The Sweat and the Furrow by Silas Weekley

Title: The Sweat and the Furrow

Author: Silas Weekley

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

At the beginning of The Daughter of Time Inspector Alan Grant is lying flat on his back, in a hospital bed, nursing a badly broken leg after falling through a trapdoor.

Friends have given him a selection of new books to relieve the prickles of boredom, but Grant cannot bring himself to read anything in the pile. At the top is the latest Lavinia Fitch, about a blameless heroine’s tribulations. Grant has only opened the book to read Lavinia’s kind message inside. In view of the representation of the Grand Harbour at Valletta on the cover, Grant guesses her heroine (Valerie, Angela, Cecile or Denise) must be a naval wife. I don’t think this sounds like the sort of book a man would reach for even if he knows the author.

Also in the pile is The Sweat and the Furrow; “Silas Weekley being earthy and spade-conscious over 700 pages. The situation, to judge from the first paragraph, had not changed since Silas’s last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the hay-loft, everyone else lying low in the barn. The rain dripped from the thatch, and the manure steamed in the midden. Silas never omitted the manure. It was not Silas’s fault that its steam provided the only up-rising element in the picture. If Silas could have invented a brand of steam that steamed downwards, Silas would have introduced it.”

[I have to say this one doesn’t sound ideal reading for anyone confined to a hospital bed. I probably wouldn’t attempt it either, not even on a sunny day when I’m feeling my most cheerful.]

Silas Weekley also features in To Love and Be Wise, (also by) Josephine Tey. To be honest, I had forgotten that, but I haven’t read it as often as I have The Daughter of Time. Silas is considered one of the greatest living British authors. And that’s despite his work being described as “dark novels of country life, all steaming manure and slashing rain”. Silas is not a nice man. He and his put-upon family live in Salcott St Mary; the equally famous author Lavinia Fitch lives there too.

Images borrowed from the internet