BOOKS OF THE DAY

The Village Carpenter (Adrian Bell) ...

The Art of the Admiral (Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond) A False Utopia (W. T. Wells) . . . .

The Press and World Affairi (S. K. Ratcliffe) . . ..

" The Little Piecer " (Vyvyan Adams, M.P.) .. .-.

Conrad's Prefaces to His Works (Graham Greene) • •

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466 .467 467 468 468 469 Boccaccio and Love (D. M. Low) ..

The Wounded Dragon (Christopher Sykes) .. The Mountain Scene (Michael Roberts). .

The English Country Gentleman (John Sparrow) Wells on Salvation (William Plomer) . . Fiction (Forrest ,Reid)

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470 471 471 472

472 474

THE VILLAGE CARPENTER

By ADRIAN BELL

A RUINED castle, a church with feudal lords lying in effigy beside their wives—these impress even one who has

no special knowledge with a sense of past greatness ; after reading Mr. Rose's book one may be brought up short before an old field gate with something of the same feeling. He writes of the work behind objects that were once the everyday things of life, things of use that may still be seen among the fields, though now on their last legs and fast disappearing. Seen With the eye of knowledge they represent a whole culture.

The old gate with its ornamental " jowl " and hand-forged irons—some of its bars are gone and replaced by hedge-poles tied in place ; the whole thing threatens dissolution every time it is opened and shut. Yet there it stands : its remaining timbers, ribbed with age, are as straight as the day they were assembled, while a modern gate nearby has already warped into a curve. " I would fain doff my hat before such a gate," Mr. Rose writes, " for it speaks of the craftsman, a carpenter whose work is the expression of his life."

Mr. Rose is that rare person, a craftsman articulate. He writes of the days of local materials and men who worked in a local tradition. He is a carpenter whose father and grandfather were carpenters before him. The Buckinghamshire village business he inherited is a complement of the Surrey wheel- wright's shop in which George Start was brought up, and of which he wrote. Mr. Rose's grandfather was a link with pre-enclosure days, one who as a boy ploughed the open-field strips, the loss of which, when enclosure came, caused him to found the carpentry business. It is odd today to think of cows and carpentry in alliance, yet so it was then ; and it is a token of the homogeneity of old village life that there should have been no feeling of incongruity in the two being carried on side by side. They were days when the land was paramount : even carpenters left their benches to help with the harvest.

Mr. Rose's writing bears all the insight of his craftsmanship : though his story is concerned with technical matters, he refers them to the hands and minds that knew them, and the life of the place. The result is something more human than any novel. What he has written is literature, because he has approached the problem of words in the same way as the problem of wood ; there is nowhere a word too much, nor an expression of feeling that is not born of the knowledge of process. There are some unforgettable pictures—of old Enoch down a well with a cauldron of boiling fat suspended over him, for the sealing of the two halves of a wooden pump : the making of the pump, involving the boring of a hole straight through an elm trunk from end to end : the fixing of sails to a windmill, and wooden cogs to the great spur wheel inside : the hedge carpenters with their simple tools and their ingenuity in convert- ing to their purposes growing timber that was to hand.

As in Sturt's Wheelwright's Shop, one is reminded on almost every page of the inter-relation between the varied aspects of village life, all centred upon the common ground of agriculture. Thus, " it sometimes happened that a piece of timber in our yard, too crooked for us carpenters to use, would be purchased by the wheelwright because he saw in the natural contour just what he wiinted, a curve difficult to obtain."

The awareness that produced that kind of practical aesthetics was a habit of life. There was no need to look to know if tools were being properly used. " The blow of the mallet on the chisel tells by its sound alone whether or not the user has the confidence of ability. The multitude of sounds of tools at work on wood is a separate language known to the woodworker, and each separate note is recognised with satisfaction or dishie."

The Village Carpenter. By Walter Rose. (Cambridge University Press. 8s. 6d.) He mentions his grandfather sitting indoors and knowing by the sound what the men were maki in the shop.

This sensibility referred back also to the past. Not only did the men have a sense of the tree in the timber (the wood they worked they had known individually as growing members of the forest), but also theirs was a living tradition in that, repairing the work of their forefathers, " we were never unconscious of our gratitude to men who had passed away many years before we were born, leaving their good handiwork as their enduring memorial."

So individual was the craft that each man's tools took on a characteristic peculiar to him, and would not do their work so well in the hands of another. Even the hedge carpenter had a personal affection for his claw hammer. This is matched on the farm itself, where, in the days of the wooden ploughs, each plough had its own individuality to which its user was accustomed, and there would be great reluctance to use a plough with which another usually ploughed. " To us it was not merely that each tool bore the imprint of the owner's name—but that they were imbued with the owner's personality."

These men had no theoretical education (" they did not know the word geometry, much less its principles ") ; but in practice they achieved niceties which were the result of a folk-knowledge which had evolved the best way of knitting the resources of the district into a self-supporting unity. The varied work took the carpenter alike into farms, mills and churches. There are fascinating chapters on wind- and water-mills. The exactness to which the wooden cogs needed fitting is a revelation to anyone who would suppose that the primitive-looking wooden gear was rude and haphazard

Unlike specialisation today, the problems with which the old workman had to deal were so basic that they equipped him for forming judgements towards other aspects of life. Th'e very descriptive phrases used by these men indicate that the awareness to which their craft keyed them was widely exercised. Mr. Rose mentions the phrase " roach-backed " to describe a saw sharpened so that the line of the teeth was slightly rounded. A term more apt could not be imagined, though far, you would think, from the carpenter's bench today. It matches the term " swamp-backed " which I have often heaid farmers use of a horse.

It is refreshing, finally, to read Mr. Rose's estimate of the future. The sanity of his reasoning makes one feel that after all craftsmanship is perhaps the best discipline for the mind as well as the hand. His admiration for the past is an admiration for workmanship, not sentiment. His attitude to machinery is qualified, not condemnatory, even though he has seen it take away much that was individual from his own craft. Is there a chance for the young carpenter today ? Is it worth while his going through the long apprenticeship that makes, not merely a carpenter, but a craftsman who understands design as Mr. Rose understands it, from familiarity with nature and the habit of the living tree which is to be his material ? Mr. Rose says yes. Standardisation is bringing its reaction : the restoration of old houses by people who can afford not to live in towns gives the village carpenter his chance.

One thing however is certain : without a unifying" force no tradition can be evolved to match the old village tradition of our ancestors. Primarily it was founded on necessity, the necessity for converting local materials into the means of growing and making bread. It made the whole of life one thing. We await the unifying pressure of some analagous necessity, which fine workmanship can serve and express. Meanwhile such books as this are our best hope for continuity, preserving lcnowledge that would otherwise die, and bringing to the layman insight.