Rusticus — Story, Setting & Ideas

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In Category - Historical Psychological Social Fiction

Authors: Briggs, Martin S. (Martin Shaw), 1882-1977 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2023 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Great Britain -- Economic conditions; Land use, Rural -- Great Britain; Country life -- Great Britain Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 22,750

Reading time 99 min

Text sections 12

This digital edition of Rusticus — Story, Setting & Ideas is described by source-level measurements including 22,750 words, 1 hr 39 min estimated reading time, and 12 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 19.9 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Great Britain -- Economic conditions,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #72263

Martin S. Briggs's 1927 polemic examines the impact of industrialization, motor traffic, and suburban sprawl on the English countryside, using a returning traveler's perspective to contrast nostalgic rural ideals with the realities of arterial roads, trackless trams, and haphazard development.

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_For the Contents of this Series see the end of the Book._

THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRYSIDE

_Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis._

Horace, _Epist._ I, i, 42

LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

_In the Heel of Italy._ 1910.

_Baroque Architecture._ 1913.

_Through Egypt in War-time._ 1918.

_Muhammadan Architecture in Egypt and Palestine._ 1924.

_A Short History of the Building Crafts._ 1925.

_The Architect in History._ (_in the Press_)

Made and Printed in Great Britain by

THE BOWERING PRESS, PLYMOUTH.

I. “SO THIS IS ENGLAND!” 7

II. BEFORE THE DELUGE 12

III. KING COAL (_c._ 1810-1910) 26

IV. THE AGE OF PETROL (_c._ 1910 _onwards_) 46

“SO THIS IS ENGLAND!”

On every side a wail is rising over the irreparable damage that is being done to the rural England that we all claim to love. The change that has occurred is most evident to those who have not witnessed its steady progress, rapid as it has been. To realise what has happened, let us put ourselves in the place of an Englishman who is now returning home after a sojourn of twenty years in some remote Eastern outpost of our Empire. Imagine him as a sensitive observer like Doughty or Kinglake, a man who has learned to appreciate the savage beauty of the Arabian desert, the very antithesis of his own land. But now at last the sand has eaten into his soul, and he is longing to see the English countryside that he remembers so well. He thinks of small green fields, of little grey churches with rooks cawing among the elms, of running water, even of grey skies, in fact of everything that is most characteristically English. There is nothing in our poetry that better describes this England than Kipling’s “Sussex,” and Kipling knew all about the East.

Our traveller lands at Folkestone eagerly anticipating his journey through Kent, and, in order to see as much as possible of hedgerows and villages and fields on the way up to London, he charters a motor-car. There is something rather daring, to his mind, in this business of the car; on his last visit to England in 1907 cars were not entirely unknown, but there was then a touch of novelty about them. His driver gingerly threads his way up from the harbour through a maze of hooting charabancs and yelping Fords, with several hairbreadth escapes which make the traveller wish himself back on his lurching camel. But soon Folkestone is left behind, and he settles down to a contemplation of the number-plate of the car in front, while the fumes of its exhaust mingle with those of his own Corona. He expects to find some changes in the aspect of England, but then of course there was the Town-Planning Act in 1909, so that nothing very unpleasant need be feared, and at any rate one misses the East Kent Coalfield by coming this way. The road is very wide and very straight; there is no dust. A small lighthouse with black and white sides, crowned by a red lamp busily blinking in broad daylight, indicates a cross-roads. Yes, this new route avoids the streets of Sandgate and Hythe, which must be very crowded in these days, but the wire fences are a poor substitute for green hedges. And these terrible petrol-stations every few yards with their glaring red and yellow pumps are very trying to the eyes. Still there are some old landmarks left: the hoardings are bigger than ever, and some of them bear the familiar legends of Edwardian days.

He looks forward to passing through Lenham, Charing, and Harrietsham--three beautiful villages on the main road--but as each is approached his car swerves along the new racing-track and thus avoids the village High Street, rejoining the old main road, widened beyond recognition, a little farther on. He passes through a great cutting gashed through the chalk. Felled trees lie by the road, old walls are pulled down, all bends are straightened out, everything is cleared away to allow the cars and charabancs to roar through the countryside. But is it countryside any longer? More than anything else in this nightmare drive he is impressed by the New Architecture, which appears to consist mainly of bungalows.

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Martin S. Briggs opens Rusticus with a vivid conceit: an Englishman returning after twenty years abroad, his senses shaped by the Arabian desert, now longs for the small green fields and grey churches of home. But the journey from Folkestone to London becomes a gauntlet of hooting charabancs, exhaust fumes, and number-plates. The contrast between remembered hedgerows and the actuality of motor traffic sets the tone for a book that is less a pastoral lament than a practical critique of planning and infrastructure in 1920s Britain.

The Returning Traveller as Rhetorical Device

Briggs does not simply describe rural change; he stages it through a fictional observer. The traveller, imagined as a sensitive figure akin to Doughty or Kinglake, serves as a proxy for the reader's own nostalgia. His shock at the transformation of Kent—the garden of England—into a corridor of cars and advertisements gives emotional weight to what might otherwise be a dry policy argument. The device allows Briggs to contrast the traveller's remembered England with the present, but the excerpts show that the traveller quickly disappears from the text after the opening chapter. The book then shifts to a more analytical mode, examining historical and economic forces.

Infrastructure as Aesthetic and Practical Problem

Briggs devotes considerable attention to the physical fabric of the countryside: roads, tramways, telegraph poles, and advertisements. He criticizes the 'trackless tram' in Wharfedale and Birmingham, arguing that motor-buses could serve the same purpose without the visual blight. He praises the reduction of dust on modern roads but worries about the design of new 'lighthouses' at crossings. The tone is that of an informed observer who expects engineers to do better. His discussion of town-planning legislation—the 1909 Act, the Advertisement Regulation Act of 1907—shows a writer engaged with current policy, not merely lamenting loss.

Zoning and the Ideal of Orderly Growth

In the most concrete section of the excerpts, Briggs explains 'zoning' as the rational allocation of land for houses, shops, and factories, determined by wind, railways, and roads. He paints a picture of suburban chaos: families buying houses in half-developed areas, only to find a shop rising opposite, prompting another move. The only beneficiary, he notes dryly, is the removal contractor. His solution is town-planning as 'idealised common-sense.' The argument is pragmatic rather than sentimental, grounded in the belief that proper planning would prevent both ugliness and financial waste.

Readers should note that the excerpts cover only the first chapter and part of a later one; the full book includes chapters on coal, the age of petrol, and the future, as well as a list of addresses. Briggs's perspective is that of an architect and historian—his earlier works include studies of building crafts and Baroque architecture—which explains his focus on design and regulation rather than on rural sociology or agriculture. The book is best approached as a period document of interwar planning debates.

There are moments in Rusticus when Briggs seems less a critic than a mourner, grieving hedgerows lost to arterial roads. I find myself thinking of that quiet ache whenever I revisit the dueling grounds in Pistols for two — Themes and Context, where honor, too, has its own vanished landscape. Some things simply fade, leaving only their echo.