Field-club nostalgia

(on reading in wartime the Members' List of the Dorset Field Club)

Trembling the heat-haze on Purbeck and Lulworth,
Sparkling the sea beyond Winspit and Wool:
Oh, what a day for the Field Club's Excursion,
Down on the coast where the breezes are cool!
Sir Kaye le Fleming conducts our party,
With Bonds from Tyneham and Bonds from Creech,
Where Sir Philip Grey Egerton and Lord Enniskillen
A century since dug for bones on the beach.

Norfolk jackets and knickerbockers,
And silver rings round silken ties –
My old tin vasculum's lost its enamel
And I'm getting too stiff to chase butterflies.
But Ignatius Bulfin and Dr Dru-Drury
Excitedly talk of migrations of rooks,
While the Reverend Stote-Blandy is fishing up seaweed
With a panama borrowed from poor Captain Ffooks.

Now there's the church for the keen antiquarians
(How cool it will be in the Turberville aisle!)
And near it they're digging a fine Roman Villa
Where we'll fill up our pockets with fragments of tile.
Miss Pulliblank (from the Curatage, Rampisham)
Button-booted and parasolled strides to the goal
While Colonel and Mrs Troyte-Bullock (from Evershott)
Are talking of fonts with the Venerable Moule.

Then to the Manor, where under the cedars
We'll gather as guests for afternoon tea
And hear and retail all the gossip of Dorset
As the delicate brew makes our tongues run free.
News from Cerne and Sydling St Nicholas
(Curious tales from Cranborne Chase):
How I can see it all, dear fellow-members
In this frigid season and alien place!

All names guaranteed genuine members!

1941

NOTES

• TS, MS subhead and note at end—'All names guaranteed genuine members!'
• Poem sent by SP to John and Myfanwy Piper 3-i-1942: the letter is in the Piper Archives—but no copy of this poem there.
• None from Clarissa Lewis