Sympathizing with the Impenitent Toad
Maybe it’s the lightsome spring weather which has brightened my mood. Maybe not. But I find myself gladdened by an unwonted (for me) sense of humor about the human condition, about my condition. By temperament inclined to inspect and suspect, ad nauseam, my motives and the quality of my penitence, it is a relief to have the occasional laugh at human intransigence. Not, I hardly need say, that I recommend impenitence (nay, never!), but it’s just a fact that we are a stiff-necked race. I usually find myself crushed by the sense that everyone else is more malleable than I and frightfully eager to renounce themselves, running light-footed along the narrow way while I plod alone like a stubborn ass along the broad. Every once in a while, though, I am reminded of something a friar told my brother years ago: “Don’t be so despondent. After Jesus and Mary—well… it’s pretty slim pickin’s.” Twenty years later, his perspective and sense of humor about the human condition can still bolster me when I need it.
Really though, it wasn’t the friar’s words, but a scene from the Wind in the Willows that came to mind today—in fact, it came unbidden during Mass (was it just after the Confiteor?), making me laugh to myself at Kenneth Graham’s delightful depiction of the impenitent Mr. Toad.
Toad—what a memorable character! Swaggering and boastful and conceited, but absolutely charming; impulsive and provoking, yet warm-hearted, generous and enthusiastic. His all-consuming enthusiasms are the big joke. First boats, then Gypsy carts, then the automobile obsess him. He first encounters a car when his Gypsy cart is smashed to bits by a car hurtling down the high road, its horn alerting bystanders of its approach with a brazen little “poop-poop.” (You have to hear this last not as a mommy of toddlers might hear it, but as an Englishman would have heard it—that is, as a car’s horn. Otherwise, it’s funny in entirely the wrong way.) Instantly, Toad is transfixed by a new mania. Seated in the middle of the dusty road, where he has been flung by the collision, his friends try to rouse him to lend them a hand. “The Toad never answered a word, or budged from his seat in the road. They found him in a sort of trance, a happy smile on his face, his eyes still fixed on the dusty wake of their destroyer.”
All Toad has to say is, “Glorious, stirring sight! The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! Here today—in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped—always someone else’s horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! And to think I never knew! All those wasted years that lie behind me, I never knew, never even dreamt! But now-but now that I know, now that I fully realize! O what a flowery track lies before me, henceforth! What dust-clouds shall spring up behind me as I speed on my reckless way! What carts I shall fling carelessly into the ditch in the wake of my magnificent onset!”
And so on. His friends see that there is no hope—for the present, anyway—of liberating Toad from this newest mania or protecting him from all the trouble it will bring—the numerous crashes, stays in hospital being ordered about by officious, female nurses (his emphasis), a run-in with the authorities and the consequent jail-time.
Eventually, however, his friends do try once and for all to cure him of his little obsession. I suppose it’s an old-fashioned “intervention.” Rat and Mole, led by the serious and determined Mr. Badger, decide that they must finally take Toad in hand.
“You knew it must come to this, sooner or later, Toad,” the Badger explained severely. “You’ve disregarded all the warnings we’ve given you…Independence is all very well, but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit; and that limit you’ve reached…I’ll make one more effort to bring you to reason. You will come with me into the smoking-room, and there you will hear some facts about yourself; and we’ll see whether you come out of that room the same Toad that you went in.”
He took Toad firmly by the arm, led him into the smoking-room, and closed the door behind them…[Rat and Mole] made themselves comfortable in arm-chairs and waited patiently. Through the closed door they could just hear the long continuous drone of the Badger’s voice, rising and falling in waves of oratory; and presently they noticed that the sermon began to be punctuated at intervals by long-drawn sobs, evidently proceeding from the bosom of Toad, who was a soft-hearted and affectionate fellow, very easily converted—for the time being—to any point of view.”
Badger leads a most dejected Toad out of the smoking-room and declares,
“My friends, I am pleased to inform you that Toad has at last seen the error of his ways. He is truly sorry for his misguided conduct in the past, and he has undertaken to give up motor-cars entirely and for ever. I have his solemn promise to that effect…There’s only one thing more to be done. Toad, I want you solemnly to repeat, before your friends here, what you fully admitted to me in the smoking-room just now. First, you are sorry for what you’ve done, and you see the folly of it all?
There was a long, long pause. Toad looked desperately this way and that, while the other animals waited in grave silence. At last he spoke.
“No!” he said a little sullenly, but stoutly; “I’m not sorry. And it wasn’t folly at all! It was simply glorious!…You’re so eloquent, Badger, and so moving, and put all your points so frightfully well—you can do what you like with me in the smoking-room, and you know it. But I’ve been searching my mind, and going over things in it, and I find that I’m not a bit sorry or repentant really, so it’s no earthly good saying I am; now, is it?”
This is just one of those scenes from literature that never fails to make me laugh. Kenneth Graham drew marvelous characters for The Wind in the Willows, with evident joy and good humor. And though there are many persons who really are generous in self-denial, prompt in obedience, and deeply repentant—indeed, I often suspect I am surrounded by such wonderfully good people—I for one am usually just an intransigent toad. I sometimes feel like saying with him, “I’ve been searching my mind, and going over things in it, and I find that I’m not a bit sorry or repentant really, so it’s no earthly good saying I am!” Is this a terrible thing to admit? I’m feel that I can do so safely, given the anonymity here. And if it is terrible, then I would actually repent of it and take it down. But in truth I think that I am not so alone. And what’s more, it’s heartening for those with a certain bent of mind to be able to laugh about it from time to time, lifted by the comedic genius of a good story.