Lascelles Abercrombie (1881-1938) was another of those literary figures who were drawn to our part of Morecambe Bay. A poet and critic, he published An Essay toward a Theory of Art in 1922, from which this anecdote is taken.

Mrs E. V. Foulds, who brought this piece to my attention, recalls that his visits were made to Silverdale and Grange-over-Sands. The irrepressible little boy was one of the author’s three sons.

I was staying a while ago with my family on the shores of Morecambe Bay. The news came one morning that a horse was in the quicksands: so we all set off to assist in digging it out. I may say – not to make the story too thrilling – that there was no danger to us. It was a temporary quicksand, due to rain. Only the head, back and tail of the horse were above ground, but it would not sink further: the sand had set firm around – till we began to dig, and then it at once became a sort of porridge. It was a long business and horribly exciting. We could feel at our backs the menace of the tide; it was only a gleam as yet on the skyline – but everyone knows how the Morecambe tide comes in.

Exciting, certainly; but the excitement was one of intense and practical anxiety. We were all the time calculating the possibility that the poor beast might be still embedded when the water was up to its nostrils; and we were trying not to notice the anguish of terror in its eyes and the quivering palsy to which exhaustion had reduced its pitiable struggles, but there was one member of the party who hopped about in pure candid untroubled enjoyment of the whole affair: this inexhaustibly interesting world had provided one more first-rate spectacle for his especial benefit.

’Will the horse be drownded?’ he kept eagerly asking.

There was nothing callous in that: what the horse felt about it had simply never occurred to him: the only judgment to which the spectacle had been referred was the simple and immediate judgment: Was it a thrilling affair or not? Why, of course it was: the whole thing was most admirably arranged. And then came the final touch. The men were busily digging round; we were all hauling on a rope doubled endways round the horse’s body; the owner was hauling on the horse’s tail. But the tail and his hands were slippery with salt water, and just as we made a grand concerted effort, – the tail slipped through his hands and over he went, heels over head. Instantly there shrilled out a piercing keen peal of ecstatic delight; I have never heard laughter of a more unqualified rapture: and I have never, I think, been more shocked by the intrusion of the pure aesthetic view of things into the world of moral or practical values. Severe remonstration followed: the unseasonable nature of the laughter was made clear. But the excuse was irresistible: ’I thought he’d pulled the tail right out!’ That would, indeed, have raised the affair to an exquisite perfection. It was not true; but the instantaneous impression of it was accepted without question and enjoyed to the utmost – simply as a thing given.

Now this was pure aesthetic experience: that is to say, it was experience that did not look outside itself for its value. That small boy had still the faculty (alas, he will lose it too soon) of taking everything as it comes along and finding it immediately good or bad: of instantly deciding its value simply as experience, without requiring any other interest.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 9 Autumn 1984