The 'Wild Wood' of Jan Needle

Jan Needle (1943-    )

Jan Needle's Wild Wood (André Deutsch, 1981 - I have the 1993 Scholastic Publications paperback edition) could be subtitled The Reminiscences (or Confessions) of  Baxter Ferret.

1993 paperback edition

The terrors of the Wild Wood of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows; and the greedy weasels and acquisitive stoats of William Horwood's The Willows in Winter - his Water Rat regards them as miserable, conniving animals - are now centre stage. Needle essentially is putting forward a critique of the politically conservative message of Grahame's classic novel.

The tale is kick-started by the human Willoughby - a journalist, broadcaster, and lover of ancient motor cars. A hopeless navigator, he not only gets lost in his splendid Armstrong Hardcastle Mouton Special Eight 1907 model on a London to Brighton Rally, but appears to have knocked down an old figure. The latter turns out to be the hero and narrator of the main story - Baxter Ferret. Although Willoughby spends a few days and nights with Baxter, he can never find him again and, sinking into a deep depression (which led to a deeper one still, in the ground), he leaves a manuscript with Baxter's tale to Needle. What follows is that story.

Baxter Ferret and Willoughby

The whole book is laced with humour which tempers the socialistic approach which is deliberately in contrast to Grahame's ordered world of privilege and class awareness, even idleness. Here, whatever sympathy there is rests with the underprivileged, who have no job security and whose lives are desperately hard during the winter. There is wonderful comedy in the descriptions of Baxter's ferret family, particularly his mother Daisy, whose Brewdays were renowned - barley wine and nutty ale for all. The depiction of the various animals' characters are superb: O.B. Weasel, the part-time teacher in the little local school and soon to become Chief Weasel (also mentioned by Grahame);  the wayfarer Rat in Grahame's chapter Wayfarers All, and who was told by Water Rat, You are not one of us, appears as Wilson a seafaring rat who'd swallowed the anchor and set up as a tobacconist and grocer in Wild Wood. A strange old fellow, lean and rangy, with a fund of marvellous stories and tales; and the outsider agitator, Boddington Stoat, a key and marvellously drawn figure. A committed, and humourless revolutionary (how like some modern political figures!), who is peculiarly yellow, lacking in body, extremely bitter, but one of the best! (and his boots squeaked!). No wonder Baxter gets tired of the grey and bilious Boddington at one stage. Moreover, his mother adds her pennyworth: that scrawney stoat fellow...that scruffy, grey-faced little runt from across the river...

One recalls Mole's frightening trek through the Wild Wood to meet Badger in The Wind in the Willows - then the faces began...a little evil wedge-shaped face, looking out at him from a hole...then there were hundreds of them...all fixing on him glances of malice and hatred: all hard-eyed and evil and sharp.,,then the whistling began...then the pattering began...the Terror of the Wild Wood! In Needle's account, we hear of his adventure through the weasels', ferrets' and stoats' eyes. The older ones are appalled at his rough treatment, whereas O.B. spoke for the more radical, young ones: that Mole bloke should never have come here on his own, and he deserved what he got - which wasn't much, in any case. All right, so some of us chivvied him up a bit - .Even the two respectful hedgehogs referred to briefly in Grahame's chapter Mr Badger are used by Needle to report on the subsequent meeting of Badger, Rat, Otter and Mole to the Wild Wooders. Boddington argues that them overfed animals have got something afoot and we should be on our guard. All the signs is there! They'm getting ready to make trouble.

There's a lovely little cameo, when O.B's ailing father, the then Chief Weasel, tries to douse the flames of insurrection: It (the frightening of Mole) was, not to mince words, a disgusting display of rudeness, bad-manners, hooliganism and oafishness directed at a harmless, reasonable, well-meaning animal. Boddington will have none of it and turns his broadside against Badger: what about that silly old mujjen Badger being turned against his fellow Wild Wooders? Whose side is he on, eh? Not ours, for sure. He's a traitor! And so, Wilson, O.B. and others are persuaded to fall in line with Boddington, even if Baxter threatens to punch his silly head if he tries anything on with his sister Dolly!

The Volunteers drill

The drilling starts: three Volunteer columns/units are drawn up and trained - Boddington's stoats, O.B's weasels, and Baxter's ferrets. Needle's account of all this is very funny. What about old Wilson, who as you know was a rat so could hardly join the Stoat Battalion. There were motleys, like Wilson; there were old-timers who couldn't shoot straight, etc. Dolly, thanks to Boddington, becomes one of the general staff. The aim? - to attack and take over Toad Hall. The chance comes with Toad's arrest. The Wild Wooders attack and successfully overpower Badger and Mole and chuck them out. Boddington changes the mansion's name to Brotherhood Hall, for ain't we all brothers, and ain't we took it, eh? It's ours. All the wealth, all the food and drink, all the rooms for homeless animals. Animalkind in this tale proves to be no different, or better, than humankind. The Wild Wooders soon succumb to the good living that the Hall can provide: wines from the cellars, quality food.

Bring on the Banquet

There follows a convoluted escape plan, to spring Toad from gaol (far too convoluted for a Blog), and his  subsequent various escapades. This essentially is the tale told in Grahame's chapter The Further Adventures of Toad. I hadn't remembered the young yellow ferret with a gun, who accosted, and then shot at, Toad when he tried to return to Toad Hall in Grahame's story. Needle weaves this incident into his alternative story. There are parallels with Animal Farm, in that O.B's behaviour is suspiciously like Napoleon's: Boddington shrieks at him, You're like Toad! You're just like Toad! You're worse than Toad! O.B. simply wanted a planned banquet to go ahead at Brotherhood Hall. Well into the festive board, the River Bankers attack, as in Grahame's book, and Brotherhood Hall, after a few glorious weeks, belonged once more to its master. Toad. What did occur, apparently was a lot of the injustices of life between the River Bankers and the Wild Wooders was ironed out. Some of Toad's surplus wealth went to providing more and better jobs like, and he introduced pensions and so on... Boddington emigrated to Manchester to help the animals there in the depressed industrial zones to fight for their liberty and suchlike. And Dolly, Baxter's sister, went with him.

Needle has written an excellent book: punctuated throughout with humour, closely following the original Kenneth Grahame novel (more closely than I originally thought, until I checked several passages again); and being very 'fair' in his treatment of the various political views. His narrator, Baxter the ferret, is an inspired casting. I noticed that nearly all other reviewers praised Willie Rushton's (knowing who he was will date you) illustrations. They are not 'my cup of tea', but I can quite see how they 'fit' Needle's humour.

ADDENDUM

This morning, I was looking through one of the copies I have of The English Illustrated Magazine - this one for 1883-1884 (Macmillan, 1884) and stopped at an article on The Weasel and his Family by Benjamin Scott. It is a detailed description of the little animal and his tribe. Scott includes an extract from Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, which Baxter and friends would not like reading:

"Weasel, a small animal that eats corn and kills mice."
"Stoat, a small, stinking animal."
"Fitchew, } a stinking little beast, that robs
"Fitcher  } the hen-roost and warren."
"Polecat, the fitchew, a stinking animal."
"Ferret, A KIND OF RAT, with red eyes and a long snout, used to kill rabbits."
"Fulimart, a kind of stinking ferret."