Intelligent Mr Toad rides again
Juliet Townsend
THE WILLOWS IN WINTER by William Horwood HarperCollins, £12.99, pp. 295 From Form IIA Frances Holland School 1950 a fervent prayer went up which Was quite properly ignored by the Almighty, 'Please let Sarah Harvey get mumps/ scurvy/ pneumonia/ the plague or anything else which will make her miss just one performance so that I can be Toad'. An unworthy prayer for an understudy, but who can blame me for coveting that partic- ular role, the swaggering, maddening, self- centred but, as William Harwood puts in his Author's Note, `exasperatingly lovable' Toad? At the end of The Wind in the Willows, we are told, 'He was indeed an altered Toad'. William Horwood did not believe for a moment that the chastened, modest demeanour of the reformed Toad could possibly last, and this is the driving force of his sequel, The Willows in Winter. He is well qualified to tackle the subject, being, as readers of his Duncton Wood books will know, a mole specialist. Yet, oddly enough M The Willows in Winter the most success- .11l portrait is that of Toad. It must be incredibly difficult to recapture the subtle, self-deprecating character of Mole, but William Horwood portrays admirably what he calls 'the clubby bachelor world of Edwardian England' which Kenneth Gra- hame transported so effortlessly from the pre-1914 City of London to the River Bank, certainly neither of them strongholds of feminism. The attraction for children of the safe, cosy, warm haven of Mole's or Badger's house in contrast with the danger- ous cold world of the Wild Wood or the River in flood is well understood and described. William Horwood's Duncton books contain a spiritual element which has enabled him to echo without embarrass- ment Grahame's mysticism, as shown in `The Piper at the Gates of Dawn', a chapter either loved or loathed by readers of The Wind in the Willows.
The Willows in Winter is obviously a labour of love, both for Grahame's book and for the River itself. Perhaps sometimes it is almost too true to the original. The plot, in particular the adventures of Toad, mirrors events we already know, with an aeroplane in place of the motor car, Toad on the run disguised as a sweep rather than a washerwoman and with the climax not a battle but the burning down of Toad Hall (not that this worries Toad, 'Lloyds will pay for it. Their word is their bond'.) The illustrations by Patrick Benson are excellent. I particularly liked the picture of Toad being pressed to the bosom of the sweep's wife, and it is a handsome and well produced book — good value at £12.99 and well worth considering as a Christmas present for lovers of life on the River Bank.
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