The Farm [antikvár]

Dear Anne and Hope and Ellen,- The Farm is written for you, who were all born long after the War came to an end, in order that you may know a little what it was like to have lived before 1914. Something came to an end about that year and I fancy it was the Nineteenth Century. You will never know what it was like at first hand, and you will never know the country from which your father came, because even if you ever went to visit it, you would fail to find it. You might discover a stream or hill which you would recognize from hearsay and legend, but that is all. The rest has vanished. One thing you would never find, and that is the feel of the country as it was thirty years before you were born, and certainly you would never find people like Great-Aunt Jane and Old Jamie and Zenobia van Essen. There is no longer either space or time for them. And you would find nothing of the Eighteenth Century. You would never hear Great-Aunt Jane say of someone she detested, " That woman is a Hessian! " nor hear words like " buttery " and " still-room " and " wench," nor witness a respectable old lady dressed in black taffeta using the word " bastard " as if she were saying " cat " or " dog." In your father's childhood, the Eighteenth Century was just round the corner. For you, born after 1914, it has become as remote as the Tenth Century. The Farm is the story largely of a way of living which has gone out of fashion, save in a few half-forgotten corners and in a few families which have stuck to it with admirable integrity in spite of everything. It was and is a good way of living, and although you live to be as old as the Colonel, I doubt that you will find a better way. I counsel you to cherish it as most of the descendants of the Colonel and the stalwart Elvira van Essen have done. It has in it v