El Escritor Inglés: Shropshire Lads

Shropshire is, geographically, one of England’s most underrated counties. It is, in pleasing contrast to many others, mostly rural and sparsely populated. It moves at its own pace. One of its greatest advocates was the London and Cambridge-educated classical scholar Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936), whose collection of poems, A Shropshire Lad, remains popular to this day. Housman reflected and reminisced about the natural beauty and simplicity of his childhood environment, while lamenting the relentless, remorseless passing of time.

Housman admitted that he had written his opus magnum with a young male readership in mind. So much so, that even one of his great critics, fellow poet W. H. Auden (1907-73), conceded that ‘no other poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent’.

It seemed fitting, then, that I recently spent a perfect day in the Shropshire countryside with my younger son, twelve years of age. After driving across its sun-drenched plains, we rocked up at Hawkstone Park (Figure 135.1), an elevated 100-acre expanse of landscaped parkland, with exposed rocks, steep footpaths and a collection of 18th-century follies. (Our shared interest in follies stems from a visit described in Article 76, Folly Followers.)

Figure 135.1: A panoramic view from Hawkstone Park. Enlarge to view.

https://www.hawkstoneparkfollies.co.uk

Restored in the early 1990s, Hawkstone is Grade-1 listed on the UK’s National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens (Figure 135.2). We trekked for three hours – the initial ascent is quite strenuous – following a maze of winding paths, through jungles of full-bloom rhododendrons, to each meticulously-renovated folly, stopping every few minutes to take photographs and admire the Housmanian views across the Shropshire plains (Figure 135.3).

Figure 135.2: Map of the park and its main features

Figure 135.3: Undulating footpaths and greened-up rock faces

Despite the current lockdown restrictions, there were perhaps fifty or so people wandering around this magical, hilly terrain. I could only shake my head at the sight of young, healthy-looking adults wearing surgical masks outdoors. If only they knew that coronaviruses cannot withstand warm temperatures and ultraviolet sunlight. Their risk of contracting any virus under such conditions was probably less than that of being struck by a falling tree. Had they known the odds, would they have worn hardhats too, or perhaps boycotted the place altogether out of fear? (Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.)

For the most part, though, my son and I were on our own and happy to be so. There was no traffic noise at all. Only birds in the oaks and squirrels among the rhododendrons disturbed the silence. We sat for a while at the woodland’s edge, gazing across a vast, gently-sloping cornfield towards the 18-century Hawkstone Hall mansion, the nearby village of Marchamley, with its scattering of thatched roofs poking through the sunny afternoon haze, and ever more straw-coloured fields and meadows, far, far beyond. There, I recited a Housman verse for my son:

‘Into my heart an air that kills.

From yon far country blows:

What are those blue remembered hills,

What spires, what farms are those?’

At the top of the main terrace, we crossed a Swiss bridge spanning two rocky outcrops (Figure 135.4). Above a fifty-metre drop, it was safer than it appeared. From the park’s northwestern extremity, it was possible to see the Wrekin, a solitary 1,335-foot (407-metre) hill rising above the plain, fifteen miles south. From there we began the descending leg of our journey, along the Lower Path. More undulating than the ascent, we twisted and turned through narrow walkways (Figure 135.5), parts of shallow caves, and exposed trails with stunning views to the west and south.

Figure 135.4: Don’t look down from the Swiss bridge.

Figure 135.5: ‘The Squeeze’, halfway down the Lower Path

While the rest of the world was engaged in a spectacular show of (COVID) madness and paranoia, my son and I ignored them all. We roamed free and relaxed, but with a tinge of introspection, exactly as Housman had first done, more than a century ago (Figure 135.6).

‘The troubles of our proud and angry dust

Are from eternity, and shall not fail.

Bear them we can, and if we can we must.

Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.’

Figure 135.6: Despite the title of his famous work, A. E. Housman was not a Shropshire lad, having been born in neighbouring Worcestershire.

El Escritor Inglés

Sunday, June 07, 2020

Shropshire Lads

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