 The
start of the centenary year of L.T.C.Rolt’s birth would seem to be an
opportune moment to celebrate -- re-evaluate perhaps, certainly to
reconsider his influence and impact on the whole waterways scene today.
Why was 'Narrow Boat' so popular and influential, and would Tom
Rolt really be satisfied by the leisure industry that he helped to
create?
 Right, I thought, this should be fairly
straightforward– delve into a book or two, find a judicious quote and
comment on it. But where to start? The problem is that so much is so
quotable and still so relevant. It is a measure of Rolt’s perspicacity
that he saw the importance of so many modern problems well over half a
century ago, questions of ecology, industrialisation and energy that are
only now being belatedly faced up to. Belated, or already too late?
Let’s start at the beginning, with Narrow Boat
published in 1944 although already completed by 1940. In the second part
of his autobiography Tom Rolt modestly admits that even with hindsight,
he could not altogether account for its success. It was “too
self-consciously arcadian and picaresque… and not strictly truthful. I
believe its instantaneous popularity was due to the fact that it
appeared at precisely the right moment. After four years of war it
satisfied a thirst for what is called escapist literature.” Well,
perhaps that was one element, but the underlying character of the author
was another. He had already spent several years worrying out a personal
philosophy, actively searching for a balance between the pressures of
technology and the natural world. This adventure of living aboard a
travelling houseboat and exploring the canal world was not a momentary
accident. It was the culmination of a practical plan, a “grand design
for living,” and some of that thoughtful consideration is implicit in
this apparently simple travelogue. Arcadian maybe, but still optimistic
that something important could be rediscovered and saved, something of
use that could help rebuild some lost values of craftsmanship in the
post-war future.
It is sometimes forgotten that by the time Narrow
Boat was published its author had already completed another book
called High Horse Riderless, a very different kettle of fish.
This is a dense thoughtful book setting forth a policy and philosophy
for a new world order based on Rolt’s interpretation of a medieval
balanced life with a particular stress on the importance of agriculture,
a balance of man’s spiritual values with the natural environment. It is
well worth reading today although admittedly hard going. It reflects the
time it was written of course, in style and wordiness, and the
depressing fact of the war then in progress which Rolt saw as the
entirely predictable result of unbridled industrialisation and the
‘will-to-power’ that he was arguing against. But it is shaped by a young
man’s optimism that if only his new philosophy is understood and
accepted everything else will automatically fall into place. Perhaps the
ultimate blind optimism is his expectation that although this
transformation of society would actually take several generations, the
co-operative goodwill that was bound to result after the end of the war
would almost make it inevitable….
 Three critical chunks of Rolt’s early life shaped much
of what he thought and wrote for the rest of his life. First there was
the idyllic countryside of his childhood, the border country of the
Black Mountains overlooking Hay on Wye and Llanthony Abbey, ‘Kilvert
Country’ as it is known to the writing classes. Undoubtedly beautiful
and still relatively unspoilt, his happy younger childhood here
indelibly tinged his memory and this area of the country took on almost
a mystical significance for him in later life. After that there followed
many dull years of unsatisfactory private schooling before he was fired
into a more constructive life when he started his engineering
apprenticeship. He started serving his time at an old fashioned
agricultural workshop in Pitchill in Worcestershire, a time that proved
to be a very rich experience for both engineering and life skills. Here
he discovered the integral role of the pride of craftsmanship that
seemed to him to be an essential ingredient for a fully rounded life,
both spiritual and practical. This was continued by what was supposed to
be a three year advanced apprenticeship at a locomotive works in Stoke
on Trent but it was quite dramatically hammered to a halt by the slump
in 1930. This was a profoundly depressing experience for the young Tom
Rolt and affected his views on the devastating effects of
industrialisation and the loss of craftsmanship for the rest of his
life. It shaped the philosophical imbalance that he spent the rest of
his life trying to reconcile, that between a love of machinery and a
love of nature, and perhaps some of the satisfaction that I get from his
writing is seeing that argument going on. He was good, but not perfect,
and I take a crumb of comfort from seeing somebody else struggling for
me. He recognised this dichotomy very early and was clearly arguing his
way through it in High Horse Riderless.
He was also researching and rehearsing those arguments
in Narrow Boat although they are rather disguised by that tinge of
Arcadia, that flavour of rural romanticism. This certainly did catch the
imagination of the war weary public four years later and may have
contributed something towards a false bedrock for the restoration
movement that emerged thereafter. The bitter disputes of the early
Inland Waterways Association were about underlying values as well as the
clash of personalities. The I.W.A. wanted to save canals whilst Rolt
wanted to retain or restore the underlying values that had created and
maintained the life balance of the people of the canals. In his
conclusion he says ”the English Canals….are the particular vehicle
of this book” (my emphasis) The book was carrying a cargo of
constructive ideas, but his readers saw what they needed to see through
the very understandable nostalgia of the time it was published. If you
haven’t got time to re-read the whole book just read the conclusion
again. And if you have never read the whole book you must. That is my
New Year resolution for you.
Tony Lewery
The Brow, Ellesmere
New Years Day 2010 |
