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Contents
Edith Olivier
Epigraph
Dedication
The Grammar of Country Life
The Grammar of Country Life
The First Mood
1 The Lie of the Land
2 Country Nights
THE SECOND MOOD
1 The Weather
2 Birds and Beasts and Insects
THE THIRD MOOD
1 Road-Books and Milestones
2 Buried in the Past
3 Literary Pilgrimages
THE FOURTH MOOD
1 Buying and Selling
2 Public Work
3 Country Women Then and Now
4 From Mumming to Pageantry
5 Some Country Pursuits
THE FIFTH MOOD
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Edith Olivier
Country Moods and Tenses
Edith Olivier (1872–1948) was born in the Rectory at Wilton, Wiltshire, in the late 1870s. Her father was Rector there and later Canon of Salisbury. She came from an old Huguenot family which had been living in England for several generations, and was one of a family of ten children. She was educated at home until she won a scholarship to St Hugh’s College, Oxford. Her first novel, The Love Child, was published in 1927 and there followed four works of fiction: As Far as Jane’s Grandmother’s (1928), The Triumphant Footman (1930), Dwarf’s Blood (1930) and The Seraphim Room (1932). Her works of non-fiction were The Eccentric Life of Alexander Cruden (1934), Mary Magdalen (1934), Country Moods and Tenses (1941), Four Victorian Ladies of Wiltshire (1945), Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady (1945), her autobiography, Without Knowing Mr. Walkley (1938) and, posthumously published, Wiltshire (1951).
Epigraph
.
FOR REGINALD PEMBROKE
MY FRIEND FROM OUR CHILDHOOD
BECAUSE HE LOVES ALL COUNTRY THINGS, AS I DO
Dedication
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Author expresses her sincere thanks to the following:
Mrs. Robert Bridges, and the Oxford University Press, for
permission to quote the lines on pages 15 and 33 from the
Testament of Beauty, by the late Poet Laureate.
Lady Newbolt, for Sir Henry Newbolt’s lines on page 28, taken
by permission from bis book, “Poems New and Old”, published
by Messrs. John Murray.
Sir Edward Marsh, for his translation of La Fontaine’s Fable, Le Rat de Ville et Ie Rat de Champs.
Captain T. R. Henn for reading the proofs.
Miss Rosemary Olivier for tracing a particularly elusive quotation.
The Grammar of
Country Life
The Grammar of Country Life
I NEVER LEARNT ENGLISH GRAMMAR. MY MOTHER AVERRED that it did not exist; but she considered that the Latin Grammar was a Grand Thing, so she taught us a little of that, which unfortunately I have forgotten. Now I begin to regret that my grammarless education has debarred me from the familiar use of a good many attractive and expressive words. I shall never know their legitimate meaning, but I fancy that some of these must be more nearly related to life than to school-books, and related especially to life in the country.
“Moods”, for instance. Grammatically I know not what they mean; but in life who has not experienced them? For they create and re-create the world around us all. That world is for ever changing, and its changes are largely due to changes in our own moods. I expect that this is especially true of life in the country, which is more solitary than life in towns, and is therefore more susceptible of an idiosyncratic. So, let the townsman say what he will, country life has more variety than life in the town. It is racy of the soil, and varies with each village, house, and even with each individual. The personal mood has time and space in which to expand and to express itself—and it expresses itself mainly by creating its own world.
On the other hand, no one could bear to live in a town without the constant artificial stimulants provided by traffic lights, cinemas, cocktail parties, evening papers, and what they call “night life”. Such things are absolutely essential to counteract the dreary sameness of life in a street; but the variety which they give is standardised. It is variety cut to a pattern, devised by someone outside ourselves, and might well be delivered with the morning milk or the afternoon post.
The INFINITIVE is pre-eminently the Country Mood. I live remote from libraries, and so am obliged to make my own collection of books of reference. Chief among these is the Oxford English Dictionary (two-volume edition to suit the capacities of my purse and of my house). Here I learn that Infinitude is “the quality of being infinite; boundlessness; immensity; vastness”. This is Nature’s primal mood. It is so entirely the countryman’s atmosphere that he is hardly aware of it, though without it he could not live. It is the air he breathes, the serene silence falling for ever on his ears. It gives to the eyes of an old countryman the aloof majesty which also appears on the faces of seamen. That look comes out of a heart at peace and at home, through familiarity with the vision of great spaces.
When a countryman lives for a time exiled in the town, the Infinitive Mood is bound to call him home sooner or later.
Thirty years ago, there lay dying in a London hospital an old dock labourer. No one knew his history, and no relations ever came to visit him. For years he had drifted about the sordid, crowded streets of Poplar and Rotherhithe, Wapping and Lime-house, where the air is acrid with an indescribable mixture of smells and stinks, odours and scents; and where the ear is deafened by a babel of sound, composed of the jargons and argots of every port in the world. This noise and these smells are anything but English, and yet can be found nowhere but in London—unless, perhaps, in Marseilles. The restless tides had at last washed this broken fragment of flotsam and jetsam into the quiet ward of a great London hospital, and for some time the Chaplain tried vainly to hear the words which the old man was trying to say. He seemed to be asking for something—something which he wanted desperately—something without which he could not peacefully die.
The words came through at last.
“The Marlborough Downs—in the rain.’’
The sought-for vision returned as he spoke. He saw his downs.
A sudden smile swept over his face, as the wind sweeps across a corn-field. Then he died.
Because country people are so quietly at home in the Infinitive Mood, strangers sometimes fancy that they have nothing whatever to do. Country Life is conceived of as one long dolce far niente. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The country-man possess no leisure: leisure possesses him. It holds him in its great spaces, but within those he is always busy. Country leisure is like the wide margin of a book. The argument is in the printed column, but the page’s beauty depends upon the balance given by that empty border.
The countryman’s busy-ness is like the busy-ness of bees, buzzing for ever among the blossoms of immemorial lime-trees. No one could think of hurry or bustle under the shade of a lime avenue, and yet the winged honey gatherer knows that the blossoms fall only too fast. His hum has an indolent sound, but his work is unceasing. The quintessentially sweet scent of the lime flower
s is the first warning that the best of the summer is over. Years are long in the country: eternities sometimes; but seasons are short, and each one brings its own occupation which must be dealt with at once, or lost for the year. Each season has its own definite character. Each brings its own work, and each its own pleasureable idleness. In the long summer evenings, there is the delicious indolence of alternating between the deck chair and the water pot; while in winter, when darkness comes in with the tea, there is unbroken solitude with books and needlework. In the country you never forget what time of the year it is.
On the other hand, in towns the seasons have been mastered by man. Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter are blended into one uniformity. Life is the same all through the year. The day’s work hardly varies, and at night there are always the same amusements—theatres, concerts, cinemas, dinners and dancing. It needed a war to remind the townsman that in some seasons of the year the nights are longer and darker than in others, and that the moon only shines on half the evenings in the month.
In the country the Infinitive Mood merges into the IMPERATIVE. This Infinitive which broods over us, giving a greatness to little things, enrols us in its “army of unalterable law”. Perforce we find that we are cogs in the great wheel which Dante saw always moving equally, driven onwards by “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars”. The countryman knows that he is the servant of the powers of Nature, and in that service he finds the joy of “Perfect freedom”.
Even in the purely feminine avocation known as “ doing the flowers”, there is this intrinsic difference between town and country. In town the flowers are found in the shops and are put into the vases. Enormous roses on very long stalks appear in midwinter. Spring flowers scent the room at Christmas time. Lilac and magnolia trees stand in ballrooms in every season of the year. It is all easy and lightly come by. It is one of the triumphs of our civilisation.
Whereas in the country, flowers appear in the rooms as the culmination of many months of preparation for their short time of blossoming. The earth must be dug and dunged; the seeds, bulbs and the plants must be set in the beds; there is weeding and watering to do; roses must be pruned and sweet peas staked. It is a long and varying process, brightened by success and darkened by disappointment, for Nature shows us every month that she means to be the mistress, and that all our labour must wait upon her sun and rain, her frosts, her winds and her blight. We can only dig and delve; then we must bow to her Imperative Mood.
It is the same with the store cupboard, so easily filled in London by the beneficence of Messrs. Fortnum and Mason. To them it is merely a matter of indifferently turning to another shelf and with equal facility they will hand over the counter Guaya Jelly, Hymettus Honey or Sloe Gin. But in the country, a May frost may put an end to all hopes of strawberry jam for the year, and a wet September can ruin the blackberry harvest. The bee keeper must be content with the honey found in the flowers which grow within range of his own bees’ flight; and although the adventurous bee owner may be daring enough to try to extend that range, the experiment does not always succeed. I once attempted something of the kind myself. Our Women’s Institute possessed a hive of bees, and one year after the usual June honey harvest, we decided to carry the hive on a visit to the New Forest, where a friend offered it hospitality, so that the bees could gather heather honey in the month of August. We drove the hive into Hampshire in my car and reached our destination after some rather tremendous vicissitudes. No sooner had we arrived than the bees proceeded to swarm, and they chose to swarm on the back of a donkey which happened to be grazing by the roadside, as is the custom of animals in the forest. The donkey kicked up its heels and galloped away into the distance, with our bees swarming and stinging and buzzing upon him, and with me and my friend and the old gardener panting along in pursuit. We caught the unwilling thief at last, and the gardener recaptured the swarm; but we agreed that henceforth we would give up such attempts to go one better than Nature. We would accept the honey produced by our own flowers, and if we wanted exoticisms, a postal order to Piccadilly would be the simplest means to obtain them. Nature’s Imperative Mood had best be obeyed.
Not until the signposts had been removed from all the English roads did one realise how great a part is played in the country by the INDICATIVE Mood. In a sense it is true that a country house and garden create a world apart, where its owners can live more completely than in any town house; yet country people always seem to be going somewhere.
Once or twice in the week it is urgently necessary to proceed to the nearest country town to do the household shopping or to meet a train. But these personal errands are the smallest part of the compulsory business which draws the countryman from home, for most people play some part in county life. The Bench must be attended. There are meetings of all kinds—political, religious, philanthropical or connected with county sports; there are county fetes and pageants, rallies of boy scouts and girl guides, or local musical festivals. The actual sports themselves entail a lot of travelling. Meets of the hounds, cricket matches, tennis tournaments and golf are none of them held in the dining room: they all mean a journey, longer or shorter. Then there are visits to country neighbours, luncheons and garden parties, for country people are very friendly when once they have made friends, which, it must be admitted, is a question of a good many years. Best of all, there is the eternal delight of sightseeing, and no country in the world is more full of beauty than is England. So in peace time, a large part of the country dweller’s time is spent on the road, and one of the chief changes brought about by the war is that all this has ended. No one has the petrol for these pursuits; and in any case no one has time or inclination for them. We are all at work. So we come to a new war-time experience. Our work takes us to places a little off the roads upon which we generally travel. We fancied we knew our neighbourhood perfectly, but now we suddenly find ourselves pulled up at a cross road, helpless for lack of a signpost. The yokel is cautious, too, about giving directions. He knows well that we are probably German parachutists.
“I bain’t a-givin’ ’ee any information” was the answer received by the Mother’s Union speaker who innocently asked the way to the vicarage; and thus it is learnt that for the time being the Indicative Mood is banished from the countryside.
The SUBJUNCTIVE is a difficult Mood to define. The Oxford Dictionary, with much else, says it refers to “Something subjoined or dependent”. It is used to “ express a wish, command or exhortation”, and therefore must obviously refer to conversation. It deals, then, with human relationships. The country community is a group of people linked up, “joined or dependent” one upon another in an intimacy impossible in great towns. In a village, even business connections are far from being purely “ business”. The local shop is still the local Club, as the town booksellers’ were two hundred years ago. In the shop the stranger asks his way on his first morning in the village: he learns the easiest method of sending for goods from the railway station three miles off. He is told the name of the parson, doctor or lawyer—nay, he is introduced to these and other inhabitants of the place should they enter the shop while he is in it.
“This is the gentleman (or lady) who has taken the late Mrs. Blank’s house.’’
The gentleman (or lady) realises that he has now become part of a social entity.
Even the postmaster and mistress are no impersonal civil servants. They are heard gladly calling to each other the news that the vicar’s son has telegraphed announcing the birth of twins. And, now, in these anxious days of war, a fatal telegram is not allowed to be delivered by the usual telegraph boy, free-wheeling recklessly up to the door. The postmaster himself carries it to the house and sees that it is handed to its recipient with all the consideration and sympathy which at such times becomes alive among friends.
Neighbourliness is a living force in village life. Illness or bereavement calls it out to an extraordinary extent. A working man will sit night after night at the bedside of a mate who is ill, in spi
te of his own hard day’s work on either side of that trying vigil. I remember once going to the house of a cottage woman, to find she had gone out, leaving her washing in confusion in the kitchen. As I stood looking round, she came in out of the neighbouring cottage, saying—
“I have just been in next door to lay out Mrs. May’s poor little boy who died this morning. She’s only a poor creature. Couldn’t so much lay out a cat, as the sayin’ is.’’
This was not a “ sayin’ ” with which I had been hitherto familiar, but I welcomed it as an addition to my knowledge of phrase and fable.
“Giving lifts” has always been a country practice, but in these days people are more than ever “subjoined or dependent” upon one another for journeys from place to place. In the country, however, there is always the dear old carrier’s cart, now looking like a motor-bus of greater or less dignity or capacity. But motor or not, it has not changed its character. It is still as friendly as ever. It will stop at an isolated door to collect the watercress gatherer, the occupants eagerly helping the newcomer to get her baskets aboard. And throughout the journey it resounds with a perpetual chorus of local gossip. Talk and laughter fill it, as do the smells and the cackling of the livestock which accompanies many of the passengers.
These carriers’ carts are the descendants of the mediaeval “Char” used in Chaucer’s day. This vehicle was drawn by five horses and was covered by a gaily painted canvas hood. It was only used by women, for the men rode from place to place. I remember one such vehicle, and it must have been a last remnant of the “Merrie England” of the road. In my childhood, the ordinary village carrier drove a van with a dreary grey hood. All those vans were alike; and in Wilton we despised them, as our own carrier’s cart was a brilliantly painted thing, in green and blue and red, its name printed in large letters on one side. It was called “The Matoka’’: I never knew why. It went to Salisbury and back every day, and was a most sociable equipage with its passengers in rows on either side and its stacks of parcels at the back.
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