The first book I picked up for the 1930 Club was Adrian Bell’s memoir Corduroy, the first in a trilogy all of which – I think – have now been reprinted in beautiful Slightly Foxed editions. That’s quite hard to track down now, but there are plenty of other editions kicking around – and I’d certainly recommend getting your hands on a copy, because it’s lovely.
The premise is that Bell didn’t really know what to do with his life when was 19 – which was in 1920. Between them, he and his father decided that he might become a farmer – and Corduroy is his account of getting some experience to this end. Before putting all his eggs in one basket, he had to find out how the farming malarkey went.
So off he went to Bradfield St George in Suffolk – known as Benfield St George in Corduroy – accepted by the Colville family. From here, he plays a slightly odd role in the social strata of the farm. He is clearly on the level of the farm owner and family, in terms of accommodation and society, but he is among the working men for the tasks.
The majority of the book is Bell being introduced to a task, doing it badly, and getting better. What makes Corduroy such an enjoyable book is the way he writes about the experience. He is never patronising about the labourers, and nor does he idolise them in with the eye of a Romantic poet. He recognises their expertise, and they recognise his eagerness to learn – not mocking him when he is useless at milking a cow or ploughing a straight furrow or being able to tell one pig from another. At least they don’t in Bell’s memories of his year as a farmhand – it’s worth remembering that their perspectives are, of course, given in Bell’s narrative and not their own.
As with his depictions of the workers, Bell has a great eye for the natural world. Again, it is observational rather than a paean. I enjoyed this vivid description of pigs at feeding time. Don’t say you don’t get variety from Stuck in a Book:
I wandered out again, and watched Jack feeding the pigs, helped him by carrying slopping pails of barley-meal, which gave my boots a less genteel appearance. At the first rattle of a pail the pigs set up a pathetic squealing, and, when one pen was temporarily lulled with a pailful, the laments of the others rose to a hysteria of anxiety at the sight of their brothers being fed before them. By the time we had brought the refilled buckets to the second pen, the first had finished theirs and were wailing for more. Thus the chorus went on, in strophe and anti-strophe, till all were filled and slept.
Fun, no?
I’ve realised what I want in people who write about villages. Either gossipy fun, like Beverley Nichols, or the sort of writing Bell does. People who respect the countryside and village life without romanticising it. And many things haven’t changed – like the sense of community. And many things have, of course. I’ve lived in three different villages all with working farms, but there is no longer any sense that everyone in the community is involved in the life of the farm. Even more than all the mechanisation of farming, I think that’s the thing that’s changed the most. Back in 1920, when Bell started farming and my great-grandad was a farm labourer, it was the whole world for almost everyone who lived nearby. The city was another world. As exemplified when Bell asks a farmhand what his brother does, and is told ‘nothing, just some writing’ – only to learn that he has an office job with the water board!
Corduroy looks at a period a decade before the book was published, so this isn’t an absolutely accurate reflection of 1930 – but I think it gives a good sense of the sort of semi-nostalgic writing that was coming out as the dizzy hope of the 20s started to turn to the nervous misgivings of the 30s… Was war already looming on the horizon? Perhaps not quite, but Bell writes with already a sense of a world that was disappearing.
God, yes, there’s nothing romantic about farming life! I’m always amused by people who say they’d quite fancy keeping a few animals and plough the furrows, having spent my holidays as a child with my farming extended family. And having to seriously muck in and help!
He does even mock some Hardy poetry at some point, for its romanticism. Lots of hard work!!
I’ve had these on my radar for years; it’s good to know this one is so good. I love a gossipy village, too, as you know!
PS nothing on my somewhat bloated TBR from 1930, unfortunately!
Yes, I think you’d enjoy this :D
Sounds like a lovely start to our week of 1930 reading, and interesting that you got a hint of the changes that the decade would bring. Agreed about the kind of village life writing – I like snarky Beverley, but if it’s going to be anything else I want a realistic take – certainly the divide between town and country was very wide in those days!
It did make me feel like a fraud, pretending to be a country boy! I would not be any use on a farm…
I’m itching to pick this back up this week. It’s been a few years since I first read it and I remember loving Bell’s writing.
Oh lovely!
Interesting! An author I’d never heard of. From your quote he does write well.
He wrote a handful of novels as well – I’m pretty sure I have one, that I’ve not read yet.
I read this trilogy this summer and it’s on my list to review! I agree with you about his writing, it’s completely absorbing. I think it works so well partly because he’s writing as such a young man – not an old man looking back with rose tinted glasses. And it’s very funny!
Glad to hear the next two live up to the first. And yes, absolutely agree – it definitely helps that he’s writing about the recent past.
I could get into this easily I think. I’m a great fan of The Archers when it remembers that its supposed to be about farming (the current story line about a pig who has a few problems in the bedroom department is highly amusing). Good to know this isn’t twee gossip or ultra romanticised. I did try Cranford but didn’t care for it at all….
Oh I do love Cranford, but this certainly isn’t similar – you could be onto a winner.
I keep meaning to get this – it’s up at the top of the wish list now!
Forgot to say who I am… Sorry!
Great!
This sounds interesting. Never heard of it before.
I was able to get this through an inter-library loan this past week. I agree his writing is good and doesn’t overly sentimentalize farming or the country, but there does seem to be some rose in those glasses. It was only okay for me. A comment, a question, a statement: he must have been inspired by Trollope’s Palliser novels to have included that long hunting chapter; was this a time in which the descriptors “yokel” and “rustic” weren’t derogatory?; I didn’t understand at all in the later chapter at the agricultural show when he suddenly switched to present tense. Still an interesting read.