Dr. Landon Loftin returns to the show to discuss Kenneth Grahame, the author behind “The Wind in the Willows”.
S8E28: “Jack’s Bookshelf: Kenneth Grahame”, After Hours with Dr. Landon Loftin (Download)
If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast platform, such as iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and many others…
For information about our schedule for Season 8, please see the our season roadmap, containing a list of all the episodes we plan to record together, as well as “After Hours” interviews with special guests.
Finally, if you’d like to support us and get fantastic gifts such as access to our Pints With Jack Slack channel and branded pint glasses, please join us on Patreon for as little as $2 a month.
Show Notes
Introduction
Quote of the Week
One does not argue about The Wind in the Willows. The young man gives it to the girl with whom he is in love, and, if she doesn’t like it, asks her to return his letters. The older man tries it on his nephew, and alters his will accordingly. The book is a test of character. We can’t criticize it, because it is criticizing us. But I must give you one word of warning. 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
Biographical Information
Dr. Landon Loftin is a husband and father of three. He teaches for Gravitas, A Global Extension of The Stony Brook School.
Chit-Chat
–
Toast
- David was drinking a Hazy IPA from Best Day Brewing.
- Dr. Loftin had some Earl Grey Tea.
Discussion
01. “The Man”
Q: Who was Kenneth Grahame? What do we know about him and where does he fit into the scheme of English literature?
- Kenneth Grahame lived from 1859-1932, so his writing fit within the late-Victorian and Edwardian age. His childhood was filled with tragedy; his mother died when he was very young, and his father became depressed, turning to drugs, eventually becoming an addict, passing his children to various relatives for care.
- Graeme found solace in the beauty of the natural world, with a particular fondness for the rivers and woods of rural England. This love of the forest would be reflected in his later writings.
- As he grew into adulthood, Graeme used his talents to pursue a scholarship at Oxford. However, a well-meaning uncle chose his early path for him, leaving Graeme to work as a gentleman clerk at a bank, a position he never desired.
- Despite his distaste for the job, Graeme was highly successful, and rose through the ranks to become the Secretary of the Bank of England.
- Graeme began to write on the side in his spare time. He was never a prolific writer, and wrote mostly essays and poems, which were often mediocre in quality. The essays that did show promise were collected into a book, titled “Pagan Papers”. However, the best part of the book, in Dr. Loftin’s opinion, were the short stories in the back of the book. These became the foundation of his next two novels, “The Golden Age” and “Dream Days”, the first of Graeme’s great books, which were an immediate hit at the time. In fact, fans were disappointed in the publishing of his most famous novel today, “The Wind in the Willows”, because they were hoping for a continuation of those other stories.
- After “The Wind in the Willows”, he continued writing, but he never had quite the same success with his subsequent work. This is partially due to sorrow in his own life. Graeme suffered unhappiness in his marriage, and experienced the sudden and traumatic death of his son.
Q: Given that only one of his works has stood the test of time in our memories, what makes him an important author?
- Kenneth Grahame played a significant role in the development of children’s literature, and how people should understand childhood. Dr. Loftin places him with Lewis Carroll in terms of influence on the genre. Regardless, it is a timeless piece of literature enjoyable at any age.
- Ironically, Graeme himself did not necessarily regard “The Wind in the Willows” as a children’s book, and did not see himself as a children’s author.
It is a book of youth, and so perhaps, chiefly for youth, and those who keep the spirit of youth alive in them; of life, sunshine, running water, woodlands, dusty roads, winter firesides, free of problems, clean of the clash of sex, of life as it might be fairly supposed to be regarded by some of those wise, small things that glide in the grasses and rubble of Woody Wreck.
Kenneth Grahame, Speaking on “The Wind in the Willows”
No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.
C. S. Lewis
- David mentioned his love/discomfort relationship with the book, having consumed it in several forms growing up.
02. “Dr. Loftin’s Encounter”
Q. When did you first come across him and when did you start to be hooked?
- Like Lewis, Dr. Loftin did not come across “The Wind in the Willows” until he was an adult. He picked it up after hearing a statement from Lewis about it where Jack pondered why Graeme disguised his characters as animals, when they are clearly people.
But why should the characters be disguised as animals at all? The disguise is very thin, so thin that Graeme makes Mr. Toad on one occasion comb the dry leaves out of his hair. Yet it is quite indispensable. If you try to rewrite the book with all the characters humanised, you’re faced at the outset with a dilemma. Are they to be adults or children? You’ll find that they can be neither. They are like children insofar as they have no responsibilities, no struggle for existence, no domestic cares. Meals turn up and one does not even ask who cooked them. In Mr. Badger’s kitchen, plates on the dresser grinned as pots on the shelf, but who keeps them clean? Where were they bought? … To that extent, the book is a specimen of the most scandalous escapism. It paints a happiness under incompatible conditions. The sort of freedom that we can only have in childhood, and the sort that we can only have in maturity, and conceals the contradiction by the further pretence, that the characters are not human beings at all. One absurdity hides the other.
C. S. Lewis, On “The Wind in the Willows”
- While this might seem like a negative critique of the book, he goes on to say that this fantasy Graeme paints is one of the things that literature does well, even when some things don’t make sense; it cuts through the mundane to deeper realities of life.
- Stirred by these words, Dr. Loftin picked up the book, and in reading it, was more deeply moved by it than any other work of fiction… besides Lord of the Rings.
- One of the draws was the novel’s charm. It captures innocence and homely comfort in delightful, simple ways. But it is also adventurous, and offers displays of virtue, including self-giving love, friendship, and beauty in it’s natural state. The things that make life pleasurable are celebrated in lovely prose.
- In David’s mid twenties, his mother gave him the book “Counselling for Toads”, a continuation of the book where Mr. Toad gets therapy. David returned to “The Wind in the Willows”, and discovered the psychological depths and layers that he had missed in his childhood.
03. “Graeme’s Influences”
Q. We’ll speak about how Graeme influenced the Inklings in a little bit, but do we know anything about what books shaped Graeme?
- As a well-read man, Graeme’s interests bled into his own work. All of his writings are full of literary illusions, primarily to classical and romantic works. On the classic side, Homer was a prominent influence, along with the Greek god Pan. On the other hand, the romantic Wordsworth was influential.
- One of the main characters, Mr. Toad, is frequently compared to Odysseus or Ulysses from Homer’s “The Odyssey”. The resemblance is clear; Mr. Toad travels into foreign, fascinating, and dangerous lands, where he is delayed on his return journey. He also has to devise clever escapes from his captors. Even his homecoming is spoiled because of others who used his absence as opportunity to advance themselves and take over, and has to use cunning to reclaim it.
- Graeme was deeply inspired by “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” by Wordsworth, as noted by Graeme’s wife, Elspeth.
I had known, of course, for years that all of Kenneth Grahame’s work had been posited upon the opening stanza of that great ode of Wordsworth, which is one of the saddest, as it is one of the wisest utterances of mankind.
Elspeth Graeme
- Dr. Loftin read the captivating opening stanzas of the poem. It speaks of the loss of innocence and childhood.
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
04. “His Works”
Q. What other stories did Grahame write?
- “The Golden Age” and “Dream Days” are short stories that are episodes of the lives of five Victorian children. Readers view the natural and civilised world through their childlike perspective, lamenting their loss of appreciation for the natural world. The passage Dr. Loftin read was a critique of adult consciousness.
These elders, our betters by a trick of chance, commanded no respect, but only a certain blend of envy of their good luck and pity for their inability to make use of it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless features in their character. When we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them, which wasn’t often, that having absolute license to indulge in the pleasures of life, they could get no good out of it. They might dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the most uncompromising Sunday clothes. They were free to issue forth and buy gunpowder in the full eye of the sun, free to fire cannons, and explode mines on the lawn. Yet, they never did any of these things. No irresistible energy hailed them to the church on Sundays. Yet they went there regularly of their own accord, though they betrayed no greater delight in the experiences than ourselves… To anything but appearances, these adults, they were blind. For then the orchard, a place elf-haunted and wonderful, simply produced so many apples and cherries, or it didn’t when the failures of nature were not infrequently ascribed to us. They never set foot within fir wood or hazel-copse, nor dreamt of the marvels hid therein.
Kenneth Grahame, The Golden Age, Prologue
05. “Influencing C. S. Lewis”
Q. Do you know in what ways Grahame influenced C.S. Lewis?
- Though there is no evidence of Lewis having read “Golden Days” and “Dream Days”, he referenced “The Wind in the Willows” quite a bit in books like “The Four Loves”, as well as his letters, citing it as his feel-good comfort novel when we was sick. In “The Problem of Pain”, Lewis cites the moment when Rat and Mole meet the Greek god Pan as a description of the mystical experience of the “numinous”, which is a mixture of fear, awe, and happiness.
‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking. ‘Are you afraid?’
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet— and yet— O, Mole, I am afraid!’
- The scene is quite reminiscent of the children’s encounters with Aslan in the Narnian Chronicles, is it not? This was the scene that always made David uncomfortable as a child, because it was a sort of blend of Christianity and paganism.
- The encounter with Pan re-enchants most of the characters, besides Toad, who remains in fluctuation and is unwilling to mature, reminding David of a quote from “The Weight of Glory”.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Q. What was J. R. R. Tolkien’s criticism of the scene with Pan?
- Holly Ordway explains the critique in “Tolkien’s Modern Reading”. Part of it was the aesthetics, because the Greek god seemed out of place in the simple English landscape.
- The origin of the title stems from Pan and his flute of reeds. However, “The Wind in the Reeds” was already taken, so Graeme had to choose another one.
- In the story, Pan offers the characters the gift of forgetfulness. However, though they might not remember the full encounter, certain sounds or encounters draw their attention thereafter. Dr. Loftin compared it to “Meditation in a Toolshed”, looking along the beam instead of at it.
06. “Where to Begin”
Q. If people are new to Graeme’s works, where should they begin?
- Begin with “The Wind in the Willows”, and move on to the other two. There is also a biography about Graeme by Peter Green to check out.
Q. Are there any good adaptations of “The Wind in the Willows”?
- Dr. Loftin believes the adaptations do a disservice to the story, turning it into something that it is not, or failing to fully encapsulate it.
Wrap Up
Concluding Thoughts
- Dr. Loftin is working on a collection based on G. K. Chesterton, called “Chesterton and the Philosophers”, which will release later this year. He is also writing a manuscript about Graeme’s famous novel, titled “A Place in the Wide World”. To top it off, he is also currently writing a biography on Owen Barfield.
More Information
- “What Barfield Thought” by Dr. Landon Loftin and Max Leyf.
