Another throwback to childhood memories this week: we’re going to be looking at the endlessly charming children’s novel, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Who isn’t fondly familiar with Grahame’s story of Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad, and their adventures on the river and in the Wild Wood? I used to get mixed up between this and a sixties’ children’s TV show called Tales of the Riverbank, which was clearly influenced by The Wind in the Willows given that it featured anthropomorphised woodland creatures like Hammy Hamster and Roderick the Water Rat, messing about in boats (and voiced by a suitably “hammy” Johnny Morris).
The novel was based on bedtime stories told by Grahame to his disabled son, Alastair. Grahame had frequent boating holidays and on these he would write tales about characters that in time would become Toad, Mole, Ratty, and Badger. He lived in Cookham Dean in Berkshire and was inspired by the farmland, lanes and villages of the area and the woodlands of local Bisham Woods which would become the Wild Wood. In 1908, he took early retirement from his job at the Bank of England and moved with his wife and son to an old farmhouse in Blewbury. There, he used the stories he had told Alastair as a basis for the manuscript of The Wind in the Willows.
The plot, you will perhaps recall, begins with Mole abandoning his spring-cleaning of his hole in the ground to join Ratty the water vole on the bank of the river, where Ratty inducts him into the ways of the river. They visit Toad, the wealthy and jovial resident of Toad Hall whose obsession with the new-fangled motorcar gives Mole and Ratty much cause for concern due to Toad’s propensity to crash vehicles. Mole visits the Wild Wood, gets lost and then found by Ratty and the two are taken in by Badger, who, upon learning of Toad’s numerous car crashes, joins the two to stage an intervention. They place Toad under house arrest, but Toad escapes, steals a car, and ends up in gaol. So far, so Grand Theft Auto…
Toad escapes from prison and winds up at Ratty’s home, whereupon Ratty informs him that Toad Hall is being squatted by weasels, stoats and ferrets. Toad, Badger, Mole and Ratty invade Toad Hall and drive out the interlopers. Toad holds a banquet to celebrate, mends his former ways and they all live happily ever after. In addition to this main narrative, the book contains several diversionary tales featuring Mole and Ratty, such as their encounter with the god Pan in the chapter called The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (which Pink Floyd would use as the title of their debut studio album).
Here’s an excerpt featuring Ratty and Mole during their first encounter with Badger and his very appealing home…
THEY waited patiently for what seemed a very long time, stamping in the snow to keep their feet warm. At last they heard the sound of slow shuffling footsteps approaching the door from the inside. It seemed, as the Mole remarked to the Rat, like someone walking in carpet slippers that were too large for him and down at heel; which was intelligent of Mole, because that was exactly what it was.
There was the noise of a bolt shot back, and the door opened a few inches, enough to show a long snout and a pair of sleepy blinking eyes.
“Now, the very next time this happens,” said a gruff and suspicious voice, “I shall be exceedingly angry. Who is it this time, disturbing people on such a night? Speak up!”
“Oh, Badger,” cried the Rat, “let us in, please. It’s me, Rat, and my friend Mole, and we’ve lost our way in the snow.”
“What, Ratty, my dear little man!” exclaimed the Badger, in quite a different voice. “Come along in, both of you, at once. Why, you must be perished. Well I never! Lost in the snow! And in the Wild Wood, too, and at this time of night! But come in with you.”
The two animals tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get inside, and heard the door shut behind them with great joy and relief.
The Badger, who wore a long dressing-gown, and whose slippers were indeed very down at heel, carried a flat candlestick in his paw and had probably been on his way to bed when their summons sounded. He looked kindly down on them and patted both their heads. “This is not the sort of night for small animals to be out,” he said paternally. “I’m afraid you’ve been up to some of your pranks again, Ratty. But come along; come into the kitchen. There’s a first-rate fire there, and supper and everything.”
He shuffled on in front of them, carrying the light, and they followed him, nudging each other in an anticipating sort of way, down a long, gloomy, and, to tell the truth, decidedly shabby passage, into a sort of a central hall; out of which they could dimly see other long tunnel-like passages branching, passages mysterious and without apparent end. But there were doors in the hall as well—stout oaken comfortable-looking doors. One of these the Badger flung open, and at once they found themselves in all the glow and warmth of a large fire-lit kitchen.
The floor was well-worn red brick, and on the wide hearth burnt a fire of logs, between two attractive chimney-corners tucked away in the wall, well out of any suspicion of draught. A couple of high-backed settles, facing each other on either side of the fire, gave further sitting accommodations for the sociably disposed. In the middle of the room stood a long table of plain boards placed on trestles, with benches down each side. At one end of it, where an arm-chair stood pushed back, were spread the remains of the Badger’s plain but ample supper. Rows of spotless plates winked from the shelves of the dresser at the far end of the room, and from the rafters overhead hung hams, bundles of dried herbs, nets of onions, and baskets of eggs. It seemed a place where heroes could fitly feast after victory, where weary harvesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their Harvest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and talk in comfort and contentment. The ruddy brick floor smiled up at the smoky ceiling; the oaken settles, shiny with long wear, exchanged cheerful glances with each other; plates on the dresser grinned at pots on the shelf, and the merry firelight flickered and played over everything without distinction.
