, and incapable of demonstrating love, Elspeth grew increasingly miserable, taking to her bed for much of the day,
Their only child, Alastair, or “Mouse” was born a little prematurely, in.
He was blind in his right eye, and the other had a severe squint, Mouse was much loved by both parents, but it was probably the case that Kenneth Grahame was trying to relive his own childhood through his son, especially his thwarted academic aspirations, and he had absurdly high academic expectations of Alastair.
“Mouse” had morbid fancies, and when he was three and a half, in an act chillingly prophetic of his own death, amused himself playing a game where he lay in front of speeding cars to bring them screeching to a halt.
Another odd instance occurred when he was given his presents on his fourth birthday, Instead of enjoying playing with them, he started to repack them in complete silence,
This strange little boy was bullied at Rugby School, and again when transferring to Eton.
He left the school, and was privately tutored in Surrey, Mouse was of a nervous disposition, and aware that he was not coming up to his fathers unrealistic expectations for him.
His eyesight was worsening he was fragile, and thoroughly miserable when he started as an undergraduate at Christ Church College, in.
He made no friends and joined no social clubs, He was to fail his Scripture,
Greek and Latin exams three times within his first year if he failed them again, he would be sent down have to leave university.
It had all got too much for him, At his last dinner in Hall, he downed a glass of port, surprising the undergraduate sitting next to him.
Alastair then set off across the meadowsthe setting for all the stories his father had told him, which had entranced him soand which were to become The Wind in the Willows.
Across the meadows was the railway track,
With supreme irony, just as Peter Llewelyn Davis, the original for J, M. Barries “Peter Pan” was to do many years later, Mouse threw himself under a train.
He was justyears old,
When his decapitated body was found the next day, his pockets were crammed with religious books for his dreaded Scripture exam.
He was buried in, on histh birthday, His grave is hidden in a quiet corner of Oxford, in Holywell Cemetery, in the shadow of the medieval St.
Cross Church. Located beside the River Thames, this is the gentle setting for Kenneth Grahames masterpiece, His father scattered lilies of the valley over the coffin, Andyears later, his father too, a shattered genius who had now written The Wind In The Willows, was to be buried beside the doomed little boy who had inspired him.
Perhaps after all, he had gained some catharsis through writing down the stories he had told his beloved little boy.
At the time of Alastairs death, Kenneth Grahame was no longer the Secretary of the Bank of England.
He left his post abruptly in, following a reported dispute with a governor, Walter Cunliffe, Some academics view Walter Cunliffe as the template for Toad, in his bullyish and forceful nature, and it has been suggested that Walter Cunliffe knew of Grahames sexuality and bullied him about it, which led to his early retirement.
Kenneth Grahame and his wife and son, Mouse then moved to an old farmhouse, where father and son spent their time, “simply messing about in boats”.
As we have seen, he used the bedtime stories he had told Alastair at this time, as a basis for the manuscript of The Wind in the Willows, where his characters do much of the same.
But he was never to write anything else, For all his fame and fortune, Kenneth Grahame remained a tortured soul until his death in, a brokenhearted man of.
Yet the legacy of this tragic life, is a delightfully whimsical tale which has entertained both children and adults for generations.
We can recognise all the anthropomorphised animals so well from our own lives, It starts with Mole, an “Everyman” and hero of the story, a homeloving ordinary sort of chap.
He is tempted to explore a little further than his own comfortable domesticity, when he meets Ratty, and is very impressed by his ideas.
The water rat turns out to be a dashing freespirited, imaginative and capable friend, and the two of them have many adventures.
One involves meeting Badger, a venerable wise old soul, with his down to earth reasoning and help.
He is a father figure or teacher to the others, Then of course there is Toad, who is wildly taken up by any new craze, and tempted by anything new.
Toad is convinced that he can outwit everybody, and his ridiculous antics provide most of the humour in this book.
He represents the spirit of abandonment and adventure that many of us might dream about, but are either too shy, or too practical and selfcontrolled to do.
Toad is impossibly vain and conceited, rather dimwitted, but when not devising new plot and tricks, he is very loyal.
He has inherited a great house from his father, who knew full well what his impressionable and impulsive son was like, and asked Badger to look out for him, after he died.
Toad is therefore immensely rich, but has a good heart essentially and is very generous to his friends, who spend much of their time getting him out off the scrapes he gets himself into.
Children will love Mr. Toad, and secretly admire his devilmaycare attitude, and defiance of conventional rules and etiquette, His antics yet even this does not cool Toads delightfully wicked ways.
The purpose of childrens stories during this “golden era” of childrens literature, was largely didactic.
Today its overt themes of appreciation for domesticity and manners may seem quaint and moralistic, yet in reality, most parents would want their children to follow these.
Throughout the novel, Rat and Badger are praised for their hospitality, or and as in the case of Toad, criticised for their lack of it.
Kenneth Grahame also shows children how to act towards others in certain situations, sometimes by speaking directly to the reader to comment on the importance of etiquette, from the smallest examples of table manners, or much larger concerns of honesty.
Through both its plot and its writing style, The Wind in the Willows clearly shows the manners deemed proper in the Edwardian era.
Unlike the much more savage story of “Peter Pan”, Kenneth Grahames characters have to face the consequences of their actions.
Both Mole and Toad make mistakes, and suffer for them, The characters in this novel are realistically flawed, as we all are, but children are shown that the way to learn and grow is to face those consequences.
The exploits and escapades of Mr, Toad were such an appealing part of the book, thatdecades later, when it was in itsst printing, the author A.
A. Milne adapted those chapters for the stage, The result was A. A. Milnesplay, “Toad of Toad Hall”, Almost a century later, it was yet again adapted for the stage, this time as a musical, by Julian Fellowes.
This is a book which has never been out of print, has many adaptations, and never lost its appeal.
One reason for this is that it is not just a collection of moral tales, but also an exciting adventure.
Kenneth Grahames characters love adventures, In common with Victorian and Edwardian gentlemen, those from this class do not work, Instead they go on visits, take boats out on the river, go for long picnics, and enjoy the open air and Nature.
Both they and we therefore as a consequence appreciate the beauty of Nature through exploration, Toad takes his road trips, homeloving Mole explores the Wild Wood on his own, and even Rat, thoroughly settled in his riverbank home, is momentarily tempted to setting out for an ocean life, at the end of the season.
Each of the main characters is subject to the lure of adventure,
Yet whilst each of them has an adventurous spirit, and enjoys their various escapades, they all enjoy the sense of having a place of their own to return to.
Rat and Badger seem older, and are more set in their ways, They prefer to stay close to their homes, while Mole and Toad want to see as much of the world as they can.
Nevertheless, Mole and Toad are also glad to have a home to go to, and which they view with great affection.
The closing scenes of the novel reiterate the power of home, with
Interestingly, although they are not human, each character represents a certain stage of a humans life.
Badger is the oldest and hence commands the most respect, Rat acts as if he is slightly younger than Badger, for example, he is more active around his home but he still seems to be very sensible and quite mature.
Mole behaves like a young man just trying to make his way in the world, Sometimes he is quite daring, but he also needs someone to guide him, as he tends to make foolish decisions.
Toads behaviour, very obviously, is that of a spoiled, immature child,
At this time, young men would often find their place in the world through the mentorship of an older, more established gentleman.
We see an example of this with Rat and Mole, They instantly like each other, which enables Rat to advise Mole in many areas, and help him towards maturity, turning him into a considerate and kind gentleman.
The reader sees how successful Rat has been by the end of the story, Mole plays an essential role in the final adventure at Toad Hall, and is highly praised by Badger.
Toad, on the other hand, is a more difficult case, so only Badger can fill that role of a mentor.
It will take a while, but we do see signs that Toad will improve as well.
It is clear that Kenneth Grahame had a strong belief in the power an older man had, as a guide to a younger one.
The novel is a series of episodes, in twelve chapters each in a way complete in themselves, and each varying a lot in its style and pace.
Some are adventure stories, full of camaraderie some are humorous interludes, often with a little moral lesson.
Some are thrilling, and full of excitement some far more contemplative, and beautifully evocative of the English countryside.
And two chapters in particular, chapter, “Dulce Domum” about an animals instinct for home, and chapter, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”, about the great god Pan, are mystical, and very strange.
Aspects of and references to the novel are to be found in unlikely places “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”, is also the name of Pink Floyds first album in.
Yet oddly, as a whole, it works, as countless enthusiastic readers have attested, Catchphrases such as “messing about in boats” and “poop, poop!” have found their way into English culture.
There are many abridgements and rewritten forms of the novel, with appropriate language for very young children.
When I approached my latest reread, I was certain that I would easily be able to select just one of the three versions that I have, to keep.
Nevertheless, all three seem to have somehow found their way back on to my shelves,
The Wind in the Willows is quintessentially English, and moreover very Edwardian.
As we have seen, it is very concerned with correct form, and good manners with what is required to be an upright jolly good fellow.
We recognise the English traits of pomposity and bluster, a certain reserve, a sense of decency, a “stiff upper lip” in the face of danger, a dry and understated sense of humour, a sense of the ridiculous and absurd, and an enjoyment of adventure.
The whole is imbued with a love of Nature and the English countryside, with lyrical passages which are quite beautiful.
The whole is a paean to the English countryside, and Kenneth Grahame repeatedly shows his views of the superiority of country life over city life.
The novel begins when Mole decides to leave his crowded home in order to live more in the country, and this idea continues to permeate through each episode.
We see the authors views in his portrayal of the destructiveness of the motor car, He continually criticizes the ugliness of industrial life a city became the Wild Wood once the humans abandoned it.
But his love for the pastoral life comes through most in his prose, which is rich in imagery about the beauty of nature.
“the rich meadowgrass seemed that morning of a freshness and a greenness unsurpassable.
Never had they noticed the roses so vivid, the willowherb so riotous, the meadowsweet so odorous and pervading.
”
The relaxing settings, rustic picnics and peaceful rambles along the riverside, all contrast with the hectic, crowded city.
As its author said, it is a book for those “who keep the spirit of youth alive in them of life, sunshine, running water, woodlands dusty roads, winter firesides”.
Altogether it is a very endearing book, and one which can be read over and over again.
It is one of the great childrens classics, and a book which is full of a type of carefree happiness.
How especially poignant and ironic, then, that the little boy who enabled its creation, found that such delight and happiness always eluded himself.
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Take Advantage Of The Wind In The Willows By Kenneth Grahame Shared As Brochure
Kenneth Grahame