River Diary

Dorothea Eastwood

Published bu Houghton Mifflin Company, hardcover with dustjacket

River Diary represents English naturewriting at its best, in the tradition of Isaak Walton, Gilbert White, W. H. Hudson. The author is a painter, a trained botanist, a keen observer and a writer of rare warmth and charm. Her diary covers the months from March to October in the valley of the Usk—the beautiful country near the border of Wales.

"Below the beeches lay Trostrey Pool, long, deep and stil, ending at a once famous, but now low and broken mill weir in a flurry of water that flashed and sparkled as it leapt into the sun-light from the deep green shade. There it divided around an island of alders and willows, the main stream continuing on its way past a meadow, the smaller slipping back into the shadows between island and trees. It rejoined its companion below a stone mill and the ruin of an old iron forge. Both had been long deserted. In the mill the wheels and shafts stood immobile, the names of wandering lovers were scratched upon its beams.

As we stood in its doorway and looked down, we saw the river run past Brynderwyn estate, southwards towards Usk. It swept out of sight in a long curve below a high bank with a tumulus on the summit, and was hidden by the folds of green, wood-crowned hills, where farms and orchards clambered over their lower slopes.

To the south-west lay the blue mountains—Mynydd-garn-wen, Mynydd-garn-clochdy, the Blorenge, sweeping along the valley's side.

"The Trostrey boundary came some two hundred yards below the mill at Brynderwyn fence, and turning we walked back to the upper water by the beechbank which sank and ended in a copse of alders and hazels, oaks and hollies. There meadows widened out between copse and river, and in its turn the copse was lost in a bed of withies.

The hill which bounded them pushed a blunt prow eastwards, into open country ; above the copse stood a white farm with a pear orchard, and beyond it, in a clump of trees, we could just discern the towers of a castle, while behind it the hill rose up and up, woodcrested, to the sky."

Here Dorothea Eastwood and her husband found their dream place and "lost a large portion of their capital and gained a great happiness." Not in our century has the feeling for nature been expressed in an easier or a more glowing prose than in River Diary. And here "nature" includes both man and his setting, for when we lay aside Mrs. Eastwood's book we part reluctantly from a delightful family who lead the good life. River Diary is a serene and lovely book.