after this lapse of time, all that is left of him is a comic song and a
beautiful tree, which has rested the eyes of generation after generation
and must surely have outweighed any bad effects which he produced by his
political quislingism.
Thibaw, the last King of Burma, was also far from being a good man. He
was a drunkard, he had five hundred wives--he seems to have kept them
chiefly for show, however--and when he came to the throne his first act
was to decapitate seventy or eighty of his brothers. Yet he did posterity
a good turn by planting the dusty streets of Mandalay with tamarind trees
which cast a pleasant shade until the Japanese incendiary bombs burned
them down in 1942.
The poet, James Shirley, seems to have generalised too freely when he
said that "Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in their
dust". Sometimes the actions of the unjust make quite a good showing
after the appropriate lapse of time. When I saw the Vicar of Bray's yew
tree it reminded me of something, and afterwards I got hold of a book of
selections from the writings of John Aubrey and reread a pastoral poem
which must have been written some time in the first half of the
seventeenth century, and which was inspired by a certain Mrs Overall.
Mrs Overall was the wife of a Dean and was extensively unfaithful to him.
According to Aubrey she "could scarcely denie any one", and she had "the
loveliest Eies that were ever seen, but wondrous wanton". The poem (the
"shepherd swaine" seems to have been somebody called Sir John Selby)
starts off:
Downe lay the Shepherd Swaine
So sober and demure
Wishing for his wench againe
So bonny and so pure
With his head on hillock lowe
And his arms akimboe
And all was for the losse of his
Hye nonny nonny noe...
Sweet she was, as kind a love
As ever fetter'd Swaine;
Never such a daynty one
Shall man enjoy again.
Sett a thousand on a rowe
I forbid that any showe
Ever the like of her
Hye nonny nonny noe.
As the poem proceeds through another six verses, the refrain "Hye nonny
nonny noe" takes on an unmistakably obscene meaning, but it ends with the
exquisite stanza:
But gone she is the prettiest lasse
That ever trod on plaine.
What ever hath betide of her
Blame not the Shepherd Swaine.
For why? She was her owne Foe,
And gave herself the overthrowe
By being so franke of her
Hye nonny nonny noe.
Mrs Overall was no more an exemplary character than the Vicar of Bray,
though a more attractive one. Yet in the end all that remains of her is a
poem which still gives pleasure to many people, though for some reason it
never gets into the anthologies. The suffering which she presumably
caused, and the misery and futility in which her own life must have
ended, have been transformed into a sort of lingering fragrance like the
smell of tobacco-plants on a summer evening.
But to come back to trees. The planting of a tree, especially one of the
long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at
almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it
will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or
evil. A year or two ago I wrote a few paragraphs in TRIBUNE about some
sixpenny rambler roses from Woolworth's which I had planted before the
war. This brought me an indignant letter from a reader who said that
roses are bourgeois, but I still think that my sixpence was better spent
than if it had gone on cigarettes or even on one of the excellent Fabian
Research Pamphlets.
Recently, I spent a day at the cottage where I used to live, and noted
with a pleased surprise--to be exact, it was a feeling of having done good
unconsciously--the progress of the things I had planted nearly ten years
ago. I think it is worth recording what some of them cost, just to show
what you can do with a few shillings if you invest them in something that
grows.
First of all there were the two ramblers from Woolworth's, and three
polyantha roses, all at sixpence each. Then there were two bush roses
which were part of a job lot from a nursery garden. This job lot
consisted of six fruit trees, three rose bushes and two gooseberry
bushes, all for ten shillings. One of the fruit trees and one of the rose
bushes died, but the rest are all flourishing. The sum total is five
fruit trees, seven roses and two gooseberry bushes, all for twelve and
sixpence. These plants have not entailed much work, and have had nothing
spent on them beyond the original amount. They never even received any
manure, except what I occasionally collected in a bucket when one of the
farm horses happened to have halted outside the gate.
Between them, in nine years, those seven rose bushes will have given what
would add up to a hundred or a hundred and fifty months of bloom. The
fruit trees, which were mere saplings when I put them in, are now just
about getting in their stride. Last week one them, a plum, was a mass of
blossom, and the apples looked as if they were going to do fairly well.
What had originally been the weakling of the family, a Cox's Orange
Pippin--it would hardly have been included in the job lot if it had been a
good plant--had grown into a sturdy tree with plenty of fruit spurs on it.
I maintain that it was a public-spirited action to plant that Cox, for
these trees do not fruit quickly and I did not expect to stay there long.
I never had an apple off it myself, but it looks as if someone else will
have quite a lot. By their fruits ye shall know them, and the Cox's
Orange Pippin is a good fruit to be known by. Yet I did not plant it with
the conscious intention of doing anybody a good turn. I just saw the job
lot going cheap and stuck the things into the ground without much
preparation.
A thing which I regret, and which I will try to remedy some time, is that
I have never in my life planted a walnut. Nobody does plant them
nowadays--when you see a walnut it is almost invariably an old tree. If
you plant a walnut you are planting it for your grandchildren, and who
cares a damn for his grandchildren? Nor does anybody plant a quince, a
mulberry or a medlar. But these are garden trees which you can only be
expected to plant if you have a patch of ground of your own. On the other
hand, in any hedge or in any piece of waste ground you happen to be
walking through, you can do something to remedy the appalling massacre of
trees, especially oaks, ashes, elms and beeches, which has happened
during the war years.
Even an apple tree is liable to live for about 100 years, so that the Cox
I planted in 1936 may still be bearing fruit well into the twenty-first
century. An oak or a beech may live for hundreds of years and be a
pleasure to thousands or tens of thousands of people before it is finally
sawn up into timber. I am not suggesting that one can discharge all
one's
obligations towards society by means of a private re-afforestation
scheme. Still, it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an
antisocial act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at the
appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground.
And, if even one in twenty of them came to maturity, you might do quite a
lot of harm in your lifetime, and still, like the Vicar of Bray, end up
as a public benefactor after all.
A NICE CUP OF TEA (1946)
If you look up 'tea' in the first cookery book that comes to hand you
will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few
lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most
important points.
This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays
of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New
Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject
of violent disputes.
When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no
fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would
be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely
controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard
as golden:
First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has
virtues which are not to be despised nowadays--it is economical, and one
can drink it without milk--but there is not much stimulation in it. One
does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone
who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means
Indian tea. Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities--that is,
in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made
in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of
china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea
and enamel pots are worse; though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a
rarity nowadays) is not so bad. Thirdly, the pot should be warmed
beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the
usual method of swilling it out with hot water. Fourthly, the tea should
be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly
to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of
rationing, this is not an idea that can be realized on every day of the
week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak
ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a
little stronger with each year that passes--a fact which is recognized in
the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners. Fifthly, the tea should be
put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to
imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little
dangling baskets under the spout to catch the stray leaves, which are
supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in
considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose
in the pot it never infuses properly. Sixthly, one should take the teapot
to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually
boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on
the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water
that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that
it makes any difference. Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir
it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves
to settle. Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup--that
is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The
breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one's tea is always half
cold--before one has well started on it. Ninthly, one should pour the
cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always
gives tea a sickly taste. Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first.
This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family
in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The
milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I
maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting
the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the
amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does
it the other way round.
Lastly, tea--unless one is drinking it in the Russian style--should be
drunk WITHOUT SUGAR. I know very well that I am in a minority here.
But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy
the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally
reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter,
just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer
tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very
similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.
Some people would answer that they don't like tea in itself, that they
only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar
to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try
drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely
that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.
These are not the only controversial points to arise in connexion with
tea drinking, but they are sufficient to show how subtilized the whole
business has become. There is also the mysterious social etiquette
surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to drink out of your
saucer, for instance?) and much might be written about the subsidiary
uses of tea leaves, such as telling fortunes, predicting the arrival of
visitors, feeding rabbits, healing burns and sweeping the carpet. It is
worth paying attention to such details as warming the pot and using water
that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out of one's
ration the twenty good, strong cups of that two ounces, properly handled,
ought to represent.
BOOKS VS. CIGARETTES
A couple of years ago a friend of mine, a newspaper editor, was
fire watching with some factory workers. They fell to talking about his
newspaper, which most of them read and approved of, but when he asked
them what they thought of the literary section, the answer he got was:
"You don't suppose we read that stuff, do you? Why, half the time you're
talking about books that cost twelve and sixpence! Chaps like us couldn't
spend twelve and sixpence on a book." These, he said, were men who thought
nothing of spending several pounds on a day trip to Blackpool.
This idea that the buying, or even the reading, of books is an expensive
hobby and beyond the reach of the average person is so widespread that
it deserves some detailed examination. Exactly what reading costs,
reckoned in terms of pence per hour, is difficult to estimate, but I have
made a start by inventorying my own books and adding up their total price.
After allowing for variou
s other expenses, I can make a fairly good guess
at my expenditure over the last fifteen years.
The books that I have counted and priced are the ones I have here,
in my flat. I have about an equal number stored in another place, so that
I shall double the final figure in order to arrive at the complete amount.
I have not counted oddments such as proof copies, defaced volumes, cheap
paper-covered editions, pamphlets, or magazines, unless bound up into
book form. Nor have I counted the kind of junky books-old school
text-books and so forth--that accumulate in the bottoms of cupboards.
I have counted only those books which I have acquired voluntarily,
or else would have acquired voluntarily, and which I intend to keep.
In this category I find that I have 442 books, acquired in the
following ways:
Bought (mostly second-hand) 251
Given to me or bought with book tokens 33
Review copies and complimentary copies 143
Borrowed and not returned 10
Temporarily on loan 5
Total 442
Now as to the method of pricing. Those books that I have bought I have
listed at their full price, as closely as I can determine it.
I have also listed at their full price the books that have been given
to me, and those that I have temporarily borrowed, or borrowed and kept.
This is because book-giving, book-borrowing and book stealing more or
less even out. I possess books that do not strictly speaking belong
to me, but many other people also have books of mine: so that the books
I have not paid for can be taken as balancing others which I have paid
for but no longer possess. On the other hand I have listed the review and
complimentary copies at half-price. That is about what I would have paid
for them second-hand, and they are mostly books that I would only have
bought second-hand, if at all. For the prices I have sometimes had to
rely on guesswork, but my figures will not be far out. The costs were
as follows:
� s. d.
Bought 36 9 0
Gifts 10 10 0
Review copies, etc 25 11 9
Borrowed and not returned 4 16 9
On loan 3 10 0
Shelves 2 0 0
Total 82 17 6
Adding the other batch of books that I have elsewhere, it seems that I
possess altogether nearly 900 books, at a cost of �165 15s. This is the
accumulation of about fifteen years--actually more, since some of these
books date from my childhood: but call it fifteen years. This works out
at �11 1s. a year, but there are other charges that must be added in
order to estimate my full reading expenses. The biggest will be for
newspapers and periodicals, and for this I think �8 a year would be
a reasonable figure. Eight pounds a year covers the cost of two daily
papers, one evening paper, two Sunday papers, one weekly review and
one or two monthly magazines. This brings the figure up to �19 1s., but
to arrive at the grand total one has to make a guess. Obviously one often
spends money on books without afterwards having anything to show for it.
There are library subscriptions, and there are also the books, chiefly
Penguins and other cheap editions, which one buys and then loses or
throws away. However, on the basis of my other figures, it looks as
though �6 a year would be quite enough to add for expenditure of this
kind. So my total reading expenses over the past fifteen years have been
in the neighbourhood of �25 a year.
Twenty-five pounds a year sounds quite a lot until you begin to measure
it against other kinds of expenditure. It is nearly 9s. 9d. a week, and
at present 9s. 9d. is the equivalent of about 83 cigarettes (Players):
even before the war it would have bought you less than 200 cigarettes.
With prices as they now are, I am spending far more on tobacco than I do
Fifty Orwell Essays Page 54