COUNTRY LIFE Peter Quince
Most of the old vernacular names for common birds have passed out of use nowadays. They survive chiefly in literature or in the lists of so-called popular names which still appear in works of reference. I am thinking of throstle ' for thrush, dunnock ' for hedge-sparrow, yaffle ' for green woodpecker, and so on. There are dozens upon dozens of such words, many of them peculiar to one place or region. Their disappearance is no doubt connected with the general decay of dialects; they also, I fancy, belong to a time when the wild life of the countryside was a more familiar element in human existence, even though the study of it was less systematic than it now is.
Twice in recent days I have come across an example of the old popular name for a species surviving into current usage in this village. Our little river swells into an ornamental lake in the grounds of the old rectory, and a mile or so further down flows into some old gravel pits which have long since filled with water to make a pleasant little watery wilderness. These stretches of water used to be frequented by herons, to the pleasure of all who enjoy seeing these huge, dignified creatures flapping slowly across the scene. Then they deserted us. Now, in their mysterious way, they have returned; and the news was passed on to me by an old villager who told me, "I saw that old crane back on the water this morning." A little later, someone else came up to me to report the presence of a 'crane' amongst us. It was years since I had heard the word crane' applied to a heron, and I had indeed forgotten that this used to be its common name. This survival owes nothing to the modern popularity of ornithology as a subject for study. It is clear case of an old oral tradition exerting its influence still.
One can say so with confidence because it is, of course, a complete misnomer. No bird-watcher with a reference book at hand could ever call a heron a ' crane.' The two birds are quite distinct: the crane, it is true, is also a long-beaked fish-eater, but it is a larger bird and is almost nonexistent in this country. The heron, on the other hand, is fairly widely distributed in small numbers, and it is conspicuous enough to make its presence apparent throughout a wide area of territory. Linguistic marginalia apart, it is a pleasure to us to have herons back in the valley again. They seem, for reasons no doubt connected with their fishing arrangements, to be most in evidence in the morning and the evening. I love to come across one, as I have just done, in the half-light of a December evening, and to see the grey, ghostlike shape rise from the water's edge and sail, slowly but with strangely little apparent effort for so large a bird, high over the trees against a frosty sky.
In spite of their size, herons are extremely difficult to see in the shallow water among reeds. As becomes expert anglers, they can stand absolutely motionless for long periods, either waiting for something to pounce upon with those fierce beaks or else, I suppose, digesting what they have already swallowed. They have a solemn and even religious air. Dylan Thomas has a line about a " heronpriested shore," and at the edge of a Yorkshire lake I once came across a dozen herons standing in a perfect semi-circle while another, no doubt the arch-priest, stood facing them as if conducting some deeply mysterious rite. I shall always remember the strangeness and seriousness of that group.
Unfortunately they saw me before I could approach closely, and they lifted themselves into the air with many a sonorous croak. One day I hope to test the assertion of the late T. H. White (an accomplished observer of nature) that if a heron can be stalked and surprised at really close quarters, it will fall down in a kind of fit. It sounds exceedingly rum, but White said firmly that he had seen it happen. Somehow I doubt whether I shall ever be able to get near enough to one to try it for myself.
Benny Green
One evening at a dinner not long after the publication of The Pickwick Papers, the main speaker, some imbecilic panjandrum suggested to the dyspeptic congregation that they should subscribe to a statue of their guest of honour, young Charles Dickens. To which Dickens, who is often regarded, quite wrongly, as a low comedian with no command of wit, replied, "Don't do that. Pull down one of the old ones instead." Unfortunately nobody ever took his advice, so that today London is still peppered with peculiar chunks of masonry which bear at times an astonishingly close resemblance to the personages they are supposed to represent.
It is not a question of ancient or modern, because both have been denigrated by Londoners ever since we became clever enough to tell the difference. The anti-traditional statuary joke concerns Lord Nelson who, glancing up and seeing two pigeons debating over who will have the privilege of taking the first shot, calls out, "Please don't talk about me, one eye's gone." As for the moderns, they are put to flight by the joke about the two yobs crossing Wimbledon Common who come across Henry Moore's scattered statuary, look apprehensively at each other and say, "Let's get out of here, before they blame us for it." They, of course, represent the oppoSi° poles of our culture, but there remains great deal of middle ground to exarnie For instance, in spite of the many Moe ings spent in the gardens at Soho Squall gazing up at the monstrous stone parm of one of the monstrous Stuart kings, can never quite make up my mind whetti1 it is supposed to be Charles I, Charles' or an ingenious composite of both. Also, find it peculiar that Abraham Lincoln 1 Parliament Square should be twice as larg as George Washington in Trafalgar Squar Then there stands in Portland Place equestrian statue of General White, though it is hard to see why. As White entire military career consisted of getti° into Ladysmith and not being able to g( out again, why put him in Portland Plae This question vexed me for years, only the other day, when my father told r could just recall standing on the paver' of that elegant thoroughfare watching t1 general leading his troops home fro' South Africa. Which leaves only one mit problem to resolve. Why should the PriO' Consort be commemorated in stone in all places, the premises of the Licen# Victuallers' Asylum?
Victoria, of course, duplicated herself over the place, being so indecently feel as an artist's model that it is well knoW that half the tanks in the Indian AO were made out of melted-down effigies ( Victoria standing, Victoria sitting, Victor, not being amused. In London she can 1 discovered bestowing a stony glare ° posterity 'in Kensington Gardens, the 1OY_„1 Military Academy, the Victoria Merno", and on the Embankment, although as 11, as I am concerned, the Embankment tto1 der is stolen by one of her most gifted delightful subjects, William Schwenk bert, whose plaque may be found not 1' from the shadows of Charing Cross Waterloo Bridges, covered in ornitholoe, ordure of a vintage not much less venv able than Gilbert himself.
I suggest, however, that both for V( doners and tourists the most fascinat111, cynical and hilarious spectacle of stattlOi that we can offer is on Horse Giler Parade, where some joker decided to the effigies 'of my lords Roberts and V1,! seley no more than fifty paces apart. Nv, it is well known that these two chocolil soldiers 'loathed and detested each 0t1' with a venom so embittered that IV"; than once in the past fifty years one of v statues has sneaked up under cover darkness, et la Tel-el-Kebir, and given t' other a sharp kick in the withers bei.6 scuttling back to base. As this compO` one of the most bizarre military o° frontations of the century, it becomes only a mere pleasure but a positive dotYt take sides, and although neither Wolsel nor Roberts is much of an argument favour of the perfectibility of man, it 11 to be Roberts who gets the palm. There he stands, crowned forever 11, with the blirnpish complacency of the S°' topee, looking less like a killer than a gi° toy from one of Barrie's Edwardian 11 eries, a clockwork soldier perhaps,i tantly related to the White Knight. vei that tiny cranium and that chort1t, walrus moustache, he looks wholly nocuous; wind him up, give him a Olt' and within minutes the artists in weekly illustrated papers will be working on a battle montage. A servant of the Queen, who deployed across the hearthrug and relieved the firetongs, a lovable miniature. By comparison Wolseley, with his silly ringlets and his tricorn hat, looks ridiculous, clutching his field-marshal's baton very tightly in the right hand, as though frightened Roberts might gallop up and snatch it away. There is no sculpted confrontation in all London half as ribald as this one, except perhaps for Lord Byron and his dog, who, with all the lost hauteur of true aristocracy, sit with their backs contemptuously to the Hilton Hotel.
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