x TOAD OF TOAD HALL
Room Club, a Baby Otter from Conti, a Pan from Clarkson's, and a wind (off) whispering in the reeds of Harker, we are not going to add any fresh thrill to the thrill which the loveliness of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn has already given its readers. Whether there is, indeed, any way of putting these animals on the stage must be left to managers, professional and amateur, to find out. But it seemed clear to me that Rat and Toad, Mole and Badger could only face the footlights with hope of success if they were content to amuse their audiences. There are both beauty and comedy in the book, but the beauty must be left to blossom there, for I, anyhow, shall not attempt to transplant it.
But can one transplant even the comedy? Perhaps it has happened to you, as it has certainly happened to me, that you have tried to explain a fantastic idea to an entirely matter-of-fact person. "But they don't," he says, and "You can't," and "I don't see why, just because," and "Even if you assume that," and "I thought you said just now that he hadn't." By this time you have thrown the ink-pot at him, with enough accuracy, let us hope, to save you from his ultimatum, which is this: "However fantastic your assumption, you must work it out logically," that is to say, realistically.
To such a mind The Wind in the Willows makes no appeal, for it is not worked out logically. In reading the book it is necessary to think of Mole, for instance, sometimes as an actual mole, sometimes as such a mole in human clothes, sometimes as a mole grown to human size, sometimes as walking on two legs, sometimes on four. He is a mole, he isn't a mole. What is he? 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. He is a fairy, like so many immortal characters in fiction; and, as a fairy, he can do, or be, anything.
But the stage has no place for fairies. There is a horrid
