by John Stewart Collis
Recently purchased at Parry Sound’s fabulous Bearly Used Books while travelling north (into bear country) for a blissful week of very remote work. (All images in this post, unless otherwise noted, are © John Degen)
John Stewart Collis, who lived his entire life in the twentieth century (1900-1984), was an Irish non-fiction author of various biographies (Shaw, Columbus, Strindberg, among others). This is by far his most famous and highly regarded work, a memoir of his war years spent in the UK’s Land Army. Instead of military service – for which Collis would have been a bit old anyway — the Oxford-educated author worked on a couple of farms, providing valuable day labour for a country suffering the many restrictions, dangers and hardships of active war.
British land army poster. Public domain image from the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
I’ll admit to being instantly drawn to the cover art of this gently used Penguin Modern Classic, as I’ve been sunk deep in nostalgic longing to return to the English countryside depicted there. Just over a year ago, I hiked for five days with a bookish buddy through The Cotswolds northern section, in Gloucestershire, England. My friend, Peter M., is a collector, currently working on the first 1000 Penguin paperbacks (and this will be the subject of another posting, no doubt), So, we stopped at many a bookstore and charity shop along the way to allow Pete rooting-around time.
A typical Cotswold scene. Bliss.
While I pointed out birds, plants and other wildlife, Pete expounded on Cotswoldian writers Graham Greene, Laurie Lee, and the WWI poet Ivor Gurney. We ended officially our journey in Painswick but took a further hike over the hill to the little village of Slad, where we visited Laurie Lee’s grave in the churchyard, and raised a few pints for him at his local, The Woolpack Inn.
Your humble correspondent, author Laurie Lee, and friend Pete M., in Slad, Gloucestershire.
Collis’s prose here is simple, straightforward observation, as he imparts his own learnings about the seasons in the fields and orchards, agricultural practices of the day, and his fellow labourers. The war is present even in this idyllic setting, as workers regularly gather for safety in a ditch to watch the almost daily dogfights in the skies above them. Agricultural understanding being relatively evergreen, I have learned much of practical value already, including that I will soon need to prune my three-year-old blackcurrant bushes if I want a continually growing harvest up north.
Some readers favour mystery or romance for summer reading, and while I love a good detective novel, Collis’s portrait of life on the land as an old-world past fades away in favour of a faster, grittier future is filling quiet minutes with delight (I’d say hours, but at this stage of my life, I never get solid hours for reading).
My copy of The Worm Forgives the Plough was previously owned by one A. George Fells, who was at one point so proud of his paperback collection he marked them with Ex Libris labels. It would appear Mr. Fells was a fellow alumnus of Oxford, and perhaps that informed his initial in this title. A quick bit of internet research by friend Peter M. reveals that Mr. Fells was a writer himself, and the author of at least one book of light verse and limericks. Fells would be in his early nineties right now, and so if you are still with us, sir, know that your former copy of TWFTP is being well-appreciated.
Thank you for the book, Mr. Fells… wherever you may be.
A quick extra word about the bookish observations I will record here:
Working as I do in the writing and publishing industry in Canada, and representing the professional interests of Canada’s book authors, I have almost completely recused myself from discussing contemporary Canadian books (professional interest recently had me review this Canadian book on copyright law, but that’s a special case). I most certainly DO read my fellow Canadian authors, with great enjoyment, but to comment publicly on their work would be to open a door I can’t possibly walk through while I still have my day job. Retirement is not that far off, so all this may change, but for the time being my selections will be older and non-Canadian.
“One comes across the strangest things in walks:
Fragments of Abbey tithe-barns fixed in modern
And Dutch-sort houses where the water baulks
Weired up, and brick kilns broken among fern,
Old troughs, great stone cisterns bishops might have blessed
Ceremonially, and worthy mounting-stones;
Black timber in red brick, queerly placed
Where Hill stone was looked for — and a manor’s bones
Spied in the frame of some wisteria’d house
And mill-falls and sedge pools and Saxon faces;
Stream-sources happened upon in unlikely places,
And Roman-looking hills of small degree
And the surprise of dignity of poplars
At a road end, or the white Cotswold scars
Or sheets spread white against the hazel tree.
Strange the large difference of up-Cotswold ways;
Birdlip climbs bold and treeless to a bend,
Portway to dim wood-lengths without end,
And Crickley goes to cliffs are the crown of days.”