Welcome to this podcast about C.S. Lewis and the Wind in the Willows. My name's Simon Horrigan, and I'm a tutor in English Maudlin College in Oxford. I want to begin this talk with the famous opening scene of the Wind in the Willows, in which the Moors suddenly abandons the cosiness of his underground home to embark on a series of adventures.
As it's a useful way into understanding the importance of the book both for C.S. Lewis but also for J.R.R. Tolkien, since it may have inspired the opening of The Hobbit, in which Bilbo leaves his snug hobbit hole to go on an unexpected journey. For Lewis, this opening with spring moving in the air, creating in the mould a spirit of divine discontent and longing comes close to capturing the emotion that he referred to as joy.
The search for which was central to his spiritual journey, as described in his biographical study, surprised by joy. While most longing speaks to the spiritual side of Lewis's personality. There are other aspects of Lewis's character in the books. Three central figures. Brat is an aspiring poet. When Mo finds him brooding miserably, he tactfully slips in a pencil and a few sheets of paper.
It's quite a long time since you did any poetry, he remarked. You might have a out at this evening instead of, well, brooding over things so much. I have an idea. You feel a lot better when you've got something jotted down. If it's only just the rhymes. Lewis, of course, began his writing career as a poet and saw writing as a highly effective way of dealing with life's problems.
He wrote, Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago. Mr. Toad reflects the gregarious and hospitable side of Lewis's personality. His love of dining, drinking and talking. But alongside this sociability amongst members of his tightly knit circle, Lewis shared Mr Badger's dislike of society and exchanging small talk at large formal gatherings.
As a teenager, he revelled in the lack of company and the few social demands placed upon him as a student at the Kirkpatrick household. Writing to his friend, Arthur Greaves in 1914, he notes that the people whose society I prefer to my own are very few and far between. This rat says in answer to his suggestion of inviting Badgett to supper. He wouldn't come Badger hates society and invitations and dinner and all that sort of thing.
Lewis noted the same reluctance to be sociable and his older brother warning, even likening him to Mr. Badger in this way. It would be perfectly splendid if you could sometimes get Big Brother to lunch with you in midweek. He writes, it would do him a world of good and give him a lot of pleasure. If here's the snag. If you can only get him to do it, he's as evasive as Mr. Badger. We even find Louis ventriloquism, Mr Bashir, and the reasons he offers in favour of subterranean living.
No builders, no tradesmen, no remarks passed on you by fellows looking over your wall and above all, know whether. Writing to his brother, Warnie, who was at that time serving overseas. Lewis touches on the subject of the climate. I suppose I'm not allowed to write you about the weather in England beyond saying that I endorsed Mr. Badger's view and are more thoroughly sick of all weather and all news every day.
It was not so much the different facets reflected by the individual characters in the wind in the Willows that influenced Lewis, but rather the way the book offers us a vision of a union between these four very different and most unlikely of friends.
In a lecture given in 1945 to a group of Christians wanting to build bridges between eastern and western branches of the church published as membership, Lewis used the trio of rat, mole and Badger as symbols of the ability of extremely different persons to live in harmonious union. In the four loves, Louis drew upon the bond between all four animals as evidence of the first love affection.
Which he categorises as the least discriminating of laughs, suggesting that where there are some people who are incapable of love or friendship, all can become an object of affection. The ugly, the stupid, even the exasperating. He emphasises that those bound by affection often have remarkably little in common since it can cross barriers of age, sex, class and education.
The bond between Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad suggests the amazing heterogeneity possible between those who are bound by affection. Despite having been a voracious reader as a child, Lewis did not read The Wind in the Willows when it first appeared in 19 08, when he would have been nine years old. This is all the more surprising when we recall his fondness at that age for the Beatrix Potter stories of Peter Rabbit and friends.
And that he was at that time compiling his history of boxing, a world populated by dressed animals of the kind that appear in Wind in the Willows. Lewis first read Graham's story in his 20s. Although he claims that his enjoyment of it was no less because he was older. He continued to go back to the story throughout his life. Particularly when he was laid up in bed with an illness. Minor illnesses were a source of some delight to Lewis since they allowed him to sit in bed all day reading.
Responding to Ruth Pitre, who had written to tell Louis that she always read his books when laid up with the flu, the West wrote. I'm greatly flattered to be read in flu since for my own flu. I always go back to the wind in the Willows while the temperature is really high and progressed to Scott or William Morris laced with trollop, as I get saying. Having encountered the book at this later stage in his life, Lewis was influenced by it both as a critic and as a writer of children's stories.
In his essay on Stories, Lewis argues that where most people have claimed that the key attraction in a story is excitement. His interest is in the atmosphere. What Michael Ward has helpfully christened the quality of Donegal, Italy. To the extent that Lewis claims to be more familiar with fictional locations than the real places in which he lived.
As a social historian, he writes, I'm sounder on Toad Hall and the wild wood or the cave dwelling selenite or Rothko's court or water guns than on London, Oxford and Belfast. And here he brings together two of the principal locations of Wind in the Willows Toad Hall in the Wildwood, alongside those of H.G. Wells. This sci fi story, The First Men in the Moon and the Courts of the Legendary Kings of Arthurian Romance and the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.
Particularly interesting for understanding the animals that populate his own books are Lewis's comments on grains decision to cast his characters in animal form and the specific animals that he chose. But this suggests that selection of a toad was driven by the specific resemblances of the toads face to that of some humans. A rather apoplectic face with a fatuous grin on it.
Although what appears to be a permanent grin on the toads face is nothing of the kind, its resemblance to the fixed grin of a particular kind of vain and self-satisfied individual neatly encapsulates Mr. Toad's arrogant and conceited personality in a light hearted and comic form that allows his friends and readers to treat him with patience and forgiveness. Similar ideas are expressed in a somewhat more defensive tone in a poem published in 1953 under the title in Penitence.
The poem begins with Lewis defending his passion for the man like Beasts of the Earth, three stories Badger or Mowgli. While he is not so crazed as to think that these are realistic depictions of the animals there is draws attention to the elements of certain animals appearance or behaviour. The cool premise of cat and mouse is twinkling adroitness calls out to be used as a symbol. Masks for man. Cartoons. Parodies by nature formed to reveal us.
Dismissing those fusty killjoys who critique such uses loose ends with the exclamation, here's a health to Toad Hall, here's to the beaver doing sums with the butcher. Like many of Lewis's poems, it was first published in Punch magazine. And in the original publication, it is accompanied by illustrations of the animals being referred to by the punch illustrator E.H. Shepard, who was also responsible for illustrating the Wind in the Willows in 1931.
Although best known, of course, for his illustrations of the Winnie the Pooh books. Lewis notes that the animal disguises in wind in the Willows do not go very deep since Mr. Toad is described as combing the dry leaves out of his hair and lives in a manor house with all the comforts of a country squire. This fact prompts him to raise the question of realism in relation to the animals lifestyles.
And Mr. Batter's Kitchen paper plates on the dresser grinned at pots on the shelf, but who kept them clean? Where were they bored? How were they delivered to the Wildwood? Similarly, most snug underground home has tables marked with rings that hinted at beer mugs. But where did he get his beer? These observations are interesting because they shed light on the use of animals in the Narnia stories. Here we meet Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, whose home is furnished in a way that raises similar questions.
Where did they get their kettle frying pan and barrel of beer? Questions of provenance are most striking in relation to the food that Mrs. Beaver cooks for the children. Since there it has been winter for 100 years. We might ask where she got her potatoes. And what about the marmalade? Did she buy it? If so, where and if it's homemade?
Where did she get the oranges? The trout is, of course, explained since Mr. Beaver catches it with pizza, although he carries it home in a pail, showing a similar blend of the animal and the human found in wind in the Willows. When water comes across Noel having a lavish picnic, he looks jealously at the contents of their hamper. Greedy beggars? He says. Why didn't you ask me? Moments later, Otto spots an errant may fly on the surface of the water with a sudden splash is seen no more.
So while Otto was clearly partial to a ham sandwich, he could also make do with a mayfly. A.A. Milne, author of the Winnie the Pooh Stories, summarised this slipperiness regarding Graham's depiction of the animals in the introduction to his stage play adaptation of the book Toad of Toad,
who he wrote. In reading the book, it is necessary to think of Mo, for instance, sometimes as an actual mo, sometimes as such a mole in human clothes, sometimes as a mole grown to human size, sometimes as walking on two legs and sometimes on four. He is a mole. He isn't a mole. What is it? I don't know. And not being a matter of fact person, I don't mind, at least I do know and still I don't mind. For Milne, and this uncertainty is part of the book's charm and not something to be criticised.
Indeed, he saw the book as beyond criticism. Instead, the book is a test of the reader's character, not the other way round. As he goes on to say. When you sit down to it, don't be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgement on my taste or on the art of Kenneth Grahame. You are merely sitting in judgement on yourself. You may be worthy, I don't know, but it is you who are on trial.
The focus on the home in Wind in the Willows is a place of comfort, and security is especially apparent in Mr Badghis series of underground chambers in which mole and rats seek sanctuary from the snow-covered Wildwood, where they find themselves lost in the dark. Lewis made particular reference to this in Spencer's images of life.
Similarly, we can say that we go back to the wind in the Willows for a sense of the sinister mounting and friendliness of the wild wood and of its sheer contrast with the holiness of Badgers house. Lewis creates a similar contrast in our first glimpse of Narnia, where Lucy emerges from the wardrobe into the midst of a snowy wood. Just as the fur coats give way to fur trees. So is the wood of the wardrobe exchanged for the wood of Narnia?
There are, of course, many menacing words in literature that could have fed into Lewis's portrayal. But of particular importance is the wild wood of wind in the willows. In which Mo's initial excitement at entering a world that has been explicitly forbidden him by the water that quickly turns to fear and panic. As the dusk advances and the light starts to fade, more will begin seeing faces everywhere he looks.
But when he turns to confront the evil looking faces and hard eyes that peer at him as he passes, they quickly disappear. Quite suddenly, he feels as if every hole he encounters possesses a face, all fixing on him glances of malice and hatred, all heart eyed and evil and sharp. Mole and rat escaped the perils of the Wild West by stumbling upon the home of Mr. Badger, which offers an oasis of security and comfort from the dangerous outside world.
Badgers Underground Cave has a floor of well-worn red brick with a log fire. Seating consisted of a couple of high banked settles facing each other on either side of the fire. Offering sitting accommodations for the socially disposed. Lewis explicitly draws upon this scene when describing Thomas's House in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Here, Lucy finds refuge from another dangerous snowy wood, where one must be wary even if the trees, which might be spies for the White Witch.
And to try clean cave of Reddish Stone with a carpet on the floor and two little chairs, one for me and one for a friend. The centrepiece of both rooms is a table with a dresser. Banjo welcomes rap more with the promise of a first rate, fire and supper and everything. Thomas similarly offers Lucy a roaring fire and toast and sardines and cake.
One detail not paralleled in Thomas's cave is the hands bundles of dried herbs, nets of onions and baskets of eggs that hanging from the ceiling of badgers dwelling. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, these turn up in the beaver's home, where there are hams and strings of onions hanging from the roof. The beaver's house differs from Thomas's cave and that there were no books or pictures, and instead of bunk beds, they were bunks like on board ship built into the wall.
For the detail of the bunks built into the wall, we can compare Mulholland as described by the enthusiastic rant. What a capital, little house this is. He called out cheerily, so compact, so well-planned. Everything here and everything in its place. We'll make a jolly night of it. The first thing we want is a good fight. I'll see to that. I always know where to find things. So this is the parlour splendid. Your own idea.
Those little sleeping bunks in the war capital. Despite Wind in the Willows being published in 19 08, it looks back to a pastoral it'll that Graham felt was being destroyed by the advent of the motorcar. Whose dangers are highlighted by toads terrorising of the countryside and various roadside smashes. In Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, this drive to modernisation and industrialisation at the expense of the countryside is symbolised by Edmund, who, having been corrupted by the white witch.
His promise of his regal status makes plans for his reign that involves the construction of decent roads, assembling a fleet of private motor cars and installing a railway system. Kenneth Graham's concerns for the way that they tripping city dwellers were disrupting the solitude and peace of the countryside are captured in his essay The Rural Pan,
published in Pagan Papers in 1894. As the iron horse bringing with it, commercialism stunts, the hills with stucco and rocks, the streams with the gutter grain fears for the future of the rural pan. Where will this kindly got this? Well, wish it had man turn when the every last common spinney and sheep down has been invaded.
Lewis's poem Pens Purge, published in 1947, takes up a similar theme recounting a dream in which Pine is crushed by man's determination to cover the Earth with bungalows in funfairs. But in Lewis's vision, Penn has his revenge since reports of his demise turned out to be baseless rumour that God returns to destroy mankind and restore the Earth to a pre-industrial age in which flowered turf swallows up towered cities and where untainted rivers run.
Graham returned to the image of Penn as a benevolent helper and wind in the Willows in the chapter. The piper at the gates of Dawn. In this chapter, Rats and Mole set out late at night in search of portly, the son of their friend, the otter, who has gone missing. Drawn down a backwater to a secluded island by the sound of haunting music, the pair find portly slumbering contentedly under the beneficent eye of Pan, whose sweet piping had led them to this secluded spot.
Coming into the presence of the guard has a powerful physical and emotional effect on the two animals. Then suddenly, the mole fell to great all fall upon him, and all that turned his muscles to water out his head and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror. Indeed, he felt wonderfully in peace and happy. But it wasn't all that smoked and held him, and without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some August presence was very, very near.
With difficulty, he turned to look for his friend and saw him and his side count stricken and trembling violently. This passage was a personal favourite of Graham's, although it baffled many of his critics, including Tolkien, who thought it quite out of place in a children's story.
Lewis, by contrast, found it deeply moving and cited it in the problem of pain for the way that it evokes the quality of the numinous, a spiritual experience that excites a kind of war that is similar to but distinct from fear. This episode also supplied Lewis with a highly charged and emotional language for describing the visceral reaction that the heavens 7z children experience on first hearing Aslan's name in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
While both rap mogul struck with or by the presence of the deity, they experience very different reactions instead of experience, panic and deliberate play on the word pan from which panic derives, mould finds inner peace and contentment. Right, by contrast, experience is an overwhelming sense of terror and dread, leaving him shaking with fear. We see a similar range of responses in the children to the name of Aslan.
The first mention of Aslan's name is in a hushed whisper in which Mr. Beaver tells the children that they say Aslan is on the move, perhaps has already landed. Although the children know nothing of this figure, no more than the reader who has heard the name for the first time, hear the words evoke a series of different yet highly charged responses. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror.
Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous, Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realise that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer. Graham's plan is both majestic and kindly, the rippling arm muscles and the broad chest are intimidating.
But the half smile on the bearded mouth and the gentle protection offered to the baby otter testified to his kindly nature. Lewis also drew on this evocation of a gold, both frightening yet trustworthy in his characterisation of Aslan. When they discover that Aslan is a lion and not a human. Susan admits that the idea of meeting a lion scares her. Mrs. Beaver reassures her that this reaction is entirely appropriate.
If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly. Then he isn't safe, said Lucy. Safe, said, Mr. Beaver, did you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Corsi isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king. I tell you. This exchange echoes a similar one between rat and more about their response to their close encounter with Pan and the mixture of fear and love that the guard evokes in them.
Right. More from breath to whisper shaking. Are you afraid? Afraid, murmured the rant. His eyes shining with an unalterable love. Afraid of him? Oh, never, never. And yet and yet almost, I am afraid. It's apparent from these close similarities that Lewis had the Wind in the Willows episode in his mind when writing this passage in Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe. But there's a clear and important difference between the two, which I suggest lies at the heart of Lewis's use of this passage in mind the witch and the Wardrobe. And Wind in the Willows, the guard whose presence inspires the two animals to bow their heads in worship is a pagan god. And in Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan represents the Christian deity. But of course, Putin is not entirely replaced in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
He appears as Thomas the phone. Subject to the authority of Aslan, just as all the other inhabitants of Narnia. In his characterisation of Thomas Lewis draws upon conflicting literary traditions in order to evoke an uncertainty over his trustworthiness. You can't always believe what phones say, as Edmund notes. On the surface, Thomas appears to be the kindly helper of Graham's pen, whose beautiful piping needs more than wrap to the young daughter they are seeking.
But Thomas is piping is a means of bewitching the helpless and trusting the U.S. to buy him time to report her to the White Witch. In his role as self-confessed kidnapper, Thomas is located within a more sinister literary tradition in which Penn figures as a tempter and abductor of children. Louis is often criticised for the way he brought together elements drawn from various different mythologies and literary traditions in The Chronicles of Narnia and to the various inconsistencies.
This these appear to create. But I want to suggest that this was a deliberate policy and one which he inherited from the wind in the Willows, and which he used to achieve particular effects and to present a vision of the Christian faith which encompasses, fulfils and transcends pagan myths like that of the Greek God.