A NOVELIST DISCOVERS WHAT LIFE IS LIKE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 18, 20 July 1935, Page 25

A NOVELIST DISCOVERS WHAT LIFE IS LIKE

B*or ten years I had a flat in London to which I returned spasmodically. 1 lised to go off to places such as Argentina, Brazil, Tonking, China, West Africa, French Guiana,' Juan les Pins, writes Arthur Mills, the novelist, in the'"Daily Mall." It was my business to travel, for 1 earned by living as a travel writer. My friends used to tell me how lucky 1 was. Curiously enough, now that I have bought a cottage in the country, I do not receive the same felicitations/

1 came to live in the cottage two years ago. At the time my friends said: "You will never stick it; the place will be up for sale within twelve months/ They were wrong; for two years, win- , ter and summer, 1 have scarcely left my cottage, for a night, and I have no intention whatever of selling it.

The first'essential to the enjoyment of life in a country.cottage is to take an interest in 'the garden; "We had to make our garden; there Was nothing ..around the cottage when we came, not even grass. We knew nothing about gardening, had to ask how to plant tulips, ;to be sure not,to put thabulbs ih'thftvWrong way up:." >:-/\ '■■'■■;[ /#,;

Cabbages, cauliflower^, p'ojatqeei.liin?: ncr beans, celery, and peas, were only; recognisable to me in .their cooked; form. Roses and carnations were flow-; ers one bought, sighing at the expense.; Crocuses, primroses, and daffodils were pretty little thinks that one associated vaguely with the coming of the spring." It is only the man who lives in the

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country, surrounded by barren, frozen or rain-soaked earth for four months, who gets the veal thrill that seeing spring flowers poking their heads through the ground.can bring. Winter in the country passes quickly; there is so much to plan and t6 look forward to.. . 4 The mind slows flown after living a long while in the country; inevitably one sleeps more and eats more, and talks and thinks IeBS than those'who live in cities. The exhilarating hubbub of London becomes like a dream of another life The almost inevitable result is a tendency to earn less money. But one does not need money in the country; there is nothing to spend it

on. There is just one question I ask myself. At one time or another most of my friends have .owned country cottages; they give them up; they take other cottages; they go back to London; they go abroad. Only a small percentage have stayed put. Why? ;I believe the answer Is that they have' never really given the experiment a fair trial; they have flirted with a new mode of life and gone on to dther pastures like a lot of restless locusts. To appreciate existence in a country cottage, to find the true secret of the joy that such a life can bring, it is necessary to live in. one's cottage the whole of one year and then another year as well. After that the rest is easy; one knows one has found the recipe for happiness.