A Countryman’s Autumn Notebook Quotes

“The morning sun drew up the moisture and made the country smell of earth. I passed an ancient elm half in sun, half in shadow. Its knots looked like gargoyles and its bark like dried lava. But the limbs were covered with ivy. The bunched ivy buds, like tiny drumsticks, were some of them smooth, others bristling with flower. It was the hum which drew my attention to the tree. Then I saw the bees, their wings filmy as they flew in through the sunlit leaves. The sun shimmered on the outlines of their tawny bodies as they pulsated, taking the last nectar of the year. There was a sudden flicker of red where an admiral butterfly also partook of the feast. Flies were darting about, but more aimlessly. They seemed to have nothing to do but dance their last sunny hours away in a frenzy. But the bees were hard at work getting provisions of which they are very short after the wet summer.”
― Adrian Bell, A Countryman’s Autumn Notebook

“And yet, what are the true joys of life? By what does a man in all sincerity measure his standard of living? For myself, I would say that the good life is a small house, a cottage, and in that cottage a hearth that will burn wood, and a lamp or two and a shelf of books.”
― Adrian Bell, A Countryman’s Autumn Notebook

“The sun slants to the horizon early. There is a sense of the world turning a shoulder away from the sun. Twilight comes quickly. Another year is passing away. At first the ground of the stubble is hard underfoot. The corn’s roots sucked its moisture. Showers fall. Day by day the stubble-walker feels a softening of the surface he treads. Latterly it is like walking on a pile carpet. As it softens, the day when the plough will enter it draws nearer. These pleasant strolls are doomed. A man may have made a little daily route for himself, such is habit. At first he goes this way one day, another way the next – across the middle of a stubble today, yesterday along by that hedge, tomorrow beside the ash trees. Yet in a week or so he comes to take a favourite route at a favourite hour. Evening is best. There is half an hour of twilight. The sun, fallen into a welter of clouds, scatters fire into the tree-tops. The glow, at setting out too bright to look on, swiftly fades to cool colours. Watching the sky, dwelling on fat woods, a man can let his feet stray; no path to miss, no clod to stumble over. Called back to earth by a whirr of wings or the swish of a surprised rabbit, he can note speedwell and charlock, pluck a leaf of wild mint and smell it, mixed with an inhalation of wood smoke from afar.”
― Adrian Bell, A Countryman’s Autumn Notebook

“This imaginary colour film of the past would need to have a soundtrack too, which would record the crunch and crackle of iron tyres on a macadam road, the sudden hush as the wagon turned off into a field, leaving just the creak of the wooden framework, and the clack of the hubs against the axletrees, or the swish of hooves and wheels through stubble. It would record also the voice of the driver as he spoke to the horses, a murmur of words which we should not recognize as words today, an earthy form of plainsong, as he guided the team over ruts, humps and hollows, through the twists and turns of the slow trek from field to barn.”
― Adrian Bell, A Countryman’s Autumn Notebook