A MODEL.*
IN a passage so often quoted that one has to apologize for using it again, Carlyle said that every clergyman should write the history of his parish—to keep him out of mischief. After reading the fragrant and mellow volume in which Dr. Warde Fowler has preserved so much of the wholesomeness, charm, and character of his adopted Oxfordshire village, we are dis- posed to amend Carlyle's dictum to the counsel of perfection that Dr. Warde Fowler should write the history of every parish—to keep English readers in love with their England.
Origins can be very curious, and the evolution of this entertaining and informative little book is strangely un- expected. It grew, its author tells us, out of the request for an article for an American economic journal. Hitherto we have thought of American economic journals as arid com- pilations quite outside the pale—the very biblia abiblia of periodical journalism : ephemerides anephemerides, as Lamb might say—but after reading Bingham Old and New we shall ever consider them with respect and turn their pages eagerly. For this book is human to the core. And more than merely human, it has personality and an underlying tenderness and sense of the best in life which make it literature.
No author could be more thorough. Dr. Warde Fowler begins with Kingham before the Conquest, and brings down his economic survey to the present day; he goes on to describe Kingham's " characters," its birds (here being very much on his own ground, as readers of other of his books will testify), its flowers, its great thunderstorm in 1910, its great drought in 1911; and finally he draws from his experience there some helpful conclusions as to rural and educational questions. Between the lines on every page one catches glimpses of one who loves his fellow men, and has acquired rich stores of
• Ringham Old and Now: Studies in a Rural Parish. By Dr. W. Warde Fowler. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell. [Ss. net.]
sunny wisdom and sympathy from an observant life of tran- quil delight in nature, books, and neighbours.
The most entertaining chapter is naturally that one devoted to "Old Village Folks." It must always be so, since the proper study of mankind is man. Every word of this chapter is tempting to the reviewer, but we have space only for two passages. The first describes the Kingham resident who first brought the village to the author's notice, Captain Barrow.
"I soon found that my host was a much more eccentric old bachelor than I had been able to divine in Switzerland. He lived in a picturesque old house which had once been, and has been again of late, the residence of the rector. It was a cottage to all intents and purposes, but the old gentleman's hobby was to make it as much like a ship as possible. In front of it was a flagstaff about sixty feet high, on which a flag was hoisted at eight o'clock precisely by Greenwich time—the red ensign for example, on the Sunday morning after my arrival. While it was being hoisted by the gardener, Captain Barrow struck 'eight bells ' on a bell fixed on the roof of his house, at the sound of which all guests were expected to appear, and breakfast followed. There was, however, just time enough between the eight bells and the breakfast for him to log' (as he called it) the weather, wind, barometer, and thermometer. When The Times appeared he set to work to make such extracts from it as might seem most interesting, and in this way the greater part of the morning was spent, or in going to see some old person in the village, or in drilling a squad of rustics out of work."
The other extract is from a story which the author tells with reserve. If only Mr. Hardy would resume his prose pen what a subject it would be for him! But in Dr. Warde Fowler's brief version it is very beautiful, and it contains one of the finest examples of a hunger strike on record. The dramatis personae are a Kingham gardener, who had married above him, and his wife. This is the close :— " I had always heard that his wife had been 'a lady,' and that she was a determined woman, though a gentle one, I could very well guess ; but that afternoon I learnt that she was a heroine, and that though what she might think right to do was not always right in the opinion of others, her own steadfast conviction would carry her safely through all opposition. Twice in the story she showed this heroic resolution. She left her father's house, where she was very unhappy, at midnight with the man she loved, and as they passed out into the great road running to Cheltenham over the wolds, she took off her gold chain with its watch, and gave it to him as a token that she descended to his rank in life. She never wore it again,' he added, 'and I have it still.' And again a few days later, when her love, now at last her lawful husband, had been lodged in Oxford jail for deserting his service and breaking out of the house, his wife refused to touch food until she saw him again. All persuasion was useless, and they had to release him. It may be truly said that they lived happy ever after, at first among the Bledington orchards, and then among the gardens of Kingham."
We should like to think that Dr. Warde Fowler's little book will have the effect of setting leisured country dwellers all over Great Britain on similar tasks. Every village has a book in it—in fact, many books; and no kind of book is so well worth writing. It is unlikely that any result of such deriva- tive activity and zeal could be as good as the model volume before us ; but, done honestly, every example would have value. As for Bingham Old and New, it will stand, at any rate on one shelf, very near Walden and Cranford and the Autocrat and Lowell's Fireside Travels.
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