Saturday 30 April 2022 The Guardian •
7
It is calving season. By my
estimation, having tracked her
cycle from when she ran with the
bull last summer, this beast is
overdue. That’s not unusual, but
she is a heifer – a fi rst -time mother- so I have been monitoring closely.
She had behaved normally
at feeding, giving no reason to
suspect change, but later on as I
pass through the woods with the
dogs, I see her down. By habit, I
inspect. She seems uncomfortable,
her breath pulses shallow and
quick, though she has been doing
this intermittently for days.
As I look, there is a sudden
expulsion of fl uid at my feet. She
stands abruptly, just as surprised as
me, and sniff s at the ground. Then
she makes the tenderest of sounds,
instinctively communicating
with her unborn calf.
There is a primitive power
in this moment in which a life
is about to be made living, but
additionally so in this instance.
The mother of this heifer was our
original matriarch, a cow we relied
on. In 2019, she was condemned
with TB along with almost half
our small herd. We wondered
if the farm could continue after
such a big loss, but the orphaned
calf – her only surviving progeny –
felt reason enough to try.
Progress is steady. She
alternates between lying and
standing. When she goes down,
I make sure the calf is presenting
correctly – two blanched hooves,
pointing down; inside her I feel a
nose. But steady becomes slow,
she is losing momentum. At the
next wave of contractions, I go to
help. With both of us straining –
she pushing, me pulling – we inch
it out until the calf fully emerges,
a warm, slithering mass.
It is momentarily lifeless, its
tongue blueish and swollen. I
prop it upright and squeeze my
hand over its nostrils to clear the
airways. She licks, I rub, we both
urge encouragement. Then it
blinks and gives a slight shake of
its head. It is alive – and what’s
more, it’s a heifer.
Opinion is mixed on the
naming of livestock, but
sometimes the case is clearcut.
Given her provenance and her
future potential, we call this
new calf Faith.
Sarah Laughton
John Crace ’s Digested week (23 April)
provides amusing evidence from
1936 that “the towering conscience
of a generation [George Orwell]
might possibly have written reviews
of books he had not read”.
Orwell’s essay Confessions of
a Book Reviewer , published in
Tribune in 1946, can be found
online in the Orwell Foundation
and my favourite sentence, relating
to the latest parcel of books he had
to review, is: “Three of these books
deal with subjects of which he is so
ignorant that he will have to read
at least 50 pages if he is to avoid
making some howler which will
betray him not merely to the author
(who of course knows all about
the habits of book reviewers), but
even to the general reader.”
At least the towering conscience
came clean a decade later.
Peter Davis
Welwyn, HertfordshireEstablished 1906Country diary
Long Dean,
Cotswolds
An unsung heroine
of literary criticism
When Orwell fessed
up over fake reviews
Kathryn Hughes , reviewing
Terry Eagleton’s book Critical
Revolutionaries (22 April) , says,
“Cambridge, the university with
which they were all connected,
was not particularly welcoming
to female academics”, the “they”
being TS Eliot, William Empson,
FR Leavis and Raymond Williams.
Prof Hughes might take solace
in the fact it was Empson’s Seven
Types of Ambiguity that was the
major springboard for the “new
criticism” of the next six decades
(and beyond), and that Empson got
the whole idea from Laura Riding
and her book, written with Robert
Graves, A Survey of Modernist
Poetry , published in 1927.
Recent scholarly work shows
that she was the authentic provider
of thought in this book, including
the close analysis of Shakespeare’s
Sonnet 129, which sent Empson off
in a scribbling frenzy to write his
book based on that analysis. She has
never been accorded recognition
for this because of the mafi a-like
conspiracy post-1940 that arose
under the auspices of Graves and
his public school acolytes. Empson
himself refused to recognise her as
the foremost author of A Survey of
Modernist Poetry because, he said
at the time, “I didn’t know who
she was”, and left her out of his
acknowledgements.
It is also no coincidence that
Riding was a member of the
renowned “Fugitive” group of
poets in America, which included,
signifi cantly, John Crowe Ransom,
a real critic, before she came to
England in 1926 and set the poetry
world abuzz. Much of A Survey of
Modernist Poetry is taken from
her book written at the same time,
Contemporaries and Snobs, a work
of intellectual rigour which has thus
far proven to be beyond the ordinary
intelligence of literary criticism.
IA Richards and the others? They
had nothing to do with it.
Dr Mark Jacobs
Nottingham [email protected]
@guardianlettersILLUSTRATION: CLIFFORD HARPER- We misnamed one of the
contestants in Interior Design
Masters With Alan Carr; he is called
Banjo, not Bingo (Television,
16 April, What’s On, p4). - A recipe for roast chicken
with green rice and ancho butter
accidentally omitted 200ml white
wine from the ingredients list
(9 April, Feast, p8). - The Kinder mass trespass, which
established the principle of open
access land, took place on 24 April,
not 25 April 1932 as we said in an
article about its 90th anniversary
( Swimmers plan mass trespass at
Kinder reservoir , 23 April, p15).
Editorial complaints and corrections can be sent to
[email protected] or The readers’
editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU.
You can also leave a voicemail on 020 3353 4736Andrew Clements thinks that
the 2022 Proms programme is
not “adventurous or ambitious”
(theguardian.com, 26 April). Well,
that is the way a lot of us like it.
Personally, if the Proms stuck to
Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Haydn,
Brahms, Wagner, Tchaikovsky etc,
that would suit me down to the
ground. At 83, I may be changing
into Victor Meldrew, but some
things are just best left alone.
John Richards
Oxford- A bank holiday in October
(Letters, 28 April)? What could be
better than UN Day on 24 October
to celebrate the inestimable value
of the United Nations and to remind
us of the urgent need to support
and strengthen it.
Hilary Evans
Twickenham, London - When I’m prime minister for the
day I shall introduce the Birthday
Bank Holiday Act, which would
guarantee you a day off to celebrate
your birthday. Who’s with me?
Matthew Newman
Leeds - I also start Wordle with the word
“audio” (Letters, 23 April) , but as it
contains a “u”, I only do it on days of
the week that contain a “u”. On other
days I start with “atone”, which uses
the most commonly used letters in
English. Works for me.
Tony Cima
Winstone, Gloucestershire - The world’s largest penis museum
(Experience, 23 April)? Oh dear,
are we really back to that hoary old
question – does size really matter?
Max Perkins
Salisbury, Wiltshire
A progressive Proms?
I just don’t believe it
Corrections and
clarifi cations