Gone to Earth

Gone to Earth by Mary Webb

A potted bio:

Mary Gladys Webb (25 March 1881 – 8 October 1927) was an English romantic novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people whom she knew.

Her writing in general was reviewed as notable for poetic descriptions of nature. Another aspect throughout her work was a close and fatalistic view on human psychology.  She won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse for Precious Bane. After her death Stanley Baldwin, then Prime Minister, brought about her commercial success through his approbation; at a Literary Fund dinner in 1928, Baldwin referred to her as a neglected genius. Consequently her collected works were republished in a standard edition by Jonathan Cape, becoming best sellers in the 1930s and running into many editions.

Stella Gibbons's 1932 novel Cold Comfort Farm was a parody of Webb's work, as well as of other "loam and lovechild" writers like Sheila Kaye-Smith and Mary E. Mannand, and further back, Thomas Hardy. Literary critic John Sutherland refers to the genre as the "soil and gloom romance" and credits Webb as its pioneer.

Gone to Earth  tells the story of Hazel Woodus, a child of the wilds who comes from the earth. and, in the end, returns to it.  She is the daughter of a Welsh gypsy and an eccentric harp-playing bee-keeper. She is happiest living in her forest cottage in the remote Shropshire hills, at one with the winds and seasons, protector and friend of the wild animals she loves. But Hazel's beauty and innocence prove irresistible to the men in her orbit. Both Jack Reddin, the local squire and Edward Marston, the gentle minister, offer her human -- and carnal -- love.

Hazel's fate unfolds as simply and relentlessly as a Greek tragedy, as a child of nature is drawn into a world of mortal passion in which she must eternally be a stranger.

What I thought:
I loved the lyrical descriptions of the wild landscape in which Hazel lived and roamed, her familiarity and passion for the animal life. These make up a substantial part of the text and some might be tempted to describe it as purple prose. 

There is a delightful passage where it describes her sucking the nectar from the beautiful, translucent bilberry flowers.  She is a naïve child of nature, gullible in her dealings with the two men who vie for her affections.  As she vacillated between the two, ambiguity a part of her character, I sometimes found myself feeling impatient with the choices she made.  Silly girl I found myself thinking.  I also had to concentrate when reading passages of dialogue in the rural Shropshire dialect which voices are wholly authentic and bring much to the atmosphere and mood of the narrative.

Natura regionis

There is much synchronicity in the lives of Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin, authors of the books featured below.  They knew each other, were friends.  Robert wrote a fulsome celebration of Deakin's writing for the Guardian  after Deakin's death in 2006.

"A month ago, I drove to Mellis to see Deakin for the last time: held his hand, talked a little, until he fell asleep. The next day, I went with two friends, who had also known him, out to the north Norfolk coast. We swam in wild waves at dawn and dusk, and in the evening we read aloud the pages from Waterlog describing that magnificent coastline. We slept in the pine forests which run down almost to the sand at Holkham. I spent half the night in a hammock he had lent me, and half of it down on the needle carpet, where it smelt of sap and resin. Roger died a week later, still in the house that he had built around himself 38 years earlier."

The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane.

"The Wild Places" is both an intellectual and a physical journey, and Macfarlane travels in time as well as space.

Guided by monks, questers, scientists, philosophers, poets and artists, both living and dead, he explores our changing ideas of the wild. From the cliffs of Cape Wrath, to the holloways of Dorset, the storm-beaches of Norfolk, the saltmarshes and estuaries of Essex, and the moors of Rannoch and the Pennines, his journeys become the conductors of people and cultures, past and present, who have had intense relationships with these places.Certain birds, animals, trees and objects - snow-hares, falcons, beeches, crows, suns, white stones - recur, and as it progresses this densely patterned book begins to bind tighter and tighter. At once a wonder voyage, an adventure story, an exercise in visionary cartography, and a work of natural history, it is written in a style and a form as unusual as the places with which it is concerned. It also tells the story of a friendship, and of a loss. It mixes history, memory and landscape in a strange and beautiful evocation of wildness and its vital importance.

Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin

Roger Deakin, who died in August 2006, shortly after completing the manuscript for Wildwood, was a writer, broadcaster and film-maker with a particular interest in nature and the environment. Wildwood. He is the author of Waterlog, Wildwood and Notes from Walnut Tree Farm.

He lived for many years in Suffolk, where he swam regularly in his moat, in the river Waveney and in the sea, in between travelling widely through the landscapes he writes about in

Wildwood is about the element wood, as it exists in nature, in our souls, in our culture and our lives.
From the walnut tree at his Suffolk home, Roger Deakin embarks upon a quest that takes him through Britain, across Europe, to Central Asia and Australia, in search of what lies behind man's profound and enduring connection with wood and with trees.

Meeting woodlanders of all kinds, he lives in shacks and cabins, travels in search of the wild apple groves of Kazakhstan, goes coppicing in Suffolk, swims beneath the walnut trees of the Haut-Languedoc, and hunts bush plums with Aboriginal women in the outback.

Perfect for fans of Robert Macfarlane and Colin Tudge, Roger Deakin's unmatched exploration of our relationship with trees is autobiography, history, traveller's tale and incisive work in natural history. It will take you into the heart of the woods, where we go 'to grow, learn and change'

'Enthralling' Will Self, New Statesman

'Extraordinary . . . some of the finest naturalist writing for many years' Independent

'Masterful, fascinating, excellent' Guardian

'An excellent read - lyrical and literate and full of social and historical insights of all kinds' Colin Tudge, Financial Times

'Breathtaking, vividly written . . . reading Wildwood is an elegiac experience' Sunday Times