posted on 26 Oct 2022

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee

 As a new English Literature undergraduate in the early 1970s, I have a vivid memory of sitting in my astonishingly uncomfortable hall-of-residence armchair on a slate-grey late autumn Welsh morning and disappearing into the sun-drenched world of Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. The drizzle on the window and the gritty sharp wind outside dissolved into the bleached landscapes of Spain, the smells, the cheap wine and the poetical bonhomie of a teenage Laurie Lee tramping on painful, blistered feet across a country on the verge of a massive upheaval and the tragedy of civil war.

And that’s pretty much how the book has lodged itself in my head for the past fifty years – until, that is, I decided the time had come to revisit Lee’s masterpiece.

I’m delighted to be able to report that as soon as I opened the covers its magical ability to transport me into its landscape immediately took hold and the uncluttered but lyrical prose carried me along making it hard to put the book down and return to the mundane realities of day. Other people I’ve spoken to about the book often go rather misty-eyed about it, talking fondly of how it captures a sort of romantic moment, a teenage dream of freedom. But what soon became apparent on my rereading was that this book is so much more than a beautifully written bit of nostalgic memoir writing. What Lee does so perfectly is to take us by the hand and lead us into a country where much of the population was trapped in a feudal and impoverished past but whose future was doomed to be tragic.

The nineteen year old Lee whose world was pretty much confined to the Gloucestershire countryside decides to strike out and see the world. He heads to London and from there takes a cheap crossing to Spain. Liz Edwards writing for The Times in 2020 describes it in this way:

‘A £4 boat ticket to Vigo starts our hero off in Galicia, from where he walks and busks his way on a lazy, looping Zorro “Z” through the country: east to Valladolid, south via Madrid and Seville to Cadiz, then east again along the Andalusian coast, past Malaga to Castillo. This was the 1930s, the eve of the Spanish Civil War, and a Spain that you couldn’t revisit now even if you busted out of lockdown.

Much of it is a Spain that you wouldn’t want to revisit: bedbugs, blisters, wolves, sunstroke brought on by fearful heat — “the brass-taloned lion which licks the afternoon ground ready to consume anyone not wise enough to take cover”.’

Wide-eyed and innocent his walking across the country amazes those he comes into contact with and he ekes out a kind of living by busking, playing his fiddle for anyone who wants to listen. The descriptions of the parched countryside are spare, graphic and three-dimensional but it’s the people he meets who fill the book with life and vitality. Jen Rose Smith writing for the Washington Post neatly captures some of Lee’s charm:

‘His youth consecrated the journey, adding magic to things both dark and mundane, so it’s a pleasure to walk alongside as Lee continues south, playing his violin for tossed coins in villages that evoke fable or fairy tale. Black-robed crones lean in doorways, and merciful strangers offer aid just as sunstroke grows dire. In one town, veiled women winnow golden grain; arriving in the next, he finds elegant but impoverished residents strutting lace and velvet attire on streets lined with hovels.’

But as Lee’s journey eventually takes him from Madrid, over the mountains and on to the southern coast of Spain, the dark clouds of politics are rolling in and he finds himself involved in the first shots of the civil war. Although he is whisked away by the British navy who are evacuating its citizens, the book ends with Lee resolving to return to the country he has come to love to fight alongside his Republican friends in their struggle against fascism.

I’m so glad I revisited the book and discovered that it’s a more richly textured read than I remembered. All the poetry and sensuality of the book are undoubtedly still there – you can still feel the sun and smell the dust – but there’s more there in the dark shadows than I had seen before or recalled. It’s a book that will reward many rereadings.

Paperback copies are easily available for well under £10.

 

Terry Potter

October 2022