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(4.06) | 10 | Beverley Nichols fans, armchair gardeners, and literature enthusiasts will delight in this reprint of the second book in his Allways trilogy, with facsimile reproductions of Rex Whistler's original graceful illustrations and a new foreword by Roy C. Dicks. Nichols's humorous ruminations on life in the countryside, as always, are refreshing. The typical Nichols gardening anecdotes and familiar characters are there, as well as the author's beloved dog, Whoops, an inveterate spy with a habit of leaping to conclusions.… (more) |
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To John Borie
who is still at Allways  | |
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foreword - A PLAGUE ON SEQUELS! The low lintels of the cottage have many disadvantages, but they have one supreme advantage. They afford an immediate topic of conversation. They make things start, quite literally, with a bang. | |
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...the blue Bristol glass...I took them into the empty Garden Room one evening at twilight...By accident I set one of them against the window. And having done so, I sat down suddenly on the packing-case, with a thump...This was perfect! Here, surely was the ultimate blue! And yet...not the ultimate blue, for if one stared long enough...one saw a hundred whims and echoes of its own sweet nature. There was a blue that was caressed with green, where the shadows of the damson tree lay across it, and a blue that verged to black, at its edge, where the light faltered. There were spaces that seemed almost white, checked and spattered with dancing spirits, glistening with a filigree of silver leaves. There was a blue that was like the blue of secret pools, where the sky looks down in wonder at its own beauty. A summer that took its toll of the flowers, breathing a scornful breath over the drooping roses, so that they gave up the struggle against this fierce lover, and hung their heads in weary ecstasy. Fow we live in days when people give orders to their decorators to 'do' a house, from top to bottom, as though it were a purely impersonal matter, and the result is so painfully correct that you feel the women look out of place because they have not got Chippendale legs. (Some of them have, poor dears.) Apart from the customary consumption of Vim, Mrs. Wrench had all the virtues except the vital virtue of 'willingness.' You felt that her life was one long martyrdom of overwork. So strongly was she impressed by this idea herself, that you caught it, and worried for her. There on the poem, the raindrops glittered, as though they were Keats's own tears. The rain fell, the print dimmed... the lovely words were dissolved in Sorrow's dew. It was as though a cloud had drifted over the open book and, growing heavy with sadness, had shed itself in the poet's memory. Any good gardener will know what i mean. For when the rain comes, after a drought, he is himself the thirsty soil...it is his own agony that is being relieved...his own soul which is being saved. In spirit he bares his breast and sighs with delight, as the trees sigh when the water trickles down their trunks...in spirit he closes his eyes, as the lids of the flowers are closed by the merciful rain...'More, more!' he cries...and always there is the sense of life returning, as it returns to the fainting leaves. Oh – there is poetry in pools, and in lakes, and in the rivers that run over the face of the earth. And there is infinite poetry, even, in a water-butt, which holds its dark, homely mirror to a sky that is always pleased to see its own image … a sky which looks prettier in this damp, weedy frame than through the roving eyes of an unhappy man. The man who cannot dream over a water-butt is to be pitied, for here is a mirror where life is kinder than outside – the blossom of the apple tree has a less piercing beauty, its challenging pinks flaunt themselves less arrogantly, take on a kindlier, dimmer hue in the shadow of the water. And at night, when the owls are hooting, if your eyes are sore with the blaze of stars, and your mind is dizzy with this drunken display of eternity above you, it is good to go out and feel the cool sides of the water-butt, and look down at the water, where these great mysteries are to be seen in miniature.
But the underground streams … these silver cords that have been threaded beneath the garment that is England … those are the waters that I love best. But here and there, in a valley, or alone in a far-flung field, you will find this lovely tree – this tree whose trunk, in winter, is gay with emerald moss, while the winds play their sweetest tunes in and out of its bleak choirs. Such a tree I found, and loved, that stood in solitude at the edge of the bluebell wood as if it had been sent to Coventry by the other trees, or as if it were too proud to join them. Often I would go and lie beneath this beech. I know it so well that the shadows must surely have thrown their pattern across my heart. For here is the Song of Summer. If you listen long enough you will hear all the secrets the wind whispered as it wantoned through the hedgerows. You will understand why the leaves were fluttering, so madly, against your window at dawn, and why there was such a poignant sweetness in the scent of the bean fields.
You will hear all the things the flowers never dared to say. It is a terrible thing to be filled with an emotion that one cannot express. People are always telling you, in these days, of the dangers of suppressed sex. The dangers of suppressed poetry are surely greater. Eagerly we leant over that book, in the fading light – a golden October sunset that flooded in on the yellow parchment – yellow to yellow, with the grave black letters dancing before our eyes, as though they were overjoyed to be read again, after two hundred and fifty years of neglect. | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (1)
▾Book descriptions Beverley Nichols fans, armchair gardeners, and literature enthusiasts will delight in this reprint of the second book in his Allways trilogy, with facsimile reproductions of Rex Whistler's original graceful illustrations and a new foreword by Roy C. Dicks. Nichols's humorous ruminations on life in the countryside, as always, are refreshing. The typical Nichols gardening anecdotes and familiar characters are there, as well as the author's beloved dog, Whoops, an inveterate spy with a habit of leaping to conclusions. ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description |
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1
Nichols was an artistic soul right down to his toes. He imbues this into everything he touches, whether his writing, his garden or his house. Certainly his imagination reflects this. The house becomes a living entity to him. When he moved in, he empties it of his tenants' terrible cottagey bric a brac and paints the entire interior white. Then he does nothing but listen to the house for a while. The story doesn't lag, however, as we are told of Mrs. Wrench, his first disastrous housekeeper, as well as other local denizens like Mrs. W., and Undine. I suspect we might not give these people a second glance were we to encounter them but put through the fertile processor of Nichols' imagination, they come out as hilarious and wonderful characters in whom we can take great delight.
Delicious discoveries like the beautiful Sheraton built in unit hidden behind plaster and coming to life through sheer happenstance or the recipe book from the 1600s being found in a shut up cupboard upstairs are fuel for Nichols' fire. It is obvious that he loves this house to its foundations and the house seems to respond. This book is not High Art and Literature. It is, as mentioned, a comfort read. And sometimes that just exactly what this reader needs. (