But there's not much about London in this book.




CHANGE AND THE PEASANTRY


A book which I shall never willingly be without, one of my minor
classics, is _Idlehurst_. Published in 1898, its author John Halsham,
it has a touch upon country things, the penetrating, pitiful and _tant
soit peu_ condescending touch upon them of one who is both scholar and
recluse, fastidious but discerning. He reads our earth, cloudscape,
landscape, season, foison, man and beast of the field, with the same
wistfulness which women who have known sorrow exhibit for children
who have not. Reading him again, however, last night, after the long
interval of fever and unrest which the war has enforced, I found
his pessimism troublesome. Sussex, so far as I know it, is not so
degenerate as he seems to have found it; and surely since the war
began he must have changed his mind. It is hard to remember 1898, or
1913 for that matter, but I happen to know that Sussex emptied itself
of its young manhood, and voluntarily, because I went to live there
for a while in 1915 and found the village of my choice bare of youth.
But that was West Sussex, and John Halsham lives nearer London, in the
forest region, as I judge, which is a part of the country overflowed
and become suburban. I don't doubt but complete cockneyfication will
be the ultimate fate of that country of deep loam and handsome women
before many years are over. Going down to my village from London,
I could not feel that I was in the country until I had passed