The
books you have read are The Golden Age. and Dream Days. Am I not
right? Thank you. But the book you have not read-- my book--is
The Wind in the Willows. Am I not right again? Ah, I was afraid
so.
The reason why I knew you had not read it is the reason why I
call it "my" book. For the last ten or twelve years I have been
recommending it. Usually I speak about it at my first meeting
with a stranger. It is my opening remark, just as yours is
something futile about the weather. If I don't get it in at the
beginning, I squeeze it in at the end. The stranger has got to
have it some time. Should I ever find myself in the dock, and one
never knows, my answer to the question whether I had anything to
say would be, "Well, my lord, if I might just recommend a book to
the jury before leaving." Mr. Justice Darling would probably
pretend that he had read it, but he wouldn't deceive me.
For one cannot recommend a book to all the hundreds of people
whom one has met in ten years without discovering whether it is
well known or not. It is the amazing truth that none of those
hundreds had heard of The Wind in the Willows until I told them
about it. Some of them had never heard of Kenneth Grahame; well,
one did not have to meet them again, and it takes all sorts to
make a world. But most of them were in your position--great
admirers of the author and his two earlier famous books, but
ignorant thereafter.
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