Coleshanger

By Thomas Corfield

“Coleshanger people are pretty bad,” said Uncle Edward. “They won’t cross water after sunset. And they have to be in bed by midnight, otherwise they think that they'll be turned into baboons and apes. They also worship the flea.”

Written in 1952, Coleshanger is a humorous, whimsical and charming recount of English village life in the early part of the last century, a tale waiting seventy years to be heard, but still very much the story of us today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Corfield
• Release date: Nov 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310630224

Thomas Corfield

Thomas Corfield was born in London several years ago, definitely before last Thursday. This was a good year for all concerned, and for him in particular, because without it, later years would mean little. He owes a lot to that first year, and now lives because of it in undisclosed locations after having successfully absconded from probation. Although he finds making friends difficult, this is only because no one likes him. Including his mother, who didn’t bother giving him a name until he was nine. His solicitor describes him as having an allergy to apostrophes and an aversion to punctuation that borders on pathological. This makes the popularity of his books all the more remarkable. At least it would if there was any. But there isn't. So it doesn't. He was recently interviewed in Joomag's Meals of Food magazine, which didn't help anyone.

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COLESHANGER

Coleshanger.jpg

Norman E. Williams

If it can be said that a village has a life, then this is a biography.

—Norman Ellis Williams, (1906-1969).

Panda

Panda Books Australia

Sydney — New York — Tokyo — Berlin

LICENCE

This publication is a literal transcription of the 1952 manuscript Coleshanger by Norman E. Williams, OBE, MA (1908-1969).

This edition copyright 2016 Thomas Corfield.

Published by Panda Books Australia.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Neither Thomas Corfield or Panda Book Australia are responsible or liable for information pertaining to names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents recounted in this publication. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is wholly without prejudice. This transcription is presented as is, without any guarantee, in any form whatsoever, explicitly or implicitly, including but not limited to guarantees concerning merchantability, uses, non-infringement, and accuracy.

THOMASCORFIELD.COM

CONTENTS

Title

Licence

Editor’s Note

Biography

Foreword

1. The Scene

2. Williams And Others

3. Catastrophe

4. Mrs. Lynch

5. Sex And Other Pleasures

6. Gradua Ad Parnassum

7. Back For A Breather

8. Noiseless Tenors

9. Mainly Mordred

10. Ichabod

The Original Manuscript

EDITOR’S NOTE

I cannot know my grandfather’s reaction to having his manuscript published. He was a sensitive, humorous and awkward man, apparently, who might be more touched than impressed that it finally has been. The manuscript has been around, unread, longer than he was alive. And seventy years after his death, and a century after the book’s setting, there is a strange irrelevance in even pondering such matters. Nevertheless, I’m pleased to have revived its faded and brittle pages, and brought his story into the immortal realm of infinitely spinning electrons.

Norman’s recount of English village life is charming, light-hearted and self-deprecating, and because it was written in 1952, has a poignancy that’s impossible to conjure were it written today. It has an authenticity that I hope goes beyond any ancestral intrigue it holds for me, and gives readers a taste of village life in the English midlands during the early twentieth century.

Coleshanger tells of a village and the people within it, villagers who lived far simpler lives than ours: either we have too much distraction in this day and age, or perhaps Coleshanger hadn’t enough. Regardless, Norman Williams’ Coleshanger suggests one thing clearly: that despite all that humanity has endured over the last century, people have changed very little. And although this could infer that we’ve learnt nothing from such tribulations, it might equally suggest we have a resilience and spirit unwavering.

—Thomas Norman Corfield,

17th August, 2016.

BIOGRAPHY

Norman Ellis Williams was born in the small village of Greens Norton, Northamptonshire, England, in 1906. He was the youngest of five children. His brother, William Washington Williams, who became Bursar of Fitzwilliam College Cambridge, was ten years older. His three sisters died in their twenties from tuberculosis. After a childhood and adolescence in Greens Norton and Towcester, Norman was accepted at Cambridge University, where he studied Literature and Classics, culminating in First Class Honours.

In 1939 he married Margery Bosworth, whose family were from Northampton. They had one daughter, Alison, mother of Thomas Corfield. Shortly after his marriage, Norman signed up as a gunner at the outbreak of war. He served mainly in North Africa and rose to the rank of Captain in Intelligence. After the war he joined the British Council, with postings to Egypt, Holland, Czechoslovakia and India.

His final posting, in 1958 was to Australia as British Council Representative and Cultural Advisor to the High Commissioner, during which he was awarded an O.B.E. He and Margery lived in Sydney, until in 1968, he was diagnosed with acute leukaemia. He died within three months at the age of 60. When Margery returned to England a few months later, it was arranged that his ashes should be interred with the rest of his family at Greens Norton church. In 1988, Margery’s ashes were also buried there.

FOREWORD

Coleshanger is the village of Greens Norton in the county of Northampton, three miles from the small Watling Street of Towcester (the Polcaster of the book) and about eleven miles from Northampton. It sits on the Banbury lanes—a series of by-ways and still deliciously rural—taking in their embrace the small town of Banbury and a number of tiny villages. Amongst these is Sulgrave with its Manor House, purchased in 1539 by Lawrence Washington, a shrine of pilgrimage for Americans ever since Washington Irving introduced it to his compatriots. I understand that Norman’s mother (although not herself a native of Greens Norton) was connected with the Washington family, which accounts for the naming of her first-born, William Washington Williams. And certainly, on visiting Sulgrave Manor (where the Washington arms appear on the porch) certain resemblances can be seen between some of the old portraits and my late mother-in-law.

I feel more than ever, after reading the manuscript, that it was right, following the big, official funeral in Sydney, to fly Norman’s ashes to Greens Norton. I contacted the Rector (whom I did not know but who has since, with his sister, become a friend of mine) asking if he could arrange to intern the urn in the family grave in the churchyard. This he did, preceding it with a simple service in the church. Although a private matter and no invitations or notices were sent out—I myself was still in Australia—hundreds of people turned up for the occasion: they came from Greens Norton and the villages around, and from Towcester and Northampton. I think Norman would have been happy to find that his world was not entirely lost² and that many of the old loyalties still lingered on. And at a magnificent tea-party Canon Worthington-Hardy and his sister threw for me on my return to the UK, I met again around a festive board many of those who shared Norman’s reminiscences and his sense of values, if not his pointed humour.

—Mrs. Margery Williams (1908-1988).

From a letter regarding the book, 10th March,1980.

In 1980.

² The manuscript was originally titled My Lost World.

THE SCENE

"The people lived in darkness and vassalage.

They were lost in the grossness of beef and ale."

—T. L. Peacock.

VISITORS TO COLESHANGER received an impression, not so much that they had gone backwards in time, as that they had gone sideways. Some of them, in spite of their struggles, never managed to return but stayed in the village, wandering around with a lost look on their faces and despair and dejection in their hearts until they died. But even the contemplation of death brought them no consolation. They seemed to feel that when their souls were freed and shot upwards at the resurrection they would be incorrectly aimed, and would go whistling past the gates of heaven into a cold and featureless infinity. My aunt Margaret married one of these unhappy creatures. He used at first to speak regretfully of the town he left, and was soon known in the village as Johnny Come-from, for it seemed to us incredible that anyone admitted to our society should have regrets for the outer world. Johnny Come-from and Aunt Margaret had a son named Mordred who was a warning to us all in the matter of mixed marriages and of whom I shall have much to say in the less pleasant passages of this book. One day a man came out of the county town in the course of a lecture and in the schoolroom explained that educated men now agreed that they were descended from apes. In concluding, he said that he hoped we should not take offence at anything he said which was, after all, scientific and not personal. Pious Dackers, speaking for the village, said,

No, it wasn’t our place to be upset.

Would he please explain? the visitor asked.

No marriage outside the village for as long as we could tell, Pious said, at least, not with educated peoples, so we was let off.

What then, demanded the lecturer, did we think we were descended from?

Coleshanger men, said Pious.

And I sometimes think there was a deep and alarming truth in his contention.

To the visitor, Coleshanger, during opening time, must have seemed very much like any other Midland village: empty and ugly, with a church, a chapel, three pubs and a school. There was a third place of worship known as the temple of the Eighth Day Creationists, a sect which never gained much ground outside Coleshanger and which in my day had only eight, or nine adherents. It was started by a blind and deaf lady who had left London to live with us in the country and who had a strong feeling one morning that she was, as it were, in the Garden of Eden on the first day of its full activities. She went into an ecstasy over the peace and tranquillity around her, and dictated to a friend the principles on which these could be perpetuated. It was unfortunate that amanuensis missed a great deal of what she said owing to a fight between the Withams and the Hotchpennys which was going on outside the window at the time, but enough was taken down to encourage a small secession from the Wesleyans and to set up a persistent, though not dangerous, spiritual opposition. There was already a bitter rivalry between the chapel and the church. The former attracting, in general, the middle sections of village society, and the latter retaining both ends. Real theological differences we only imperfectly understood, but our general impression was that the church looked to the First, the chapel to the Second, and the temple to the Third Person of the Trinity. It seemed, therefore, that the village was reasonably well looked offer, and most of us felt we could occasionally take time off for other interests.

The amount of original sin in Coleshanger was probably no greater than in any other village of the same size; but it was different, and on the whole, more original. Sins venial and moral had an honoured and accepted place in our daily routine, and a catholic missionary who visited the village for a week’s assault is said to have left in despair on the second morning, having encountered several kinds of vice not accounted for in the very comprehensive catalogue issued by his superiors.

We had, however, other qualities, equally rare and surprising. Generosity, kindness and loyalty, for example; and in the summing up of spiritual accounts the balance was probably in credit. Certainly we all loved the village, and there was an old saying current among us that everyone who left Coleshanger came halfway back, which alluded to the lunatic asylum which lay midway between us and the county town, the greatest distance that anyone might expect us to travel.

We hated change, and were as much annoyed with a reformed drunkard as with a man who substituted slats for thatch on the roof of his cottage: our society was framed with room for drunkards if they developed—as long as they got drunk in the village. Any man who changed his character, even for the better, was liable to forfeit our confidence.

The one exception to this was Dan Patchworthy (or Padgery). Pious Dackers described him as a Jack-of-all-faiths and master of none. It was not quite accurate, but as a short description we could not improve on it. Up to the age of twenty-two, Dan had not been particularly interested in religion, but in 1864, and for some reason I never understood, he suddenly became a regular attendant at divine worship. This lasted only six months, however, after which he became lost again in the ways of sin and general village activities. But the next year, a home missioner came to the chapel, and Dan was converted again. His previous election had been to the Eighth Day Creationists, and his change of front was not all jam for the chapel, which we Williams supported. Dan’s approaches to the Almighty at the weekly prayer meeting seemed to us to have something of the manner and delicacy of the bum-bailiff, and one of the older members once said to me, Mr. Williams, Dan Padgery goes on so in them prayer meetings. If your grandad ’adn’t built the chapel, I’d expect the Lord to cause the roof to collapse and crush us all. On the other side, the Creationists felt he was conveying information to the enemy, and ultimately the situation became a little strained. The village feast, however, which fell in September, seduced Dan from this new righteousness, and it was not until the next spring, following an unfortunate experience with a barrel of ale which he breached and had to spend an entire night with his mouth to the bunghole, that he turned over another leaf and joined the church. It reminded some people of the dove and the ark, and it gave Dan quite a lot of pleasure for a time. He had a healthy voice which he used at first with a rather endearing timidity, and they put him in the choir, which was a mistake, for it went to his head. Many of the hymns he did not know at all, but he felt he must earn his promotion and succeeded in drowning everyone but the Squire, and could only come level with the loudest parts with a vigorous tally-ho, which was not always in sympathy with the hymn’s sentiments. It was the Squire who got rid of Dan in the end by asking him in to the hall and requesting his opinion on such a variety of liquors as laid Dan up for three days and kept him for some months afterwards searching and experimenting to discover what the mixture was. The next year he joined the Creationists again, but he fell out with his brother, and showing too much sympathy with Cain, was ejected. A spring conversion was now, however, a habit with him, and for the rest of his life he went on doing the rounds, finding salvation in March or April, and losing it in the early autumn, and always sticking to his strict rotation of faiths like a contentious theological husbandman. When he was about to die, his family wanted to call the parson, but Dan insisted on a chartered accountant instead.

When the accountant arrived, Dan told him to get out his pencil and paper and take down figures, and for half an hour there was writing down and adding up until Dan began to grow impatient.

Looking whitely at the ceiling he demanded, Come on, Mr. ’udson, what is it then?

Mr. Hudson sucked his pencil and fiddled for a moment longer. A debit balance of three years four months and nine days, he said at last.

Well, I’m damned, said Dan, and it was a statement, not and oath.

The accountant chewed his moustache. How do you sleep, Mr. Patchworthy? he asked.

Sleep? Why, allus sleep like a log.

And do you dream, sir?

Aye, said Dan, fretting to get back to the figures.

And what sort of things do you dream?

Most ’an general about the devil.

What kind of things about the devil?

Well, us be allus a-chasin’ between the pubs, the church an’ the chapel, Dan said. Sometimes ’e be chasin’ I, and sometimes I be chasin’ ’e.

Do either of you catch the other? asked Mr. Hudson, leaning forward eagerly.

No, said Dan, regretfully. Never.

Then I reckon you’re alright, said the accountant, looking at the figures. You’re seventy-two years old, you’ve slept a third of the time—that’s twenty-four years. Half of that we’ve taken in already. That leaves twelve. You were first converted at twenty-four, so even counting you being a limb of Satan until then, which by all accounts seems pretty certain, we’ve got four years left over. Take away the debit and seven months and twenty days in hand.

But Dan could not see it at first.

Look here, the accountant explained, if you were chasing the devil, then you were on the right side, and so you were if you were running from him. You must have been saved in your sleep.

Dan thought for a minute and then sent for the doctor.

Doctor, he said, how long have I got?

Well now, said the doctor, and began hum-ing and ha-ing.

Come on! Out with it. It’s for a bet.

The doctor’s eyes lit up: he was a sporting man. A week at most, he replied. It’s even you don’t last six days, ten to one against seven, and a hundred to one against eight. You couldn’t bet on nine, but I’ll take any money on my terms up to eight.

Several of Dan’s friends put small sums on then and there, but Dan called his daughter-in-law to him.

Lize, he said, bring me a pint o’ bitter with a noggin o’ brandy in it. I’m about six months to the good.

At his funeral, eight days later, burial services were read by the church, the chapel and the Eighth Day Creationists. Not because they all wanted to claim Dan, but rather to be quite certain that his spirit would not, from force of habit, came forward as an unwelcome fruit of evangelisation next spring.

As I said, however, we were, on the whole, opposed to any kind of change: we regarded it as inimical to the spirit of Coleshanger. We even resented marriage outside the village, but there were just enough adventurers among us, bringing their brides from four, five or even six mile distance, to prevent the stock from deteriorating: and at the same time, the dilution was small, and never amounted to a dangerous adulteration. The life of the newcomers was a little difficult for the first thirty years or so, after which pity and charity began to assert themselves. But their children were always half foreigners, and regarded with something like awe by the rest of us. We used to wonder what they looked like with their clothes off.

Our attitude to time, or our disregard for it, was perhaps exemplified by the incident of the schoolmaster’s father. When the old man retired so that he might have more time for serious drinking, his son was appointed in his place, since the managers did not want a complete stranger about the place. This arrangement was quite ideal as the son had been a poacher with our fathers and they could rely on him not putting any nonsensical ideas into our heads, if for no other reasons than that he had none of his own. It is, I think, well known, or I should not have heard of it, that school teachers come in time to look upon the whole world as one puling riot of irritating infantilism. The schoolmaster’s father had this at least in common with his profession, and one morning, having quarrelled rather violently with his son, he came down to school, ordered him to bend over the desk, and gave him six with a rough stick he had cut from the hedge outside. The schoolmaster was then made to sit with us, and his father took charge. The lesson then went on something like this:

The schoolmaster’s father, looking down at his son, Twice seven.

Schoolmaster, Fourteen.

Father, with infinite scorn, Fourteen, indeed! What a brain! Exactly what I would have expected from a child of seven! And I expect you learned it from someone else. Fourteen, indeed!

Schoolmaster, trucently, Very well then, what is it?

Father, beginning to lose interest: What’s what?

Schoolmaster, Twice seven.

Father, in despair to the rest of us, Do you hear this, children? Your schoolmaster has to go round asking what twice seven is!

And so we bickered our