kenneth grahame
The W ind ind in the W illows illows
an
a n n o t at e d
edited by
e dit ion
Seth Lerer
the belknap press of harvard university press
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, and London, En England gland 2009
Copyright © 2009 by the President and Fellows o Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States o America Design by Annamarie McMahon Why Line drawings by Ernest H. Shepard in the text, on the title page, and on the hal-title page: © E. H. Shepard, reproduced by permission o Curtis Brown Group Ltd., London, and with the permission o Atheneum Books or Young Readers, an imprint o Simon & Schuster Children Children’s ’s Publishing Division, rom The Wind in the Willows by Willows by Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard. Copyright © 1933, 1953 Charles Scribner’ Scribner’ss Sons; renewal copyright © 1961 Ernest H. Shepard, 1981 Mary Eleanor Jessie Knox.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Grahame, Kenneth, 1859–1932. The wind in the willows : an annotated edition / Kenneth Grahame ; edited by Seth Lerer Lerer.. p. cm. Includes bibliographical reerences and index. ISBN 978-0-674-03447-1 (alk. paper) 1. Animals—Fiction. 2. England—Fiction. 3. Friendship—F Friendship—Fiction. iction. 4. Country lie—Fiction. 5. River lie— Fiction. I. Lerer, Seth, 1955– II. Title. PR4726.W515 2009b 821 .8—dc22 2008055734 9
Contents
Texts and Editions xiii
Introduction 1 The Wind in the Willows an
a n n o t at e d
editio n
45
Afterword: Illustration and Illusion 261
Bibliography 271
Texts and Editions E ditions
The Wind in the Willows has Willows has been printed countless times since it rst appeared in 1908. The website or the Kenneth Grahame Society lists over ty illustrated editions o various kinds. The online bookseller Amazon.com has one hundred and thirteen editions available. No doubt, there are others. With the exception o adapted and abridged versions, the text o The Wind in the Willows is Willows is remarkably stable, having varied little rom its rst publication. In preparing my edition, I have relied on the original 1908 text, consulting subsequent editions published during Grahame’s Grahame’s lietime and the excellently prepared edition o Pete Peterr Green, The Wind in the Willows (Oxord: Willows (Oxord: Oxord University Press, 1983; reprinted in 1999). Many readers will have encountered the book in the edition illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931; requently reprinted), or in the version illustrated by Arthur Rackham (London: Methuen, 1940; also requently reprinted). These editions vary rom each other slightly in punctuation and capitalization. cap italization. In order to remain aithul to the 1908 edition, I have retained British spelling and punctuation. For Grahame’s Grahame’s other works, I have relied on the ollowing (listed in chronological order o original publication): Pagan Papers (London: Papers (London: John Lane, 1893). I quote rom the 1900 reprinting. The Golden Age (London: Age (London: John Lane, 1895). I quote rom the edition illustrated by Ernest H. H . Shepard (New York: York: Dodd and Mead, 1922).
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Texts and Editions
Dream Days (London: Days (London: John Lane, 1898). I quote rom the edition illustrated by Ernest H. H . Shepard (New York: York: Dodd and Mead, 1930). The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2 vols., 1915, 1916). I quote rom the combined edition o 1919. All material rom the Oxford En glish Dic tionary tionary comes rom the online third edition (http://dic tionary.oed.com). tionary.oed.com). Literary quotations used to illustrate word histories or usages in the OED are cited as such. Quotations rom the works o Shakespeare are taken rom Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, eds., The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (New York: Penguin Books, 2002). All other quotations rom En glish poetry come rom online versions via the Chadwyck- Healey Data Base o English English Poetry (accessed rom the Stanord University University Libraries at https://dlib.stanford.edu:6521/ text/engpo.html). All other sources are cited in the notes to my Introduction and in the annotations to the text.
Introduction
A
ater its initial publication, The Wind in the Willows still Willows still enchants. Over one hundred editions have appeared, and it has inspired adaptations or the stage and cinema rom A. A. Milne’s Toad of Toad Hall (1929) to Disney cartoons, BBC animations, and the ministrations o Monty Python’s Terry Jones. Though the book originally appeared without pictures, generations o readers have grown up with the illustrations o Ernest Shepard (1931) and Arthur Rackham (1940), just to mention the two most prominent o the book’s book’s many illustrators. Its characters and con conficts ficts have inspired imitations and responses rom Jan Needle’s Wild Wood (1982), Wood (1982), which retells the book’s story rom the point o view o the rebellious stoats and weasels, to William Horwood’s Willows Willows sequels sequels in the 1990s. Because o the richness o Grahame’ss narrative—the sensitivity o Mole, the mania o Toad, Grahame’ Toad, the domesticity o Rat—the book has permeated the imaginative lives o both children and adults. Along with Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, and J. R. R . R. Tolkien’s Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Grahame’s Wind in the Willows testies to the continuing hold that early-twentiethearlytwentieth-century century antasy has had on the canons o modern children’s literature. And like the authors o those other works, Grahame himsel has long stood as an icon o the children’s author: the displaced banker, unhappily married, taking solace in the stories or his son, a nd then retiring to English rural isolation. Given the deep impress and worldwide popularity o Grahame’s work, why oer up another edition? Much has been written about the story, with great eeling and great appreciation, and the past two decades in particular century
2
Introduction
have seen Grahame absorbed into academic literary study. But unlike, or example, Carroll’s Alice Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland or Wonderland or Baum’s Wizard of Oz, The Wind in the Willows has Willows has not been the object o close textual study. Perhaps because Grahame himsel was not a university scholar like Carroll, Tolkien, Tolkien, or C. S. Lewis, his work has not been subject to the explications o more modern scholars, seeking to nd history and philology, knowledge and insight in his writings. This new edition brings The Wind in the Willows, and Grahame’s work more generally, generally, into the ambit o contemporary scholarship and criticism on children’s literature, while at the same time exploring the historical and social contexts or the novel’ novel’ss origins. It does so in three ways. First, I oer an extended introduction, synthesizing the best and most recent research into Grahame’ss lie and work. Rather than simply seeing The Wind in the Willows Grahame’ as an extension o Grahame’s amily experience or personal imagination, I locate it in the larger trajectory o his publications—rom the early magazine pieces and antasy tales, such as “The Reluctant Dragon” (1898), to his later work as the editor o The o The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children (1916). Rat and Mole, Toad and Badger all have their antecedents and their aterlives throughout Grahame’s career. But they all have their sources in Grahame’s reading. I stress throughout this volume that Grahame, though denied the university experience he craved, received a rich classical education at St. Ed ward’s School in Oxord. He was remarkably well read in ancient legend, English En glish poetry, Shakespeare, the novel, and the history o Western culture. He saw himsel as sharing in a tradition o English En glish prose writing going back to the great Renaissance scholar Sir Thomas Browne, and almost ev ery ev ery page o his early essay collections (The ( The Golden Age, Dream Days, and Pagan Papers ) as well as The Wind in the Willows itsel Willows itsel bristles with learned allusion. Second, this edition locates Grahame’s Grahame’s work in the unique social moment o its writing—what the critic Samuel Hynes has called “the Edwardian turn o mind.”1 It is no accident that much o our modern canonical children’s literature emerges rom this period, or that many recent children’s books evoke the England En gland o the decade de cade just beore the First World War. Part o this
Introduction
Edwardian location has to do with the king himsel. A g ure o what Hynes calls “feshly pleasures,” plea sures,” “overweight and overdre overdressed,” ssed,” aggressively “convivial,” he was in many ways the eternal child o the Victorian era. It was under his aegis, as well, that many o the rites and rituals that orm the heart o children’s narrative originated: the tea party, the lawn game, the hunt, the east, the excursion. The Edwardian de cade also stimulated not just social orm but scien scientic tic antasy. Psychic research ostered a vogue or supernaturalism. In Hynes’s words, “Ater the social realism o the Victorians, rom Dickens to George Moore, Edwardian novelists . . . turned toward the mysterious and the unseen.” 2 Such a turn infects Edwardian children’s literature with a distinct sense o the secret, especially in visions like the Wild Wood o The Wind in the Willows or Willows or the Secret Garden o Burnett’ Burnett’ss tale. So, too, science and technology were taking o. The airplane, the motorcar, and improvements in the telephone, the train, and the electric light lled the rst years o the twentieth century with visions o technological possibility. possibility. There is something brilliantly childlike, or child- inspiring, in the gure g ure o Thomas Edison as “the Wizard o Menlo Park,” or o Nikola Tesla as a magician o light. Men raced planes and autos, X-rayed X- rayed bodies, and imagined (as H. G. Wells did) instruments o unspeakable destruction. This is the world in which Grahame’s Grahame’s novel appeared, the world that breaks into the easy lope o late-Victorian wandering much as the errant motor car upsets the horsedrawn carriage that Mole, Rat, and Toad Toad drive early in the book. Finally,, this edition oers complete annotations to the language, contexts, Finally allusions, and larger texture o Grahame’ Grahame’ss prose. These annotations identiy quotations, reerences, and parallels. It is ascinating to discover, or example, just how much Romantic poetry stands behind Grahame’s purple passage work; how much John Ruskin inorms his aesthetics o both nature and domestic lie; how much o Gilbert and Sullivan there is in Toad’s adventures and his theatrical posturing. Not ev ery ev ery annotation, however however,, is a direct source. Grahame’s Grahame’s prose chimes with a range o late-Victorian and Edwardian writing: history, technology, psychology, ction, and poetry. Throughout this edition, thereore, I call attention to phrases that resonate with the kinds
3
4
Introduction
o material that Grahame’s contemporaries would have read and known— not necessarily to identiy Grahame’s Grahame’s own reading, but to recover something o what readers o the time would have recalled and elt as they worked their way through his book. That verbal world is largely lost to us. Grahame’ Grahame’ss prose has, by the beginning o the twenty-rst twenty- rst century, become encrusted with the patina o age and aect. Though The The Wind Wind in the Willows has Willows has been read continuously or the past hundred years, many o its words are opaque to today’ today’ss children and their parents. Locutions o a century or more ago come o a s more evocative than meaningul. I rely, thereore, on linguistic resources to explain Grahame’s words to modern readers. The Oxford En glish Dic tionary is a primary tionary is resource here—or reasons both scholarly and historical. As the great historical lexicon o the language, the OED records the orms and meanings o words over time; each change and nuance is illustrated with quotations rom literature, historical documents, and intellectual writing. To To look up a word in the OED is to nd a social history o English En glish lie, and very oten it is the best guide to new words coming into English En glish in Grahame’s own lietime. The OED, like The Wind in the Willows itsel, Willows itsel, is also a product o the lateVictorian and Edwardian imagination. 3 Underway by the end o the 1870s, it reached its initial completion in 1928 (supplements ollowed in 1933, 1968, and 1989, and the whole work is now available, with continuous updates, online). The OED and The Wind in the Willows are Willows are both products o an age attentive to the history o the En glish language, to the relations between verbal orm and aesthetic eect. And, though its editors were scholars o great learning and, or the most part, university training, the bulk o the work on the Dic tionary tionary was was done by volunteers, who sent in slips o paper with words, quotations, and usages gathered rom reading a millennium o English writing. The OED is thus a testimony not just to scholarly lexicography but to Victorian habits o reading, and in this aspect it bears directly on the ways in which Grahame himsel was a Victorian reader and writer. Indeed, The Wind in the Willows is Willows is itsel part o the OED OED—it —it shows up in illustrative quotations more than twenty times.
Chapter 1
The River Bank
T
had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning springcleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail o whitewash; 2 till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes o whitewash all over his black ur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit o divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly fung down his brush on the foor, said ‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’ spring-cleaning!’ and bolted out o the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made or the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage- drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled 3 and scrooged4 and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himsel, ‘Up we go! Up we go!’ till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he ound himsel rolling in the warm grass o a great meadow. he mole
1
1. This phrase emerged in the late Victorian period.
Houses and apartments would have been turned out and cleaned at least once a year, but the earliest example o the phrase “spring cleaning” in the OED is 1857 (where it appears in quotation marks, indicating its recent or colloquial use). It clearly marks a turn in late- nineteenthcentury domestic habits, one keyed to the gradual move away rom the domestic space dened de ned by objects and clutter to a space dened de ned by cleanliness. The symbolic resonances, too, are obvious: spring is the time o renewal, o clearing out the past, pa st, and o rereshment. The OED oers this quotation rom The Pall Mall Gazette o Gazette o 1889: “There are ew points o mutual sympathy between the poet and the spring cleaner.” Grahame begins the story, then, by clearing out the past and ma king a resh start. But he also reveals one o the governing conceits o the stor y: that his main characters, even though they are animals, live in a comortably amiliar domestic world. 2. A mix o lime and water, sometimes with chalk added,
that remained the basic material or wall painting rom the eighteenth eighteenth through the early twentieth century. The metaphors came early: to “whitewash” something was to cover up the suspect with a seemingly pristine coat. 3. A verb meaning to clamber a long on all ours. The OED
oers a more specic specic deni denition tion (2): “O an animal: to scratch hurriedly with the claws or paws.” It quotes rom an 1863 essay that associates the verb explicitly with moles: “The mole . . . then scrabbled about until he came upon the rest o the worm.” 4. A variant o the verb scrouge, meaning to crowd or push
ahead. The OED quotes this passage rom The Wind in the Willows to Willows to illustrate this orm.
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5. Readers may notice a similarity between the opening o
The Willows and Willows and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Mole leaves the comort o his home to explore the wider world, just as Bilbo Baggins sets out rom hi s cozy hobbit-hole hobbit-hole (as we will learn later, “Mole End” is the Mole’s abode; “Bag End” is Bilbo’s). See Michael D. C. Drout, ed., J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (New York: York: Routledge, 2006), p. 375: “Tolkien “T olkien commended The Wind in the th e Willows . Willows . . . as ‘an excellent book’ in an aside in ‘On Fairy-stories.’ Its polarity,, with underground coziness at one point and outdoors ity adventures on the other, may have contributed to The Hobbit.”” Hobbit. 6. From the verb chaff, meaning to banter or rail at. The
OED presents it as a slang term o the nineteenth century, century, and cites no appearances ater 1885. Grahame’s use is odd (Mole is not chang at at or or with anyone), and implies that Mole is probably talking down to or brushing o the inquisitive rabbits as he hurries along. 7. The Mole’s Mole’s equivalent o “hogwa sh.” By the nineteenth
century, onioncentury, onion-sauce sauce had come to represent the simplicity o home cooking, in contrast to the ancy cuisine o court or the Continent. The OED quotes rom Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby: “I don’t don’t know how it is, i s, but a ne warm summer day like this . . . always puts me in mind o roast pig, with sage and onion sauce a nd made gravy.”
the wind in the willows ‘This is ne!’ he said to himsel. ‘This is better than white washing!’ The sunshine struck hot on his ur, sot breezes caressed his heated brow, and ater the seclusion o the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol o happy birds ell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout. Jumping o all his our legs at once, in the joy o living and the delight o spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the meadow till he reached the hedge on the urther side. 5 ‘Hold up!’ said an elderly rabbit at the gap. ‘Sixpence or the privilege o passing by the private road!’ He was bowled over in an instant by the impatient and contemptuous Mole, who trotted along the side o the hedge chang 6 the other rabbits as they peeped hurriedly rom their holes to see what the row was about. ‘Onion-sauce! ‘Onion- sauce! Onion-sauce!’ Onion-sauce!’7 he remarked jeeringly,, and was gone beore they could think o a thoroughly jeeringly satisactory reply. reply. Then they all started grumbling at each other other.. ‘How stupid ‘How stupid you you are! Why didn’t you tell him——’ ‘Well, why didn’t you didn’t you say——’ ‘You might have reminded him——’ and so on, in the usual way; but, o course, it was then much too late, as is always the case. It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, nding nd ing ev erywhere erywhere birds building, fowers budding, leaves thrusting—ev ery ery thing thing happy, and a nd progres gressive, sive, and occupied. And instead o having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering ‘whitewash!’ he somehow could only eel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. Ater all, the best part o a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yoursel, as to see all the other ellows busy working.
The River Bank
He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered8 aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge o a ulled river. Never Never in his lie had he seen a river beore—this sleek, sinuous, ull-bodied ull-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fing itsel on resh playmates that shook themselves ree, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake a- shake and a-shiver—glints a-shiver—glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, ascinated. By the side o the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side o a man who holds one spell-bound spell- bound9 by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling proces cession sion o the best stories in the world, sent rom the heart o the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea. As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank opposite, just above the water’s edge, caught his eye, and dreamily he ell to considering what a nice snug dwelling-place dwellingplace it would make or an animal with ew wants and ond o a bijou10 riverside residence, above food level and remote rom noise and dust. As he gazed, something bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart o it, vanished, then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could hardly be a star in such an unlikely situation; and it was too glittering and small or a glow- worm. worm. Then, as he looked, it winked at him, and so declared itsel to be an eye; and a small ace began gradually to grow up round it, like a rame round a picture. A brown little ace, with whiskers. A grave round ace, with the same twinkle in its eye that had rst attracted his notice.
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8. The word meander meander comes comes ultimately rom the name o
the river Maeander in Asia Minor, known in antiquity or its serpentine course. Rivers meander, and beginning in the early nineteenth century, people could, too. The verb came to be applied, guratively, to anyone or anything that wandered aimlessly. The OED quotes this passage rom The Wind in the Willows to Willows to illustrate this usage. 9. As we ourselves are spellbound. Like many other chil-
dren’s book authors, Grahame calls attention to the act o storytelling, inviting his audience to pay attention. The word spellbound emerged in the nineteenth century to connote, in particular, the ascination that a listener eels or a great orator or storyteller. 10. A jewel or trinket, used as an adjective to describe a
cozy and elegant dwelling. The phrase “bijou residence” seems to have been a commonplace: note the OED OED’s ’s quotation rom 1904, “The London piedLondon pied-àà-terre terre consisted consisted . . . o a bijou residence in Mayair.”
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11. A variant o “hello,” a word which emerged in the late
nineteenth century as a term o greeting or an exclamation o surprise. Under the in fu fuence ence o Thomas Edison, it came to be used as the standard way o answering the telephone by the mid-1880s. mid- 1880s. bad- tempered way. 12. In a childish and bad-tempered 13. For Edwardian readers, a journey in a little boat c ould
not but recall Jerome K. Jerome’s novella, Three Men in a Boat, rst published in 1889 and reprinted requently thereater. Jerome (1857–1929) chronicled the humorous, but oten trivial, misadventures o three young men on the Thames River. By the 1880s, the Thames had become a kind o riverine playground, and the ashion or rowing—stopping o or picnics, pub excursions, and the like—ueled the popularity o Jerome’s work. By oering an adventure story set not in the ar reaches o Empire but close to home, by writing in a chatty colloquial style, and by ocusing on the oibles o his heroes, Jerome set the pattern or a generation o popular writers. Together in their boat, Mole and Rat replay much o this kind o story.
the wind in the willows Small neat ears and thick silky hair. It was the Water Rat! Then the two animals stood and regarded each other cautiously. ‘Hullo,11 Mole!’ said the Water Rat. ‘Hullo, Rat!’ said the Mole. ‘Would you like to come over?’ enquired the Rat presently. ‘Oh, it’s all very well to talk, talk,’’ said the Mole, rather pettishly pettishly,, 12 he being new to a river and riverside lie and its ways. The Rat said nothing, but stooped and unastened a rope and hauled on it; then lightly stepped into a little boat 13 which the Mole had not observed. It was painted blue outside and white within, and was just the size or two animals; and the Mole’s whole heart went out to it at once, even though he did not yet ully understand its uses. The Rat sculled smartly across and made ast. Then he held up his orepaw as the Mole stepped gingerly down. ‘Lean on that!’ he said. ‘Now then, step lively!’ and the Mole to his surprise and rapture ound himsel actually ac tually seated in the stern o a real boat. ‘This has been a wonderul day!’ said he, as the Rat shoved o and took to the sculls again. ‘Do you know know,, I’ve never been in a boat beore in all my lie.’ ‘What?’ cried the Rat, open- mouthed: ‘Never been in a— you never—well I—what have you been doing, then?’ ‘Is it so nice as all that?’ asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the ascinating ttings, and elt the boat sway lightly under him. ‘Nice? It’s the only only thing,’ thing,’ said the Water Rat solemnly, as he
The River Bank
leant orward or his stroke. ‘Believe me, my young riend, there is nothing —absolutely —absolutely nothing—hal so much worth doing as simply messing about 14 in boats. Simply messing,’ he went on dreamily: ‘messing—about—in—boats; messing——’ ‘Look ahead, Rat!’ cried the Mole suddenly. suddenly. 15 It was too late. The boat struck the bank ull tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom o the boat, his heels in the air. ‘—about in boats—or with boats,’ the Rat went on composedly, picking himsel up with a pleasant laugh. ‘In or out o ’em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm o it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it i you like, but you’d you’d much better not. Look here! I you’ve really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day o it?’ The Mole waggled his toes rom sheer happiness, spread his chest with a sigh o ull contentment, and leaned back blissully into the sot cushions. ‘What ‘ What aa day I’m having!’ he said. ‘Let us start at once!’ ‘Hold hard a minute, then!’ said the Rat. He looped the painter16 through a ring in his landing-stage, landing- stage,17 climbed up into his hole above, and ater a short interval reappeared staggering under a at, wicker luncheon-basket. luncheon- basket.18 ‘Shove that under your eet,’ he observed to the Mole, as he
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14. The phrase “messing about” emerged in the 1880s to
connote pleasant time wasting. The OED quotes this passage to illustrate this usage. 15. A classic misadventure, right out o Jerome. Indeed,
the idea o the adventure or vacation constantly beset by inelicities had become so much a part o late-Victorian and Edwardian expectation that the editor o Punch, o Punch, Basil Boothroyd, could reply to the in quiry, “Have a good holiday?” with the response: “Awul. Nothing went wrong at all.” 16. “A rope attached to the bow o a (usually small) boat
or tying it to a ship, quay quay,, etc.” (OED, ( OED, s.v. s.v. painter, painter, n.2). A highly specialized word rom the technical vocabulary o boating. 17. A foating platorm or little pier or boats. Grahame’s
vocabulary here evokes the technical terms o latenineteenth-century nineteenthcentury boating as a way o illustrating Rat’s commitment to his pastime. 18. The luncheon basket was a Victorian invention, rst
appearing in the 1850s and then appropriated by the rail ways as a service ser vice to customers.
