Corduroy

Rural Trilogy #1

by Adrian Bell

Corduroy was first published in 1930. It was followed by Silver Ley in 1931 and The Cherry Tree in 1932. Together they form a trilogy that has been described as 'the classic account of a twentieth-century Englishman's conversion to rural life'. In Corduroy the author's experiences as a farm apprentice in Suffolk are described. The tone is affectionate, humourous and not in the least patronizing. At times there is an elegiac strain not dissimilar to Edward Thomas. The three books constitute a threnody for, what was then, a vanishing, pre-mechanized way, of farming and rural life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Memoir, Biography, Biography Memoir, History, Literature

252 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Adrian Bell is one of the best-known of modern writers dealing with the countryside. His books are noted for their close observations of country life.
The son of a newspaper editor, Bell was born in London and educated at Uppingham School in Rutland. At the age of 19 he ventured into the countryside in Hundon, Suffolk, to learn about agriculture, and he farmed in various locations over the next sixty years, including the rebuilding of a near-derelict 89-acre smallholding at Redisham.

Reviews

[Abigail Bok · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of books written in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century, and we are currently in a bountiful era for reprints of them. A favorite republisher of mine, Slightly Foxed Editions, has brought out a tidy little hardcover of this 1920 memoir, complete with silk ribbon for marking one’s place, and the physical volume added to my enjoyment of this book. Sadly, the Slightly Foxed edition doesn’t seem to be up on Goodreads. (Slightly Foxed has produced the next two books in the series as well, Silver Ley and The Cherry Tree, as well as another book by Adrian Bell, A Countryman’s Winter Notebook.)

Corduroy is one of that genre of self-reflecting books by young British men from good families who venture out to find themselves, and after my not-so-happy experience with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee, I was a little apprehensive about reading this one. I need not have worried: Adrian Bell has all the virtues so conspicuously lacking in Lee—Bell is a modest, self-effacing narrator, observant, honest, and willing to laugh at himself.

An urbanite running in a sophisticated, artsy crowd in London, Bell takes it into his head to give farming a go and is apprenticed for a year to a successful Suffolk farmer. He arrives at the start of the agricultural year, October, and the narrative of Corduroy takes him through to the following autumn. There is a wealth of detail about country life and agricultural wisdom, local lore and customs, but all that information is balanced with the mini-stories of the locals’ lives and perspectives so the book never feels didactic.

Bell lives with the farming family and he is at his best when observing the personalities and social relations of the people in his sphere, from farmers to laboring men, agricultural salesmen to villagers. He has a gentle and accepting way of bringing characters to life, and his reports of how his city clothing and assumptions are mocked by the locals are delivered without resentment, providing further nuance to our understanding of the world he has entered. His humility and desire to fit in remove much of the sting of his outsider status, and he takes genuine pride in being accepted.

The world Bell has entered is undergoing massive change, and he is keenly aware of the threats to the rural way of life, though he highlights the dangers with the lightest of touches. The automobiles posing risks to people pulling their carts down country lanes; the migration of city dwellers into the countryside seeking idleness, not productivity; the interference of the central government in the farming economy, including setting wages—all are noted gently without harangue. In one market town, he notes “portents” of this shift, including “an ‘olde’ tea-shop,” with all the accoutrements of the twee that are anathema to the older country folk, the whitewashed walls and lace half-curtains and dainty cakes. “This place succeeds,” he says. “As a symptom it is dangerous, for it is patronised by the younger folk. The older men, what have they to do with four-o’clock tea?” Without waxing overly sentimental, he has set out to preserve a vanishing way of life on the page.

Occasionally he falls prey to overwriting, and one can tell he is excessively proud of his strained metaphors because a few of them get repeated. But those moments are brief and can be forgiven in the young. For the most part, Bell makes a genial and unassuming guide to a world that offered a hard but rewarding life to so many over a millennium but was largely destroyed by progress.

[Whitney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slightly Foxed is my latest literary obsession - I love their literary quarterly, and I’ve started hunting down used copies of their reprinted classics. Corduroy is the memoir of a young writer’s first year of farming in rural England in 1920. Immersing myself in the story felt so therapeutic - who knew that crop rotations and country shows could be so soothing? I loved this slice of English life one hundred years ago, as a young writer finds his life’s calling in the fields of Suffolk. It’s humorous, gorgeously written, and a lovely reminder of quieter days. I’m so glad Slightly Foxed brought this back into the modern world.

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

This came recommended by both the 'Tea or Books?' podcast, and by 'Slightly Foxed', (who released their own Slightly Foxed edition), so I was pretty sure I was going to like this.

It is a memoir of Adrian Bell's time working on a Suffolk farm in the 1920's. Told in a very straight-forward style, it gives us a pretty detailed picture of a bygone time, and told with real affection. One to sink into.

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

For anyone interested in farm life in the 20's, this book is a treasure. For me, this book was all kinds of things I like thrown in the pot and called supper. The main thing - Adrian is great. Coming from a city background as he does, he puts himself into the role of farmer's apprentice with all good will and positivity. And Mr. Colville, his mentor (all the considerable number of Colvilles, in fact) it was not difficult to see that Adrian would have a case of hero-worship for him - energetic, eagle-eyed and generous with his sound advice as he was. Lovely family, the Colvilles - a prosperous farm, for certain. And Adrian is an excellent writer. He gives a very rounded feel for the farm in Suffolk, the people, the animals, the fairs, auctions, holidays, etc. If he missed anything, it wasn't worth telling. And his descriptions of the work, learning to plow, learning everything for the first time, lends a certain sense of wonder that is infectious. He is interested in everything, sees everything, wants to know and belong. I was surprised that the very hard work involved didn't daunt him. I've read many books that speak of the grueling labour of farming in those days (Hamlin Garland was very descriptive in his autobiography), so I wonder if Adrian had his apprentice rose-coloured glasses on or something. Maybe the next book - Silver Ley? will enlighten me on that point.

(My thanks to Mumzie for the recommendation.)

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was hovering around three stars for this, but the ending bumped it up. Adrian Bell was so blessed to be taken in not only by an incredibly smart, experienced farmer (Mr. Colville), but also by Mr. Colville’s whole family, parents, siblings, in-laws, etc. The last scene where Adrian is included in Mr. Colville’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration is beautiful. And then he gets to return home to his very own farm! I was quite moved by him getting his own small farm and little thatched, ivy-covered cottage.

I thought Adrian Bell conveyed his bewilderment at the start of the book very well. A 20-year-old kid raised in upper middle class London decides to become a farmer and is apprenticed to Mr. Colville for a year’s training at the Colvilles’ impressively large farm in Suffolk. Back in 1920, moving from the city to the country was a major culture shock. Adrian comments how it took him weeks just to pick up on the farmhands’ dialect. Adrian jumps right into farm work though and seems to take to it like a duck to water.

So many fascinating period details (what we now call period details, of course). Some parts were a bit long with lots of terminology that I didn’t quite catch. The scene with the agricultural fair reminded me so much of Farmer Boy with Almanzo and his father. I did like Adrian’s love of beauty and poetry and how he was attentive to the beauty of the farm and not just its harvest and usability. There were some funny scenes, too, like when he tried to find local villages with shortened names and when he tried hunting for the first time and was so sore the next day he could barely move. I look forward to reading the other two books in the trilogy.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a lot of Suffolk blood in me, and call this part of the world my "second home" so when I found out that Adrian Bell had written a trilogy of life in this rural part of England, I snapped them up! My Uncles all have large farms in this area, so these books were of especial interest to me.

In Corduroy, Adrian shares his experiences in moving from the bustling, pretentious metropolis of London to the farming life in Suffolk, and working as an apprentice on the Colville farm. From having the wrong boots, to learning the "lingo", we are with him as he learns harrowing and threshing, goes out hunting, visits markets and changes his life destiny from being in gaudy London society to becoming a land-owner by himself.

Reading this book actually makes me miss my "second home" - the descriptions of the landscape are very vivid, especially Stambury (obviously the real life Bury St Edmunds) on market day.

I would recommend this book as a perfect way to escape to a slower pace of life for a few hours. I'm off now to read the sequel!

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book written by a man who went from a life of flapper dissipation to learning the ropes of farming from a man who had done it all his life. Bell's parents wanted him to stop fooling around and do something with his life. He wanted to work outside, and he wound up with an old-fashioned farmer. At this time in England (the 1920s), the old ways were still common, and the impending changes of the post-war revolution were merely a flicker in the eyes of the people. Bell describes windmills still being used to grind grain, farmers who used all manner of 19th century tools as well as changing over to mechanized equipment.
Really fascinating and compelling, frequently funny.
Mom recommended this one, the first of a trilogy.

[Bronwyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

First published in 1930 and recently reissued by Slightly Foxed press, though I read an ancient copy falling apart at the spine. The memoir of a young man who went to learn farming in Sussex in 1920 and fell in love with the land. He later had a farm of his own and wrote many other books about life on the land. He also set the Times crossword and his love of the written word shines through this beautiful book.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting much except a light, easy read from this little book, but it was better than I expected. Bell is a poet, with an admirable attitude of humility towards his new rural neighbours and mentors, as he learns to become a farmer. The book is beautifully written and constructed, from the beginning of the farmer's year in October, to harvest and then the preparations for a new season. His descriptions are vivid and evocative, as well as being interesting in a purely documentary sense: life on a Suffolk farm just after WWI, with traditional methods being used alongside the first new-fangled machines such as tractors and binders. Adrian is swiftly aware of how clumsy and useless he is in this context, his fancy education counting for nothing alongside untutored but skilful and knowledgeable farm hands.

Most chapters are built around a theme. I loved the one about hunting, and couldn't help remembering the tedious hunting scene in Trollope's Can You Forgive Her? which caused me to toss the book aside in disgust. What a contrast! You almost feel you are riding alongside Adrian as his mare flings herself at hedges and he does his best to cling on. Another highlight is the harvest chapter. Such beautiful writing.

The last footfall dies into silence. The stillness tingles with the aftermath of noise. All around stand the new cornstacks, unfamiliar shadows, ramparts thrown up suddenly round the yard. An owl detaches itself from the darkness of a beam, swoops down into the moonlight and away, now white against a shadow, now black against the moon.

By the end of the book, despite the hardships, Adrian has abandoned city life definitively and bought a small farm, becoming part of the community. I'll be reading the next part of this trilogy with interest. Shoutout to Slightly Foxed for republishing these little gems.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clopping

[Hunted Snark · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars with a pint of mild and a cheese and pickle sandwich

This is the third memoir I've read in the past month or so.

And it wasn't a cover-to-cover read, it was a 'hop-about until you're not finding new bits to land on' read.
*stands back to admire the effect as more respectful readers have fits*

My Oxford paperback, picked up from a charity book fair years ago, has the ugliest cover illustration I've seen in many a day. It tells me that Corduroy is a 20th Century Classic.

And so it is. It's like a museum exhibit of rural life in England just after the First World War. But not a dull one. The author is talented at setting down detail in a way that doesn't feel detailed, and capturing moods in a way that rarely feels like he's stared out the window for ten minutes thinking up lyrical sentences for our delectation.

It's become a classic because it captures a world that was just in the process of dramatic change. He gives us the old with glimpses of the new. And occasionally brings country life into a different focus when he goes back to his arty set in town, and sees the country through their eyes.

Of course, he's quite aware that he's writing a time capsule. To begin with, it was published ten years after the events it describes. Secondly, time capsules about changing ways of life were all the rage in 20s and 30s England.
A wealth of books were published -- whole series of them: Arthur Mee's 'modern Domesday book' of the counties, the 'England in pictures' series, the Batsford books, HV Morton's many, many books on the subject of changing England and Scotland (not sure where he stood on Wales, let alone Ireland).
All apparently popular, or at least commercially viable, and produced for home consumption, not for tourists. The trend was fueled by the dread of war, the dread of the modern, nostalgia, urbanisation, and the romanticisation of the rural and natural worlds that gave a fillip to the nascent conservation movement, etc etc.

So, Corduroy and Bell's other books and articles had a market, but it's stood up because it's not a vaguely nostalgic survey. It's a record. Even if curated and polished up, it's still a valuable document.

Its value can be traced in what he occasionally leaves out:

I went home for Christmas, of course, while the Colville family gathered at Benfield for theirs. I have spent many Christmases there since, but, as every reader has a country Christmas of memory, there is no purpose in my re-enumerating the signs, from the early bells to the mistletoe in the yokels' caps (a fancy that even the cinema tuition in what's what cannot eradicate).

But Mr Bell! We don't all have a 'country Christmas of memory'. That's why we're reading you, a hundred years on (and half a world away). Tell us!

But he does tell us a lot. I know ever so much about threshing now. And things I didn't want to know about turkeys. And about the irony of how expensive windmill sails were in comparison to petroleum.
So, ugly cover or no, Corduroy will stay on my shelves.

[Trisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1920 Adrian Bell was 20 years old and anxious to do something else with his life other than work in a London office. So his father (who was obviously a man of means) arranged for him to board with a Suffolk farmer in order to learn what he could about agriculture. A year later he had purchased his own farm and was about to embark on a lifetime spent living on and from the land.

This is the first of many books Bell has written about his love of the rural English landscape and the changes that took place there in the years between the two world wars. It’s full of details and descriptions of a way of life that has completely vanished. “Say you possess a farm of two hundred aces and keep six horses. You send one horse-hoeing, three drilling barley, and two harrowing. Just as you have got them all off and foresee a good day’s work, the boy comes and tells you that he is out of pig-meal and needs a horse to fetch some from the mill…”

I was fascinated reading Bell’s evocative descriptions of what he was discovering that first year. It was a time when the same equipment that a farmer’s grandfather had used was still being used as well as most of the same approaches to farming, although that was about to change drastically in a very short time. “Yes, the old things were best,” Bell muses at one point, “When England ceased to have pleasure in them it would surely be the end of her.”

Reading this book all these years later, at a time when the world has long since ceased to have pleasure in the kinds of things Bell was writing about, I couldn’t help but think of my own grandparents. Farming in rural Iowa around the same time Bell was farming in rural England, they probably could have identified with some of what he was talking about and perhaps they would also have agreed that old ways were best. They, like Bell, might find it difficult to know what to make of today’s approach to agriculture….and just about everything else about life in the 21st century.

[Charles Sheard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a simple book and theme, but it subtly imparts such a weighty impact through Bell's wonderful eye for detail, and a pen that spills out poetry without seeming to try. Written from his experiences just over a century ago, we naturally expect it to convey a certain nostalgia for the pastoral life, but of course it was published only a decade later so the writing itself is not bathed in the rosy glow of memory, and we readers are certainly bringing our own expectations. Yet Bell's ability to capture the timelessness of the land and the repetition with variation of the seasons, the habits and tools of the workers doing the same chores as their ancestors performed in much the same manner, while still commenting on the changes that had arisen even by 1920, delivers to us that same message of a life tenuously in the balance of disappearing. The nostalgia is there in the words of the farmers who pass the time discussing long-remembered events and people, sometimes commenting on how things have changed. And despite its possibly bleak future, agriculture still offered sufficient hope to draw Bell into its midst.

Surprisingly, what I think captured Bell's interest, and what I believe he conveys here best, is not so much the expected smell of the earth, the lowing of cattle, and the golden hue of the wheat in the field under a dazzling sunset - what he himself would point out as the romanticizing of the city dweller. While moments such as that are present here, it is the community of those who work the land, the camaraderie, the connection through shared struggle, which I believe captured Bell's heart, and which capture the reader's as well.

[Anthony Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adrian Bell, as a young man in 1920, clearly thought it would be nice to be a writer until his father disabused him of the notion by saying, presumably with paternal authority and an air of worldly wisdom, ‘that the desire to write in the young was but a manifestation of the sexual impulse’.

So Bell decided that farming might not be an uncongenial option as he liked the open air. Consequently he found himself as a live-in apprentice farmer with Mr Colville of Farley Hall Farm in Benfield St George in Suffolk where for a year he was put through his paces as a farm labourer and as a lad with promise enough to be taken to markets, shows, farmers’ dinners and shown the lay not only of the land but also of the social organisation of the farmers’ world.

‘Corduroy’ is a fine piece of writing – published after Bell had been 9 years on his own farm – which shows he might have been a perfectly good professional writer but who, one suspects, benefited enormously by having something first hand to write about and something he clearly loved from the off.

Landscapes and the people who inhabit them and understand them, who have their particular skills and knowledge and place in the social fabric, the rhythms of the working year, the organisation of a farm’s infrastructure – fields, buildings, working tools, animals and vehicles, labourers’ cottages, accounting, holidays, clothing… Bell’s observations are recorded with a freshness, openness and natural elegance of style that makes this a really memorable read.

[Larry Piper · Rating 4 out of 5]

For some reason, my daughter got totally enraptured by this book and insisted I read it. My friendly local library tracked down a copy in Maine and snagged it for me. Of course, I could have just bought a copy from Amazon, but what's the fun in that? Librarians are such nice people that any excuse to interact with one is a good excuse.

Anyway, this is the story (autobiographical) of a young man, Adrian Bell, who leaves London to apprentice on Mr. Colville's farm in Suffolk. Bell knows literally nothing about farming, crops, animals, implements, the organization of land preparation, planting and sowing. So, he takes us along on his learning journey. It's a most fascinating read. The time is just after World War I, and most farming is still done as in the "old days".

So we get an amazing look as to how things were done, the changes in the seasons, people's attachment to the land and so forth. By the end of his first year of apprenticeship, Bell begins to think about a small farm of his own. He buys that at the end of the book. I gather that there are two subsequent volumes in which Bell further details his adventures in becoming a farmer. This was a most interesting book, and I'm seriously thinking about importuning my local librarians to hunt me up the next volume of the trilogy.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Romanticised ruralism was not uncommon in the 1920s and 30s; for some writers and activists it led to some dubious and dark corners; paganism, witchcraft, ‘blood and soil’ fascistic leanings all featured (a theme brilliantly explored in Melissa Harrison’s recent novel All Among the Barley). Adrian Bell has a much more pragmatic approach, and Corduroy, an account of his year learning the basics of agriculture with a large Suffolk farming family in 1920-21 is deserving of its reputation as a minor classic. He gives up his comfortable life in Chelsea for one of hard work, exposure to the elements and learning on the job. Corduroy is an affectionate but unromantic survey of a world on the cusp of major changes. Against the odds he thrives and soon grows to love the world in which he has landed; he makes such a success of it that at the end of the book he finds himself the proud owner of his own small farm - the story of which will be told in the second book in the trilogy, Silver Ley. Adrian Bell (father of war correspondent and erstwhile MP, Martin Bell), was still writing a farming column for the Eastern Daily Press in my childhood in the seventies so it’s clear that he made a lifelong career out of his surprising early decision.

[David Killington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite having first been published almost twenty-five years before my birth, this book evokes in me an almost painful yearning for the time and the ways it portrays.
Adrian Bell has an easy, rhythmic way about his prose, that draws one into the very course he led on his journey from a life of potential loucheness to the worthy and valuable pursuit of farming.
Along the way, he shares with us the beauty he both sees and imagines in all around him.
I truly did not want this volume to end, and I am eager to read the next two parts of the trilogy.
Ultimately, this tale has left me with an overwhelming sadness for the loss of the England we once had. We really do not care enough of, and for, our country. Nor of the county lives, dialects and languages, once so individual and special, but now so homogenous. They are all gone forever, overwhelmed by "progress" and globalism.

[Kenneth Shersley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't fault it. Wonderful evocation of 1920s East Anglia. Beautifully written. All townies should read it. (I speak as about 80% townie.) A very important book. As you read you become more and more aware of the huge wealth of skills and customs that have been irretrievably lost - most significantly, the abilities possessed by the most 'ordinary' of people, and which gave them something to be proud of. A terrible contrast with and indictment of the contemporary age. First of a trilogy.

[Steph Macdonald · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book as it was recommended in Susan Hill's book, Jacob's Room is Full of Books. I enjoyed the first part but found it dull as I read on.

[robert gomersall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A view into the past and of better times

It is life I would have liked to have lived .Where thingy had a true worth.The author brought it to life

[Ernest · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars

[Susan Gibbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charming, nostalgic and heartwarming.

[Fernando Botella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living in London it helped me escape to the countryside

[Devs38 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book about rural life and farm life in England in 1921.

[K. Velk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by way of a public service. I stumbled over several references recently to this book and decided to hunt it down. "Hunt" is the right word, though of course that's not so hard these days. It seems to have gone out of print in the late 80s (I may be wrong about that, but the used paperback copy that I found on the Internet was itself a revival with a foreword noting how awful it was that such a great book had been allowed to drop out of print). I resorted to ADDALL Used books (which is another tip for you while I am here being helpful) to find my copy. My copy had absolutely the least appealing cover illustration I have ever seen, a cartoonish image of pigs being slopped. Maybe that had something to do with it disappearing again? Another lesson to us all not to judge a book by its cover.

This book was written between the wars by the truly gifted Adrian Bell. He was a son of the British upper classes who decided at age 20 that since he had to do something, and he wasn't interested in office work in London, he ought maybe to learn farming. He was apprenticed in the very old fashioned way to a successful farmer in Suffolk for a year. This book details his transition in that year from cosseted London poet and dreamer to actual farmer. It is his personal story and as such it includes, in addition to the arc of his own change, all kinds of fine details about the daily and seasonal life of the farm. Needless to say, it provides a very specific, and so very telling, view of that lost world.

Bell began as a poet and a gentleman and so he remained. The book is a work of grace. It ought to be available for the e-readers of today. Publishers, are you listening? I'm very glad to have made this discovery and am eager to read the sequels to this book. I have heard that they are also very good although most seem to say that this book, Corduroy, is the pick of the lot.

[Matthew Fray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books captures time and place perfectly but from the point of view a person involved (Adrian Bell lived and worked on a farm just after the First World War)as well as an outside observer who gradually learns more of the ways of the countryside. It is not simply a series of anecdotes nor does it present itself as a grand description of nature, but it has elements of both of these. He never looks down on his colleagues, in fact he's the one that feels like an idiot a lot of the time compared with a lot of the people who work on the farm who know exactly what they're doing within their own area of expertise. This is more than the sum of it's parts.

[Dianne]

Silly to be reading this beautiful old book on the KINDLE app on my iphone - but there you have it, modern Life. Wonderful to have it nearby and sneak a few pages now and then...recommended in their monthly online newsletter by my favorite book shop on earth, Slightly Foxed in London.

[Jake Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've ever read. A beautifully written coming of age story set in the rural English farming countryside. Although I'm an American, it reminds me so much of my own upbringing. Loved this so much!

[Catie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buddy read w/ @bookmusings - January 2017

[Poppy]

never reading the 50+ years old editions of books no one in my family knew existed again, but that last line, uh huh.