“Soft refreshing rain” – those words popped into my head when the first thunderstorms of this summer broke. As in the hymn:
We plough the fields, and scatter
The good seed on the land;
But it is fed and watered
By God’s almighty hand:
He sends the snow in winter,
The warmth to swell the grain,
The breezes and the sunshine,
And soft refreshing rain.
Anglicans sing it at harvest festival, that homely tradition invented in Victorian times by the wildly eccentric parson, opium enthusiast and last-minute Catholic convert, Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-75), vicar of Morwenstow, Cornwall.
It was translated into English by Jane Montgomery Campbell (1817-78) from Matthias Claudius’s German original, itself based on a farmers’ song. She translated lots of hymns, but sadly died in an accident driving a carriage across Dartmoor.
……..
There is a pointless and banal modern updating, quoted in The Daily Telegraph Book of Hymns (2006), beginning: “We plough the fields with tractors/ With drills we sow the land … We add our fertilizers/ To help the growing grain/But for its full fruition/ It needs God’s sun and rain.”
As Ian Bradley, the scholar who edited that book, points out, the updating is uncomfortably reminiscent of John Betjeman’s waspish parody. I don’t know when Betjeman wrote this, but he might as well have had in mind Roundup weedkiller, whose makers Monsanto were recently told to pay $289 million in damages to an American groundsman who got cancer after using it:
We spray the fields and scatter
The poison on the ground.
So that no wicked wild flowers
Upon our farms be found.
Then after Betjeman, the poet and environmentalist Clive Sansom went one step further with his even bleaker Hymn of the Scientific Farmers:
We squirt the fields and scatter
Our phosphates on the land:
‘‘Organic waste’’ and ‘‘humus’’
We do not understand.
We slaughter trees in thousands
To sell for what they’re worth;
No stems to hold the water,
No roots to bind the earth.
My brother-in-law is an extremely well-informed farmer and he says (as does Monsanto) that scores of scientific studies on Roundup have proved that it is safe. But, still, it’s a long way from the Rev Hawker’s romantic vision of the harvest – a vision no doubt enhanced by regular hearty tots of laudanum.
……..
I have noticed a phenomenon on the District Line that shows how desperately, at the end of a day’s work, we commuters crave to return home, which for the French is simply “rentrer”.
A lot of District Line trains take the fork heading south-west which terminates at Wimbledon – some from the City and others from the Edgware Road branch.
So you often get two Wimbledon trains simultaneously on adjacent platforms. In this case, the driver of one train will sometimes announce that the train on the other platform has a green signal, so therefore should be leaving first. Some travellers immediately dash across the platform. Others hesitate before quickly skipping the few steps to the opposite train. Some even relinquish precious seats, knowing that they’re unlikely to get seats on the other train now that everyone’s packed into it.
Should I join them, I’ve wondered. But what’s the point? I have a nice seat and something to read. And how much time would I actually save? A minute or two at most, before arriving back at “Dunroamin’”.
……..
The cross-platform dash is clearly proof of how precious time is to urban commuters, but it also reveals how urgently we want to get back to our suburban homes. Many of these are (or were before modification) three-bedroom semis of the kind built in vast numbers between the wars, but sneered at by intellectuals as soulless.
Yet people persisted in liking them, and such low-density housing has survived where many of the trendy architects’ “progressive” tower blocks have been demolished. Many of these modest semis were built with the design trappings of a romanticised Elizabethan age, which the snobs loathed but which gave their buyers a sense of security at a time of uncertainty, with the prospect of war looming: touches such as gables, fake timbering, oriel windows, and porches with stained glass (a galleon, perhaps). Many had garden gnomes, their owners not realising that these little bearded men with pipes or fishing rods were originally phallic symbols with a long ancestry in folklore.
Perhaps, now that we are again in a time of uncertainty, suburban life offers a feeling of wellbeing. If only we could dispense with public transport, and be teleported instantly back home.
Andrew M Brown is obituaries editor of The Daily Telegraph
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.