Eyre and Spottiswoode first edition - 1938
Another book, with a fox - Rufus - as its hero; but this really is a splendidly crafted piece of work. To say it vies with Charles Roberts' novel is to pay it the highest compliment. The author appears be intimately acquainted with every living thing that inhabits the woods, fields, ponds, farmyards and skies around and above Northamptonshire and the edges of Leicestershire and Warwickshire. He is not sentimental and describes with an unerring eye and detail the lives and deaths under, the often cruel, nature's law.
Denys James Watkins-Pitchford (1905-1990) was a British naturalist and illustrator who wrote under the pseudonym "B.B." Delicate as a child, he was educated at home, spending much of his time outdoors, wandering the local woods and fields. He enjoyed drawing, fishing and shooting, which were all to influence his later writing. Aged 15, he left home to study at the Northampton School of Art, winning several prizes whilst there.
Denys Watkins-Pitchford
The author's deep love for, and knowledge of, Nature and the changing seasons shines through on nearly every page. The story is populated not just by Rufus and his various mates, but by Old Zank the heron; Old Brocky, the snuffling boar badger; the stoats and weasels, the bullfinches and rabbits, the owls and crows, and the other denizens of the woods and fields; as well as the humans, such as wily Bellamy Bill, the Woodhall poacher; and those from the local farms - Jackman's (especially Miss Pamela, clad in tweeds and with the quiet eyes), Hawking Tower and Ledhills; and the Hunts' hounds, often led by wily Orator.
We follow Rufus as he makes his way through Hieaway Wood, Coldhanger, Bluecovert, Berrydale, Scotland Wood, old Poors Gorse, Scaldwell Wood, Blueberry Bushes, Walgrave Gorse and Badby Wood - sleeping on beds of rushes by the sides of ponds, or under the starlit skies in the woods and hedges. Such is the literary skill and deep knowledge of what he is writing about, reinforced by his atmospheric illustrations, that the author carries us along with his hero, Rufus. One could quote from nearly any page to convey that skill and knowledge.
Here he is on one of the months: March was here, shouting March, the Merry Monarch of the Months. He set the fir trees tossing with boisterous glee, and made the ash poles rock until they shrieked for mercy under his rude and merry jests. He brushed and garnished the woodlands and the fields, and made them ready for the new fresh harvest as he had done for a million years. And from out of the blue oceans of sky where cloud got short shrift, the first chiff-chaff came into the welcome shelter of the budding thorns, to rest after his passage over the sea. Hesitatingly at first, he sang, as though he were apologetic, and to this halting music Rufus' first children were born.
And here, the end of a kingfisher: The kingfishers that built in the sandy bank by the crossing ash spinney were on the verge of starvation, and one night the vixen found one, a flame of shot blue, lying stiff and stark on the shingle below the high sandy bank. Up above was his favourite perch, a dead willow branch. Here he used to sit in the summer heats, when the gnats were weaving over the cattle-scented water, and catch the silver minnows. The vixen ate him, but found him very fishy. Still, it was meat, and she ate him, bones and all, Only his long bill she left on the shingle, the weapon whereby he had caught many a good fish for his wife and family. A wandering crow spied it and carried it three fields away where he lit on a fence and pecked it. Then he dropped it and it fell into the bottom of the hedge, sticking down between the stout horizontal branches that had been laid by the woodcutter's bill-hook. A mouse found it there, but could do nothing with it. and that was the end of that.
On Hunting: Rufus only killed for food. Even when he burst out into an orgy of chicken killing, he was killing for food, though he might not be able to eat all he slaughtered. As a general rule he only killed in districts that were away from his earth, and in this way he was a true hunter, whereas the men who came after Rufus with hounds were not true hunters at all, for they did not kill for food, like the fisherman or the gunner. And it was no use saying they hunted the fox because he was such a pest, for the next moment they were making specially built dens for foxes in the woods, wherein they might breed undisturbed.
On a family of camping gypsies - as the dusk deepened into the velvet pall of night the fire became more vivid, showing the autumn glory of the trees and bushes, and lighting the interesting faces of these wild people. They differed from the usual country clods one sees in the rural villages, whose faces are as expressionless as cows. Hmm - would one get away with that these days?!
On modern youth: Large black slugs were abroad on the tennis lawn, and the hedgehogs went bustling across the white lines that glimmered in the dark...How few people knew or cared about wild life! This world of little people she now saw going about their business in the scented gloaming of the June night...Those skylarking youngsters never gave them a thought, so taken up were they with their own artificial world where pleasure-seeking became a drug...Heated rooms, cock-tail bars, the empty silly flirtations...the shallowness of it all. Writing in 1938, looking back on those hedonistic, soulless two decades, the author, surely, had a point.
'B.B.' brings poetry to all he writes and the reader can contentedly bathe himself/herself in its glow. Here the author writes in his Preface: ...there come back memories of childhood walks along the leaf-strewn autumn lanes, where the soft ridges of mud told of passing wheels and feet, and the crushed blue stars of stones rolled out by the passing wagon, and the jewels of pebbles, washed clean and brilliant by the winter rains, at the side of a roadside hill. And the smells of growing things; cruel smell of nettles and the exciting rare smell of marsh vegetation where the great kingcups glowed, goblets of gold, among the wild forget-me-not. The reader can count himself/herself lucky that they can share such memories, so vibrantly told and, admittedly unwillingly, leave Rufus with the last two lines: May the good earth keep you, now and for always! Good hunting, little red fox, and ...good-bye!
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