Paddling in yesterday’s pools can provide unlikely reflections. I rolled up my trouser legs and waited for cool confirmation that the old days really were better, I ended up with a lot of silt between my toes.
It soon became clear how little anything changes. Somebody’s old granny was quite correct if she did say there was nothing new under the sun. The pastoral impulse of Victorian England is being echoed uncannily in many forces and feelings of our current Green movement
Our great debate does seem much more complicated and has been elevated to the highest political platforms.
At least the Victorians were spared too many contributions from that department. High priests in their back-to-the-land pulpits. John Ruskin, William Morris and Edward Carpenter, merely had to put up with being called sandal-clad eccentrics who spouted slogans like “the plough is a better backbone than the factory” and encouraged girls to dress as Alpine peasants.
Perhaps the lasting value of their “alternative pursuits” was to urge future generations to question a deep-seated belief in untrammelled progress. Even in the late 19th century, market force, working through a process of evolution to balance supply and demand, brooked no intervention.
It would be foolish to draw too many analogies between that era and this one, but certain similarities are most striking. The late 19th century brought a dramatic flowering of societies for protecting and preserving pieces of old England from urban and industrial onslaught.
We owe much to these pioneers who really meant it when they talked of saving something for their children’s children.
Agriculture collapsed in 1870, prompting a massive decline in rural population.
Much land was taken out of cultivation – again we make comparisons with the present farming scene and all its eyelid - fluttering with diversification – and large tracts were given over to game.
While the pheasant was ousting the peasant, cities were overcrowded.
A sudden rush of nostalgia for rural life completely ignored the possibility it could be tough, dull and lonely. As the new century beckoned, so did that rustic dream with a steady procession of urban emigrants to the countryside.
George Sturt called them “Resident Trippers,” underlining the fact that big shifts in population can inspire comments not far from the downright uncharitable.
As far as Ruskin, Morris, Carpenter and their colourful disciples were concerned, they made little impact on the overall scene.
We must pray the present campaign, which has to go far deeper than an anti-industrial impulse, bears more green fruit.
At least those with power to make vital decisions today in the name of tomorrow seem to have accepted, albeit slowly and reluctantly not all environmental-conscious folk are into vegetarianism, flowing robes and a selection of Eastern religions.
On a purely local track, there may be a strange sort of comfort to be gleaned from discovering complaints we have come to take for granted were being made over a century ago.
More uncanny echoes: “Bygone Norfolk,” a volume edited by William Andrews in 1897 included this swipe at so-called progress:
“Of late years many interesting birds and animals once plentiful in Norfolk have become either rare or extinct. This is owing partly to better drainage of the marshes, introduction of better guns and of late years to the invasion of a host of Cockney visitors.
“Steam launches, numberless yachts, popping revolvers and champagne corks leave no peace to the modest denizens of the reed beds. Fowling guns destroyed the splendid bustard that once roamed the wester heaths. What a magnificent bird it must have been and how short-sighted its destroyers!”
In his History of Norfolk, published in 1885, Walter Rye pushed his prolific pen into critical waters as he came up to date ….. It is painful for one who has known and loved the Broads as long as I have in common honesty to say that their charms have been greatly exaggerated of late.
“To read some of the word-painting about them you would think you only had to leave Yarmouth and sail up the North river to get at once into a paradise of ferns, flowers and fish the first few miles will effectually disillusionise any stranger who has been taking in this “Swiss Family Robinson” sort of rubbish.
“He will be disgusted with the very muddy flint walls up a tediously winding river dragging itself through a flat uninteresting marsh country, varied only by drainage mills in various stages of dilapidation and by telegraph poles.”
Intriguing to note how one of Norfolk’s most patriotic sons was bemoaning decline of the Broads over a hundred years ago while so much other material painted a cosy picture of nature hugging itself closely.
And you can still hear the same sort of contrasting cases being made today.
A few summers ago, The Norfolk Landscape, a volume glowing with sound perspective from David Dymond, reawakened us to awesome environmental responsibilities placed on our generation.
As he sized up one of the most important wetlands in Europe, he agreed competing claims of agriculture, leisure and sport had to be heard.
“But at the same time, the fragile ecological fabric, infinitely more precious than any short-term economic gain, has to be maintained for posterity”
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