David Bouchier Essay: Down by the River Side

Mr. Toad and all his friends from the river bank are a hundred years old this year. This important literary information may leave you completely indifferent - unless you know who I?m talking about. Then you may get a faraway look in your eyes, and even begin to mutter the magic words: ?Boop-boop.? Mr. Toad is the most prominent and certainly the loudest character in The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham, which was published in 1908. Either you were brought up with this book or you were not. If you were you will certainly remember Toad and his long suffering companions, Water Rat, Mole, and Badger, who live an idyllic life by the river and in the Wild Wood, interrupted by bursts of wild excitement, usually precipitated by Toad, who is a kind of Walter Mitty character, but more active. Toad has enthusiasms, one of which is the motor car - hence ?Boop-boop? - and his gentler and more sensible friends try to save him from himself. Some people adore the book, others find it fey and silly. But it made an impression on a lot of children, including me, because the animal characters are so good natured and sympathetic. Life by the river has its dark side, but there are no superheroes and, apart from one unfortunate chapter that you can skip, very little sentimentality. Like Lewis Carrol?s Alice stories, this is real life through the looking glass. We all know at least one Mr. Toad, just as we all know at least one Red Queen. Until recently, when I read a biographical sketch of the author Kenneth Graham, I had never realized another and more elusive appeal of The Wind in the Willows. The characters are all solitary creatures who love their little homes. There is an affecting passage where Mole, who has been enjoying all kinds of adventures on the river, catches the scent of his own underground burrow and is overcome with homesickness. It seems that Kenneth Graham had a lifelong dream of a little room of his own where he could just be alone, and be happy. He even went looking for it in London, believing it must exist somewhere. How many of us had such a fantasy as children ? a hideway, a room that nobody else knew about, a secret garden? Children?s literature is full of them, or used to be. It?s a deeply anti-social fantasy, so it may be out of fashion nowadays. Reading about Kenneth Graham brought my own fantasy back. My little room of the imagination was closely modeled on that of Sherlock Holmes ? rather dark, full of books and papers, curiosities and scientific experiments, and discreetly managed by a kind housekeeper who would provide regular meals and ask no questions. In The Wind in the Willows Water Rat has his cozy nest in the river bank, Mole has his tidy burrow, Badger has rather fine quarters under the roots of a tree in the Wild Wood, and Toad, in keeping with his excessive character, has Toad Hall. Through all their adventures these places always call them back. Even as we live our lives in the chaos of other people, and enjoy it, I suspect that most of us as adults still harbor that childhood fantasy of a secret place where nothing and nobody can trouble us ? an apartment 7B with no name on the door or, like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, just a room somewhere with one enormous chair, oh wouldn?t it be luvverly. Copyright: David Bouchier With acknowledgements to Richard Ingrams