Memorial plaque to Winifred Holtby in Rudston church, East Riding of Yorkshire, the village where she was born and is buried.
This poem was written after a tour of the Yorkshire Wolds and Holderness, visiting the landscapes that, like me, Winifred Holtby grew up in and which inspired her writing, especially South Riding and Anderby Wold. The first stanza of the poem is the favourite quote of Sarah Burton in South Riding and informs the whole novel.
Take
what you want – the landscape of Winifred Holtby
Take what
you want,
said God.
Take it
and pay for it.
Take broad,
straight-sided valleys,
chalk-strewn
Wolds
and
massive, open skies,
and across
this landscape, wide and clear,
stretch
your imagination.
Take clay
of fragile, sea-gnawed cliffs
and
reclaimed river mud,
and mould
from them a land
of breath-held
liminality -
a
strange, forgotten corner
on
England’s furthest edge.
Take
those who live here
and, like
God himself,
create a
world
that
shows, in contrasts too-long hidden,
the
strengths of women
and the
weaknesses of men.
But, most
of all,
take
compassion and equality
as your guides
and
spread the words to even those
who do
not choose to listen.
Take all
of this – and pay for it,
said God.
Pay for
it with a life cut short,
like all
those brave young men
with whom
you went to war.
Pay with
the love of generations
that you
won’t live to know.
Pay for
it at a price
that is, perhaps, too high,
that is, perhaps, too high,
but a
spiritual bargain
you fully
understand.
Then, even
though your work is incomplete,
take your
rest in that same place
where you
first saw the day,
and where,
on summer mornings
when the
sun climbs orange from the sea
and a skein
of wild geese splits the sky,
the
shadow of the timeless Stone
pays out across
the graves.
Rudston church and monolith - the Stone.
A typical view across the Wolds.
Dowthorpe Hall, the inspiration for Maythorpe in South Riding, currently the home of John Holtby, descendant of Robert Holtby, Winifred's uncle, who inspired the character, Robert Carne.
