Countryside Nostalgia
TiimiE is a nostalgic element in our modern love for the country. The country-born boy who goes to the town to make his fortune, returns in old age to the village of his childhood, and ends no longer a, village but a town, is 'a familiar figure of Pathos and frustration. His fate is increasingly the fate of 'Air civilization. It is not merely that, being urban, we are for the . most part cut off from country• sights and sounds ; More disturbing is our realization that the sights and sounds are growing steadily fewer. Soon, if we continue to eat up England at our present rate, there will be none of them left, but only a few mummified patches of preserved Beauty-Spot, 'Surrounded by sprawls of Suburb, to demonstrate to our chil- dren what the country was. Hence the literary townsman's nostalgia for something he knows to be fading past recall ; it is as if a loved woman were dying of a slowly growing cancer, With the difference that the cancer is of our own making. For I:1Y Part I would make it a criminal offence to publish a book, about England's country, without some reference to the Menace that threatens it., and the steps by which it may be averted. (Incidentally, Mr. Mais and Marjorie Tiltman would be the only two of the present writers to escape prosecution.) • For it is not true that we are satisfied with our towns Very much the contrary . . . Mr. Street gets thousands of letters from people who want their sons. to be farmers. He Points out to them that there is no money in farming, or very little ; that • farming is' " a life of •long hours,. great personal kesponsibility, much mental worrY, great risk of financial failure, no holidays by right." But it is no good ; farmers the boys must be, while those who arc too old to farm, " town friends, most of them far wealthier than I, bemoan their, lot in office or factory, and yearn for the life of a farmer." Hence Mr. Street's book to give these nostalgic townsmen " some worthwhile information concerning this problem of getting a town lad into British agriculture." He tells them how much it costs and how their money may best be laid out ; how and where to get the right kind of training; the worth of Agricultural Colleges and their degrees ; the relation of farming to the multi- tude of subsidiary occupations—those, for example, of Live- stock Officer, Agricultural Adviser, Milk and Marketing Board Inspectors, and so on, which the increasing regulation of the farming industry by the State has called into existence. For, un- less one has a clear two thousand pounds initial capital,Mr. Street advises strongly against farming proper. The subsidiary salaried jobs do not completely satisfy the nostalgia, but they take away its edge by providing a country life. As for farming proper, it may be financially risky and economically bad busi- ness, but it offers four cardinal values, whose absence is at the root of the townman's malaise Space, Time, Faith and Individualism." It could not have been put better. Mr. Street has written' a first-rate text-book for would-be farmers, but he has done more than that. He is one of the few men now living who can write about the English country, the love men have for it, and the value they get from it, simply, sin- cerely, unselfconsciously, yet very. movingly. I am not sure' that he is not the only man since Hudson died who can do this difficult thing. Mr. Mais assuredly cannot. His book is pretty-pretty and Peter-Pansy. It is, indeed, possible that, as his publishers claim, Mr. Mais knows " the field paths and forgotten tracks of the countryside of England better than any other living man outside the Ordnance .Survey Wive," but it seems impossible for him to convey his knowledge simply and unaffectedly. His countryside is lush with romance and sweet with sentiment. He chases "ghost foxes," visits birthplaces of " lovely frail ladies of history," climbs hills by day and other hills by night, visits the " loveliest manor-house in all England "—this by unters "twitches and wolves," the way is in Somerset—eneo and surf-rides on " the jolliest sands in Britain." The book is, in fact, at once thoroughly eupeptic and thoroughly cultured. It should sell very well. But one cannot help feeling glad when Mr. Mais does not mention one's own favourite places. Also Mr. Mais, who has sound views on the subject of motors, should not encourage motor-cycles to go over the Wrynose pass. English Earth and The Countryman's England belong to a class of book that is becoming increasingly common, a class which caters for the townsman's nostalgia not by literary raptures over tfie countryside's beauty and appropriate com- ments on its inhabitants' quaintness, but by conveying definite information about their pursuits. What in fact do country people do ? Both books, I should imagine, are written by women who live in the country and seem to know what they are talking about. Marjorie Hessell Tiltman writes of tithes, market-gardening, growing things under glass, the marketing of country wares, the tinning and canning of country produce, pigs, milk, sheep, beef, and the application of science to farm work. There is, she holds, a crisis ht English agriculture ; farming is being revolutionised by machinery and our genera- tion is seeing the last of a dying world. " The last load of hay being drawn down the lane at twilight, too often belongs to a farm with only one load of hay." Dorothy Hartley's book follows much the same lines, but pays more attention to the appearance and less to the industries of the country. It is oddly dedicated to all fellow-members. of the A.A. and the Youth 'Hostel Association, which is as though one were to dedicate a book to all members of. the Medes and the Persians, the Montagues and the Capulets, or the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. It is based upon the sound view that the modern nostalgia is not satisfied by passage through the country, but demands leisured residence in it, residence enriched by an interest if not by actual participation in the things which are done in it. It is not enough to ride or even to walk in the country, one must work in it or play in it. The Countryman's England tells us what work there is and how it is done. Both it and English Earth are profusely illustrated with admirable photographs.
C. E. M. Jo An.
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