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- Herausgeber: Merlin Unwin Books
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
The Best of BB brings together in one volume some of the best writing and illustration by Denys Watkins-Pitchford – better known as BB. This edition has a larger typeface and improved layout from the original which was published to celebrate BB's eightieth birthday in 1985. This beautiful anthology contains extracts from all his books for adults, and few short extracts from this timeless children's books as well. From stories of wild-fowling in the far north of Scotland to night fishing for carp in dark Midland pools, from his famous books about the white goose, Manka the Sky Gipsy, to the Little Grey Men (winner of the Carnegie Medal) there is something here for everyone who loves the British countryside and its wildlife.
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The Best of ‘BB’
ILLUSTRATED BY D.J. Watkins-Pitchford ARCA FRSA
For CC from ‘BB’
‘The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colours, lights, and shades; these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts.’
Contents
Acknowledgements
The extracts included in this anthology are taken from the following books, listed in order of publication:
THE SPORTSMAN’S BEDSIDE BOOK: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1937)
WILD LONE – The Story of a Pytchley Fox: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1939)
MANKA, THE SKY GIPSY – The Story of a Wild Goose: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1939)
THE COUNTRYMAN’S BEDSIDE BOOK: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1941)
THE LITTLE GREY MEN: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1942)
THE IDLE COUNTRYMAN: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1943)
BRENDON CHASE: Hollis & Carter (1944)
THE FISHERMAN’S BEDSIDE BOOK: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1945)
THE WAYFARING TREE: Hollis & Carter (1945)
DOWN THE BRIGHT STREAM: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1948)
THE SHOOTING MAN’S BEDSIDE BOOK: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1948)
CONFESSIONS OF A CARP FISHER: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1950)
LETTERS FROM COMPTON DEVERELL: Eyre & Spottiswoode (1950)
TIDE’S EN DING: Hollis & Carter (1950)
DARK ESTUARY: Hollis & Carter (1953)
THE AUTUMN ROAD TO THE ISLES: Nicholas Kaye (1959)
THE WHITE ROAD WESTWARDS: Nicholas Kaye (1961)
SEPTEMBER ROAD TO CAITHNESS: Nicholas Kaye (1962)
LEPUS THE BROWN HARE: Ernest Benn (1962)
SUMMER ROAD TO WALES: Nicholas Kaye (1964)
A SUMMER ON THE NENE: Kaye & Ward (1967)
LORD OF THE FOREST: Methuen (1975)
RECOLLECTIONS OF A ’LONGSHORE GUNNER: The Boydell Press (1976)
A CHILD ALONE – The Memoirs of ‘BB’ Michael Joseph (1978)
RAMBLINGS OF A SPORTSMAN-NATURALIST: Michael Joseph (1979)
THE NATURALIST’S BEDSIDE BOOK: Michael Joseph (1980)
THE QUIET FIELDS: Michael Joseph (1981)
INDIAN SUMMER: Michael Joseph (1984)
The publishers wish to specially thank Chris Coles for kindly allowing some original BB scraperboards in his ownership to be reproduced in this edition (pp. 19, 111, 159, 241, 251, 256, 258). Two of them, on pages 159 and 256 have probably not been reproduced in book form before.
Illustrations
Indented captions indicate small illustrations which appear between sections; all other captions refer to full-page illustrations.
The small boy in the big bed from A Child Alone
A child alone from A Child Alone
Jogging to the meet from Wild Lone
Bullfinch
Rufus drinking in the woods from Wild Lone
Rufus went along at an easy lope from Wild Lone
The field pond from Countryman’s Bedside Book
The old oak from Down the Bright Stream
Baldmoney carries firewood into Oak Tree House from The Little Grey Men
A little grey man from The Little Grey Men
The ‘Jeanie Deans’ on her way from The Little Grey Men
Baldmoney and Squirrel out for a row from Down the Bright Stream
Ben towing the Wonderbird from Down the Bright Stream
Baldmoney at the controls from Down the Bright Stream
Tracking in the winter woods from Brendon Chase
A fishing man from Ramblings of a Sportsman-Naturalist
A Warwickshire stream from The Naturalist’s Bedside Book
A Welsh trout stream from Summer Road to Wales
The lake at Lambert’s Mill from Letters from Compton Deverell
A buzzard by the burn from The Autumn Road to the Isles
Corner of a carp pond
Three studies of carp from Confessions of a Carp Fisher
The last day of the season from Confessions of a Carp Fisher
What a pond for carp! from Ramblings of a Sportsman-Naturalist
The fowler from The Countryman’s Bedside Book
A young BB on a driven shoot from Tide’s Ending
A little brown round-winged bird from Ramblings of a Sportsman-Naturalist
Over the white-capped hills from Manka, the Sky Gipsy
The tide was beginning to ebb from Manka, the Sky Gipsy
Foxy from Manka, the Sky Gipsy
A moving curtain of snow from Manka, the Sky Gipsy
The white goose in the lead from Tide’s Ending
Then for a fleeting moment you see them from Dark Estuary
Goose shooting
A long, weaving skein from Dark Estuary
Geese circling the field from The Quiet Fields
At my single shot a bird fell plummetwise from Recollections of a ’Longshore Gunner
Dozing in the early summer sun from Lepus The Brown Hare
Lepus from Lepus The Brown Hare
In search of the carnations from Lepus The Brown Hare
Hedge hunting from The Shooting Man’s Bedside Book
In the boathouse from A Child Alone
Dogging on the moors from The Wayfaring Tree
Fotheringhay Church from A Summer on the Nene
Hartley Mauditt from across the carp pond, from The White Road Westwards
Evening camp from White Road Westwards
Kites fighting from Summer Road to Wales
The lone sentinel from September Road to Caithness
Loch Venachar, Trossachs
Goodnight to the Isles from The Autumn Road to the Isles
Deer on the skyline from The Autumn Road to the Isles
Loch a’Chroisg
Curlews
Peeking at a bird’s nest
Grass snake
Hunting hedgehog from The Countryman’s Bedside Book
The path through the beech woods from Letters from Compton Deverell
The harvest of flowers from The Idle Countryman
Mallard
The heron winged his way up the valley. More Stories of the Wild (Ernest Benn: 1977)
Water-lilies from The Idle Countryman
The thrush from The Idle Countryman
Sleeping duck from The Idle Countryman
Oak in Salcey Forest
Full to the brim with succulent wasp grubs from Lord of the Forest
Iris drying its wings from Ramblings of a Sportsman-Naturalist
White admiral
Haunt of the purple emperor from Ramblings of a Sportsman-Naturalist
Iris on a leaf from Ramblings of a Sportsman-Naturalist
Partridge on the winter stubble from The Quiet Fields
A quiet field from Indian Summer
The end of the day from Indian Summer
From the Foreword to A Child Alone
I was born at a fortunate time in a beautiful home set in the heart of the country. Had I arrived on the scene a matter of five or ten years earlier I would not be writing this, which shows what a great gamble life is, and how grossly unfair is the fortune of birth. As a double bonus, for which I take no credit, I had two ‘gifts’: an ability to write, after a fashion, and to paint and draw, with a modest degree of skill. I cannot claim to have made the most of these gifts. With hindsight, I could have done a lot better, but they have enabled me to realise a few of my ambitions so I cannot grumble. I hope the reader will find things of interest in these recollections; I’ve certainly enjoyed writing them and that’s the main thing.
Part One
A CHILD ALONE
The small boy in the big bed
I sometimes wish there were no such things as clocks to give audible reminder of the passing seconds and no such things as calendars or diaries. Then I remember the rising and setting of the sun is a measuring stick; each nightfall, a tick of the clock.
Youth, that glorious dawning does not notice time. We never gave it a thought, and rightly so. To the child, time is non-existent. It is only when we realise our own life must end that it takes on a new significance. That knowledge came as a terrible shock to me. I was seven or eight at the time, and for days a cloud hung over me which has never gone away completely. I have described this realisation in my book A Child Alone.
(From THE QUIET FIELDS)
1.
A CHILD ALONE
The small boy in the big bed was staring at the lighted candles on the dressing-table. The four flames were solemn spires of radiance, their pointed wavy tips were reflected on the backs of the brushes and silver fittings below the oval mirror.
In that seemingly vast room the ceiling was barely illuminated, dark shadows were thrown on the wall behind the dressing-table mirror. The boy could see the tall wooden shutters, which were fitted to all the principal rooms and closed by a black metal bar which fastened into a buttoned catch. Every night at dusk the under-housemaid made a tour of the house, closing those hinged shutters and, in the lower rooms, drawing the heavy velvet curtains.
There was a low stool in front of the dressing-table where his mother sat night and morning to comb her long dark hair – hair so long that she could sit upon it. This ritual brushing and combing was a constant source of interest to the small boy for it took some ten minutes to plait those long tresses in the morning and then to wind them cunningly round the top of the head. A ‘fall’ of dark hair at the back was left to last when it was back-combed and fastened into place with numerous pins. When she had married, her hair had been corn gold.
Alone now in the big room, the boy stared at the four motionless flames and he felt himself becoming afraid, dreadfully afraid, for he was going to die.
He was sorry about this. In his ten years of life he had found it a fascinating existence with new delights and surprises every day, and though he had been assured beyond all doubt that there was an infinitely more beautiful world awaiting him when he departed, the prospect was becoming increasingly alarming.
And the more he stared at those candle flames the greater his fear.
He had been ill and uncomfortable many times before with the usual complaints of babyhood and childhood – horrid colds in the head when he had been unable to breathe and his nose creaked and squeaked when he tried to breathe through it, irritating coughs which had kept him awake at night with exasperating tickles just when he was dropping off into dreamland.
There had been sore throats – really bad ones, for he had tonsils which were so large they almost met at the back of his throat and were liable to ulcerate every winter.
But this new menace was something much more disturbing and quite different. The first symptoms had begun early in the day, soon after breakfast – a little niggling pain in the middle of his stomach above the navel. He hadn’t wanted his breakfast which was unusual for he was a good trencherman. As the day wore on, the pain became more insistent; he felt hot and muzzy in the head.
After tea, his mother put him to bed and took his temperature. The thermometer was put under his armpit and he was told to hold it there. After an interval, his mother took it to the dressing-table and held it close to the candle. He could see the candlelight shining through her hair on to her shoulder.
‘Is it up?’
‘Just a little, dear, nothing to worry about. I expect you caught a chill playing in the garden.’ She looked again at the thermometer, shook it down against her hand, and went out of the room. He could hear her washing it under the tap in the bathroom, and then going down the front stairs.
That was some time ago. The room was very quiet now. The candle flames curtsied, a bead of wax dribbled over and ran down the side of a candlestick.
The boy remembered a story told him by his two brothers who were away at a prep school in Scotland. It concerned a boy called Peters who had died in the Autumn term, how everyone was told to keep very quiet when he was ill and how there had been a special service and prayers in the school chapel. Everyone prayed for Peters but it was no good.
Was he to be like Peters? Perhaps his father would hold a service in the church. The boy began to cry into the pillow – quietly to himself. He dared not look at the candles.
‘What’s the matter, dear?’
His mother had come quietly into the room. She stood by the bed, her cool hand on his forehead.
‘I’m going to die!’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Don’t say such a thing, you silly boy. Of course, you’re not going to die! What an idea!’ She went swiftly from the room.
Then his father was there, the tall handsome man with black curly hair. He sat down on the bed – the boy felt it give to his weight. ‘What’s this nonsense about dying, Tuppeny?’
‘I’m going to die, Father.’
‘Of course, you’re going to die; so is Mother, so am I, and Roger and Engel – we all have to die, but you are not going to, just yet. God has a lot of work for you to do. Tell me where the pain is.’
The boy took the big hand and laid it on the upper part of his stomach. ‘There – just there.’
The big hand pressed gently. ‘I will make it better. Can’t you feel it getting better?’
Somehow the pain lessened. Tuppeny nodded glumly.
‘No more nonsense about dying then. You’ll be better in the morning and I’ll ask Dr Winterbotham to come and have a look at you and he’ll give you some medicine to put you right.’
When he had gone out of the room the pain came back, a nasty vicious pain. It was appendicitis which, at the beginning of this century, was a killer.
My life now, without companions in that large house, was depressing. All that February and March I looked forward to the coming of spring and the return of my brothers from Scotland.
Time to a child seems endless, an obvious statement but so true and so easily forgotten. I mooned about the gardens and played on the swing under the great cedar on the lawn.
A child alone
This fine tree, planted when the house was built, was full of interest, beloved by birds as well as by me. In its lower spreading branches, supported and re-inforced by forked poles against the weight of winter snows, the small birds loved to build their nests: the golden crested wrens, their beautiful little hammock-fashioned nests almost as wonderful as the lichen-decorated nests of chaffinch and goldfinch, and in the dark interlacing crown high overhead, the wood-pigeons built each year, and soothed us with their cooings on summer mornings. Sometimes too, looking upwards as I swung to and fro, I saw a great striped tawny owl regarding me with bent head and huge melancholy eyes, an uncanny unbirdlike creature. Other birds seemed faceless, but the owl had a true face with the eyes to the front and a nose.
Tiring of the swing, I would go into the kitchen garden to talk to old Gunn the gardener, a bearded gnome-like fellow, the only male companion I had apart from my father, who was always too busy composing on the piano to play with me. Or I would go through the little iron gate which led to the orchard where Gunn kept his white geese. One awful day I went down to the orchard gate and all the geese lay dead, their big white motionless bodies strewn around on the green grass. No mark was upon them but Gunn, carrying out a post mortem, found the brilliant berries of the deadly nightshade in the gizzards.
As winter faded into that spring of 1914, I felt strong again and the prospect of the Easter holidays and the return of my brothers gave me a new zest for life. Green points showed on the rows of gooseberry bushes in the kitchen garden and in the lengthening twilights I heard my beloved blackbirds warbling quietly.
The memory of those dark hours so recently left behind, the pain and fear, was over. My brothers would soon be home and my loneliness be ended.
I used to come back from Rugby at weekends, gobble some supper, and sit down to write and write. The story unfolded with a strange and quite frightening intensity – I could not write fast enough, it was as though my hand was guided by an invisible driving force. Time was unimportant. I wrote on and on into the early hours of the morning – page after page.
Once the door of the morning-room opened. My father came in, in his dressing-gown, and wanted to know what I was doing. When I told him I was writing the story of a fox, he said I was wasting my time and that I should be in bed. ‘Your work at Rugby will suffer if you go on like this. Anyway, nobody will publish it!’
I had no advance idea of how my story was to end, no plot whatsoever, but as each page was finished, the story seemed to write itself. I suppose I completed the book in a little under eight weeks – writing mostly at weekends and sometimes in my digs at Rugby. I had it typed professionally and, together with the reprints of my Shooting Man’s Diary, I sent the manuscript off to David Higham, the London agent who had been recommended to me.
The weeks went by with no verdict from Eyre & Spottiswoode, the publishers to which my agent had sent the manuscripts. Then one day, Bob Dickens, the postman, brought me a letter with a London post-mark – a letter I have carefully preserved for it was to me like a gleam of light at the end of a long tunnel. My secret ambition to be a writer as well as artist seemed to be not so impossible after all.
The letter read as follows: ‘Dear Sir, We have received your two manuscripts and if you would care to call at a date convenient to yourself, we may have something to offer you.’
Accordingly, I went up to London to the office of Eyre & Spottiswoode in Great New Street and was shown into the office of Douglas Jerrold and his colleague Mr Cave. To my utter astonishment, they told me that they would like to publish both manuscripts – first The Sportsman’s Bedside Book and Wild Lone afterwards.
I was to do my own illustrations for Wild Lone. I promised them within a couple of months as the publishers wanted Wild Lone for their autumn list. I think I enjoyed doing the illustrations almost as much as the writing – for I seemed to live with Rufus in all his hunting and being hunted, his loves, and his enjoyment of his surroundings, his nights and days. I knew every field, spring, spinney and tree in the neighbourhood of Lamport, every rabbit run almost, so this was not difficult.
(From A CHILD ALONE)
2.
THE SPORTSMAN’S BEDSIDE BOOK
We had a splendid run yesterday from Gibbet wood, and after a hunt of an hour and five minutes ran into our fox near Miller’s spinney, a point of six miles and a splendid line of country.
First… the meet on the village green, below the tall elms. The sun shining like an April morning and a bustle of cars and horse boxes, grooms and second horsemen, pink and white, black and white; as busy as an ant’s nest under the trees. Across the road and the village green, blue shadows patterning, and a host of foot people, all moving hither and thither, laughing and chattering. High in the elm tops the twiggy bundles of the rooks’ nests, and jackdaws busy about the holes as though they were contemplating nest building at mid-winter. Then comes the ring of hooves and the sound of hounds being called by name, and here they come with their huntsman, through the interlacing shadows; fleeting shadows that turn for a second the vivid pink of the huntsman’s coat to a cool rose red. The hounds, friendly and nuzzling, cropped ears as soft as velvet to the touch. Orator I see, strong of loin and straight of back, with many a straight-necked fox to his credit, making acquaintance, in gentlemanly fashion, with a small child hardly a head taller than himself.
The waving sterns are like peeled willow wands through which the breeze is playing. Some hounds sit apart in contemplation, happily smiling to themselves. Others are scrounging on the chance of a tit-bit; and one, Emperor I think, but I cannot be sure from here, is investigating the roots of one of the elms, where he eventually leaves a note.
With every moment more riders come to swell the whirlpool of colour, this open green space is as busy as a springtime pond where frogs are spawning. For every road and lane is filled with horsemen, cars, and people, all converging to the same spot. The wheeling daws must have a wonderful view, circling in the sunlight, appearing like metal-clad birds as they turn. Below them this hub of changing colour and every radiating road dotted with people and cars, drawn by some mysterious impulse to the spot.
Jogging to the meet
And then, still taking the wheeling jackdaws’ view, a change comes about. The stream begins to flow down the village street (where, in the June evenings, the swifts scream past the thatched eaves), a stream narrow at the head, a pink spot at the fore, the waving sterns filling the lane from brim to brim, and then the mass of the field behind.
A mile away Gibbet wood dreams in a false security in the pale sunshine; a flock of wood-pigeons feeding in the green fields below is unaware of the approaching host. Within the wood the birds are going about their daily business and two ‘hairies’ are peacefully grazing near the rusty beech hedge, hair over eyes, and their sturdy legs, wide like sailors’ trousers, matted with earth.
One of the wood-pigeons on the outskirts of the flock has raised its head, listening, and his white collar shows in the sunlight. The two hairies have likewise stopped their tearing of the grass and are waiting with ears a-cock by the side of the russet hedge.
High above Gibbet wood a kestrel is crucified against the soft blue of the sky. It wheels and slides away, downwards and slanting, for it sees the river flooding towards the wood. A ragged rascal of a magpie goes away, with wavering flight and backward glance over his white shoulder; Gibbet wood is uneasy this lovely morning.
Charles James slipped out from the north corner, where the crab apples lie rotting green in the ditch, and the hollow pipes of hemlock stand stiffly and sharp. And then hounds were running in the glorious morning, exultant and musical.
The pigeons fly away as a blue cloud of smoke drifts from a gun. I can see them now against the purple tones of the wood. Every gateway is a dam, holding for a fleeting minute, but unavailingly, the surging of the torrent. With the grace of sable swallows skimming a roof tree, some of the field take the beech hedge. One man on a big chestnut takes a nasty toss and rolls into the ditch, and for a moment lies with a horrid inertness, his horse galloping on with swinging stirrup and staring foolish eyes. The nearest horsemen wheel about and come to the figure, stirring now like a drunken insect in the ditch.
On, on past Dingle mill and the osier beds… rose-red in the sunlight – across the glittering Marly brook as it winds through intimate little meadows, oak studded and remote, haunts of otter and moorhen. Across the main road to the gorse on the hill and here there is a check of some minutes, and we fear he has gone to ground. But the earth was well stopped – Jim Corfield will get drunk on this – and so to the village of Hinton Hine with its squat little church sitting like a hen partridge on its nest, and the white-haired rector watching from the kitchen garden.
In the park behind we lost him for a space but he was ‘halloaed’ away by a roadman, and for the first time I saw the fox, muddy of brush and with hanging head, crossing, for an instant, a gap in a tall bullfinch. How strange that it is so seldom the majority of the field ever views the fox from start to finish! Led it seems by an invisible thread, the whole mass of the field is drawn along, over hill and down dale, as though they had gone completely mad.
The end was sad, and I saw it and was troubled. The main body of the pack were running down one side of the hedge when the fox doubled back. But Orator and two trusty henchmen had elected to go through to the other side and met the fox as it doubled. The fox saw the hounds running in at him, and slipped like a stoat through a gap between two stout laid thorns. And there he met his end, swiftly it is true, and gamely withal. The mass of hounds engulfed him and turned, then the sterns were waving in a ring and a minute later there floated back a trembling note of horn music.
Far away, by Gibbet wood, the hairies were again at graze, giving no thought for what had passed nor caring where the hunt had gone. The winter sward was poached and cut by the hoof marks of the host, gashes in the hedge and broken sticks showed where flying hooves had caught and blundered, and a big speckled thrush was pulling out a worm that had come up inside a hoof mark to see what all the thunder was about.
And the gentleman on the big chestnut, with his top hat over his ears, was drinking something out of a flask by Miller’s spinney. His little finger was broken and it was painful.
Wild Lone was now going into new editions and reprints. I began to get letters and visits from people who had found the story absorbing; some even visited the ‘Rufus’ country to trace the way he ran before the hounds and the woods he loved so well.
To begin with, I was puzzled by this, but I think its attraction lay in the setting of the story and the feel of the seasons, the mists of autumn and the heats of summer.
In my tale, I had described the tragic loss of some of the Pytchley pack when they went through the ice at Fawsley Park – in pursuit of ‘my’ Rufus, of course. This actually happened, and a stone was erected in the park with the names of the drowned hounds engraved upon it. When Fawsley fell into decay, the stone was hidden in a tangled shrubbery but I found it and copied the names of the hounds from it.
Some years after the publication of Wild Lone, an enthusiastic ‘BB’ fan discovered the stone and it is now erected by the huntsman’s house at the Pytchley Kennels at Brixworth – a fitting last resting place.
(From A CHILD ALONE)
3.
WILD LONE
Mid-October in Coldhanger… pearly mornings and mushrooms, dying hues of leaf and fern, mists coming up from the river, and longer nights for hunting! Rufus was well grown now; a lithe, clean-run fox without a trace of mange.
In the woodland rides the gold-red leaves lay deep, and with every sigh of air, more would tick and waver down as though loath to join the earth. Most beautiful of all were the pink, almost incandescent, fires of the sloe bushes, and the vivid autumn fungi that grew round the bases of the big trees.
The field maples flamed a lovely salmony orange; the exquisitely cut leaves, borne on the slender pinkish stems, seemed to mock the paintings of a Japanese artist, and the ditches were full to over-flowing with millions of such little beauties, each one a picture in itself. The trees that already showed their bare bones revealed also new and hidden loveliness, yet men went about this world and were blind to it all.
There was a new exciting mystery in the woods, too; nay, in every little spinney, wherever trees gathered together. The lower veils of foliage had not yet dropped, but let through the light in a magical way, and the earth, strewn with the damp fresh-fallen leaves, took on a new smell, sweeter far than the rarest incense. This rusty wealth and range of colour blended with an enchanting rareness the hues of the fox’s coat as he padded about his secret ways.
To a black pool in the centre of the woods, some wild duck came in the evenings. The pool was not deep, though it appeared so because the water was so dark and peaty-looking, due to unburdening of many autumns such as this, generations of trees shedding their leaves into its mirror. To this pool came a drake mallard, a duck and three youngsters born in April by Wildwood pool, four miles away across the fields. Every evening, when the smoke from the cottage chimneys was sending up soft blue signals, they circled the wood and came in to this dark water, and Rufus knew of this arrangement. For three nights he had lain in the dying brambles close to the water’s edge at the upper end of the pond. From this ambush he had caught moorhens, young ones, as they quested about on the black evil-smelling ooze, in which a bullock would have sunk to his middle.
On the fourth night Rufus went again and hid in his favourite ambush. For a long while nothing came but a cock bullfinch that had been piping in the maple bushes, and he came for a sip before going to bed. He was a lovely little bird, with a breast the colour of some of the hawthorn leaves and a cap as blue as a crow’s wing. ‘Wit, Wit!’ he flew up again, and only his white rump was visible as he flew away through the dark thickets.
‘Hoo, hoo, hoohoo!’ the owls awoke, mothy and with mothy eyes, birds of the touchwood and the night.
A wee mouse rustled, ever so quietly, making no more sound than a little brown sprite, but Rufus heard it and his eyes took on a watchful expression and both ears cocked right forward. He sat up slowly with bent head, staring through the veil of bramble leaves to where the maple bushes formed a fairy screen. But the mouse disappeared, and the fox lay down again and resumed his watch on the pond.
Whenever the shadows began to fall in the woods, the blackbirds made much bother, zinking like a pair of rusty shears.
Sometimes they had cause for alarm, especially when the owls awoke. There was nothing they liked more than teasing the owls awoke. There was nothing they liked more than teasing the owls, and they drove the poor big-headed things to distraction.
All kinds of sounds came to Rufus as he lay under the brambles, and all manner of smells, all far beyond the range of human ear and nose. He could smell a rabbit that was hopping along beyond a fallen tree-trunk on the other side of the pond; he could smell the yellow-lipped sinister fungi that grew on the underside of the fallen tree. He could recognise a moorhen scent coming from the rushes on his right, and a dead water-rat was lying on the edge of the mud, where a little trickle of water fed the pool. He could smell other things, the scents of different plants and trees, and he sorted them all out with a twitch of his nose.
Bullfinch
He could hear a beast scratching itself against a rubbing post outside the wood (the post was all shiny on one side and had given pleasure to countless tough hides now long perished) and the men talking over their spades in the village allotments right on the other side of the hill.
And all about there was a pattering, as of little furtive feet. This was the sound of the falling leaves, millions of them, falling all over the wood in a ceaseless flurry of yellow and amber snow. Whenever a breath of wind came over the hill the rustling would grow, and it sounded as if fairy armies were on the march. This pattering would have made a man uneasy if he had lain there long, but Rufus knew them for lifeless things.
Far singing came to him. It was a party of cyclists on the Harboro’ road. They were bent over their handlebars with eyes fixed on the ground, blind to all beauty of earth and sky. They were singing a sexy American jazz song, ‘D’you love your baby like I love ma baby, or do you simply say, Meet me at twilight, little Miss Eyebright, then that’ll be OK.’ One of the cyclists was a beefy girl, and her bare lobster-tinted thighs worked like pistons. How could they guess a little red fox heard them, as he lay under the pink bramble leaves by a wood pool!
The sounds died away, and then a cow began to call, a faint hornlike sound like a man calling a moose.
Across the pool a big white owl suddenly flew, quite silently, and two blackbirds chased it. One, in its excitement, let fall a white spot into the water and the consequent rings took quite a minute to subside. Losing their quarry, the excited blackbirds came back into the holly tree close by, and one of them, dropping to the leaves for a moment, saw this new enemy. For a minute it sat there, tail slightly up and its privetberry eye fixed on the fox. Then, with a scream, ‘zink, zink, zink,’ it flew up into the tree and the other blackbird saw the fox as well. Both birds hopped low in the holly, scolding and shaking the leaves. Before very long, a missel-thrush – a big handsome masculine bird, that feared no man nor beast, and who built in the most absurdly naked positions with such infinite scorn – came and joined the blackbirds, and his long, drawn-out rasping call was louder than the blackbirds’. As Rufus showed no sign of life they soon went away. There was no fun in teasing a thing that would not move, and perhaps the fox was dead.
‘Whi, whi, whi, whi,’ the sound of pinions circling! Rufus became alert, his eyes glowing and tail twitching ever so slightly. The circling mallards kept on coming round and round past the holly, trying to make up their minds to land. With exasperating indecision they kept this up for two minutes; then the drake, feeling perhaps a little tired of the business, landed with a splash in mid-pond. Immediately he turned round, backing water, his neck very straight and rigid, and a semi-smile on his face, which was not really a smile at all. The other mallards immediately landed, too, and for a full minute they took stock of their surroundings. Then they began to swim slowly about, preening, questing the weeds and mud, and feeling more and more at home. But they did not come near the holly.
In the centre of the pond was a stump of a tree, very green because fresh grass was sprouting on it, and the edge of the stump was quite shiny, trodden by the feet of resting waterfowl. A few grey feathers were there too; it was an ideal preening place. The drake mallard climbed on to this with sturdy greenish-yellow legs, the colour of the rushes, and stretching his head right out and raising the feathers on his head he gave himself a good shake, just as a farmyard duck will do. Several small feathers dropped out of his person. He preened carefully, first his madder breast and then his tail, twisting round and pulling at his white outer tail-feathers.
Rufus drinking in the woods
There drifted across to Rufus the most appetising smell of wild duck and with every exertion of the preening mallard this scent seemed redoubled. It was agony for Rufus. He was ravenous, and he felt much as a hungry man would feel if a steaming turkey were put before him, and he were unable to touch it. The saliva dribbled out of the corner of his mouth, but he never moved. After a lengthy toilet, the mallard pushed off into the pond, passing some remarks in a low, watery voice to his duck. They swam about together, throwing the beads of moisture over their backs with evident abandon. But they did not come near the holly.
In the water was the reflection of a star, and soon a wondrous thing appeared. Over the tops of the thick crowding trees, rose a misty glow, and soon the moon, red and large, swam clear – the Hunter’s Moon. It was reflected in the water, not as a whole, but in little shaking pieces as the ducks swam about.
Rufus was puzzled at this light and was at first a little nervous, but he soon thought of nothing but ‘duck’ again, and how to capture one. The young mallards now landed on the muddy margin of the pond and began to waddle about, and soon the old birds joined them. But they did not come near the holly.
Suddenly all heads were lifted, fox and ducks alike. Something was coming up to the pond, for a stick had cracked. It was some lumbering person who did not care a damn how much noise he made. The mallard sprang into the air, ‘quacking, quacking,’ and Rufus heard their voices die away over the wood. The old boar badger came through the bushes, and drank noisily at the pond. Rufus discreetly went over the bank and trotted down through the blackthorn thickets. He left the cover of Coldhangar, and went over the Market Harboro’-Leicester road, heading for Old Poors Gorse.
This was a paradise for foxes; indeed, as far as Rufus was concerned, too much so, as the place was full of them, mostly youngsters of the year. Acres of impenetrable thorn, beloved by the bullfinch and nightingale, and, in season, starred with tender dog-roses and sweet honeysuckle; it was a wilderness of joy. Rare birds, too, were found there, and the red-backed shrike impaled his beetles on the sharp thorns. The great round moon, now no longer red-faced, was clear and bright, and in the hollows, the mist lay like dense white blankets, cutting off cleanly at the base all herbage that was of any height.
Rufus went along at an easy lope
Rufus went along at an easy swinging lope, crossing the metals above Lamport station, and stopping for a moment to gaze at the light of the distant signal. In the signal box Robertson was reading the account of a gentleman who had won four thousand pounds in a ‘penny pool’, and his brain reeled at the idea of such wealth. It was cosy in the cabin, and an alarm clock ticked loudly. Below, behind the ‘Box,’ he kept his fowls, white leghorns, which were the apple of his eye. He had housed them in an old rabbit hutch, until what time he could get some more wood to make them a better home. Rufus, two hundred yards up the line, smelt FOWL, and he came to investigate. The sight of the lighted signal cabin alarmed him, but after watching a while and finding all was still, he came up to the fowl-house.
The smell of fowl was strong and Rufus was very hungry. Moreover, he had missed the duck up in Coldhangar, and he had grown somewhat rash. He began to dig under the wall of the coop, sending the earth back between his legs. Some of the fowls awoke and began to make remarks. Rufus dug on until he could get his head into the hole. The hens began to complain querulously.…
Up in the cabin Robertson was nodding by the stove. The paper lay on the floor, and a mouse was eating the canary seed under the hanging cage. The moon shone white on the slated roof of the signal box… and down below, something was digging in the inky shadow. Rufus was definitely ‘getting on’. He could now get his shoulders into the hole, between the edge of the wood and the chicken-saturated earth. One final squeeze and he was inside. A second to look round and then… In an instant, pandemonium. Fluttering hens, screams and clucks, white bodies banging and bustling. Rufus seized the nearest hen by the neck, and squeezed under the edge of the wood. The hen proclaimed loudly, and vehemently, and Mr Robertson heard.
In the corner of the Box he kept a ‘four-ten’, which he used for shooting rats and sparrows that came to raid the chicken run for corn. He seized the gun and rammed a cartridge home, then he flung wide the door. In the moonlight he saw a trail of white feathers leading to the hedge, and something like a brown shadow with a white flapping head was moving by the fence.
BANG! A little cone of red flame jetted against the tarred wall of the signal box, and a singing cloud of lead rattled about Rufus. One pellet stung him on the bottom, and he dropped the fowl and fled up the rails.
Inside the fowl-house there was great to-do, and some of the leghorns were still banging about hysterically.
Rufus followed the railway until he came to the distant signal, then cut across the Draughton fields for Shortwood, still hungry and with injured pride. Passing a flock of sheep, that all bunched and first ran away, and then came trotting after, he went over the wide, rolling fields of Wold. He put up a hare on top of the wolds, but after chasing for a few yards, resumed his trail. A fox will not course his game for any distance. He came to deserted Faxton, the lonely forgotten village in the fields, with its jackdaw-haunted elms and owl-ridden belfry. It lay ghostly in the moonlight, and some black-and-white cattle were rubbing themselves against the posts round the churchyard wall. In a rough, ant-hill-strewn field beyond, he stalked a watchful peewit. This was a great field for them, and in the spring they bred there, but they were very hard to catch. In the moonlight he had not got a chance, and the bird arose ‘pee-weeing’ keenly, and waking others which were encamped among the ant-hills. He entered Old Poors Gorse and hunted it all through without result. But near the hedge he found a rabbit in a snare, partly eaten. This he devoured and, as dawn was greying, he laid up in a dense thicket of blackthorn and went to sleep….
I had lessons each day from my father – arithmetic, Latin (quite useless), some French and history, and twice a week in summer, I went to the house of Mr Abbott, the village schoolmaster, who lived in a little cottage beyond some turkey oak trees in the village of Hanging Houghton.
Mr Abbott was a big man from Derbyshire with a very precise way of speaking – a mannerism which fascinated me. He wrote a fine longhand, like a bank clerk’s. He gave me a book on the English countryside illustrated by coloured pictures – one of which I copied, a picture of an open-air market. He paid me seven and sixpence for it – my first commission. It was quite a good copy too. I had already begun to show signs of artistic talent. Both my father and mother could draw well and much of my time was spent with brush and pencil. But most of all I loved to get away, rambling about the fields around the rectory. My favourite walk was beside the fishponds which were visible from the windows of the house.
Of all the most favoured haunts for me were the three pools, the fishponds, in the valley below the house. I have written of them in The Countryman’s Bedside Book.
(From A CHILD ALONE)
4.
THE COUNTRYMAN’S BEDSIDE BOOK
I stood tonight at the top of the little marsh on my shoot, waiting for duck.
The long hot summer is over, many of the bushes were beginning to turn colour and a few pale slivers had dropped on to the boggy margin of the brook, others had fallen in and been carried away downstream. The dry weather has shrunk the water courses and most of the field ponds are dry. As I waited there I thought of all the sunshiny hours we have had during the last twelve weeks and how the glorious rays must have poured on to this quiet little backwater in the meadows. There was a strand of sheep’s wool caught on the wire of the fence and above it leaned a twisted crab tree laden with fruit, bright green apples, some of them blushing a clear pink on the side which had faced the sun. A great many had fallen into the ditch and had rolled together into a solid mass so that from a distance they showed up very distinctly. What a pity it is that the crab is so sour to the taste. I picked one of the red apples and bit it, surely with that red skin it must be sweet! Yet its juices dried up my mouth, though there was a wild tang about it which was not unpleasant.
Out in the mead, about forty yards from the hedge, grows a may tree. Like the crab it leans at an angle and the ground beneath is bare of grass, rammed hard by the feet of cattle and horses, quite a little hollow sunk below the level of the surrounding sward.
On examination the trunk has a definite gloss on one side and the tough bark is badly worn, polished like an old gunstock from constant friction of rubbing beasts. This tree is a natural ‘cow comfort’, which is the rustic name for trees and posts used by cattle. Here and there a few wisps of coarse hair are caught in the crevices of the bark and the chaffinches will hunt these out next spring. Horsehair is a favourite nest lining for many birds.
On the hot days the cattle stand for hours at a time beneath the tree, rubbing their hairy flanks against the iron-barked stem. How did this tree grow and survive, out in the open field, why was it not bitten off in its early years by cattle and sheep? A few of its upper leaves are now a beautiful rose red, later all will drop and collect in the hollow beneath and the fieldfares will come for the red berries.
All summer long the wind has whispered in the leaves of the willow, it has rustled the tall poplars yonder and the bright brooklet has chuckled onwards, every hour, every day, every year, on its journey to the remote sea.
What millions of gallons must have flowed away, a whole ocean of water. Whence came it? Surely not from the condensation of the clouds, all those tons and tons of water! There is no high ground about here, no lofty hill which would attract the rain and break the clouds.
Not so long ago the cuckoo’s chime was ringing from coppice to hedge and all the meads were white with hawthorn snow; shy warblers swung on the willow wands, timorous moorhens have quested along the boggy margin of the brook, whitethroats have built in the nettle brake by the fence gap. There has been nobody to see, only the clouds have gone over and perhaps a passing shower pattered in the night.
This quiet angle of the meadow was a beautiful place, untidily perfect after Nature’s own way. What a jolly time the water voles must have had, plopping in and out among the sturdy sedge swords whose sharp edges can cut the incautious hand! The wild iris have bloomed in their season and no-one has come to gather them; wild animals, little wild animals, have come to drink in the grey before the dawn.
Swallows and martins have come, gathering plaster for their homes built in shed and under eave, walking awkwardly on their puny feathered feet, flying away with wee balls of mud in their bills, twittering happily despite the fact of their mouths being so full.
So, thought I, must there be untold millions of little meadows such as this all over the kingdom where nobody comes near all summer long, save birdnesting boys of a Sunday.
The field pond
Now the warblers have gone and the leaves are going, the autumn dusk steals down the valley and the sun sinks low.
Whatever man can do so will it always be; this stream will run onwards to the sea, the simple plovers camp on yonder rushy slope. Peace here always and the passionless march of the years will go on.
I went back to see if the stream* had changed much. It flowed as strongly as ever, looping on itself with its bays and re-entrants, its purling shillets, its deep brown pools. The old oak was still there with the dark and shadowed hollows under its roots where the spring and autumn floods had washed away the soil and gravel.
Surely, if gnomes there be, here was their dwelling place! Here they lived unseen, unknown, more wary than any four-legged or two-legged creature, never showing themselves to mortal gaze, only to their wild neighbours which were their kinsmen.
So I thought up a story of four little creatures, Sneezewort, Dodder, Cloudberry and Baldmoney who lived under that oak and how, years before, Cloudberry, the restless, more adventurous gnome, had gone up the Folly Brook to find its source, and had never come back. Then his brothers decide to go in search of him. It was an unusual fairy story – a fairy story without any hint of the ‘tinsel fairy’ rubbish which is only fit for toddlers. The sturdy self-sufficient little men hunt for game, eat fish, and make their coats from moleskins.
I did all the illustrations for the book, which I called The Little Grey Men, with decorated capitals to the chapters and heads and tails.
Shortly after it appeared in 1942, I was dumbfounded one day at Rugby to have a note from the Headmaster complimenting me on winning the Carnegie Medal, which is awarded for the most outstanding children’s book of the year. This was the first I heard of the award; Hugh Lyon must have seen the announcement in the Press. I had to go up to London to receive the award and make a speech to the large assembled audience, an ordeal I was glad to get over with.
(From A CHILD ALONE)
*The Nene Brook at Lamport
5.
THE LITTLE GREY MEN
It was one of those days at the tail end of the winter when spring, in some subtle way, announced its presence. The hedges were still purple and bristly, the fields bleached and bitten, full of quarrelling starling flocks; but there was no doubt about it, the winter was virtually over and done with for another seven months. The great tide was on the turn, to creep so slowly at first and then to rise ever higher to culminate in the glorious flood, the top of the tide, at midsummer.
