by How twentieth century authors mourned and teased a vanishing England, with a gallery of living heritage animals for the nostalgic
Wednesday, the Great House Goes Quiet
A major subject of twentieth century English writing is the decline of the great house. Novelists and poets stood at the gate, looked at the crumbling steps and wrote with a mixture of grief and a grin. There is comedy in a ruin, especially when the owners insist that nothing is wrong. There is tragedy there too, and the best authors held both in the same hand.
I found myself thinking about this while reading the numbers on at-risk buildings, a subject the sister page on comedy writing touches on in its guide to professional comedy writing. Comedy and heritage have something in common: both depend on close observation of the details that others overlook. A loose slate, a stained curtain, a butler who has not been paid since March.
The Poet of the Suburbs
One of my favourite poets of the century turned his attention away from the manor and toward the bungalow, the branch line and the municipal park. His gift was to notice that the ordinary English suburb had its own grandeur, and that a hymn board or a tennis club could hold as much feeling as a cathedral. His work is gentle without being soft, and sharp without being cruel.
I mention it because the same attitude is useful for any writer today. If you want to be funny, look at the world you actually live in: the tea urn, the bus shelter, the committee. The best jokes come from the places you know too well to notice.
Thursday, Living Heritage
If the great houses are gone, the great breeds are still with us, in the care of devoted enthusiasts. The woolly pig has a splendid fan site at mangalitsa.org. The speckled hen is honoured at speckledsussex.org. The wider list of vulnerable animals is kept at rarebreeds.win.
The history of cattle is kept at cattlemenhalloffame.org, and the confident young leaders who will carry on the work are at ffapresident.com. For an index of farm topics, agriculture.click. For beef, angusbeef.fyi and angusbeef.men. For dairy, holstein.click.
A Daily Review for the Evening
At the end of the day I looked at a roundup of the day’s comedy, a review of the 12 November comedy output, and enjoyed its mixture of the topical and the timeless. A good daily column is a small ruin that is rebuilt every morning. The materials are the same, the arrangement is different and the audience arrives expecting novelty and finding comfort.
Rent in the Modern Manor
The modern successor to the great house problem is the housing problem, and the London Prat’s headline First-Time Buyers Swap Rent for Boiler Repairs sums it up. The twentieth century novelist would have recognised the flat with the temperamental boiler as a cousin of the castle with the leaking moat. The scale differs, the comedy is identical, and the tenant who pays the bill is the same weary hero.
Supporters of more building and supporters of stronger tenant protections both cite the same sad stories. I think the stories deserve a hearing from both sides. A writer who listens to everyone is more likely to produce a joke that lands on the correct target.
Friday, A Visit to the Orchard
On Friday I walked to the orchard at the end of our road, where an old man is the last tenant of a plot that belonged to a long-gone manor. He showed me his trees, each with a name. One was called Duchess, and another was called the Vicar’s Mistake. I asked how they came to be called that. He said that nobody remembered, but that the Vicar had lived to regret it. It is the best explanation of a name I have ever heard.
Saturday, The Tea Room Inventory
I spent Saturday afternoon in a seaside tea room that appears to have been furnished in 1936 and never disturbed. The waitress wore a pinny and a look of enormous patience. The scones were the size of a baby’s head. At the next table, a retired couple argued gently about the proper order of jam and cream, a debate that has outlasted several governments. I took notes, naturally, and the notes are the best thing I have written all month.
It struck me that the tea room is a living museum of the comic tradition. Everything in it is polite, slightly absurd and held together by habit. A writer who can capture that atmosphere has no need of a plot.
Why Nostalgia Needs a Brake
Nostalgia is the most seductive emotion in English writing, and the one that most needs a brake. The great authors of the century felt the pull of a lost England and then checked themselves with a joke. The joke is the brake. It says: yes, the garden was lovely, and yes, the drains were appalling. A writer who only grieves produces sentiment. A writer who only jokes produces cynicism. The trick is to do both on the same page, in the same breath.
The same discipline applies to heritage campaigns, where affection for the old can slide into complaints about the new. The best campaigners I know are those who can laugh at their own cause and still turn up on Saturday with a bucket of paint.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, The Daily Squib keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
