A Rural Synthesis
Village England. By Sir William Beach Thomas. (Maclehose.
8s. 6d.) - As with The Yeoman's England last year, Sir William Beach Thomas has again collected his year's observations of the country into a book, this time under the title of Village England; a title it takes, perhaps, from the first chapter—a forcible apologia for country life and country outlook. It is becoming more and more acutely felt that the true dynamic of that life is the one physic that a desiccated civilization needs. Yet just what the special virtue of that old life was, for which a thatched roof and studded walls stand already as too facile a symbol ; and how it may be distilled and injected into a world that has no desire to " return " but to progress, is a matter towards which general opinion can only grope its way. For one thing, there is little of it left—the shepherd's solitude, the harvester's comradeship. The mind, too, has been tuned to such a different vibration that. there is little more definable than a sense of nostalgia as over the enchant- ment of a childhood scene. Sir Williain speaks severely yet truly : " They are consumers, so thoughtlessly concerned with con- sumption that they cannot or will not trace the bread back to the grain, or feel that the shop is founded on the field."
He goes on to -give- what- should be a clan sic instance of the effect of that sense of -process above individuality which dominates country work. The labourer, instructed in his master's absence to plant an orchard, did as he was told except in one respect :
" You did tell me,' he said, ' to plant the apple trees here and the walnut trees there ; but I have planted the walnut trees here and the apple trees there. It did seem to me -that some day, when you and me was gone, them walnut trees would shade them apple trees.' "
After his confession of faith Sir William proceeds to his theme of the seasons. January to December : the form of such a book is as fixed as the sonnet, and is equally -unconstraining
to the " free play of life " within it.
Sir William occupies -a unique position in being in himself
a sort of synthesis of all phases of country life and work ; he brings us pews, -as -it were,- from all fronts. Village. England is the -record of an exceptional year—of drought, of bumrer crops-.of fruit; . but also of the by-play of life in hedge and. field, the- ambushed glimpser. as -well as of the latest. from the. research station.. .kbmsanity and nature are interwoven in his-pages -in proportion as they are in the country itself. The thing newly observed ,is placed in its true -light against the, background of his experience. Almost .every-:month of his calendar has yielded something which calls for readjustment
of previous estimates.
The news, for instances of the transatlantic migration of
Monarch butterflies yet deepens a mystery of nature. He
notes that the time of hay-cutting is growing earlier and earlier owing to scientific research proving a greater nutriment in the young grass ; though in parts of Hereford they still time it by the flowering of the rhododendrons. In the eastern counties June the twelfth used to be reckoned the appropriate date. He sees, without abating one jot of the practical outlook, a new harvest picturesqueness in the -hay sweep ; and even after watching a harvester-thresher at work he proclaims that the " joy in harvest " remains.
It is typical of Sir William's outlook that the reader can hardly discover in him a preference for one part of the country over another : lowland or highland, grass or arable. But one may detect perhaps an extra affection for Herefordshire. Certainly, some of his most interesting pages are on the revival of the cider orchards and on cider apples.
There are some good photographs, but no more vivid than the pictures that the author's pen summons by the way : the old family of gleaners sitting among their gleanings stacked from floor to ceiling of their cottage ; the shimmer of a barley field ; a sale on a decaying farm. The sanity of true knowledge and an eye for essentials are what make Village England an authentic reflection of village England of today.
ADRIAN BELL.
Previous page
