The Wind in the Willows and the Moral Imagination

So much of life's meaning centers around the humble dinner table.

“When you sit down to it, don't be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, or on the art of Kenneth Grahame. You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself. You may be worthy: I don't know, But it is you who are on trial” —A. A. Milne on The Wind in the Willows.

All images are the illustrations of E. H. Shepard, the only edition to own!

Kenneth Grahame, the author of the The Wind in the Willows, created one of the most beloved and one of the most whimsically delightful books of all time. Yet his own life was marked by long suffering. He lost his mother at five and went to live with a rather cold grandmother, whose garden ran down to the Thames river, shaded by willow trees on its banks (this would be the inspiration for the setting of his novel). Grahame endured a loveless marriage and his only son died tragically at age 20.

It is not surprising that he admitted to being in a mind to “take refuge from the rubs and disappointments of a life where things go eternally askew, in our imaginary world, where we have things exactly as we want them.”

Given the author’s difficult life and his desire to escape in his literary writings, one might expect to find the same kind of romantic imbalance that is present in the creative works of other artists who, like that arch romantic Jean-Jacques Rousseau, desired to take flight on the wings of the imagination into a “land of chimeras.”

Grahame’s imagination, however, found solace in a fictional world that was nonetheless proportional and, although sometimes comically absurd, governed by Christian morality. Perhaps it was because of Grahame’s real suffering that he never broke from the bounds of reality in creating the world of The Wind in the Willows. Grahame understood that life is bound by certain parameters, and even fiction must operate within the moral law.

C. S. Lewis, in his illuminating essay “On Stories,” observed that Frog, Mole, Toad, and Badger have “no responsibilities, no struggle for existence, no domestic cares. Meals turn up; one does not even ask who cooked them.” It is true! They are like children, adult-children of the animal variety, which allows us to suspend our disbelief and enter fully into the story. “This excursion into the preposterous,” Lewis says, “sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual.”

Unlike real products of the undiluted romantic imagination, Grahame’s famous novel is a place we would want to visit (perhaps that is one of the litmus tests for the romantic versus the moral imagination).

The romantics get high praise for their vivid imaginations, but I try to show throughout The Christian Imagination why that quality of imagination is not only deficient but also very dangerous, particularly to children. Grahame shows us that a story can be highly imaginative, even preposterous, and can come out of a desire for escape from this reality (which is characteristic of the romantic imagination) and at the same time be a product of the moral imagination.

The escapism that Grahame indulges in in The Wind in the Willows, I would argue, is an entirely salutary one and one that gives great pleasure as it instructs in the Christian virtues of humility, charity, and friendship.

So much of what gives this book its pleasurable character are its rich and textured descriptions of country life, and also the ritual as well as humor that surrounds life in the world down by the river.

There are many themes that could be examined in The Wind in the Willows, but I think that this book could be profitably viewed from the perspective of liturgical living, a theme that I have tried to develop in recent posts. Specifically, I will delve into liturgical living as it relates to food.

Since this past Sunday we heard in the Gospel of John of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana, the banquet seems a fitting theme to meditate on.

Part of what gives The Wind in the Willows its homely feeling, the sense that we can take refuge in it when we are sick (as I did, and apparently as C. S. Lewis did too), are all of the meals by the fire that the animals share. The ceremonies that accompany their little feasts nurtures their friendships as it nourishes their bodies and prepares them for what lies ahead.

Soon after Mole meets Rat for the first time, they are enjoying the contents of the packed luncheon-basket that Rat had brought along.

“The Mole begged as a favor to be allowed to unpack it all by himself; and the Rat was very pleased to indulge him, and to sprawl at full length on the grass and rest, while his excited friend shook out the tablecloth and spread it, took out all the mysterious packets one by one and arranged their contents in due order, still gasping. ‘O my! O my!’ at each fresh revelation.”

Their lunch provides some much-needed sustenance. Mole, after all, quit his old solitary life underground mid-spring-clean and was now famished. Rat was happy befriend and show hospitality to a creature in need. We at once see a lovely dynamic forming between these two, who begin as unequals but grow together until Mole can meet Ratty as his equal—growth that marks the virtue that exists in and between true friends in the Aristotelian sense.

There is another memorable scene when Mole and Ratty escape from the terror of the Wild Wood. The two stumble upon—rather providentially—the abode of Ratty’s dear friend Badger. Badger welcomes the relieved creatures in and brings them to his kitchen. If I were teaching a writing class, I would assign this passage describing Badger’s kitchen:

“A couple of high-backed settles, facing each other on either side of the fire, gave further sitting accommodations for the sociably disposed . . . 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.”

It’s so good, I must keep going:

“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.”

It’s also how we would hope that our home might seem to the weary guest. The ideal home: inviting, warm, and with a full pantry ready to be shared in hospitality. In fact, this description influenced C. S. Lewis, whose description of Mr. Tumnus’s home echoes Grahame’s description of Badger’s hearth.

Badger fetches fresh, dry clothes for his companions as they warm by the fire. When Mole and Rat laid eyes on the supper their host prepared for them, “really it seemed only a question of what they should attack first where all was so attractive, and whether the other things would obligingly wait for them till they had time to give them attention.”

The best part, though, is Badger’s kind, gentle manner that does not judge his friends for whatever antics led them to his doorstep at night in the freezing cold. From their joyous excitement to be safe from the Wild Wood and by his warm hearth, Badger’s friends talked mouths full, elbows on the table, all speaking at once—“that regrettable sort of conversation.”

But to Badger “these things belonged to the things that didn’t really matter. (We know of course that he was wrong, and took too narrow a view; because they do matter very much, though it would take too long to explain why.)”

The irony is that Badger notices their unmannerly behavior, suggesting that he is, like all good English gentlemen of his generation, a man of courtesy and manners—and the implication is that his friends usually are too.

Badger’s hospitality, his never having reprimanded his friends with “‘I told you so,’ or, ‘Just what I always said,’” and the simple joy that the three had in one another’s company—are part of a ceremony that finds as its center the breaking of bread. Grahame’s playful personification of Badger’s house only adds to our delight. It attracts the imagination to the whole. It makes manners, ritual, fellowship seem good because they are good. That is the moral imagination at work, on the part of the author and on the part of the reader who delights in it.

There is another significant moment in the book when Mole and Rat make it into the Mole’s old home. They had left Badger and been traveling for some time when Mole detected something very familiar nearby. “It was one of these mysterious fairy calls from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness.” Suddenly, he placed what that mysterious something was: “Home!”

Mole had nearly forgotten it in his new life, but still it found him. He longed to go back to it, just to see it. He tried to tell Rat, but Rat brusquely dismissed him, so eager was he to return to his river. Rat did not understand the pleading in his friend’s voice until Mole sat down, entirely overcome with emotion and—through the sobs—explained how he had longed to see his little home once more.

“I see it all now! What a pig I have been! A pig - that’s me! Just a pig - a plain pig!” Rat said. He then got up and demanded that the two set off “to find that home of yours, old fellow.” I was reminded of Mole’s heartfelt, over-the-top (yet entirely sincere) apology to Rat that took place in the beginning of the book when Mole overturned the boat in his eagerness to steer it.

Here are two good friends who are able to offer their sincere apologies when needed. It is a wonderful lesson for us all!

When they reached Mole’s old home, Mole was ashamed of its drab, dusty appearance, but “the Rat paid no heed to his doleful self-reproaches.”

“‘What a capital little house this is! . . . ‘so compact! So well planned! Everything here and everything in its place! We’ll make a jolly night of it.”

The first thing they did, of course, was to make a fire. And then, despite Mole lamenting that there was no food, Rat demanded that they forage, and they cobbled together a meal of sardines, a box of crackers, a German sausage, and some bottles of beer.

“There’s a banquet for you!” the Rat said, who then set the table, mixed the mustard, and asked Mole to tell him all about his lovely home.

The ceremonies that we have around food are so many symbols of meaning. Ultimate meaning came through food: Christ’s institution of the Eucharist. Physical nourishment points toward spiritual nourishment, if we allow it. Pausing to say grace before we dine recognizes the priority of the transcendent.

We have many little rituals around food, including the preparation, setting the table, the orderliness of the meal (as far as is possible with several little barbarians crowding around the table), saying please and thank you, serving others first, taking turns speaking, not speaking with our mouths full, etc. We’ve heard of all of those scientific studies proving what we already know—how family meals are formative for children and correlate with children’s success and parental involvement and everything else.

The dinner table is a little school in itself for practicing restraint, courtesy, helpfulness (feeding the baby some bites), conversation skills, politeness even in the face of “the most disgusting” food, saving dessert for last, pushing in chairs, cleanup, and more.

Despite the grumblings of some critics that The Wind in the Willows does not have a sufficient ending, that it simply ends, I believe that its ending is fitting, for it ends with a banquet. The Badger had put together a fine banquet to celebrate the friends having recovered Toad Hall from its erstwhile invaders, and even the Toad, who had planned to deliver great speeches and toasts and songs in an absurd self-celebration, opted to show great restraint out of respect for his beloved friends. “He was indeed an altered Toad!”

There is much to this charming, whimsical story. I think that it is so successful at evoking the moral imagination because of its slow pace. Grahame takes the time to describe all of the details, to give us the texture of life. One can see what C. S. Lewis meant when he said that he knows better Toad Hall and the Wild Wood than London, Oxford, and Belfast.

Art slows down and narrows in on the aspects of real life that we miss when we aren’t paying attention (which is most of the time). Lewis suspects that undue elements of “excitement” that overshadow the story may be “hostile to the deeper imagination.” Grahame, who wrote a book for those “who keep the spirit of youth alive in them; of sunshine, running water, woodlands, dusty roads, winter fire-sides,” could hardly be accused of sacrificing the story to plot-driven excitement (wild as Mr. Toad’s rides were!).

One of the functions of art, Lewis says, is to present what the “desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude.” I am reminded of Josef Pieper’s famous little tract, Leisure as the Basis of Culture. Pieper was writing at a time when the 5-year plans were all the rage and even in the West, a coldly utilitarian approach to education was in the air. Is there no place for learning for its own sake, Pieper asked? Or must all learning justify itself in terms of its contribution to the bottom line?

Leisure, Pieper asserted, is the wellspring of freedom, education, and culture. It is that contemplative activity that allows us to meditate on and create those non-utilitarian parts of life that are ultimately where its meaning lies. Pieper brings up the role of the feast and the banquet:

“In all religions, the meaning of a feast has always been the same, the affirmation of man’s fundamental accord with the world; and its purpose is to express this accord and man’s participation in the world in a special manner. Feast days and holy-days are the inner source of leisure. It is because leisure takes its origin from ‘celebration’ that it is not only effortless but the direct contrary of effort; not just the negative, in the sense of being no effort, but the positive counterpart.”

The convivial banquets of Rat, Mole, Frog, and Toad were, if nothing else, leisurely. They drew strength and nourishment on a physical and spiritual level from their celebrations, even of such seemingly “small” events as finding home (first Badger’s and then Mole’s). Grahame reminds us, as does Pieper, that life’s significance and joy can be found in these little rituals, which the modern world is so quick to toss out as unnecessary. Fast food and convenience foods may turn out to be as detrimental to family life as technology. Imagine if mothers simply had to cook meals for their families? Working a full-time job would be out of the question! The whole pace of life would slow down and family life could find the dinner table as its anchor.

One of Grahame’s social criticisms underneath The Wind in the Willows was that the motorcar was going to destroy country life in the name of efficiency. The leisurely activity of the little animal quartet represents the joy of an unhurried existence, one that makes time for ritual, ceremony, an apology to a friend, and a feast.