WET WEATHER WORK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 653, 11 January 1952, Page 14

WET WEATHER WORK

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SUNDOWNER

NOVEMBER 23

Y generous but still anonymous reader in Dunedin has sent me another of those books which are food and drink to me but have never met my own lazy eye. I don’t think Dunedin possesses more of them than other cities, but my benefactor is clearly more dili-

gent than I am in exploring unlikely places. He is also

kinder than I am and more active in expressing kindness. There is in addition the quickness of the eye in seeing through appearances. I could have passed this book a hundred times in a library without taking it down; pushed it to one side on a bargain counter; ignored it in a sale catalogue. The title (Wet Days at Edgewood) would have meant nothing to me, the author’s name meant nothing (Donald G. Mitchell). I still don’t know who the author was, how he lived, and what he stood for; and I don’t think I will find out as I read on. If he lived by farming he was an unusual type of farmer and lived very well-in a big house, with a choice library, and a view that brought back Lombardy and Greece though it was of Long Island Sound. All. I know at the end of 50 pages is that he clearly loved the land, had money, leisure, scholarship, taste, and a considerable gift of sarcasm; that his book-a survey of agricultural writing from Hesiod and Homer up-appeared first in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly, 20 years before I was born; and that writing it kept his mind off the tragedy of the Civil War. We may suppose also, if we like-I don’t-that the writing was done only on wet days. It may have been Wet-Weather-Work, as he originally called it, in conception,

but the execution was spread over a long period, and involved much hard reading, writing, and polishing. The nine days into which it is formally, but artificially, divided were probably 90 days at least of writing time, and could have been 900. If a publisher or radio corporation commissioned a writer today, as Mitchell commissioned himself nearly a hundred’ years ago, to tesuscitate the agricultural writers ‘of 30 centuries, it would not be suggested on one side or the Other that the job could be done on the author’s off days. It was a job that called for fasting and prayer, for facility in seven or eight languages, two of them very dead, for wide and deep historical knowledge, and for a_ heart ‘that leaped to the bleat of a sheep and the smell of a cow. All these qualities Mitchell possessed; but not, I am sure, the nine-days wonder faculty which he half hoped his readers would attribute to him. , m *

NOVEMBER 24

HE further I travel with Mitchell the more surprising it is to find so many of his early farmers cultivated as well as rich. But some of them are forbiddingly pious and complacent. Here is a day in the life of a German (Lutheran) farmer of a _ period

a hittle earher than Shakespeare, written in Latin

by Conrad Heresbach, Councillor to the Duke of Cleves, brother of the unfortunate Anne, and translated by Barnabv Googe, a Lincolnshire farmer and poet who was a gentleman-pensioner to Queen Elizabeth: I use commonly to rise first of all myselfe specially in Sommer, when we lose the (continued \on next page)

healthfulest and sweetest time with slugglishnesse. In the Winter if I be loathe I commit all to my Steward, whose faith and diligence I am sure of, whom I haue so well instructed that. I safely make him my utie: I aus my maid, so ski in huswifery, that shee may well be my wives suffragan; these twaine we appoint to supply our places. But if the weather and time serve, I play the workemaster myselfe. And though I haue a Baylife as skilfull as may be, yet remembering the old saying, that the best doung for the field is the master’s foot, and the best provender for the Horse the Master’s eye, I play the overseer myselfe. When my servants are all set to worke, and everie man as busie as may be, I get me into my tloset to serve God, and to reade the holy Scriptures: for this order I always keepe to appoint myselfe everie day my taske, in teading some part of the old Testament or of the new. That done, I write and tead such things as I thinke most needfull or dispatch what businesse soever I have in my house, or with sutors abroad. .. . A little before dinner I walke out, if it be faire, either in my garden, or in the fields; if it be foule in my gallerie. When I come in, I find an egge, a chicke, a peece of kid, or a peece of veale, fish, butter, and such like, as my foldes, my yarde, or my dairie, and fish ponds will yeeld: sometimes a Sallat or such fruits as the garden or orchard doth beare: which victuals without aney charges my wife provideth me .. . after dinner I rise and walke about my ground, where I view my workemen, my Pastures, my Meddowes, my Corne, and my Cattel. . . . In the meanwhile I behold the wonderful wisedome of Nature and the incomprehensible working of the most mighty God in his creatures. Here waigh [ with myselfe, the benefits and wonderfull workes of His, who bringeth forth grasse for the Cattel and green hearbe for the use of man. With these sights do I recreate my minde, and give thanks unto God the creator and conserver of all things, singpen Frm song "Praise thou the Lord Oh my soule’ To complete the picture of that complacent old rascal, whose feet are a little too firmly planted in both worlds, I should add that he sowed by the moon, believed that if you grafted your pear on a mulberry you would get red fruit, big fruit if you grafted your medlar on a thorn, and sweet but not lasting fruit if you attached your graft to a pine tree. He also believed that if you took the horn of a ram and ground it to powder, and "sowed it, watering it well, it would come to be good Sperage." Sperage, I gather, was asparagus, and when I think how often and how thoroughly my own bed has to be weeded, with what difficulty it was es; tablished, and how vigilantly I have had to guard it since, I can’t help hoping that the old humbug got no more asparagus in his Sallat than his ram’s horn sowings provided under the influence of the moon. a (To be continued)