A Typical Briftish Hamlet.

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17840, 12 October 1929, Page 13 (Supplement)

A Typical Briftish Hamlet.

Mn. JAMES TRUSLiOW ADAMS is an American writer with a big reputation both sides of the / Atlantic. He is engaged on Important literary work In London, and writes In the "Saturday Review of Literature’’ of a Somerset village. We quote his report, which will give as much pleasure to New Zealand as it must have given to New York readers. Mr Truslow Adams says:— “Last evening I was sitting In my flat ■ In London working over an 'Ordnance Survey map of Somerset planning a few days’ •ytrip. You see, I am editing a Collected Edition of the Works of Henry Adams in ten or a dozen volumes, and writing a book on the Adamses beside. Tire family descended from the immigrant Henry Adams, who lived over here in Carton St. David’s and married a girl from the neighbouring village of Charlton Maokrell, both In Somerset. Being a conscientious person (and also dead tired of the traffic on the Bayswutcr Road), I decided I must have a look at both these villages. Nothing Changed Slr.co 1388. "Well, here I ! am, In an utterly unspoilt village (but not .Muchelney, which Is only a cluster of houses). Nothing has changed here since the nearby battle cf Scdgemoor In 1 685. My letter paper lets you into the secret, but If you publish the name of the inn or village may your mind fail you for copy; may you lose your job; may your pipe never draw again! "This village is perfect. It is a haunt cf ancient peace if there ever was one. It Is utter peace. It all stopped in 1685 — the lovely square with Its grey stone houses, its market cross, and its church with an octagonal tower. I asked my host at the inn how old the hostelry might be. Tie said; ‘All I know is that the last time It was done over was In 1605, and,’ he added, ‘I don’t mind saying It is about time a few things about it were done over again.’ I disagree. When we got here, late for luncheon, we were told It made no difference, and if we wanted some strawberries . while we waited for a meal to be cooked, wc could help ourselves in the garden—which we did, oh, how wc did. Farmer This . . . The New Squire. K.- “Wc had no car, but found a chap who Is driving up .about the country for a few days at sixpence a mile (the rates universally outside of this delectable spot are a shilling up). We have seen the Priest’s Houser miles and miles away (I will not iocalc where I am). It is as sweet a dwelling as you can imagine.

American Author and a Somerset Village.

"It Is rented to a literary gent, and although because it is owned by the National Trust I was told he could cot refuse admission, I refused to ask for it. A man who has got as near Heaven as that ought not to be intruded on. We stopped in his village a while, however, visited the old abbey, and heard talk of Farmer This, and The Old Squire and The New Squire. Can’t you see it all? Then why Hoboken? No Shops or Post Office. "There is no village at Muchelney, no shops or even post office that I discovered. There is a triangular green, in the middle of which is the old stone cross. On one side is the old abbey church and on another the priest’s house, with a lovely garden in front of it, full of larkspur, Canterbury bells, and the usual gay mixture, "A winding road from the green leads between a couple of barnyards a few hundred feet to the partially ruined abbey buildings, long used as a farmhouse, but now bought by the Government and being sensibly restored, 1.e., a long rubble wall is being dug out and Js revealing old cloisters which had been completely built and plastered over. The whole place stands on one of the so-called ‘islands’ in the Somerset marshes, though drainage and summer weather reveals no marsh now. You will find a page or two about it in Hutton’s ‘Highways and Byways of Somerset.’ "I suppose after another year we shall have to go back to the States, but after spending a good part of the last six here, besides many earlier visits, the prospect grow 3 more and more formidable. There is no use arguing It. Something In me clings to English ways and the English country and English peace and beauty, and you might as well tell an oyster that you tear off his beloved rock that all the oysters are much more efficient where you are going to put him. Only the Wash of the Tide. "It isn’t his rock, and he doesn’t care about efficiency, and it won’t be many years before tie will he eaten anyway, and that is all there is about it. An oyster should thank the Oyster-God that he can cling to the rock that suits him, and enjoy the wash of the tides and such things as float past him without knowing or caring what flag floats above him'. After all, ‘nationalism’ is only Hie wash of the tide these last two or three centuries, and some way we oysters can be happy again on any rock we choose without being ‘unpatriotic.’ ”