Word: brensham
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...Everyone in the English village of Brensham knew that their lovable lord of the manor was as mad as a hatter (he didn't have a penny in the bank and happily ate his own rabbits, stewed, three times a day). But when they discovered that the old gentleman had never seen a movie, they realized that his condition was more serious than they had suspected, and the pub-keeper's daughter rushed Lord Orris off to the nearest movie house. He emerged spellbound, exclaiming: "My dear, it was wonderful! That splendid detective! . . . And those policemen on motorcycles...
John Moore's studies of men and manners in the Cotswolds, as presented in Brensham Village and its predecessor The Fair Field (TIME, Dec. 9, 1946), will do for the U.S. reader what Hollywood did for Lord Orris-transport him into an overseas dreamland whose main charm is its remoteness from everyday life. Just as the romantic "reporting" of H. L. Mencken makes old Baltimore a place of "happy days," so does Author Moore's accomplished imagination remove his rural Englishmen as far from mediocre reality as Falstaff and Prince Hal are from the men in the Kinsey...
Blossom & Shadow. Author Moore allows that Brensham village has its troubles. When the frost strikes the blossoms of its innumerable orchards, the village goes half-penniless the remainder of the year. When rich Londoners buy up and "develop" the mad lord's crazy, romantic acres, poachers and gypsies foresee the doom of carefree living, and the black shadow of standardized modern life falls across Brensham's thatched roofs. But such events are like wars and earthquakes -huge blows of fate under which a man must either collapse or grin and buckle his belt. And the men of Brensham...
...Brensham, all the thieves and poachers are lovable rogues, all the women quiver with massive bursts of laughter, all the intellectuals are wise, all the drunkards poetic. Natural eccentricity and tolerance leave no place for nasty gossip and nagging. The vicar keeps live bait in the church font and nesting-boxes over the porch ("My dear fellows," says he to his wardens, "can you think of anything less sacrilegious than a pair of spotted flycatchers...
...doesn't matter what you do," say the amiable people of Brensham, "so long as you don't frighten the horses." No horse could ever be frightened by Author Moore, who rides the reader through fairyland "with the magic touch of one who has been there himself...