[In the following essay, Price traces the origins of The Wind in the Willows.]

One of this century's beloved children's books, popular on both sides of the Atlantic, originated in a series of letters the author wrote to his young son.

What Kenneth Grahame wrote as The Wind in the Willows was a single work of the highest artistry to which any child or adult can return at different times and derive fresh aesthetic joy and revelation. His book is one by which a reader can measure a part of himself—that part which has an affinity with the natural world—with a certain style of writing, and with Grahame's insights into the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of human nature. (2:52) [References cited by number and page are listed in the bibliography at the end of this article.]

But what of the circumstances leading toward this creation and its creator? And were the Toad/Rat/Mole/Badger stories ever intended for publication? And how, as a classic, did the book take on a life of its own?

Born 20 July 1859, in Edinburgh, the child Kenneth spent happy years among the lochs and firths of the western Scottish highlands … where he found tranquility in nature which he explored alone because he was already slightly aloof from his other three siblings. (2:173)

When he was five his mother died, and he experienced the complete uprooting of his life. His father, who subsequently moved to the Continent, sent the children to live with the maternal grandmother, Mrs. Ingles, at Cookham Dene, a village near the Thames in Berkshire, England. An older sister described the grandmother as “not strictly cruel, but simply not demonstrative” in her care of the children. (2:8)

So the boy Kenneth turned to the woods and fields and small animals. This countryside became the setting for his eventual bedtime stories and letters to his own son.

Grahame attended St. Edward's School in nearby Oxford; there he became head scholar, took part in rugby and debating, and began to explore the upper reaches of the Thames in a canoe. His first published article, on the good and evil effects of “Rivalry,” appeared in the school newspaper.

Lack of family funds obliged him to give up his ambition to go to the University. So KG went to London and entered upon a career with the “Old Lady of Threadneedle Street,” as the Bank of England is known. He rose to responsibility by becoming acting secretary of the bank at age 34 and full secretary five years later.

In London he served in the Scottish Regiment, took part in social work at Toynbee Hall and learned to sing, fence and box. Among his acquaintances was a Shakespearian scholar, Dr. F. J. Furnivall, who also ran a men's rowing club. “Bluff, cheerful, full of purpose on an excursion and knowledgeable about what to take along and where to go,” did Furnivall become the Water Rat in The Wind in the Willows? (9:217)

In the decades KG worked at the bank he apparently felt very much at home in the London literary milieu. His mentor, poet/critic/editor William Ernest Henley, published many of KG's essays in his literary review, National Observer. These were collected into Pagan Papers in 1893.

WRITING ABOUT CHILDREN

For relaxation on evenings and holidays KG had begun writing about his boyhood days in Berkshire with memories of his grandmother and her house contributing much to these writings. Ever the champion of young people against tyranny of their elders, he wrote a story about some boys and girls and their various escapades in defiance of the “hopeless and incapable” grownups. (8:140)

This story, The Golden Age, published when KG was 36, became a widely read book. In the prologue, entitled “The Olympians,” he speaks of his early childhood without “a proper equipment of parents” and one whose “nearest—aunts and uncles—treated us with indifference, even stupidity.” Adults were Olympians—they commanded no respect, never indulged in the pleasures of life, went regularly to church but betrayed no delight in the experience, talked over children's heads during meals about political inanities, never defended or retracted or admitted themselves in the wrong. (5:4)

The Golden Age was followed within three years by Dream Days, whose characters were “not any particular children” but “any and all children.” Grahame thus became established as a writer about children though not as a writer for children. (8:140)

KG also contributed his writings to the Yellow Book, an illustrated quarterly published in London from 1894-1897, edited by Henry Harland. Its contents were a miscellany of short stories, poetry and exotic drawings with an emphasis on the bizarre. Aubrey Beardsley was art editor and Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm, John Davidson and G. B. Shaw among the contributors.

In the London of the 1890s the ideal male was independent—free of adult restraint, responsibility and sex—but with a boyish charm. Was this ideal male the Prince of Wales acting like a schoolboy, his escapades engendering the Queen's displeasure? (10:167)

At the age of 40 Grahame married Elspeth Thompson, age 37, of Edinburgh. Their only child, Alastair, a frail boy with poor eyesight, grew up pampered and privately tutored. “The marriage itself was lacking in emotional or sexual maturity.” (10:168)

An anecdote has been handed down about Mrs. Grahame, dressed for a dinner engagement and anxious not to be late, asking her maid: “Where is Mr. Grahame, Louise?”

“He's with Master Mouse, Madam. He's telling him some ditty about a Toad.”

In the nursery Mrs. Grahame found her husband—a tall, broad, mustached, distinguished-looking gentleman, immaculately dressed—with his son Alastair, familiarly known in the household as Mouse. The boy, who had a face like a Maxfield Parrish illustration, was listening raptly to a bedtime story of the Toad and his friends the Rat, the Mole and the Badger.

Yet Grahame's deprived early childhood apparently hindered him from ever becoming the husband and father he must have wished to be. He was inventing these stories when Alastair was about the same age as he had been when “happy in nature.” (2:175) He was almost 50, financially secure, and himself spending a good bit of time away from their London home. Had he become the personification of the independent adult of 1890s London?

When ill health in his 49th year forced Grahame's resignation from the Bank of England, he retired to spend the rest of his life in seclusion in the Berkshire countryside. Living at Boham's farm house in the hamlet of Blewbury (1:124) and out of touch with the literary world, he wrote nothing after he left the Bank, although he lived for another quarter century.

Asked why he stopped writing when he had the leisure, KG told a visitor, “I am not a professional writer. I have never been and never will be by reason of the accident that I don't need any money. And I do not care for notoriety.” (8:140) His summers were spent boating and fishing in Cornwall, or traveling quietly with his wife in Italy.

His last years were clouded by the death of his son at age 20 while an undergraduate at Oxford. Accounts vary as to whether Alastair fell under or jumped from a moving train. (10:169)

The Grahams then went to live at Pangbourne in another dignified, secluded cottage. Here KG died at age 73 and was buried beside his son on the bank of the Thames.

Elspeth Grahame lived well into the 1940s. Her introduction to First Whisper of “The Wind in the Willows” (Lippincott, 1944), a charming bit of literary history published in America during World War II, offers the best insight into the creation of this classic children's book.

Prior to the dinner-engagement story, Mrs. Grahame recalls an incident during the family's summer holiday at an old Scottish castle, when a visitor arrived one evening and went upstairs to meet the author.

The small boy Alastair had already gone to bed and his father was telling him a bedtime story. The visitor, not interrupting, listened spellbound at the door of the nursery as KG told “a magic tale with a Badger in it, a Mole, a Toad, and a Water Rat, and the places they lived and were surrounded by.” (4:3)

First Whisper is a reproduction of KG's letters to Alastair. According to Elspeth, Mouse refused to go away for many weeks to the seaside because he would miss the adventures of Toad. So his father promised further installments to be forwarded in writing.

Mouse's nursery-governess, who read the adventures aloud to the boy “evidently saw something unusual about them,” Mrs. Grahame remembers, “for she preserved and posted them to me for safekeeping, knowing full well that, if restored to the author, they would merely be consigned to the wastebasket.” (4:1)

WRITING FOR CHILDREN

Some years later “a lady agent for an American firm of publishers arrived in a taxi from London at the house in Berkshire … to proffer a request that Kenneth write something for them on any subject and at any price he desired.” Kenneth said he had nothing ready and regarded himself “not as a pump, but as a spring.” (4:4)

“The lady seemed disappointed,” Elspeth continues. “I bethought me of the bedtime stories now more or less in manuscript form, and after some discussion, it was decided that the adventures of Toad, Mole and Company should go farther afield and be published in America.” (4:4)

But the American publishers were displeased! Where were the children in The Golden Age and in Dream Days? The Americans were at a loss to adapt themselves to “the transmutation of realistic boys and girls into animals” (4:4) who

like us human folk are forever busy—Mole, the field worker, the digger; Rat, the perfect waterman, wise about currents, eddies and whatnot; Badger, big and stout, uncouth but oh! how dependable, a champion of the smaller folk; and Toad, the impossible and loveable, never out of a scrape and never ceasing to boast.

(11:83)

Therefore, Kenneth asked for the manuscript to be sent back, and it was forthwith published in England. Grahame himself wrote on the dust jacket that the book is “perhaps chiefly for youth.” (10:174) Upon its publication the book's reception was muted.

The Wind in the Willows did enjoy acceptance in America, however. President Theodore Roosevelt sent copies to Grahame to be autographed for his children, Kermit and Ethel.

The book was dramatized after 21 years by A. A. Milne as Toad of Toad Hall and under this title enjoyed a new popularity and has been widely performed. (8:140)

The most famous quotation from The Wind in the Willows, and its only citation in John Barlett's Familiar Quotations, appears in the chapter, “The River Bank.” (7:6,7)

The Rat sculled smartly across (to the river's edge) and made fast. Then he held up his fore-paw as Mole stepped gingerly down … and to his surprise and rapture found himself actually seated in the stern of a real boat.

“This has been a wonderful day!” he said, as the Rat shoved off. … “Do you know, I've never been in a boat in all my life.”

“What?” cried the Rat, open-mouthed.

“Never been in a … what have you been doing?”

“Is it so nice as all that?” asked the Mole shyly … as he leant back and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks … and the boat swayed lightly under him.

“Nice? It's the only thing.” said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leaned forward for his stroke. “Believe me, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing—about—in—boats.”

One summer an American family, the Bodgers from California, made a summer excursion to the Berkshires in the 1950s to rediscover the riverbank's locale on the Thames. John Bodger, a reference librarian, his wife Jean, a connoisseur of children's books, nine-year-old Ian and three-year-old Lucy stayed at the Red Lion Inn at Henley. (1:106)

The family hired an elderly boatman to take them up and down the river several times to seek out the New Iron Bridge and the boat at Rat's house directly across from Pangbourne; the place where Rat and Mole had their picnic; Mapledurham House, with a few details from Hardwich House downstream, which has been accepted as Toad Hall; and a house named Blewbury which appeared to be Mole's house and where the kitchen was undoubtedly Badger's. (1:118-121)

By the end of the week, the boatman finally unbent enough to talk to them while on a final picnic. (1:132) Yes, he had known Mr. Grahame. No, he had never read any of his books. He was amazed to discover that the old gentleman had once been Secretary of the Bank of England, though he did remember people saying that Queen Mary had written to Mrs. Grahame when her husband died. Mr. Grahame was “a foine (cq) old gentleman, a wonderful looking chap. He used to go for a walk almost every day, rain or shine, walking along the bank. He loved the river. …”

“And messing about in boats,” young Ian Bodger interposed, “Simply messing about with boats. …”

“That's a funny thing the lad just said,” he told the family. “That's the very way he always put it. He'd come walking down that path and stand watching me … painting, calking, or getting boats into the water … he always said exactly the same thing, ‘There's nothing, absolutely nothing, like messing about with boats.’ I thought it was a joke, like. And now this little lad comes along … It fair gives me a turn!” he mused. (1:133)

GRAHAME'S ILLUSTRATORS

All of Kenneth Grahame's works benefitted tremendously from superb illustration, in the earlier decades by Maxfield Parrish and Ernest H. Shepherd, and later by Arthur Rackham.

Parrish illustrated the 1908 edition of The Wind in the Willows, as he had illustrated editions of The Golden Age in 1904 and Dream Days in 1907. Several of Parrish's colored pictures for The Golden Age hung on the living room walls at Boham's. Clayton Hamilton, an American professor of English, visited KG there and commented on the paintings.

Grahame, who had never laid eyes on Maxfield Parrish, asked, “Does he look like the sort of man who ought to paint such pictures?” Upon Hamilton's assurance that Parrish was “one of the handsomest men in the United States,” KG remarked, “I'm glad … people really ought to look like themselves.” (4:29)

Artist Ernest H. Shepherd illustrated the 1922 edition of The Golden Age. His charming account of meeting Grahame as an old man in the early 1930s was published in Horn Book magazine in April 1954.

KG told Shepherd where to look for the meadow, the river bank, the pool and the Wild Wood where his animals lived so that the artist could sketch accurately for the 1933 edition of The Wind in the Willows. Shepherd returned later to show the results. “Though critical, the author seemed pleased and said, ‘I'm glad you've made them real.’” (11:83, 84, 86)

Regarding the modern child as reader, this children's librarian is inclined to think that this classic is not a book a child would choose on his or her own—although a child exposed to it may well pick it up again as an adult. Rather, this is a book to be read aloud, first, because it is slightly above the average child's unaided capacity to read to her/himself. And, secondly, by hearing the tale the child may savor the beauty of style, the rhythmic and poetic prose, the power of the imagination, and a wealth of commentary on the human experience.

As Dora V. Smith, an authority in the field of children's literature, told the National Council of Teachers of English at their golden anniversary convention in 1960, “There are no stories or books which every child should read, but there are a great many which it would be a shame for a child to miss.” (12:XV)

The Wind in the Willows is one of the latter!

Works Cited

1. Bodger, Jean. How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to British Sources of Children's Books. Viking, 1959.

2. Cameron, Eleanor. The Green and Burning Tree: On the Enjoyment and Writing of Children's Books. Little Brown, 1962.

3. Grahame, Kenneth. Dream Days. London: Bodley Head, c1898; c1907, 3rd ed., illus. by Maxfield Parrish.

4.———. First Whisper of the Wind in the Willows. Edited, with an introduction by Elspeth Grahame. Lippincott, 1944.

5.———. The Golden Age. London: John Lane, Bodley Head. c1896; c1904, illus. by Maxfield Parrish.

6.———. Pagan Papers. London: Bodley Head. c1893; c1898.

7.———. The Wind in the Willows. Scribner, 1908. Edition of 1933, illus. by Ernest H. Shepherd. Renewal c. 1961, Ernest H. Shepherd.

8. Kunitz and Haycraft. Junior Book of Authors. Wilson, 1935.

9. Oxford University Press. Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, 1984.

10. Sale, Roger. Fairy Tales and After. Harvard University Press, 1978.

11. Shepherd, Ernest H. Illustrating “The Wind in the Willows.” Horn Book magazine, April 1954.

12. Smith, Dora V. Fifty Years of Children's Books. National Council of Teachers of English, 1963.