The Phoenix Generation (34 page)
Read The Phoenix Generation Online
Authors: Henry Williamson
There was a note from Brother Laurence. He wrote that Phillip had undertaken a great physical task on the land, but this was good, because it would help to clarify and simplify a
greater spiritual task that lay before him: a clarifying of values that the peoples of the Western world needed.
Even in the terror of ordinary living we are wrung and rent and scorched and temporarily destroyed by the emotions whether of love or hate, anger or ecstasy, fear or resentment, but we can have all purged by the pity and terror of great art, and thereby find ourselves, like the phoenix, living in the spirit once more. You know this, you always have known this, and with this knowledge you have a strong spirit that will lead you past calamity, derision and despair to the Faith.
All great art is grown out of the predicament of man. All creative effort destroys the peace of the flesh, the warring of the flesh, only to clear the way for the flowering of the spirit of creation. D. H. Lawrence knew this, while he rode on the crest of the wave of death. Shakespeare knew this, and Beethoven, Bach, Michelangelo, Mozart, Homer, and all the major poets. You know it, you have always known it. You cannot escape the presence of these values, the presence of what is sometimes called the Holy Ghost.
It was a winter of grief and dismay in a world decaying. An issue of Birkin’s weekly newspaper arrived from Piers in London. In big black type STAND BY THE KING.
Under the winter stars of the western hemisphere many voices were encircling the world. Among them was that of the abdicating King of England. His voice was preceded by another voice—the same gruff, wreathing voice which had announced the results of the General Election through loudspeakers during half the night at Mr. Gordon Selfridge’s party.
“This is Windsor Castle. His Royal Highness Prince Edward.”
Phillip wondered if the voice that followed would break; but he knew it would not. Three—four—five words. Then the voice had to pause to gather fortitude, like a man alone climbing a Himalayan Peak.
Afterwards Rosamund, sitting on her father’s knee and
examining
a half-crown, asked what the words meant round the head of the old King.
“George the Fifth by the grace of God King of Great Britain.”
“And the other side, Dad?”
“Defender of the Faith and Emperor of India.”
“Why has the new King gone, Dad?”
“He grew up on the battlefields.”
*
And now nearly time to pack up and pull out for East Anglia. But first he must see his father off from Southampton on his world
cruise. Richard had bought a ticket in the
Arandora
Star,
together with a new wardrobe of clothes, including his first dress suit.
“It’s rather a tumbledown house on the farm, Father. Lucy and the children will remain in a Dorset cottage she has rented until I’ve got it more or less in order.”
“Will you be on your own, old man?”
“Ernest, Lucy’s brother, may come with me.”
“Well, I hope you won’t lose on the land what you’ve made from your books. Au revoir, Phillip. Thank you for coming to see me off. I’ll write to you.”
Ernest said to Lucy, “I suppose I may as well go with Phil, as remain here.” He added, “At least until I hear from Fiennes and Tim about joining them in Australia.”
Richard wrote, while lying nauseated in his cabin during the crossing of the Bay of Biscay,
Never
again,
old
chap.
I
am
returning
overland
from
Gibraltar.
I
will
never
find
my
sea-legs
at
my
age.
“One more for the community, I suppose, Lulu. He’ll make a good gamekeeper. There’s a lot of wild birds on the farm, also a duck decoy.”
The gamekeeper didn’t last long. At Gibraltar the sun was shining, the gale had abated. Richard made friends with other passengers. A postcard of the Rock, with a large monkey staring in the foreground, said,
I
am
a
new
man,
this
is
a
wonderful
life.
How Mother would have laughed!
*
The Abelines had gone, masons’ trowels rang in the Abbey, the Yacht Club was empty, yellow willow leaves lay resting on the bines of crowsfoot endlessly weaving in the cold spring-water of Flumen Monachorum.
Phillip and Ernest had arrived with a caravan, but owing to the cold weather were living in what was called the Old Manor. At night the east winds echoed down the halls and passages, for the seventeenth-century house was ruinous in one wing. Indeed, the entire building was in a condition nearing dilapidation.
From 1915 to 1918 it had been occupied by soldiers.
Compensation
for damageâfloors pulled up and doors taken off hinges, panelling ripped off for firewood; smashed plaster, broken lavatory pans, fallen ceilingsâhad not been used to restore fabric or interior. The owner, believing that England was finished, and that the future of the white man lay in Africa, had departed with all his capital, to farm in Kenya.
The Old Manor and its lands had been bought by a group of local speculatorsâclerks and lesser tradesmen of the decaying coastal town of Crabbe. What remained of the interior was gutted. Doors, panelling, fire-backs, fire-dogs, the chimney-piece of the main hall, an Italian plaster ceiling were sold. When Phillip bought the property the Old Manor had been standing empty for a decade.
Phillip's billet, as he called it, was in one of the smaller rooms of the second or top floor. This room had been chosen because of a small open hearth, upon which had been heaped, when he first saw it, the remains of many seasons' jackdaw-nests. Sticks filled the fire-place, sheep's-wool, grasses, even paper spread out across the floor of heavy oak planking. When all this rubbish had been stuffed into the hearth, on the principle of kill or cure a match was applied one night; smoke poured out, dimming the stars. Flames in the chimney thundered. They had pails of water ready for any falling carbon crusts.
These were soon dropping, to slide red-hot across the floor. Ernest dealt with them expertly with a wet mop. The accretion of wood-oil and soot was thick, probably from oak-wood smoke
at the beginning of the century. At one moment Phillip feared that the house might burn down, so great was the thunder of flames in the chimney. While Ernest remained on guard with his mop and pails of water, Phillip hurried by the light of an electric torch to a passage window whence the north wing stack could be seen.
Red flames arose from one twisted-brick chimney, sultry in billowing smoke. As he watched the flames became more urgent. They began to stab the darkness, they were changing colour to pale blue and lilac, there was no more smoke. The chimney was a huge stub-exhaust of a bomber aircraft at night. He thought of the rockets the Germans were experimenting with, some attached to racing cars. He had seen a group of young men in a forest clearing while going round labour camps with Martin a year ago. Martin had gone past without looking, saying, “We have seen nothing, yes?” Phillip had considered himself to be a guest, he had not mentioned it to anyone in England.
While he watched, the pale flames rose higher and there was a burst of sparks which swirled and fell with red fragments. And at that moment there was a banging on the heavy oak door below. He remained still. The banging came again, together with faint cries. He waited. The fire in the chimney burnt out, only a spark now and again whirled away in the darkness. Then there came an irregular tolling of the courtyard bell.
“What the hell is all this about,” Phillip said to Ernest who had opened his door.
“Ah,” said Ernest, and closed the door.
“Someone in the village must have thought the bloody house was on fire. I wish to God it was. Not really. It doesn't belong to me, but to white owls, and bats,” and Phillip went down the stone stairs and through the kitchen to the courtyard door.
A shadow stood there. “Hullo,” it said, and then cleared its throat. “I know you, but you don't know me,” it continued. “I thought I'd see how you're getting along. Everyone in the district knows me, I live in the yard by the Cross.”
“Do come in. My name is Maddison.”
“I know that.”
“Oh.”
“I saw your house was on fire, so I thought I'd come and insure it for you.”
“That was kind of you.”
“No-one need know I didn't sign the cover note this morning. I'm an agent, you see.”
Phillip went into the courtyard and looked up. “I rather think the fire's out now, but thank you for coming round so promptly.”
“That's all right. I like to help a neighbour if I can. Everyone hereabouts knows me. I'm Horatio Bugg. I don't need to work, you know, I do it for a hobby. I live on the interest of my money. Your bell rope is rotten, do you know that? I can supply you with a good second-hand rope if you like. I've had it some time. I bought a lot at the auction of Yarwich old prison before it was pulled down and made into flats by the Labour government, robbing the savings of decent people to give it to those who had lived in slums all their lives. They only use ropes once to hang anyone, did you know that? They're as good as new.”
“Well, thank you for coming. I'll let you know if I want a rope to hang myself with.”
After playing the torch around the kitchen, rather in the mood of a criminal returning to the scene of his crime, Phillip went upstairs. He felt near to despair. That great rusty range, put in what once was an open hearth thirty years before, when a dozen servants were employed in the houseâthat horrible old hot-water tank, resting on a diagonal beam, and going up to the ceilingâthe pipes solid with lime deposits. Mere fossils. All to be taken down and an entirely new system put in. And a water-softening plant. Then the electric light wiring was perished, where it hadn't been pulled out of the wall plaster in which some genius had buried it. Everything about the place tumbled down, or rottingâthe coach-house with its conked-out oil-engine, said by Ernest to be one of the first ever made. That enormous flywheel weighed about half a ton. Ernest had tried to draw the piston. It had seized in the cylinder, the skirt probably cracked, the rings broken. Value as old iron, eighteen pence a hundredweight.
He wandered into the larders, then to what had been the
servants
' hall. Sweating flagstone floors. Damp brick floors of pantry, larder, apple-room, scullery, outhouses. Narrow Jacobean bricks, worth something as antiques for some rich business man wanting to build in the country, according to the agent, who had had the farm on his books for several years.
He flashed his torch-light on hanging, obsolete spider-webs, rat-holes, fungoid growths on damp wood.
Ernest was in his room, reading
The
Model
Engineer
by the light of an oil-lamp. He had fitted out his room as a workshop. There was a small treadle lathe held by carriage bolts screwed into the oak floor. He had bored holes first, and filled them with soft wood,
without permission. It was a good floor, or had been. Still, he had made a fair job of the lorry they had bought for ten pounds at the diddecais' field. The diddecais were not true gipsies, or Romanies, but odd family groups dealing in scrap metal. Ernest, having repaired the lorry, was making a model of a traction engine, to scale.
“Someone wanted to insure us against fire.”
“Ah,” replied Ernest, examining a slide-rule.
“He also tried to sell me some old rope.”
“Ah.”
Phillip went back to his room, and turned up the flame of his copper oil-lamp. Greyish-black lumps of wood-tar lay on the oak planks of the floor. Ernest might have swept them up. Odd lumps were still dropping down, perhaps he had been unfair to Ernest. He swept the floor and then brought in a wooden box, filled with selected twigs, to light a fire. The box had been taken outside for safety. A cord of logs, tied-in at each end by header-stretcher, stood against the far wall. When the kindling was alight, he built logs around it, leaving air-spaces. The flames climbed. No smoke came out, thank God. The flames rose higher. Still no smoke billowing out. The chimney was clear of two decades of jackdaws' nests.
He settled almost happily to write.
My farm is known locally as the Bad Lands. It consists of woodland, meadow, river, and arable beside the North Sea. This country is the homeland of the wild goose, pheasant, partridge, and, in one great park some miles to the north of my holding, a flock of wild turkeys. It is an arable country, growing malting barley, sugar beet, oats, wheat, and hay for fattening bullocks in winter boxes in the yards after grazing on the marshes in summer. My house and my farm premises are near ruinous. My farm, like many others in this bankrupt granary of East Anglia, is mortgaged to a bank.
The villages along this coast are peopled by a mixture of racial types. Dark South Folk, sensitive, easy, and untidy; fair-haired
blue-eyed
North Folk, descendants of invaders from across the sea, as were the red-haired Danes whose ancestors came in galleys to burn and kill, and seize women and cattle; salmon-eyed people from Iceland.
To me, coming from the West Country, this area of England is a wild, remote, and betrayed country. There is a great arable tradition half-lost in its weedy fields and rotting barns, in its shabby hamlets where live many men who have been without work during the years when it was said that only fools farmed land because they weren't smart enough to get out in time to put their money into industry of the
towns, or even smarter, into industry abroad in backward countries, where factories employ sweated labour to produce goods with which to undercut the home market and so put British people on the dole.
The fields of arable, with their subsoil of chalk, lie on ground a hundred feet and more above the level of the sea and the coastal marshes to the north. The sea used to flow at high tide up to the farm buildings. Even so, in periods of heavy rain, when the river floods over its banks, water comes very near to the farm premises; but when the sea-wall was built on the coast-line, the saltings and flats became meadows. In the mildest winter the meadows are water-plashes, the haunt of snipe, and an occasional bittern. Duck fly across the North Sea from Holland and farther east, and feed in the grupps, or dykes, between the meadows. It is a sporting country.
Phillip raised his head. Down the chimney came the noise as of a brass band beginning to practise somewhere. He listened at the open window, looking up to the stars. The geese were flying in from the North Sea. A sound remote, romantic, inspiring! When the flock had flown inland to their feeding ground, probably some clover field, he shut the window and went back to his writing.
My four-hundred-year-old premises stand in the valley, the arable fields lie a hundred feet above the premises. This means that
everything
has to be brought down steep hills, and much of it taken up again later in the season. As a farm it is not, I have been told by my
professional
valuer, an economic unit. But I did not accept this valuation by ordinary standards. I have other ideas for this farm. I believe that nothing is impossible and nothing therefore is inevitable. I intend, by new ideas and methods, to create a yeoman farm for my family. This time, my second attempt to farm, I must not, shall not fail.
The casual eye of the rambler or nature-lover would see in summer, from the high fields, a world of beauty lying before and below him. I can imagine an enchanting prospect, while sitting on the grassy Home Hills near the pine wood, among plants of ladies' bedstraw and
eyebright
, wild thyme, cowslip, and pale July harebell swaying on delicate stalk, while before and below one, the river winds through the meadows, beyond the woods and coverts. Afar lie the marshes and a sunlit line of sandhills below another line of azure sea flawed by a remote whiteness of waves breaking on the shoals of the shallow coast. It is a view beautiful to behold, in rare moments when the mind is free of business details; but to the farmer's mind those meadows are water-logged, the dykes choked, the trout stream is polluted; while the flowing slopes of arable make the farm so costly to work. Every tumbril of muck from the yardsâI am told two hundred and fifty loads, more or less, every yearâeach load weighing about three-quarters of a tonâhas to be hauled up
to the high lands, if the fertility of the soil is to be maintained. Every load of straw has to be brought down from those fields, to be spread as litter for cattle in the yards during the winter to tread into muckâto be hauled up once again. Hence the local name of my farmâthe Bad Lands.
It is a question of great frictional loss in haulage. I watched a stack being threshed this morning. The day before, the tackle arrived to be set in. Up the steep slope the lumbering traction engine, drawing drum and elevator, had to puff and chuffârelic of the age of steam box and engine and grasshopper-like elevator on wheels weighing well over twenty tons. For every ten acres of corn there is a stack to be threshed; and for every stack, four hundred gallons of water has to be lugged up to those Bad Landsânearly two tons of water slopping about an iron coffin on wheels, journey after journey down to, and up from, the river below. The corn, too, must be brought down those loamy hills so slippery in winter, and shot in the Corn Barn. I reckon that one hundred and more sacks of corn from every stackâ1½ cwt. of oats, 2 cwt. of barley, 2¼ cwt. of wheat per sackâhad to be lifted into the tumbril, eight to a load because one horse could not manage more, and brought down, and tipped out on the asphalt floor of the barn; then all the way up again, to fetch another 16-cwt load.
To bring down the corn from one stack means twelve tilting journeys sideways down the grey slippery clay of the hillside, while the old wheels of the tumbrils in the vast puddled ruts look like being wrenched off. It may be better with the old-fashioned waggons with their thin iron wheels, although the pull would be greater than with modern
rubber-tyred
tumbrils. I helped as an unpaid hand with the nondescript threshing team of twelve men, to gain experience. The result is that I have determined to cut a road up the hillside of the field called Steep to the arable above. How does one build a road? I have made a rough survey of where the route should lie, along the lane under the
pinewood
and so to a hollow or bottom under a steep slope rising to the skyline field one hundred and fifty feet above. I would need to fill the bottom with a raised road, or causeway, starting at a gap in the hedge: a new opening with a wide curve of entry, for the second-hand lorry I have bought, and big green trailer I have ordered, to turn in easily. Mechanical speed across a causeway and up and down a new cut will solve the horse-breaking problem of the centuries! When I mentioned my idea to the stewardâuntil I came to the district he had been a teamsmanâhe asked anxiously if it would pay. Meanwhile we are making up the old roads and I drive the lorry and also work in the stone-pit from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. I am more or less fit, but not too well fedâcheese, brown bread, apples, bully beef, and teaârather monotonous, but better than Flanders in 1914.
And
I
can
sleep
dry
at
night.
My woods are now, in winter, a-wing with the grey, or hoodie, crow
from over the North Sea. The grey crows are larger than the native carrion crows, and even more wary. The villagers call these âforeigners' Denchmen (Danishmen), the old name for the invading Vikings, a name which possibly has been in use on this coast for a thousand years and more.