Grace Before Plowing

by John Masefield

Subtitled 'fragments of autobiography,' Grace Before Plowing is a memoir of sorts, a short collection of vignette-like memories, mostly from Masefield's childhood.

Genres: Memoir

90 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Masefield was born in Ledbury, a rural area in England to George Masefield, a solicitor and Caroline. His mother died giving birth to his sister when Masefield was only 6 and he went to live with his aunt. His father died soon after. After an unhappy education at the King's School in Warwick (now known as Warwick School), where he was a boarder between 1888 and 1891, he left to board the HMS Conway, both to train for a life at sea, and to break his addiction to reading, of which his Aunt thought little. He spent several years aboard this ship and found that he could spend much of his time reading and writing. It was aboard the Conway that Masefield’s love for story-telling grew.

In 1894, Masefield boarded the Gilcruix, destined for Chile. He recorded his experiences while sailing through the extreme weather. Upon reaching Chile, Masefield suffered from sunstroke and was hospitalized. He eventually returned home to England as a passenger aboard a steam ship.

In 1895, Masefield returned to sea on a windjammer destined for New York City. However, the urge to become a writer and the hopelessness of life as a sailor overtook him, and in New York, he deserted ship. He lived as a vagrant for several months, before returning to New York City, where he was able to find work as an assistant to a bar keeper.

For the next two years, Masefield was employed in a carpet factory, where long hours were expected and conditions were far from ideal. He purchased up to 20 books a week, and devoured both modern and classical literature. His interests at this time were diverse and his reading included works by Trilby, Dumas, Thomas Browne, Hazlitt, Dickens, Kipling, and R. L. Stevenson. Chaucer also became very important to him during this time, as well as poetry by Keats and Shelley.

When Masefield was 23, he met his future wife, Constance Crommelin, who was 35. Educated in classics and English Literature, and a mathematics teacher, Constance was a perfect match for Masefield despite the difference in age. The couple had two children (Judith, born in 1904, and Lewis, in 1910).

In 1930, due to the death of Robert Bridges, a new Poet Laureate was needed. King George V appointed Masefield, who remained in office until his death in 1967. Masefield took his appointment seriously and produced a large quantity of verse. Poems composed in his official capacity were sent to The Times. Masefield’s humility was shown by his inclusion of a stamped envelope with each submission so that his composition could be returned if it were found unacceptable for publication.

On 12 May 1967, John Masefield died, after having suffered through a spread of gangrene up his leg. According to his wishes, he was cremated and his ashes placed in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Later, the following verse was discovered, written by Masefield, addressed to his ‘Heirs, Administrators, and Assigns’:

Let no religious rite be done or read
In any place for me when I am dead,
But burn my body into ash, and scatter
The ash in secret into running water,
Or on the windy down, and let none see;
And then thank God that there’s an end of me.

Reviews

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5* Been reading too many memoirs, I think. Need a palate cleanser. A bit more distant in tone than what I normally like, but the chips-and-fragments way of organizing worked well. And there were some interesting bits: Masefield really loved the canals and canal-workers, and there's a lot about that, a mention of "Gipsies" (how they warned children of them, but he had never found them anything but courteous), hop-picking holidays (these are mentioned in more detail by Kathleen Dayus in "Her People"), how he saw Jumbo, the famous elephant, ran into a gang of charcoal-burners, how Herefordshire was known for making a special 'cider' out of pears, called perry, a little about cricket, oh, and The Marcle, a weird land-promontory. Quite short, made even shorter by the fact that the Open Library ebook of this was missing 12 pages. Arrrghh! Be warned!

Missing pages:
8,12,20,35,47,59,61,69,71,88,90,91

[Andrew Darling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laurie Lee's Slad Valley is just a few miles from the Herefordshire and Worcestershire borderlands, where John Masefield grew up, and Grace Before Ploughing has many echoes of Cider With Rosie. It is beautifully written (as one would expect from the man who was poet laureate for a good part of the 20th century), perhaps less determinedly "poetic" than Laurie Lee's memoir, and is crammed with insights into English rural life at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, when, as a boy, Masefield knew the area around his home "as only a child can know a country. No child can have a great range, but he knows his mile, or at most two miles, better than the grown-up knows his parish."

[Paul Doughton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sentimental, sensitive and well written, in that I found myself very 'present' in the act of reading, but not really savouring the book after it was over. A refreshing walk in the country on an overcast day, I'm glad I pulled the boots on...

[Jim Puskas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written when well into Masefield’s ninth decade of life, these reminiscences are saved from being mere nostalgia by capturing a child’s sense of wonder – at the making of a railway embankment; at the bubbling of a natural spring; at the passing of barges along a canal. The joy of mystery, of discovery, the contemplation of things unseen. This collection of childhood memories is enriched by a vernacular so foreign to my ears that it might derive from not just an England long past but perhaps from some far-off kingdom: “cheap-jacks” (carnival barkers); “beacon” (a steep hill); “donkeyman” (quarryman); “coverts” (hunting-grounds).
Among many delightful passages is an entry called “The Forge” evoking a village smithy (a place and trade now sadly almost forgotten): … we could watch the wonderful sight of man’s triple mastery over horse, metal and fire, each mastery helping his life on earth unspeakably, and all of the three utterly beyond us. There we would watch the fearless smith take a terrible leg in hand with a kindly grip and at once peel away the hoof, as if it were the peel of an onion. Then we would see the hot iron redden under the bellows, and smell the entrancing smell of the burnt hoof, and gasp at the skill and coolness of the smith, who fitted the shoe and nailed it sure for the roads.
And the final passage titled “Piping Down” concludes with “Hope is a jewel”, somebody said. But Hope is not stolen, like so many jewels. Hope is a thing given, so that a more lovely thing can be.

[DocNora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this so much! It evokes an England which is slipping away into the past...I say that because it's still there hidden away down little country lanes, in olde villages off the garish motorways..So beautifully written in poetic prose. I was very lucky to find my copy on eBay with dust jacket, a reader's union hardback only meant to be sold to RU readers.

[Katharine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short fragments of memory from the author's early childhood in Herefordshire in 1880s. Charming as brief snapshots from a lost world but very slight.