Portrait of Elmbury

by John Moore

  And so dusk fell, and the lamplighter went round with his long pole, the gas lamps glowed yellow, even that wan, cloudy nebulus that burned at the entrance to Double Alley, and the last of the country people went home. Only a few belated drovers still hung about the pubs; and the first carol-singers gathered round our front door to tell their old tale of peace on earth and goodwill among men.

  Elmbury Goes to War

  But peace on earth had ended when I was seven. Already the Volunteers, re-named Territorials, had marched out of their dark and dusty creeper-clad Drill Hall, and the citizens who had always laughed at them for playing soldiers cheered them all the way to the station. Those farmers’ sons, small tradesmen, keepers, poachers and hobbledehoys thereafter played soldiers in Flanders for the better part of five years. They were maimed, blinded, and slain; and they added proud battle-honours to the colours of a regiment which already possessed more battle-honours than most. Two of my cousins marched at the head of them; one was killed in 1915, the other lasted until the Somme, when company officers could not expect to last any longer.

  But after the soldiers had gone, it was a long time before the war began to have any visible effect upon the life of Elmbury. My mother collected vegetables for the Navy; and I remember the garden looking like a harvest festival, with piles of cabbages, cauliflowers, lettuces, beets and marrows on their way to Scapa Flow; but how they got there, and what state they were in when they arrived, we never knew. A big house nearby was turned into a military hospital, and convoys of ambulances occasionally passed our window. Men in blue uniform, on crutches or in bath-chairs, became a familiar sight in the street. Christmas markets were less festive, perhaps because there was less to drink; and Nobbler Price became more sober. Mr. Hook sought sanctuary from his wife in the Army.

  And a stranger thing occurred in Double Alley. There was a barrel of a man, some twenty stone of him, called Dick Perkins, a genial rogue with mischievous and watery blue eyes, a drover turned cattle-dealer, who lived there presumably because it amused him to live there—for he was prosperous enough to live elsewhere if he had liked. He had two buxom daughters; and one morning these young women dressed themselves up in green jerseys and tight breeches and went off to work on the land. Double Alley, which had witnessed many shocking things, was never so shocked as by this tomboyish gesture. Where indecency was commonplace, the trousers were regarded as the height of indecency. The outraged neighbours came out in a bunch to stare.

  “The hussies!” exclaimed Old Nanny, as we too stared from our window. “They’ll never dare to go back there!” she added; and of course they never did. You wouldn’t go back if you’d lived in a farmhouse and worked in the green fields. The emancipation of the Misses Perkins had consequences, as we shall see. It was a break with Double Alley’s tradition; and it was the beginning of the end of Double Alley itself.

  That must have been about 1916. Thereafter the war grew sterner. Officers who were billeted on us from time to time stayed for shorter periods, and always it seemed only a few weeks after they left us that we heard they had been killed. My father, aged fifty, and sick unto death, put on a red armlet and drilled twice a week with a Boer War rifle, or guarded railway bridges against imaginary and ubiquitous “spies.” Recruiting posters became more frequent and began to betray a slightly hysterical note. Recruiting marches took place in the town.

  Even Pistol, Bardolph and Nym were caught up in the maelstrom. These battered veterans of forgotten and possibly apocryphal skirmishes always went about together and generally got into trouble at the same time. They drank, begged and stole as a trio; recently the tall thin one, Pistol, abetted by the others, had knocked a policeman’s helmet off, in private spite, while the policeman innocently stood directing traffic at Elmbury Cross. They were still tolerated, although they were such a nuisance, because of their humour, or I suppose I should say “humours” in the Elizabethan sense; they were “characters.”

  Now one day, as we watched a military band marching bravely down the High Street, on one of the frequent recruiting parades, with a smart squad of carefully-picked soldiers behind it, and behind them a rag-tag-and-bobtail of sheepish-looking civilians who had taken the King’s shilling, we were astonished to see Pistol, Bardolph and Nym bringing up the rear. It must have been almost the last time we looked through the Tudor House window; my father had died, and the lovely house was to be sold. Already the auctioneer was busy cataloguing the furniture, posters advertising the “desirable residence” were stuck up on the walls.

  It was high summer, the last summer of the war. The band blared, and the soldiers marched stiffly at attention, left, right, left, right, never a foot wrong; then came the newly-recruited rabble, shuffling, out of step, looking curiously ashamed, not, I think, because they had joined up, but because they had held back for so long. Somebody from the entrance of Double Alley called out: “There goes young Bert—at last!” and there was a ripple of laughter. Then came Pistol, Bardolph and Nym. They wore their medals; and they looked like soldiers. They threw their shoulders back, and they cast away all the infirmities which their flesh had inherited from their folly, and they marched. A passing policeman stared at them in astonishment and they shouted some piece of merry rudeness at him. We couldn’t hear it, but he roared with laughter and shouted back: “Now we shall have a bit of peace for a change!”

  I suppose they were the dregs of England’s man-power. Nym was lame from a wound he got at Mafeking; Bardolph suffered from rheumatics; and Pistol was lame also, but this was not, as he asserted, from the thrust of an assegai, but through falling off a fence, and breaking his leg, while trying to escape from a keeper who had caught him poaching. Crippled though they were, by God they could march. Somebody shouted in jest: “We must be in a bad way if we’ve come down to that!” Black Sal came suddenly out of the dark entrance and ran into the middle of the street, pirouetted there screeching and fell in behind them, doing a sort of goose-step. Then suddenly the band stopped blazing, the order was given: “March-at-ease!” and the soldiers slinging their rifles broke into song with “Tipperary.”

  “Good-bye—

  Double Alley!”

  improvised the three old warriors; and Double Alley cheered them as they went off to their last war.

  Part Two

  Background to Boyhood

  (1919-1924)

  Country Prep School—Entomology and Port—A Liberal Education — The Scholar Fisherman—The Young Alchymist—Anarchic Interlude—The Facts of Life—Business Man

  Country Prep School

  Shortly after this I was sent to school, underwent certain metamorphoses, and was transformed from a pampered and coddled brat into an extremely tough little ruffian. This was largely due to the glorious prep school, a gracious Georgian house in its own grounds about ten miles from Elmbury, where I learned to tickle trout and to read Virgil; to swim a length under water and to enjoy English history; all about catapults, and a little about Attic Greek.

  The poaching, the swimming, and the catapult-shooting I acquired partly by the light of nature and partly through the companionship of three other boys, Dick, Donald and Ted, who had the reputation of stopping at nothing short of murder. The Latin and Greek I learned from a man who loved the classics and knew how to teach them. One day, when I had been consistently slow at finding the verb in my Latin unseen, he sent me to the Headmaster with a note. The note was folded but conveniently unsealed. Naturally I wanted to find out what had been written about me and what was my probable fate. I hid in the lavatory and tried to read it. But the sentence was in Latin. For the first time in my life it seemed really important to construe a Latin sentence. My mind worked at three times its usual pace, I found the verb more quickly than I had ever found the verb before, and when I had the hang of the sentence I was encouraged to continue on my journey towards the Headmaster’s study; for it said: “Do not beat him with too many stripes.”

  This wise scholar, Mr. Chorlton, had a cottage at Elmbury
where he spent the holidays. He was a link with home, and for this reason I never felt exiled. The school was such a civilised place that terms passed quickly; and in the holidays I never wanted to go to the seaside, but always returned to Elmbury, where Dick, Donald and Ted were near neighbours.

  And now with my new-found freedom and my awakened intelligence I began to find out more about Elmbury than I had ever known before. I explored the rivers and the brooks, the field-paths and the woodlands; discovered one by one the villages and hamlets; made friends of poachers and foes of keepers; and enjoyed a kind of Richard Jefferies boyhood in which holidays coincided with seasons and each season had its special delights. Easter holidays were birds’-nesting holidays (curlews and redshanks on the Ham; plovers on the ploughed land; finches in the hedgerows; whitethroats in the nettles; magpies and hawks in the highwood on the hill!) Summer holidays, long and leisurely, were divided between fishing and butterfly-hunting, swimming and “messing about in boats.” At Christmas we followed the hounds on foot, skated on the frozen floods, learned to shoot rabbits (and other game) with .22 rifles, went ferreting with farmers, fished for pike.

  I never minded going back to school; because school, too, was fun. But always, even at school, Elmbury was the background, its rivers, meadows and lanes were unforgotten, and with Dick, Donald and Ted in the dormitory at night I would plan next holiday’s expeditions. We must make another attempt to catch the big carp in Brensham Pond; after that we’d hunt the old willows for Puss Moth caterpillars and Red Underwings; and when it grew dark we’d light lanterns and “sugar” the trees in the rides for moths. We must tar the bottom of our old boat and make it watertight; we must go cubhunting in September, and we must ask Keeper Smith if he’s let us beat when Squire started partridge-shooting; we must camp at the Hill Farm and help Farmer Jeffs with his harvest.

  Elmbury and its green-and-brown countryside were always the stuff of our dreams. I was getting to know the place as Highlanders know their deer-forests: “every stick and stone.” I was growing my roots.

  Entomology and Port

  One evening in the summer holidays we were up in the larch plantation above Mr. Chorlton’s cottage. Donald and Dick were searching for caterpillars and I was trying to stalk some fallow-deer which had escaped from a neighbouring park and which dwelt there as shyly as fauns in the thickest part of the plantation. Dick found a huge grey hawk-moth sitting on a larch trunk, and hearing his yelp of delight we gathered round him, admiring the unfamiliar monster, while he stood at the ready with the net. At that moment along came Mr. Chorlton, out for his evening stroll.

  “Hallo, you rascals,” he said. “What’s the excitement?”

  “Big moth, sir. Looks like a funny sort of Hawk.”

  Mr. Chorlton took one look over Dick’s shoulder. “Good God,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “Sphinx convolvuli,” said Mr. Chorlton, “come all the way from Africa; and you three rascals pounce on him as soon as he arrives.” He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a large glass-bottomed pill-box. We should not have been more surprised if he had produced a white rabbit or a cage of singing canaries; for although we were aware that Mr. Chorlton knew all about Greek accents we didn’t expect him to know anything about moths. “Now listen,” he said. “If Dicks nets him in his rugger-forward fashion he’ll spoil him as sure as eggs is eggs. I’ll box him for you. But in case I muff it Dick with his net must stand in the slips and you others at point and long stop.”

  We watched breathlessly while Mr. Chorlton with miraculous calm persuaded the great moth into the pill-box. He handed it to Dick. “Lucky beggar,” he said. “In thirty long years I’ve never found one.”

  “But, sir, we didn’t know you were a bughunter!” It was as if Zeus himself had come down to earth and we mortals, discovering his divinity, had exclaimed in awe: “We didn’t know you were a god!”

  “Come back to the cottage,” he said, “and I’ll show you.”

  The cottage lay among shrubberies of rhododendrons and its garden was full of flowers, pentstemon and tobacco-flower and valerian, which we were sure had been planted specially for the moths. He took us inside and sat us down in a room which was lined with books from ceiling to floor. We had never seen so many books in a room before. They mostly had Latin and Greek titles, and it seemed to us that all the wisdom in the world was enclosed between those four walls. Mr. Chorlton said: “I’ll go and get the key of the cabinet,” and he left us free to explore the wonderful room. There was a net standing in the corner; and next to it a fishing-rod. In a jar on the window-still some caterpillars which none of us could recognise nibbled a sprig of birch. And Dick, wandering round the room, discovered a photograph entitled “Somerset C.C., 1895,” with Mr. Chorlton, in flannels and cricket-cap, sitting in the front row.

  He came back and opened the cabinet doors. The glass-topped drawers slid out silently one by one while we stood and gasped. There were long rows of Swallow-tails, Clouded Yellows, tawny Fritillaries in infinite variety; Blues in every shade from pale azure to the kingfisher’s own colour: hundreds of little Skippers; and then the Hawks, a whole row of Death’s Heads, olive-shaded Limes, Poplars ranging from palest grey to burnt sienna, Eyed Hawks with sunset-flushed hindwings, exquisite pink Elephants (not those that topers see!) Bee Hawks and Humming Birds. But there was a gap above the label “Sphinx convolvuli”; and Dick, gulping hard and trembling with the ecstasy of glorious martyrdom, said suddenly: “You have him, sir! Put him in that space!”

  “No,” said Mr. Chorlton; but hesitantly.

  “Please,” begged Dick; as a man might offer up his one, his only ewe-lamb as a burnt offering to a god, and yet the cry escapes him, “Please, please take it quickly, lest I repent!”

  Mr. Chorlton, who was infinitely wise and who knew all this, didn’t hesitate any longer. He said: “I’ll keep him, then, because I’ve got a cabinet to keep him in; but he’s still yours and you can come and see him whenever you want to. And now,” he added, “we’ll celebrate the capture of the first living Convolvulus Hawk Moth I’ve ever seen.” He went to the sideboard and fetched glasses and bottles. For himself he poured out a glass of port; for us, fizzy lemonade, into which he tipped enough port to make it pink. “This wine,” he said, “is Mr. Cockburn’s rarest and most precious; and it’s the last bottle; and a great many people would have fits if they knew I poured it into fizzy lemonade. But Convolvulus Hawks are rarer even than rare wine, and deserve a proper libation when they appear.”

  We drank to the moth ceremonially; then we sat down, and there was a moment’s silence, and suddenly we all three asked questions simultaneously:

  “Sir, have you read all the books in this room?”

  “Sir, are you really a fisherman as well?”

  “Sir, did you play cricket for Somerset?”

  Mr. Chorlton poured himself out another glass of port.

  “I’ve read most of the books; not quite all; but I’ve still got a few years, I hope, to go on reading. Yes, I am a fisherman, and one day I’ll teach you how to catch chub with a fly. And I did play for Somerset, and fielded against Archie Maclaren’s 424, which as you know is the highest score in county cricket. Look it up in Wisden, and you’ll find out roughly how old I am; if you can do the sum, which is doubtful.”

  It was dark before we left. We made Mr. Chorlton show us the caterpillars—which turned out to be Kentish Glories—and then he tied us each a chub-fly out of a starling’s feather and a brown hen’s hackle, and finally we persuaded him to read us the Frogs’ Chorus from Aristophanes which always delighted us with its deep-throated “Brekekoex-koex-koex.” He said good-bye to us, and added:

  “Now for an hour I am going to contemplate Sphinx Convolvuli and finish the port.”

  “The whole bottle?” asked Donald, full of awe.

  “The whole bottle,” he said firmly.

  As we went down the drive between the dark rhododendrons Dick put into words what we were all thin
king. “He can read a Latin book as if he were reading the paper,” he said, “and Greek as easy as English. And he knows every moth that flies. And he’s a fisherman. And he’s played county cricket. What a mixture of things he can do!”

  “And the port,” we said. “Don’t forget the port. He’s going to drink the whole bottle!”

  I think we all resolved that when we grew up we’d be like Mr. Chorlton; and it wasn’t a bad resolution, for I’ve never met another man who could so beautifully walk the tightrope between the bios praktikos and the bios theoretikos and get so much pleasure out of the two kinds of life which lie on either side.

  A Liberal Education

  We had other schoolmasters.

  Pistol, Bardolph and Nym were back from the war, unchanged and unreformed. Pistol complained that the damp trenches had touched up his sciatickee, Nym had a new wound, this one in his backside, Bardolph had seen no Germans, for he had spent most of the time in gaol. These three musketeers, to the great alarm of our parents, now took us under their distinguished patronage, and taught us how to set wires for hares, how to caulk a leaking boat, how to cook moorhens on a camp fire, and how to look innocent when we had our pockets full of things which shouldn’t be there. Others contributed their knowledge and experience to make sure that we had a liberal education. A man called Jim Meadows, who was a porter and billposter employed by my uncle’s firm, showed us how to make bird-lime out of boiled holly-bark and, with a decoy, to catch linnets and larks on Brockeridge Common. I don’t know whether the Wild Birds’ Protection Act was in existence at that time; I think it was; but it made no difference to Jim Meadows, who went about openly carrying clap-nets with which he cleverly swept goldfinches off the thistle-heads. He lived in an alley—not Double Alley, but one nearly as bad—where he kept in a home-made aviary canaries, bullfinches, jackdaws, magpies and even owls; he also kept, uncaged, somebody else’s wife.