Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field

Hello Gentle Reader,

Emily Dickinson is mythologized in a variety of personas. One is the astute gardener of the soul. Of course, nature and the garden of her Amherst home were dominating features of her intimate landscape. Yet, flowers are often elevated beyond their superficial beauty and take on representation and personification of virtues. By extension the seasons cast their own tint and lens to the light, cloaking the world with a new ambience. Dickinson wrote:

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”

Which harks back to the faint silhouette of Gerbrand Bakker’s novel “The Detour,” where Dickinson haunts the pages with the most transparent of touches. Bakker is a masterful writer of landscape and tangibility with effortless talent; his stone plain prose is never lifeless, but vividly material. Dickinson’s stanza:

“These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June, --
A blue and gold mistake.”

The final line: “A blue and gold mistake,” circulates throughout the novel with cryptic and meditative airs. In both instances, Dickinson wrote about the changing airs of the seasons. The referenced “blue and gold mistake,” is Autumn falsifying summer splendor; while the reference to November as the Norway of the year, is less a reference to the Norse mythology or illustrious Viking history. Rather Dickinson sought to reference the notion of a landscape in grayscale. A land of sepia earth, bleak mackerel skies, silver mercurial clouds, the tin rays of a distant sun. This is equally reflected when November comes to pass over John Lewis-Stempel’s field:

“November is one of my favourite months, with its faded afternoons of cemetery eeriness, and its churchy smell of damp musting leaves.”

There is genuine appreciation of the month which perilously exists within the precipice of winter. November, however, is a month sidelined with begrudged exhaustion. Though Lewis-Stempel rejoices the muted exaltation of November with its cemetery eeriness in the light filtered through the grey low clouds; or how the scent of leaves are reminiscent of old churches, uncomfortable, cold and damp carrying on in the pious tradition that worship is service best experienced in discomfort, in order to somehow empathize with the mortification and suffering as experienced by Christ, when in actuality its stingy tight fisted priests, old and musty themselves. Yet, this is not the resounding approval echoed in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables,” when the titular spirited heroine celebrates with characteristic romanticism the regalia of October:

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

November leaves little to the imagination. It’s a month straddling both the bareness of autumn and the frost of winter. Overcast afternoons – to quote John Lewis-Stempel – certainly do fill the day with the solemn ambience of a cemetery. Perfect for a month of remembrance, tribute, and contemplation. Which in turn is an apt description of “Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field.” “Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field,” is a seasonal biography of the farmland around the ancient home of John Lewis-Stempel in Herefordshire, where Lewis-Stempel’s family has lived for 700 years. This immediately sets the scene that the landscape in which John Lewis-Stempel writes about is not just same paltry plot of land, but one of personal significance. Through personal observation, experience, biology and ecological study, literary references, and historical record, John Lewis-Stempel has written a multilayered book of both natural history, personal anecdote, and celebration of the quintessential English countryside and lifestyle, which includes the regular transactions of life and death, even the natural cruelty of the natural world.

Perhaps owing to his career as a farmer, John Lewis-Stempel has a deep-rooted respect for nature and the natural world; thankfully he has a natural affinity or talent with prose. An expert erudite observer with a penchant for poetic display, John Lewis-Stempel provides a refreshing and intimate perspective of the English countryside. The countryside of the United Kingdom always recalls the manicured image of television, the poetry of William Wordsworth, and the pastoral paintings of John Constable. The English Garden is often viewed as the standard for perfection in landscaping architecture, manicured carpets of green lawns. Beautiful spectrum of wildflowers. An abundance of roses overflowing in a vigor. Lanes of lavender stirring in the breeze. The perfect place for a picnic or a cup of tea. Now the most adamant adversarial challengers to the pristine admiration of the English garden criticize it as a legacy item from colonization. A trademark to a colonial past. Such criticism is easy to ignore, for its emblazoned indoctrination and superficial principles, entrenched into the misgivings that outrage and being offended are equivalent to occupying some moral high ground. When it cheapens any merit to their arguments and makes fools of themselves. The admiration of the English garden is no different then admiring Japanese gardens or Italian garden or French gardens. “Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field,” is not idyllic cottage read about the manufactured pastoral, but a book detailing the life of a working English farm, which includes the migratory birds, the sheep and the cows, the rabbits, the foxes, owl, moles, and badgers, which John Lewis-Stempel maintains great respect and adoration for.

Compassionately, John Lewis-Stempel writes about both the fostering and preservation of life on the field, but also of the innate reality of death. One scene recounts John Lewis-Stempel discovering red kites devouring a sheep’s carcass, and the grim task of having to dispose of the body. Perhaps other farms would have fixated on the economics of the death, how much money the premature slaughter would cost their bottom dollar; John Lewis-Stempel instead is disheartened by the loss, not due to profit, but of a sense of regret for the sheep who would be unable to continue. The burial is both an act of dignity and duty. This same compassion can be seen when the veterinarian comes to call. The visit is stressful. By his own admission, Lewis-Stempel states it’s an anxiety inducing time. Readers should abandon, any previous stereotype of a character reminiscent of James Herriot from All Creatures Great and Small. There is no tweed wearing country veterinarian. What John Lewis-Stempel describes instead is equivalent to a grey man, a scientific bureaucrat whose inspection and measurements, decide the fate of cattle. Though it’s a necessary precautionary measure for public health policy and agricultural policy, its depicted with a dispassionate sense of Kafkaesque approach.

As the seasons change, so do the fields. “Meadowland:  The Private Life of an English Field,” begins in January, that hangover of a month; that darkening bitter month and flows throughout the coming months and seasons. The deepening winter of January begins to cede for spring, and by March, the seasonal direction is noticeably changing. The green phantoms of spring give way to the summer and all its glory. It is in this season that after a mechanical failure, John Lewis-Stempel decides to swath the fields and make hay with an old-fashioned scythe. The task is laborious, difficult, as well as time consuming. Despite this, John Lewis-Stempel pushes through, finding further enjoyment in what I could view as misery. Through poetry he incites with great admiration and respect the farm-poets Robert Frost and John Clare and continues with the labour-intensive mediative task. All of which is interrupted by a fleeing vole, who seeing shelter and sanctuary scurries up harvesters’ leg, which causes a great deal of shriek and panicked dancing to dislodge, which explains why former hay cutters tied off their pant legs, meaning John Lewis-Stempel’s chosen attire for the day of shorts would not prevent such incidents.

Voles are not only creatures that Lewis-Stempel stumbles across within the fields or that he encounters. There is the fox family. So beautiful and red, the pups playful and curious. Then of course there are the badgers, whose courtship and relations carries a particular flavour. A pungent musk. Then of course is the warren of rabbits. The industrious mole, however, deserves special attention. Of all the animals in the world, the mole is perhaps the most anthropomorphized animal, depicted as genial, timid, and rather home-loving creature. The velvety subterranean rodent is a staple of English literature, be it from “The Wind in the Willows,” or the theological faith fulfilled moles of William Horwood’s “Duncton Wood.” John Lewis-Stempel provides a more naturalist perspective. When digging fence posts, Lewis-Stempel stumbles across what can only be described as a larder or pantry full of paralyzed earthworms. The fun fact provided by this book, is that moles salvia containing a toxin in it which immobilizes worms, allowing moles to capture them and store them into these underground larders for later consumption. John Lewis-Stempel describes how moles eat worms, a lot like spaghetti, where they squeeze out the earth and other contents out of the worm and then slurp them up like noodles. The mole should not be underestimated. The characterized and personified charming homebody animal, to a subterranean shark, with the squirrel’s passion for storage and savings.

As far as nature writing goes, John Lewis-Stempel is a master. “Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field,” was the book that immediately caught my attention by John Lewis-Stempel, when it was originally published in 2014, the reviews praised the novel for its attentiveness to the natural world, and it would go on to win the Wainwright Prize. Unfortunately getting a reasonable copy of the book turned out to be an adventure. Time and circumstance were not always generous either. Yet after finally getting a hold of it, “Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field,” proved to be well worth the wait. The seasonal cycle is expertly captured with admiration, appreciation, and a sense of passage. John Lewis-Stempel’s prose is uncomplicated, but refreshing in turn, maintain a dutiful understanding to describing the landscape, but also providing necessary commentary on the residents of the fields, both wild and domestic. An interest and understanding of history provide the necessary context regarding the landscape. While being a farmer, provides the professional qualifications to understand and remark on the process of stewarding the land. At no point in time does John Lewis-Stempel indulge into personification of the animals or the fields themselves, but this does not mean he lacks any sense of fondness or respect for them. In turn, where I would have suspected most nature writing to plain, blanched and bleached to the most uniform utilitarian style, John Lewis-Stempel remains engaging while avoiding tiresome plain prose, through flourishes of the poetic and engaging with other literary works to provide yet another level of context to the natural world.

Reading “Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field,” was a relaxing and enjoyable read. John Lewis-Stempel proves that nature writing is a marvelously complex literary genre, one which celebrates the natural world, civilizations stewardship of the land, but also perhaps, reflects on how agriculture has terraformed the natural world in turn. Yet great strides are being made to return landscapes back to their primordial natural prime, as in the case of Scotland, which is set to be the first rewilded nation on the world, through efforts to reintroduce and establish the wilderness of the famous highlands, which for centuries as revered for its untamed wilds. Yet, after centuries upon centuries of human activity and deforestation, Scotland’s once primeval and untamed landscape was reduced to a tame windswept heaths, sparkling lochs, and green hills. Yet in due time, there are plans for the return of wolves and bears. Truly the efforts of reforestation and remediation of the landscape is an example to other nations to take note. As a Canadian, we often pride ourselves on our rich and complex geography. Yet, environmental protections and attitudes towards the natural landscape are not always cut and dry. Still, reading about the caretaking and beauty of a mere microcosm of the English landscape is a remarkable and enjoyable read, which has been perfect company as October’s splendor has been reaped into the barrens of November.  

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary