On listening to a Mockingbird

Port Antonio, Jamaica, 1932     

Lying adoze in bed, with the sky kindling in the east and a deliciously fresh breeze blowing softly through the open window, it is a sheer delight to half-hear the matins of this master songster. His notes seem to be the echo of lost summers – to awaken memories of sunlit mountains and green valleys – of childhood rambles, of the empty hills of the Cevennes – the scented forests of Fuji and a hundred other corners of the world where avine music is indelibly associated in my mind with the joys of life.

 Preface

My first memory of Collingwood Ingram is of him stomping down the imposing staircase in The Grange, asking in a loud ‘barking’ voice for my opinion of a theory he had about hardiness in plants – he had heard that I had a degree in Horticulture. I soon discovered that his knowledge of plants was infinitely greater than mine. He was intimidating to a young man, but it was largely a front, and kindness and generosity lay behind it. I was engaged to his granddaughter Veryan and we married in 1964 with the reception at The Grange. The cherries should have been in bloom, but it was a cold spring and they were late

      The Grange garden was then almost magically beautiful, especially in spring when the cherries were in bloom. It is sad that many of the cherries proved to have a shorter life than Collingwood, so that by his last years it had lost some of the magic. Even today however, some of the cherries, especially the species, survive, as do many other tree species, collected by him from distant parts of the world.

          Plants became a passion for him only after the age of forty. Before that he had devoted his life to birds and was recognised as one of the great field ornithologists of his day. He was also a talented artist who could capture the essence of a bird with a quick pencil sketch. 

           I remember going with him to Dungeness, which he had known from the 1890s. He showed me his Dungeness journal of 1915, a combination of journal entries made on the day and wonderful sketches. I also took him to Stodmarch in north Kent to hear the bitterns. Stodmarsh owes its wetland character to subsidence following coal-mining, Collingwood knew the area well before the mining began.

        After he died in 1981, having reached his century, I was lucky to be given his journals and sketchbooks, to make use of them as I wished. I did little except admire them and transcribe some journals for many years. Then in 2014, after I retired, I co-edited, with Hazel Strouts, his WW1 diaries, as much bird diaries as war diaries, and then I provided much background information on his life and work for Naoko Abe’s  Cherry Ingram: The Englishman who saved Japan’s blossoms, a book which has greatly  increased his fame worldwide.

Introduction

Collingwood Ingram was a superb field ornithologist with a special  passion for the the study of nests and nestling birds. He wrote an extraordinary WW1 diary in which birds and war featured equally. After that war he created a great garden and introduced to Britain many flowering cherries from Japan, and other plants from all over the world. In WW2 he was a Home Guard Commander and left a unique record of the day to day activities of his platoon. His collection of Japanese inro, netsuke and other works of art, now in the British Museum as the Ingram Bequest. He wrote some 60 travel journals, and sketched and painted throughout his life.

Thanks especially to Naoko Abe’s best-selling book Chrery Ingram: the Englishman who saved Japan’s blossims his life as a plantsman is widely known, In this book we focus on his enthusiasm for birds, which dominated the first 40 years of his life and again in old age, after the “cherry years. Well in to his nineties he investigated puzzles in bird life that had long intrigued him.

Collingwood’s own writings and drawings are the core of this biography – he recorded and illustrated his lifelong love of nature. He combined energy, observational powers, a remarkable memory, meticulous recording, artistic talent and, above all, an enquiring mind.

In the spirit of this book, we will let Collingwood introduce himself – he wrote an autobiography when he was fifteen.

…… One of the first things I can remember was the snore of my Norwegian nurse, when we were staying at Quex. Pids (that is my father) can, I am sure, snore with anyone, but this nurse fairly took the bun. It was a kind of rasping, blood curdling noise (at that date it did make my blood curdle too, I can tell you) that seemed to try to fetch the plaster off the ceiling and rumble along through your stomach with the vibration of a traction engine. Her name was Solway something-or-other (I think Vangen) and she remained with us for some years, going to Algiers with us in ’88 or ’89 (I’ve forgotten which) and then (some years after) departed to marry some man she knew previous to coming to England. Bruce and she used to have fights together about this time, which looking back seemed to be of a very comic nature. Although earnest enough at that time with Bruce – and for the matter of that Solway too – he used to rush quite savagely at the woman with his teeth showing and glaring eyes, and sometimes with such force as to send her against something or other. But Bruce has always been hot-tempered, poor old Frisky! And kind when otherwise.

       Besides the famous snore I can remember other things; one is Pid’s dragon stories, and when he broke his wrist. Another is how Bruce and I tried to remain awake all one night in turns, and I think we did it too, and others, as when I looked into my first nest (which I now think must have been a hedge sparrow) and also how the frost killed a lot of swallows, and in fact many other things equally varied and unaccountable why they should be fixed in my mind.

       Bertie was so much older at that time in comparison with my age – which was about seven – that I can recollect very little about him, which is the reason why I have not mentioned his name on the last few pages. One thing however which might have been put in was his departure for school. He was the hero of the hour, everybody in the family wept bitter and briny tears except himself, but you could quite see he did not enjoy the prospect by his face, the expression on which was more doleful than the whole of the weeping family put together. …       

…… After we left Quex we spent some months in Algiers; of this trip I could say much, but as I said before I must curb my flowing pen. One or two things however I will put down. Somehow when I arrived at the villa my father had taken for us I seemed to recognise it; of course I had never set eyes on it before, and the only way I can account for it was that I had dreamt of the house or of one something similar. Perhaps my age had a lot to do with this curious familiarity with a building I had never seen before. Bertie here started a kind of what we called a fort. He, Bruce and a French boy were the garrison. I was too young in their eyes, so was only admitted as a prisoner or a friend.

It was here the bugbear of my life was realised. I had a French governess! Not that the nationality had anything to do with it, but any kind of teacher was what I dreaded. Speaking of this I remember I have omitted a rather funny story of how Bertie once dressed up at Quex as Miss Smackemhard. At that time I did not see the joke. I could not see through the disguise, a wig, bonnet, dress and a pair of spectacles, and I felt miserably unhappy at the thought of a creature like that teaching me. But to return to the French governess; she did not after all turn out to be as objectionable as I had anticipated and never taught me, only speaking French to me.

I still think sometimes of those sunny days, and the luscious loquats from the large-leaved trees in the garden and the orchids of the pine woods. I can see too the old friendly Arab with his turkeys and chickens and the Australian Magpie amongst the fowls. All has passed like the present will pass, and like the future will pass. All must glide silently from memory, all!

Returning, we came to the Bungalow, Westgate-on-Sea (where I am now writing), and here, on and off, up to now I have spent most, or a good deal, of my life: that was, if I recollect rightly, about nine years ago.

One or two winters after this, we all went to Cannes, staying at the Hotel Californie; from thence we continued along the coast calling at Venice and other principal towns through the North of Italy and home by Switzerland and Paris. At one of the places we were staying at, I composed a little song, or what I called a song, without music. It ran thus: “Little man, little man, what time is it? One two three four (up to twelve). Little man, little man, it is time for you to go to bed” or something very much like it. One morning at about twenty to eight, I started singing. Somehow my brothers did not appreciate my melodious voice at that time of morning, and Bertie went and (what if I had done, would have been called) ‘sneaked’ to Pids and returned to my room with the information that if I continued making that disgusting noise Pids would thrash me. I did not believe him, and went on singing. The next thing I did was to slide, howling with fright under the bed, my father in full pursuit with a hair-brush (mine, too! I believe). He did not hurt me much, but I felt very bitter against my brother, and still think it a beastly thing to have done. Since then I have never sung that song and do not intend to again. ……

……   About this time, Pids took a shooting in Yorkshire for three years and it was here that I first fired off a gun. I can remember perfectly that shot: I was eleven and knew very little about it and actually closed the wrong eye, which resulted in my missing the hayrick (a very small one) as well as the target – not a very brilliant beginning.

Those three visits have been some of the most enjoyable periods of my life. It all comes back to me, my first rabbit, the old keepers, those quaint cricket matches, and above everything that landscape. It was not a majestic landscape, just a simple one, nor was it anything extraordinary. Great field after field, intersected by tall ‘bullfinches’ and hedgerows, stretched down to the south with an occasional tree here and there. Behind was the hilly moorland, and to the right and left were the slopes of the range, covered with woods mostly of pines and larch. In some places the view was wonderful for you could see as far as the eye could reach right over Yorkshire and again in the north-west as far as Bonnie Scotland if the day was sufficiently clear. I have not mentioned before my infatuation for moors and wild districts, I love them - revel in them!.

On the hillside (about a mile from our house, Manor House it was called) we knew of a spring, cool, trickling and clear: it bubbled straight from the ground among the heather and ferns, the sweetest of springs imaginable. I am sure if ever I was dying of thirst in some desert or upon the merciless ocean, this crystal flow of water would haunt me. I feel a longing come over me as I write, to return once more to the little source and drink, and have felt it before.

The name of the village we were staying in was Over Silton (ten miles from Thirsk and Northallerton) a very small place of few inhabitants, yet it possessed a cricket eleven which was greatly improved by our arrival in the place for we took with us a ‘pro’ to teach Bertie and Bruce the game. The matches between the neighbouring places were of a very amusing nature, and some of the umpires’ decisions were truly funny. If the ‘Hoo is it’ was shouted loud enough it made a good difference in the answer, supposing the umpire was on the questioners side.

In the second year, I think it was, we played the town of Northallerton. Posters were pasted about the walls announcing this fact, with the names of the probable players and everything. The eventful day came. We won the toss and made about 64. Then came the Northallerton people: first one then the other of their wickets fell before the bowling of Parmington* and the whole team was dismissed for about eight! Never had we won such a victory, it was beyond all our dreams, we, a potty little village beating a town like that so completely. Unfortunately I had nothing to do with the match except applaud, so I can claim none of the honour with which the Siltonites returned that evening.

*Parmington was our pro.

Talking of ‘pros’, I forgot to mention the first one we had. His name was Gandy, and a funny looking ‘cove’ he was too. He and I used to go to a little stream and he there showed me the way to catch trout by hand; he was no novice at the trick and it was not the first time he had tried either, for in his time he had poached a bit (he is a policeman now, by the way). One day we returned with 14 fish, very small of course but nevertheless I have never eaten fish to equal them, not that I have had vast experience of the flavours of trout, but still I would not mind saying that you would not find better, anyhow in our island.

Good and bad, everything has to come to an end sooner or later and those pleasant months in Yorkshire at last terminated. Sometimes now when I hear a robin warbling among the dew-covered leaves of September I think of the old place, for robins were frequently singing in the orchard and they seem to belong to that grey-coloured Manor House; they seem true Tykes, straightforward and honest.

I have often noticed this with birds - it is one of the pleasures of studying their ways – they remind one of the past. One note of a migrant under the beating rays of the sun in a far off country will bring you back to some sequestered nook in dear old England, as suddenly as a vision in a fairy tale. The palms, the Egyptian orange sellers, the donkey boys, all seem dream-like: once more you are under the swaying birches in Surrey and once more you hear the ripple of the stream, the croak of a moorhen, the cheerful note of a chiff-chaff – ah but that’s too realistic, he is not hopping among the birch trees but is in amongst the palms, far, far from Surrey.