The Wind in the Willows (27 page)

Toad saw that he was trapped. They understood him, they saw through him, they had got ahead of him. His pleasant dream was shattered.

‘Mayn’t I sing them just one little song?’ he pleaded piteously.

‘No, not one little song,’ replied the Rat firmly, though his heart bled as he noticed the trembling lip of the poor disappointed Toad. ‘It’s no good, Toady; you know well that your songs are all conceit and boasting and vanity; and your speeches are all self-praise and—and—well, and gross exaggeration and—and—’

‘And gas,’ put in the Badger, in his common way.

‘It’s for your own good, Toady,’ went on the Rat. ‘You know you must turn over a new leaf sooner or later, and now seems a splendid time to begin; a sort of turning-point in your career. Please don’t think that saying all this doesn’t hurt me more that it hurts you.’

Toad remained a long while plunged in thought. At last he raised his head, and the traces of strong emotion were visible on his features. ‘You have conquered, my friends,’ he said in broken accents. ‘It was, to be sure, but a small thing that I asked—merely leave to blossom and expand for yet one more evening, to let myself go and hear the tumultuous applause that always seems to me—somehow—to bring out my best qualities. However, you are right, I know, and I am wrong. Henceforth I will be a very different Toad. My friends, you shall never have occasion to blush for me again. But, O dear, O dear, this is a hard world!’

And, pressing his handkerchief to his face, he left the room with faltering footsteps.

‘Badger,’ said the Rat, ‘I feel like a brute; I wonder what you feel like?’

‘O, I know, I know,’ said the Badger gloomily. ‘But the thing had to be done. This good fellow has got to live here, and hold his own, and be respected. Would you have him a common laughing-stock, mocked and jeered at by stoats and weasels?’

‘Of course not,’ said the Rat. ‘And, talking of weasels, it’s lucky we came upon that little weasel, just as he was setting out with Toad’s invitations. I suspected something from what you told me, and had a look at one or two; they were simply disgraceful. I confiscated the lot, and the good Mole is now sitting in the blue
boudoir,
^cg
filling up plain, simple invitation cards.’

At last the hour for the banquet began to draw near, and Toad, who on leaving the others had retired to his bedroom, was still sitting there, melancholy and thoughtful. His brow resting on his paw, he pondered long and deeply. Gradually his countenance cleared, and he began to smile long, slow smiles. Then he took to giggling in a shy, self-conscious manner. At last he got up, locked the door, drew the curtains across the windows, collected all the chairs in the room and arranged them in a semicircle, and took up his position in front of them, swelling visibly. Then he bowed, coughed twice, and, letting himself go, with uplifted voice he sang, to the enraptured audience that his imagination so clearly saw.

Toad’s Last Little Song!

The Toad—came—home!
There was panic in the parlour and howling in
the hall,
There was crying in the cow-shed and shrieking
in the stall,
When the Toad—came—home!

When the Toad—came—home!
There was smashing in of window and crashing
in of door,
There was chivvying of weasels that fainted on
the floor,
When the Toad—came—home!

Bang! go the drums!
The trumpeters are tooting and the soldiers are
saluting,

And the cannon they are shooting and the
motor-cars are hooting,
As the—Hero—comes!

Shout—Hoo-ray!
And let each one of the crowd try and shout it
very loud,
In honour of an animal of whom you’re justly
proud,
For it’s Toad’s—great—day!

He sang this very loud, with great unction
^ch
and expression; and when he had done, he sang it all over again.

Then he heaved a deep sigh; a long, long, long sigh.

Then he dipped his hairbrush in the water-jug, parted his hair in the middle, and plastered it down very straight and sleek on each side of his face; and, unlocking the door, went quietly down the stairs to greet his guests, who he knew must be assembling in the drawing-room.

All the animals cheered when he entered, and crowded round to congratulate him and say nice things about his courage, and his cleverness, and his fighting qualities; but Toad only smiled faintly and murmured, ‘Not at all!’ Or, sometimes, for a change, ‘On the contrary!’ Otter, who was standing on the hearth-rug, describing to an admiring circle of friends exactly how he would have managed things had he been there, came forward with a shout, threw his arm round Toad’s neck, and tried to take him round the room in triumphal progress; but Toad, in a mild way, was rather snubby to him, remarking gently, as he disengaged himself, ‘Badger’s was the mastermind; the Mole and Water Rat bore the brunt of the fighting; I merely served in the ranks and did little or nothing.’ The animals were evidently puzzled and taken aback by this unexpected attitude of his; and Toad felt, as he moved from one guest to the other, making his modest responses, that he was an object of absorbing interest to every one.

The Badger had ordered everything of the best, and the banquet was a great success. There was much talking and laughter and chaff among the animals, but through it all Toad, who of course was in the chair, looked down his nose and murmured pleasant nothings to the animals on either side of him. At intervals he stole a glance at the Badger and the Rat, and always when he looked they were staring at each other with their mouths open; and this gave him the greatest satisfaction. Some of the younger and livelier animals, as the evening wore on, got whispering to each other that things were not so amusing as they used to be in the good old days; and there were some knockings on the table and cries of ‘Toad! Speech! Speech from Toad! Song! Mr. Toad’s Song!’ But Toad only shook his head gently, raised one paw in mild protest, and, by pressing delicacies on his guests, by topical small-talk, and by earnest inquiries after members of their families not yet old enough to appear at social functions, managed to convey to them that this dinner was being run on strictly conventional lines.

He was indeed an altered Toad!

After this climax, the four animals continued to lead their lives, so rudely broken in upon by civil war, in great joy and contentment, undisturbed by further risings or invasions. Toad, after due consultation with his friends, selected a handsome gold chain and locket set with pearls, which he dispatched to the gaoler’s daughter with a letter that even the Badger admitted to be modest, grateful, and appreciative; and the engine-driver, in his turn, was properly thanked and compensated for all his pains and trouble. Under severe compulsion from the Badger, even the barge-woman was, with some trouble, sought out and the value of her horse discreetly made good to her; though Toad kicked terribly at this, holding himself to be an instrument of Fate, sent to punish fat women with mottled arms who couldn’t tell a real gentleman when they saw one. The amount involved, it was true, was not very burdensome, the gipsy’s valuation being admitted by local assessors to be approximately correct.

Sometimes, in the course of long summer evenings, the friends would take a stroll together in the Wild Wood, now successfully tamed so far as they were concerned; and it was pleasing to see how respectfully they were greeted by the inhabitants, and how the mother-weasels would bring their young ones to the mouths of their holes, and say, pointing, ‘Look, baby! There goes the great Mr. Toad! And that’s the gallant Water Rat, a terrible fighter, walking along o’ him! And yonder comes the famous Mr. Mole, of whom you so often have heard your father tell!’ But when their infants were fractious and quite beyond control, they would quiet them by telling how, if they didn’t hush them and not fret them, the terrible grey Badger would up and get them. This was a base libel
^ci
on Badger, who, though he cared little about Society, was rather fond of children; but it never failed to have its full effect.

ENDNOTES

1
(p. 27)
the magnificent motor-car:
In 1904, when Grahame began telling his son, Alastair, the stories of Toad, the automobile was a recent invention. A Daimler motor syndicate opened in London in 1893, and in 1897 Motor Mills in Coventry began producing cars for sale. Grahame possibly identified the motor-car with social changes he feared: the loss of agrarian life and the rise of a materialistic middle class. Edward VII, Queen Victoria’s eldest son, who reigned from 1901 to 1910, popularized the motor-car when he became the first member of the royal family to ride in one. People with money soon followed suit. Toad’s view of the motor-car—“The poetry of motion! The
real
way to travel! The only way to travel!” (p. 28)—which Grahame satirizes, was typical of the time.

2
(p. 61)
Garibaldi, and the infant Samuel, and Queen Victoria, and other heroes of modern Italy:
Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) liberated and unified modern Italy. Samuel was a preeminent Jewish leader—judge, prophet, soldier, and seer—in the eleventh century B.C.; information about his life is found in the Bible’s first book of Samuel (also known as the first book of Kings). Queen Victoria ruled England from 1837 to 1901. Peter Green notes in his biography of Kenneth Grahame (pp. 163-164; see “For Further Reading”) that these idiosyncratic features of Mole End derive from the “old-fashioned Ligurian home” Grahame stayed in during the spring of 1905 while on holiday at Alassio on the Italian Riviera. The statues also suggest Mole’s dubious artistic taste. Through his friendship with Rat, Mole grows to have a greater appreciation for art and the imagination.

3
(p. 81)
“Oddsbodikins!”:
In having the sergeant speak this mild oath (“God’s little body!”), Grahame provides a parody of writer William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882), whose “Newgate” novels (named for the infamous London prison) sensationalized the lives and exploits of criminals.

4
(p. 84)
a sudden clear call from an actual articulate voice:
Rat and Mole are progressively drawn to the articulate voice of nature, which culminates in their vision of Pan and the sound of his music. Grahame is indebted to the British romantic poets for this chapter’s imagery and tone. Indeed, the chapter’s structure recalls that of Wordsworth’s sonnet “Composed by the Side of Grasmere Lake” (1806), which begins as evening turns to night, concerns the speaker’s troubled spirit, and ends: “But list! a voice is near; / Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds, / ‘Be thankful, thou; for, if unholy deeds / Ravage the world, tranquility is here!’ ”

5
(p. 87)
he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper:
Grahame describes the nature god, Pan—half-man, half-goat—as a benevolent force, exemplifying the neo-pagan mysticism associated with the nineteenth century. Compared with the depiction of Pan in ancient Greek mythology, his sexuality is moderated here; his paternalism is accentuated; and he bestows on Rat and Mole the gift of forgetfulness, a talent that he did not have in antiquity and that is Grahame’s invention.

6
(p. 91)
“And hark to the wind playing in the reeds!”:
One of Grahame’s early titles for his book was “The Wind in the Reeds,” which he abandoned because it echoed too closely the volume of poems by W B. Yeats entitled
The Wind Among the Reeds
(1899). Another title he considered, among others, was “Mr. Mole and His Mates.” The one he chose operates on two levels. “The Wind in the Willows” signifies literally the sound of the wind “whispering” through the “reed-stems” (p. 18), which Mole hears in chapter 1, and connotes a deeper meaning as the whispering becomes the music and message of Pan in chapter 7.

7
(p. 104)
Wayfarers All:
Like chapter 7, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” this chapter contains numerous echoes of the Romantic poets. John Keats’s “Ode to Autumn” (1819), with its imagery of autumnal change and mutability, informs the opening of Grahame’s chapter, with its “air of change and departure” (p. 104) . The chapter’s structure recalls Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798). As the Wayfarer Rat holds Ratty spellbound with his “shining eyes” (p. 110) and stories of the south, so Coleridge’s Mariner with “glittering” eyes and tales of the sea hypnotizes the Wedding-Guest.

8
(p. 110)
“You will have heard of Constantinople, friend?”:
The seafaring rat’s historical musings on Constantinople are lifted from William Morris’s
Sigurd the Volsung
(1876). Morris influenced Grahame to the extent that he dreamed, as did Grahame, of a “rural non-industrial Earthly Paradise: the return of a lost Golden Age” (Green, pp. 259, 262).

9
(p. 111)
“we rode into Venice down a path of gold”:
Grahame’s romance with the south, particularly Italy, began in 1886, when he traveled to Florence and Rome. In 1890 he visited Venice and in 1895 Alassio on the Italian Riviera, to which he returned several times. He gives the seafaring rat some of his own experiences and impressions of Italy.

10
(p. 127)
Near him stood a dingy gipsy caravan:
Toad’s encounter with the gipsy is a parody of
Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest
(1851), a novel by George Borrow (Green, p. 259), about the son of a soldier traveling through the British Isles, having adventures and befriending, among others, gipsies, and encountering murderers and thieves.

11
(p. 136) “Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears”: The title for this chapter is a variation on lines from Alfred Tennyson’s 1847 narrative poem “The Princess: A Medley”: “Rose a nurse of ninety years,/ Set his child upon her knee—/Like summer tempest came her tears—/‘Sweet my child, I live for thee!’ ” (part 6, lines 13-16). Tennyson’s mock-heroic poem concerns a princess who founds a university for women and, in order to preserve it from the encroachment of men, imposes a death penalty on male intruders. When a prince enters in disguise, the princess is forced to admit her failure. She marries the prince only after it is clear he shares her views, and together they strive to free women from oppressive societal strictures. Tennyson was a peripheral member of Frederick James Furnivall’s Early English Text Society and his New Shakespeare Society, to which Grahame belonged. Grahame’s readers would have recognized the echo of Tennyson in this title, which points to Toad’s despair at losing Toad Hall to the stoats and weasels and to the resolution of his friends to help him reform and reclaim his home.