Norfolk Journal
Norfolk Life. By Lilias Rider Haggard and Henry Williamson. (Faber and Faber. 8s. 6d.)
How is such a book as this to be adequately described? It is a journal of the years 5936-7. It is an anthology of unusual extracts from old books on husbandry, farmers' calendars and herbals. It is a gardener's book, a farmer's book, a field naturalist's notebook— with some especially good observations on birds. It is a book of jottings that somehow manage to get the very heart of Norfolk in them. And yet it is more than any of these. It is (as all good journals must be) a portrait of its author, in this case an English countrywoman of rare personality, wise, humorous, responsible, and practical, a woman in whom fact and imagination are nicely matched, whose serviceable Norfolk waggon is indeed hitched to a star.
It is a considerable compliment to our provincial newspapers that most of these " notes and descriptions " first appeared in the Eastern Daily Press. There Mr. Williamson saw them. It had been his intention, he says, after his migration from Devon, to explore to the full this tract of the Norfolk coastland where he had come to live and to write about it; but the reclamation of a derelict farm took up all his time and energy. He was the more pleased, therefore, when he discovered that somebody had already success-
fully undertaken 'such a task. He made the acquaintance of the anonymous author and has recast her notes into book-form. He supplies an introduction which, to be candid, is mainly a repetition of things he had already told us; and he adds an occasional foot-note which is usually a hindrance rather than a help. To cut across the wholly delightful personality of the author with such irrelevancies as " B.B.C. Brains Trust might enquire of Professor Toad of Toad's Hall " is hardly good editing. Nevertheless, to have ensured that this book should see the light of day is reason enough for gratitude.
To quote from such a richly discursive book is impossible: there is nothing to do but to read it all and keep it by one for future pleasure. It is as packed with sense as a nut with food. Its garden- ing notes are practical and out-of-the-way. It has much that is sensible (and humorous) to say about the government of village life. It is as likely to quote Lord Horder or Swinburne or Kipling as an entertaining inscription or an old husbandry book;. and it has things to say about the abdication of King Edward and the coronation of King George which, even at this date, are impressive. It will take the reader to Walsingham one moment, or to Bavaria the next; ro Portsmouth, to watch a review of the Fleet, or to Bond Street, to see a Peter Scott exhibition. But " everything always comes back to Norfolk," as a member of Miss Haggard's family used to say; and it is at once the charm and the mystery, of this book that, far afield though it ranges (not only geographically), in the end Norfolk Life remains the right title for it. That As author knows her Norfolk to the last mouldiwarp anybody will appreciate who has 'read those other books for which she was responsible, The Rabbit Skin Cap and I Walked By Night. But no book .written ostensibly about this most individual county, and only about it, could hope to give so much the sense and spirit of the place as Miss Haggard has done here. For the sense and spirit of a place dwell in its people; and
Miss Haggard is Norfolk to the marrow. C. HENRY WARREN.
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