New Forest childhood

Press, 10 August 1985, Page 20

New Forest childhood

A Child in the Forest. By Winifred Foley. Century, 1935. 191 pp. $29.95.

(Reviewed by

Margaret Quigley)

This is a new edition of a work first published in 1974 and it is a beautiful book. A very pleasing size (not too large to read comfortably), splendidly bound, well printed on high quality paper, and wrapped in an appealing dust-jacket, "A Child in the Forest” is a delight to hold and browse through. Every page is delicately bordered, and the book is lavishly illustrated with charming small paintings, line drawings and a series of illuminated borders in the style of a medieval manuscript. All too often with a book of such visual delights the text is disappointing, but in a few happy cases the product equals the packaging and the reader of this volume will not be disappointed. Winifred Foley writes vividly and naturally of her childhood in the Forest of Dean just after World War I. “When I was a child the Forest of Dean was remote and self-contained. Ten by twenty miles of secluded, hilly country; ancient woods of oak and fern; and among them small coal mines, small market towns, villages and farms. We were content to be a race apart, made up mostly of families who had lived in the Forest for generations, sharing the same handful of surnames, and speaking a dialect quite distinct from any other.” The book gives an unforgettable and unsentimental picture of life in that small community. The poverty, the nagging hunger, the pit strikes, and the illnesses are described as honestly as

the beauty of the forest, the warmth and love in their small cottage and the hardy, resilient good humour of the villagers. Mrs Foley has an eye for telling detail and an acute ear for the rhythm of speech. Her dialogue captures the rural accents and the sturdy self-reliance of the foresters, and her descriptions conjure up the land of oak and fern, of farms and poverty-stricken cottages. Winifred Foley’s childhood and schooldays in the Forest form the first part of the book. At the age of 14 boys from mining families followed their fathers down the pit and girls went into service. “The bony finger of poverty was pushing me out into an alien world.” Determined that if she must leave the family she loved she would at least see a bit of the world, Winifred answered an advertisement for “a general maid fond of children" and set off for London. Part Two is less evocative and moving, but still easily holds the interest of the reader as she tells of various places she held and characters she encountered. Both parts bring a now past age. vividly to life, and both treat unsentimentally the good and the bad in those times. The beautiful illustrations by Tricia Newell do occasionally appear a little sentimental, but they also create such a charming impression of rural England in the changing seasons that the reader can forgive a little rose tinting in the spectacles. Rose-coloured or not, the illustrations are a lovely complement to Winifred Foley’s personal, lively, funny and moving account of the Forest way of life in the 19205.