Painswick must have loomed large in Laurie Lee's childhood as the bigger village in the next valley that might as well have been a world away from his secluded Slad. In 'Cider with Rosie' Lee evokes an idyllic childhood spent in an isolated Cotswold valley that has charmed generations of readers. The imposing church and the 99 Yew trees in the kempt graveyard provide a sense of order and status to the village, lording it over lesser hamlets and stating that Painswick's valley is a cut above.
The streets are lined with rather imposing three storey townhouses which provide a sense that this place housed a wealthier bunch than the raggedy valleys beyond. Neatly clipped yews strike a sense of order in a topiarised world and provide a view for my lodging that is pure middle England. They provide inspiration for an American artist who diligently commits to a painting pilgrimage each year
It is easy to see why coach loads of tourists browse these narrow streets in summer as England's chocolate box heritage becomes ever more popular as the pound sinks. It is stunning in its honey coloured Cotswold charm, aloof and unknowable yet accessible and easy to peer into the empty second homes resplendent in their fading glory.
It is the whispers of secret histories that beguile the visitor with names like Friday Street and houses with tales visible in their facades. There is a sense that this was a respectable village governed well with a sense of mercantile propriety fed by the wealth of the trade in wool. This was where the barons slept soundly above the hidden Cotswold coombes beyond.
I am here in search of 'Cider with Rosie' though and the hills beckon as I dip down into rural isolation. This tractor reminds me of the William Carlos Williams poem;
so much depends
upon a red tractor
glazed with rainwater
beside the white chickens
...until I remembered its was red wheelbarrow. Same difference, 'no ideas but in things' and when the skull cinema gets going with an oxygenated ramble the connections flow.
I started to revel in the idea that this was where Laurie Lee and his mates would have explored and played in their gilded youth so evocatively portrayed in his memoir. The path that leads to the next valley runs a zigzag through birch woods, ailing January limbs still in hibernation burn as I climb.
Up and over is a theme in the parts as one valley cedes into another. As I descend into Slad it becomes clear how isolated these coombes would have been when Laurie was three just after the First World War when he was set down from the carriers cart and his memories began and 'our horizon of woods was the limit of our world.' His vivid recollection of a village that was their world leads one to remember a sense of rural bliss about the tale although the actuality of agricultural poverty is much clearer upon a second reading. It reminded me of Hudson's Wiltshire as Lee casually remarks, ' my mother was born to quite ordinary poverty,' and then more annoyingly in a Smooth radio contemporary vibe to Paul Young's cover of 'living in the love of the common people' as memories of the familial love in the book shone through my ramble.
A young boy's love for his family is the lasting impression of this timeless evocation of a bygone age as Lee brings the village and valley of Slad to immemorial life. His sisters picking him up as an infant lost in the grass is a vivid image, their mouths smeared with red currants and their hands dripping with juice. 'Come down 'ome and we'll stuff you with currants'. It is a blissful existence in part, edged with the tragedy of mortality and patient suffering in a place embalmed from the vicissitudes of a changing world. His world is his mother and his sisters in a world where the men seem traumatised by war or figures of another world of adventure beyond the valley walls. It was, as ever, the women who kept things together. Lee himself just walked out one midsummer morning as men increasingly deserted their homes to find themselves and get lost in wars and making their fortune. He wrote a better book out of his adventures but it is Rosie that holds our imagination.
Bringing jugs of flowers into the cottage to brighten a humble home, his mother's fragility and boundless love feeds the family, binding them together in her selflessness. 'She was a country girl; disordered, hysterical, loving. She was mischievous as a chimney jackdaw,' struggling to keep them clothed and fed living by 'the easy laws of the hedgerow'. The father gets short shrift as he abandons the family although it is his death that finally breaks his mothers spirit after 30 years of hoping he will return from a suburban London life of automation, dying whilst cranking his new car. In the pub I heard that he ran the Co-op in Stroud but I like to avoid reality spoiling a good narrative. He was a bounder and a cad.
His mother is the heroine believing like Gatsby's Daisy Fay that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing. Not contemplating tomorrow but dealing with the demands of the day.
Lee's descriptive language captivates readers of all ages and is so memorable that the walk reminds one of small instances like the split stone tiles that decorate at the rooves. I read a passage to my Year 7 students and their tongues started lolling and the thousand yard stares suggested reveries of their own. A couple of pages is a all that is required to begin tales of childhood that would horrify their parents. I hope I add a few metaphorical flourishes to their writing but it is Laurie that inspires.
Soon enough I stumbled upon the very house, the epicentre of the tale. It was such a surprise after years of creating a vision in my mind. This was what I had come for, realisation of the vision so vividly portrayed. I wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or in wonder, I thought it a rather grand residence compared to the book but perhaps our perceptions of wealth and grandeur have shifted. It was up for sale at half a million pounds! Rather more than the peppercorn rent his mother struggled to find. Snowdrops adorned the approach to an idyllic spot nestled in the valley. An artists studio extended to the rear.
My visions of bleak winters where, ' young children dropped dead like chickens,' and 'wet winter days at times unending which quite often led to self slaughter' were tempered by the idyll before me and a pint of ale in the Woolpack. As I read Lee's words, ' if you survived melancholia and rotting lungs it was possible to live long in this valley', I thought if I finish this pint before Poppy and Josh have a melt down I will survive this valley. I'm being flippant though and historical perspective is not aided by the fog of the snug. I left my crisps and took the air, wanting to feel the essence of Lee and the sense of place he describes so vividly. The schoolhouse is still extant, in gentrified form, although why anyone would want to live in a building stared into in summer months is a question Lee will have to answer for. His grave demands star billing in the picturesque church and a leaded window attests to his legacy.
Somehow the proximity of other tourists shook my sense of being the explorer, the pathfinder. This book was so special and such a long held passion that I didn't want to share it and suddenly felt protective of my memories. Silly really how the mind works. I felt the need to stride out, up the valley, to leave the modern world despoiling the authenticity of my experience. I was jarred into thinking how personal a thing a book is. How these thoughts and visions of a place really hit home and live for the reader. This was my book. How ridiculous! I walked the streets looking for the 'old sodger' who had deserted the war to live rough in the valleys, sniffed the air for Jones' terrorist goat and waited to be whacked by Cabbage Stump Charlie. There are still a few characters in the bar at The Woolpack and in my wickedness I though they were tolerated for added authenticity. I must have had a bad pickled onion.
As my choler returned I reflected on Lee's characters and how they resembled a sense of community with he espouses. A community that policed itself and tolerated difference in a time worn fashion. Albert the devil, a deaf, mute beggar; Percy from Painswick, ' a clown and ragged dandy' who the young girls followed through the streets until 'he died of his brain soon after.'
As I pushed on up the valley my limbs told me what a tough existence this must have been. I was heading for Bull's Cross, a windswept netherland for Lee where myths abounded to terrify the children. Tales of Hangman's House in Deadscombe's Bottom must have kept order and limited the straying youths. I gave in when I saw my alter ego power past, I was more Wysis way by this point so I cut back to Painswick after a short consultation with a long face.
On my way back I wondered why Lee had recounted such a vivid tale some years after the event. Maybe his childhood illness, where his family had felt his number was up on several occasions led to a sensitivity to his surroundings, the images he conjures made so redolent in the time spent in bed tucked up like RL Stevenson. Maybe illness in youth leads to a speculative imagination or perhaps the motherly affirmation of his sisters and mother led to a need to thank his matriarchal support network in later life. Whatever his motivation what a wonderful and honest account he provides, it could be entitled 'o lucky man!'. I want Bovril and hens' eggs for tea.
And that is before we even get to Rosie! My least favourite parts of the book, but perhaps the most infamous. These tales of coming of age seem to have caught the imagination but the book tails off for me as transgressors being dealt with by their own community and boys' sordid adventures in the woods lend a tone that is unedifying and leaves a sour taste that any editor today would have had a stern word about. Innocent, natural exploration about rumbles in haycocks, 'she was yellow and dusty with buttercups'. I suppose it has its charm but it is the sheer power of his descriptive prose that transports one to another world that time forgot that brings endless joy in a memoir that brings a happy glow wherever you dip into it. I have often picked this in a library just to spend a minute with Laurie Lee and who am I to challenge the authenticity of a timeless classic.
