A Toad with a Message
Caroline:
February 25th, 2007
As a child did you love Toad of Toad Hall in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows? And if so did you realise that Toad had an important moral message to impart? It has been revealed in documents being shown in the Bodleian this week for World Book Day, that Grahame created Toad as a kind of caveat for his wayward seven year old son Alastair. At the time he was already getting the wrong kind of attention from figures of authority and his father invented Toad to try to teach him right from wrong. The stories were sent in letter form to Alastair during the summer of 1907 when he was on holiday with his nanny in Littlehampton. Sadly he developed into a troubled teengaer despite Mr Toad’s efforts and committed suicide just before his 20th birthday whilst a student at Oxford.