Bog Myrtle & Peat

Two of Henry Williamson’s stories overlap, and it’s interesting to measure one against the other. The Badger Dig (1923) and parts of The Epic of Billy Brock (1925) describe what seems to be the same event, and while the first is non-fiction and the second is fictionalised, they’re probably drawn from the same material. The same blonde-haired, fretful girl is rendered uneasy by the reality of the hunt, and the same terrier (“the mad mullah”) appears under comparable circumstances to wreak havoc underground. But while Billy Brock offers greater detail and a certain tragic merit, The Badger Dig is more interesting in its attempt to provide an “objective account” of killing a badger.

Almost from the outset of The Badger Dig, a leisurely walk in the countryside is undermined when Williamson’s “emotional spaniel” is caught in a gin trap. It’s only a small moment of peril – all is well, but alongside a distant view of ploughed land, the trap reminds us that this is a working world. There’s a real and sometimes ugly substructure which lies beneath the wonderful scene, but Williamson’s perspective soon feels increasingly at odds with the rough pragmatism of the people who live there. This is the specific point of interest in The Badger Dig – not in the morality or ethics of the sport itself, but in Williamson’s studiously passive detachment from everything he sees. 

As events unfold, Williamson joins the action as a curious observer. And what seems to be a calm account is quickly clouded by subjectivity when the badger diggers are described as if they were animals themselves. None of the human beings in The Badger Dig are named – instead they are tagged for convenience with simple, physical descriptors: the “ragged, hairy man”, “the strong labourer” and the “long-nosed, little man” who is sometimes given the nickname “brock”. Justifying their sport, the diggers explain that badgers are pests and the work is an act of management – but while Williamson disagrees with their logic as an aside to the reader (as he does vicariously in Billy Brock), he does not intervene or argue. When he finally decides to ask the diggers a probing question, it’s opaque and oddly sneering. They don’t understand what he’s getting at, and the point is unscored – except as a sly aside to the reader.

Later, the activity unfolds with a kind of joyless, aggressive nihilism that is hard to understand. Williamson hints that badger digging is simply an obscure survival from older and more primitive times “when terriers came over [to Britain] in wooden galleys” – and so for that sake it’s shown to have cultural interest (but not value). It would be useful to explore this further, but the thread is abruptly abandoned. The story almost serves as a pseudo-ethnographic piece which ties to other themes in the same collection (The Village Book); simple, faceless archetypes perpetuating meaningless ceremonies for the sake of habit and continuity. There’s savagery too, and a kind of snarling atavism as the mean fight over the dismembered remains of their quarry. But instead of trying to understand this nastiness, it feels more like colour for the sake of emotional engagement.

Then in a sudden volt face at the end of the tale, Williamson abruptly tears away from the group and condemns himself for having been part of a scene that is so far beneath his creative sensibilities. He’s quite explicit here: “I climbed the hill, cursing the satanic ways of men, yet knowing myself vile, for the [others] had not known what they were doing, but I had betrayed an innocent; and all [my] tears… would not wash from my brow the blood of a little brother”. 

If you’re trying to love Williamson, it’s an uncomfortable moment – because it’s nothing like a description of a badger dig after all. The death of that badger (which he did nothing to obstruct or prevent) is abruptly revealed as little more than a few cultural observations weighted around a moment of of personal and spiritual development for a detached, almost supercilious observer. Elsewhere in his “nature writing”, Williamson is usefully ambivalent – and his uncertainty contributes to a richness of discourse around the ethics of hunting. Here it’s presented as an ugly business perpetuated by stupid or weak-minded people as a gesture towards their own uncertain frailties. And if it was so offensive, why did he stay to accept the horrid trophy of the badger’s broken paw?

Williamson is one of the most celebrated rural writers of all time, but his depiction of country folk is strangely uneven. He often floats slightly above his subject, looking down upon people with curiosity from a position that is nothing like theirs. This effect becomes steadily clearer with every passing page of The Village Book – and perhaps modern readers would argue that it’s not always to Williamson’s credit. In the story The Trapper’s Mates (from The Old Stag), Williamson describes the experience of being dismissed by landowners and aristocrats who look upon him as a devious misfit “writer fellar”. Williamson narrator snarls at this snobbishness, but if this moment represents his own discomfort at being “othered” from above, he sees no hypocrisy in “othering” downwards. 

At the same time, I’m not sure Williamson is looking “up” or “down” on the basis of class or social hierarchy – his bugbear is more like a general distaste for ignorance and “a lack of feeling” in the world. In Salar the Salmon, the humble poacher “Shiner” becomes a hero when he allows his own innate sympathy to overcome a primal lust for killing – at the other end of the scale, the plot of the short story Zoë hangs on the callous, amoral behaviour of officers and gentlemen. For Williamson, the divide is not “rich or poor” but “people who think like I do” and “people who don’t”. But his writing often fails to explain where the line lies – and even when I feel like Williamson and I are on the same page, I slightly squirm to see his “bad guys” portrayed with sniffs or sneering – and no real hunt to discover why.

Picture: “Crowstarvers Spinney in the Big Wheatfield” by CF Tunnicliffe, featured in The Old Stag, by Henry Williamson, 1933)