,
 
 //* t. rfc 
 
 /
 
 THE OPEN AIR
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 1 NATURE NEAR LONDON," "THE LIFE OF THE 
 FIELDS," ETC. 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 THOMAS COKE WATKINS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1907, 
 BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & Co. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE. U. 8. A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SAINT GUIDO j 
 
 GOLDEN-BROWN 30 
 
 WILD FLOWERS 38 
 
 SUNNY BRIGHTON 62 
 
 THE PINE WOOD 85 
 
 NATURE ON THE ROOF 98 
 
 ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS 113 
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 135 
 
 THE SINGLE-BARREL GUN 167 
 
 THE HAUNT OF THE HARE 172 
 
 THE BATHING SEASON 179 
 
 UNDER THE ACORNS 199 
 
 DOWNS 211 
 
 FOREST 220 
 
 BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY 229 
 
 OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY 244 
 
 HAUNTS OF THE LAPWING 261 
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 272 
 
 ON THE LONDON ROAD 297 
 
 RED ROOFS OF LONDON 305 
 
 A WET NIGHT IN LONDON . . . .,. . . 311
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 LL things seem possible in the open air." 
 In these few words we have an epitome 
 of Jefferies' philosophy of Nature. 
 To write as he has written, to be 
 confident of Nature and to share the secrets of her 
 penetralia, requires more than the mere power of 
 observation, however acute, or a life of reclusion, 
 however remote. It necessitates a love of out-of- 
 door life, as fond, as passionate, as devoted as that 
 of lover for his mistress. It calls for close com- 
 munion with the earth and sky, at all hours and in 
 all seasons ; not only during the gleam of summer 
 sunshine, but amid frost and snow. " So it has 
 ever been to me," he tells us, " by day or night, 
 summer or winter; beneath the trees the heart feels 
 nearer to that depth of life which the far sky means. 
 The rest of spirit found only in beauty, ideal and 
 pure, comes there because the distance seems 
 within touch of thought. To the heaven thought 
 can reach, lifted up by the ascent of the flame-shaped 
 fir. Round the spruce the blue was deepened, con- 
 centrated by the fixed point j the memory of that
 
 INTRODUCTION g-~.org ~^ae 
 
 spot, as it were, of the sky is still fresh I can see 
 it distinctly still beautiful and full of meaning. 
 It is painted in bright colour in my mind, colour 
 thrice laid, and indeljble; as one passes a shrine 
 and bows the head to the Madonna, so I recall the 
 picture and stoop in spirit to the aspiration it yet 
 arouses. For there is no saint like the sky, sun- 
 light shining from its face." 
 
 It was when Jefferies lived in the open air as the 
 young Wiltshire yeoman, wholly unconscious of 
 the momentous influence these early Nature studies 
 were exerting on his character and life, that he 
 gained the valuable material for these essays. This 
 education, he tells us, must be sought direct from 
 Nature. " All of you with little children, who 
 have no need to count expense, or even if you have 
 such need, take them somehow into the country 
 among green grass and yellow wheat, among the 
 trees, by hills and streams, if you wish their highest 
 education, that of the heart and soul, to be accom- 
 plished. Therein shall they find a Secret a 
 knowledge not to be written, not to be found in 
 books. They shall know the sun and the wind, 
 the running water, and the breast of the broad earth. 
 Under the green spray, among the hazel- boughs 
 where the nightingale sings, they shall find a Secret, 
 a feeling, a sense that fills the heart with an emo- 
 tion never to be forgotten. They will forget the 
 viii
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 books they will never forget the grassy fields. 
 If you wish your children to think deep things, 
 to know the holiest emotions, take them to the 
 woods and hills, and give them the freedom of 
 the meadows." 
 
 And he illustrates this most beautifully in the 
 opening chapter of this volume. It begins with a 
 child story, a fairy tale which, like The Water 
 Babies, holds thought and charm for children of 
 a larger growth. " Saint Guido ran out at the 
 garden gate into a sandy lane, and down the lane 
 until he came to a grassy bank." They called him 
 Guido because " they thought if a great painter 
 could be a little boy, then he would be something 
 like this one." And he was Saint Guido because 
 his golden curls made a halo round his brow. He 
 runs away to a wheatfield, where he talks as a 
 comrade to the birds and bees, the cornflowers and 
 the May-weed. The fern had taught him a secret 
 if you want to hear what the grass and the wheat 
 say, you must be careful not to interfere with any of 
 the things of the field. Remembering this, Guido 
 stopped chasing a butterfly, and, lying down in the 
 grass, he whispered, " Rush, rush, tell them I am 
 here." Then the nearest wheat-ear talks to him of 
 what it has been thinking, talks in wise, wonderful 
 fashion of the problems of labour and poverty, and 
 weaves a poem and a sermon into one. 
 ix
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Turn over a few pages and read the essay on 
 "Wild Flowers." "Bathed in buttercups to the 
 dewlap, the roan cows standing in the golden lake 
 watched the hours with calm frontlet; watched the 
 light descending, the meadows filling, with knowl- 
 edge of long months of succulent clover." " Of 
 all things there is none so sweet as sweet air one 
 great flower it is, drawn around, about, over, and 
 inclosing, like Aphrodite's arms ; as if the dome of 
 the sky were a bellflower drooping down over us, 
 and the magical essence filling all the room of the 
 earth. Sweetest of all things is wild-flower air." 
 
 And again we find him writing of " Red Roofs of 
 London " and other familiar themes. " It is much 
 to be regretted," observes Mr. Salt, in his Study of 
 Jefferies, " that he did not write more in that vein ? 
 but the reason is obvious he was compelled for 
 the most part to defer to the wishes of editors and 
 publishers in the selections of his subjects, and the 
 country was found to yield a better profit than the 
 town." 
 
 Most of these papers were written during 
 1882-4, an d were originally contributed to the 
 English magazines. 
 
 No one ever lived, I believe, unless it were 
 Wordsworth, who took greater delight in the mere 
 beauty of Nature. "Never yet," he tells us, "have 
 I been able to write what I felt about the sunlight
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 only. Colour and form and light are as magic to 
 me. It is a trance." But more than Wordsworth 
 he is the true Laureate of the English country- 
 side. Although he never had the spiritual insight 
 and elevation of Wordsworth, never rose " through 
 Nature up to Nature's God," yet Nature was his 
 teacher. He was the child who spoke in the music 
 of the falling water, the sweetness of the meadow 
 and the flower, and he heeded not, he knew not, 
 that there was separation between them and the joy 
 of animal life, the freshness of youth. They were 
 all parts of one whole, harmoniously blended. 
 Wordsworth accepted the past, its wisdom, its 
 experience; he added to his poet's gift a deep sense 
 of the divinity and unity of the animate and the 
 inanimate : while Jefferies is content to pour out 
 his ardent, simple, pure love for 
 
 The warm woods, the sunny hills, and fresh green 
 
 fields 
 
 And mountains not less green, and flocks and herds, 
 And thickets full of songsters, and the voice of lordly 
 
 birds, an unexpected sound 
 
 Heard now and then from morn to latest eve, admon- 
 ishing the man who walks below 
 Of solitude and silence in the sky. 
 These have we and a thousand nooks of earth have 
 
 also these, but nowhere else is found, 
 Nowhere (or is it fancy?) can be found the one sen- 
 sation that is here, 
 
 xi
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Here as it found its way into my heart in childhood, 
 
 here as it abides <by day, 
 By night, here only; or in chosen minds that take 
 
 it with them hence, where'er they go." 
 
 After all, what we each love in Nature is ourself, 
 some subtle suggestion of the human spirit ; and 
 just in proportion as we seek beauty and light and 
 truth will we possess and enjoy all the wealth of 
 Jefferies' great, Nature-loving soul. 
 
 " Dim woodlands made him wiser far 
 
 Than those who thresh their barren thought 
 With flails of knowledge dearly bought, 
 Till all his soul shone like a star 
 
 That flames at fringe of Heaven's bar. 
 Where breaks the surf of space unseen 
 Against Hope's veil that lies between 
 Love's future and the woes that are. 
 
 "His soul saw through the weary years 
 Past war-bells' chimes and poor men's tears 
 
 That day when time shall bring to birth 
 (By many a heart whose hope seems vain, 
 And many a fight where Love slays Pain) 
 True Freedom, come to reign on earth." 
 
 T. C. W. 
 
 xii
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 se^gg 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 T. GUIDO ran out at the garden gate into 
 a sandy lane, and down the lane till he came 
 to a grassy bank. He caught hold of the 
 bunches of grass and so pulled himself up. 
 There was a footpath on the top which went straight 
 in between fir trees, and as he ran along they stood 
 on each side of him like green walls. They were 
 very near together, and even at the top the space 
 between them was so narrow that the sky seemed 
 to come down, and the clouds to be sailing but just 
 over them, as if they would catch and tear in the 
 fir trees. The path was so little used that it had 
 grown green, and as he ran he knocked dead 
 branches out of his way. Just as he was getting 
 tired of running he reached the end of the path, and 
 came out into a wheatfield. The wheat did not 
 grow very closely, and the spaces were filled with 
 azure cornflowers. St. Guido thought he was safe 
 away now, so he stopped to look. 
 
 Those thoughts and feelings which are not sharply 
 defined but have a haze of distance and beauty about
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 them are always the dearest. His name was not 
 really Guido, but those who loved him had called 
 him so in order to try and express their hearts about 
 him. For they thought if a great painter could be 
 a little boy, then he would be something like this 
 one. They were not very learned in the history 
 of painters : they had heard of Raphael, but Raphael 
 was too elevated, too much of the sky, and of Titian, 
 but Titian was fond of feminine loveliness, and in 
 the end somebody said Guido was a dreamy name, 
 as if it belonged to one who was full of faith. 
 Those golden curls shaking about his head as he 
 ran and filling the air with radiance round his brow, 
 looked like a Nimbus or circlet of glory. So they 
 called him St. Guido, and a very, very wild saint 
 he was. 
 
 St. Guido stopped in the cornfield, and looked 
 all round. There were the fir trees behind him 
 a thick wall of green hedges on the right and the 
 left, and the wheat sloped down towards an ash 
 copse in the hollow. No one was in the field, only 
 the fir trees, the green hedges, the yellow wheat, 
 and the sun overhead. Guido kept quite still, 
 because he expected that in a minute the magic 
 would begin, and something would speak to him. 
 His cheeks, which had been flushed with running, 
 grew less hot, but I cannot tell you the exact colour 
 they were, for his skin was so white and clear, it
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 would not tan under the sun, yet being always out- 
 of-doors it had taken the faintest tint of golden 
 brown mixed with rosiness. His blue eyes, which 
 had been wide open, as they always were when 
 full of mischief, became softer, and his long eye- 
 lashes drooped over them. But as the magic did 
 not begin, Guido walked on slowly into the wheat, 
 which rose nearly to his head, though it was not 
 yet so tall as it would be before the reapers came. 
 He did not break any of the stalks, or bend them 
 down and step on them ; he passed between them, 
 and they yielded on either side. The wheat-ears 
 were pale gold, having only just left off their 
 green, and they surrounded him on all sides as 
 if he were bathing. 
 
 A butterfly painted a velvety red with white 
 spots came floating along the surface of the corn, 
 and played round his cap, which was a little 
 higher, and was so tinted by the sun that the 
 butterfly was inclined to settle on it. Guido put 
 up his hand to catch the butterfly, forgetting his 
 secret in his desire to touch it. The butterfly was 
 too quick with a snap of his wings disdainfully 
 mocking the idea of catching him, away he went. 
 Guido nearly stepped on a humble-bee buzz-zz ! 
 the bee was so alarmed he actually crept up 
 Guide's knickers to the knee, and even then 
 knocked himself against a wheat-ear when he 
 3
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 started to fly. Guido kept quite still while the 
 humble-bee was on his knee, knowing that he 
 should not be stung if he did not move. He 
 knew, too, that humble-bees have stings though 
 people often say they have not, and the reason 
 people think they do not possess them is because 
 humble-bees are so good-natured and never sting 
 unless they are very much provoked. 
 
 Next he picked a corn buttercup ; the flowers 
 were much smaller than the great buttercups which 
 grew in the meadows, and these were not golden 
 but coloured like brass. His foot caught in a 
 creeper, and he nearly tumbled it was a bine of 
 bindweed which went twisting round and round 
 two stalks of wheat in a spiral, binding them 
 together as if some one had wound string about 
 them. There was one ear of wheat which had 
 black specks on it, and another which had so 
 much black that the grains seemed changed and 
 gone, leaving nothing but blackness. He touched 
 it, and it stained his hands like a dark powder, 
 and then he saw that it was not perfectly black 
 as charcoal is, it was a little red. Something was 
 burning up the corn there just as if fire had been 
 set to the ears. Guido went on and found another 
 place where there was hardly any wheat at all, and 
 those stalks that grew were so short they only 
 came above his knee. The wheat-ears were thin
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 and small, and looked as if there was nothing but 
 chaff. But this place being open was full of 
 flowers, such lovely azure cornflowers which the 
 people call bluebottles. 
 
 Guido took two ; they were curious flowers 
 with knobs surrounded with little blue flowers 
 like a lady's bonnet. They were a beautiful blue, 
 not like any other blue, not like the violets in the 
 garden, or the sky over the trees, or the geranium 
 in the grass, or the bird's-eyes by the path. He 
 loved them and held them tight in his hand, and 
 went on, leaving the red pimpernel wide open to 
 the dry air behind him, but the May-weed was 
 everywhere. The May-weed had white flowers 
 like a moon-daisy, but not so large, and leaves like 
 moss. He could not walk without stepping on 
 these mossy tufts, though he did not want to hurt 
 them. So he stooped and stroked the moss-like 
 leaves and said, " I do not want to hurt you, but 
 you grow so thick I cannot help it." In a min- 
 ute afterwards as he was walking he heard a quick 
 rush, and saw the wheat-ears sway this way and 
 that as if a puff of wind had struck them. ' 
 
 Guido stood still and his eyes opened very wide, 
 he had forgotten to cut a stick to fight with : he 
 watched the wheat-ears sway, and could see them 
 move for some distance, and he did not know 
 what it was. Perhaps it was a wild boar or a 
 5
 
 gEESK THE OPEN AIR 
 
 yellow lion, or some creature no one had ever seen; 
 he would not go back, but he wished he had cut 
 a nice stick. Just then a swallow swooped down 
 and came flying .pver the wheat so close that 
 Guido almost felt the flutter of his wings, and as 
 he passed he whispered to Guido that it was only 
 a hare. " Then why did he run away ? " said 
 Guido ; " I should not have hurt him." But the 
 swallow had gone up high into the sky again, and 
 did not hear him. All the time Guido was de- 
 scending the slope, for little feet always go down 
 the hill as water does, and when he looked back 
 he found that he had left the fir trees so far behind 
 he was in the middle of the field. If any one had 
 looked they could hardly have seen him, and if he 
 had taken his cap off they could not have done 
 so because the yellow curls would be so much 
 the same colour as the yellow corn. He stooped 
 to see how nicely he could hide himself, then he 
 knelt, and in a minute sat down, so that the wheat 
 rose up high above him. 
 
 Another humble-bee went over along the tips 
 of the wheat burr-rr as he passed; then a 
 scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who 
 was telling a friend flying behind him that he 
 knew where there was such a capital piece of 
 wood to bite up into tiny pieces and make into 
 paper for the nest in the thatch, but his friend 
 _6
 
 CEE3C SAINT GUIDO SE^s*jE=r^3g 
 
 wanted to go to the house because there was a 
 pear quite ripe there on the wall. Next came a 
 moth, and after the moth a golden fly, and three 
 gnats, and a mouse ran along the dry ground with 
 a curious sniffling rustle close to Guido. A shrill 
 cry came down out of the air, and looking up he 
 saw two swifts turning circles, and as they passed 
 each other they shrieked their voices were so 
 shrill they shrieked. They were only saying that 
 in a month their little swifts in the slates would 
 be able to fly. While he sat so quiet on the 
 ground and hidden by the wheat, he heard a 
 cuckoo such a long way off it sounded like a 
 watch when it is covered up. " Cuckoo " did 
 not come full and distinct it was such a tiny 
 little " cuckoo " caught in the hollow of Guide's 
 ear. The cuckoo must have been a mile away. 
 
 Suddenly he thought something went over, and 
 yet he did not see it perhaps it was the shadow 
 and he looked up and saw a large bird not very 
 far up, not farther than he could fling, or shoot 
 his arrows, and the bird was fluttering his wings, 
 but did not move away farther, as if he had been 
 tied in the air. Guido knew it was a hawk, and 
 the hawk was staying there to see if there was 
 a mouse or a little bird in the wheat. After a 
 minute the hawk stopped fluttering and lifted his 
 wings together as a butterfly does when he shuts
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 his, and down the hawk came, straight into the 
 corn. " Go away ! " shouted Guido, jumping up, 
 and flinging his cap, and the hawk, dreadfully 
 frightened and terribly cross, checked himself and 
 rose again with an angry rush. So the mouse 
 escaped, but Guido could not find his cap for 
 some time. Then he went on, and still the 
 ground sloping sent him down the hill till he 
 came close to the copse. 
 
 Some sparrows came out from the copse, and 
 he stopped and saw one of them perch on a stalk 
 of wheat, with one foot above the other sideways, 
 so that he could pick at the ear and get the corn. 
 Guido watched the sparrow clear the ear, then he 
 moved, and the sparrows flew back to the copse, 
 where they chattered at him for disturbing them. 
 There was a ditch between the corn and the 
 copse, and a streamlet ; he picked up a stone and 
 threw it in, and the splash frightened a rabbit, 
 who slipped over the bank and into a hole. The 
 boughs of an oak reached out across to the corn, 
 and made so pleasant a shade that Guido, who 
 was very hot from walking in the sun, sat down 
 on the bank of the streamlet with his feet dangling 
 over it, and watched the floating grass sway slowly 
 as the water ran. Gently he leaned back till his 
 back rested on the sloping ground he raised one 
 knee, and left the other foot over the verge where
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 the tip of the tallest rushes touched it. Before he 
 had been there a minute he remembered the secret 
 which a fern had taught him. 
 
 First, if he wanted to know anything, or to 
 hear a story, or what the grass was saying, or 
 the oak leaves singing, he must be careful not to 
 interfere as he had done just now with the but- 
 terfly by trying to catch him. Fortunately, that 
 butterfly was a nice butterfly, and very kind- 
 hearted, but sometimes, if you interfered with one 
 thing, it would tell another thing, and they would 
 all know in a moment, and stop talking, and never 
 say a word. Once, while they were all talking 
 pleasantly, Guido caught a fly in his hand, he 
 felt his hand tickle as the fly stepped on it, and 
 he shut up his little fist so quickly he caught the 
 fly in the hollow between the palm and his fingers. 
 The fly went buzz, and rushed to get out, but 
 Guido laughed, so the fly buzzed again, and just 
 told the grass, and the grass told the bushes, and 
 everything knew in a moment, and Guido never 
 heard another word all that day. Yet sometimes, 
 now they all knew something about him, they would 
 go on talking. You see, they all rather petted and 
 spoiled him. Next, if Guido did not hear them 
 conversing, the fern said he must touch a little piece 
 of grass and put it against his cheek, or a leaf, and 
 kiss it, and say, " Leaf, leaf, tell them I am here." 
 9
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 Now, while he was lying down, and the tip of 
 the rushes touched his foot, he remembered this, 
 so he moved the rush with his foot and said, 
 " Rush, rush, tell .them I am here." Immediately 
 there came a little wind, and the wheat swung to 
 and fro, the oak leaves rustled, the rushes bowed, 
 and the shadows slipped forwards and back again. 
 Then it was still, and the nearest wheat-ear to 
 Guido nodded his head, and said in a very low 
 tone, " Guido dear, just this minute I do not feel 
 very happy, although the sunshine is so warm, be- 
 cause I have been thinking, for we have been in 
 one or other of these fields of your papa's a thou- 
 sand years this very year. Every year we have 
 been sown, and weeded, and reaped, and gar- 
 nered. Every year the sun has ripened us, and 
 the rain made us grow ; every year for a thousand 
 years." 
 
 " What did you see all that time ? " said Guido. 
 
 " The swallows came," said the Wheat, " and 
 flew over us, and sang a little sweet song, and 
 then they went up into the chimneys and built 
 their nests." 
 
 " At my house ? " said Guido. 
 
 " Oh, no, dear, the house I was then thinking 
 of is gone, like a leaf withered and lost. But we 
 have not forgotten any of the songs they sang us, 
 nor have the swallows that you see to-day one 
 
 10
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 of them spoke to you just now forgotten what 
 we said to their ancestors. Then the blackbirds 
 came out in us and ate the creeping creatures, so 
 that they should not hurt us, and went up into 
 the oaks and whistled such beautiful sweet low 
 whistles. Not in those oaks, dear, where the 
 blackbirds whistle to-day ; even the very oaks 
 have gone, though they were so strong that one 
 of them defied the lightning, and lived years and 
 years after it struck him. One of the very oldest 
 of the old oaks in the copse, dear, is his grand- 
 child. If you go into the copse you will find an 
 oak which has only one branch ; he is so old, he 
 has only that branch left. He sprang up from 
 an acorn dropped from an oak that grew from an 
 acorn dropped from the oak the lightning struck. 
 So that is three oak lives, Guido dear, back to the 
 time I was thinking of just now. And that oak 
 under whose shadow you are now lying is the 
 fourth of them, and he is quite young, though he 
 is so big. 
 
 " A jay sowed the acorn from which he grew 
 up; the jay was in the oak with one branch, 
 and some one frightened him, and as he flew he 
 dropped the acorn which he had in his bill just 
 there, and now you are lying in the shadow of the 
 tree. So you see, it is a very long time ago, when 
 the blackbirds came and whistled up in those oaks
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 I was thinking of, and that was why I was not 
 very happy." 
 
 " But you have heard the blackbirds whistling 
 ever since ? " said, Guido ; " and there was such 
 a big black one up in our cherry tree this morn- 
 ing, and I shot my arrow at him and very nearly 
 hit him. Besides, there is a blackbird whistling 
 now you listen. There, he's somewhere in the 
 copse. Why can't you listen to him, and be 
 happy now ? " 
 
 " I will be happy, dear, as you are here, but still 
 it is a long, long time, and then I think, after I 
 am dead, and there is more wheat in my place, the 
 blackbirds will go on whistling for another thou- 
 sand years after me. For of course I did not hear 
 them all that time ago myself, dear, but the wheat 
 which was before me heard them and told me. 
 They told me, too, and I know it is true, that 
 the cuckoo came and called all day till the moon 
 shone at night, and began again in the morning 
 before the dew had sparkled in the sunrise. The 
 dew dries very soon on wheat, Guido dear, be- 
 cause wheat is so dry ; first the sunrise makes 
 the tips of the wheat ever so faintly rosy, then 
 it grows yellow, then as the heat increases it be- 
 comes white at noon, and golden in the afternoon, 
 and white again under the moonlight. Besides 
 which wide shadows come over from the clouds,
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 and a wind always follows the shadow and waves 
 us, and every time we sway to and fro that alters 
 our colour. A rough wind gives us one tint, and 
 heavy rain another, and we look different on a 
 cloudy day to what we do on a sunny one. All 
 these colours changed on us when the blackbird 
 was whistling in the oak the lightning struck, the 
 fourth one backwards from me ; and it makes me 
 sad to think that after four more oaks have gone, 
 the same colours will come on the wheat that 
 will grow then. It is thinking about those past 
 colours, and songs, and leaves, and of the colours 
 and the sunshine, and the songs, and the leaves 
 that will come in the future that makes to-day so 
 much. It makes to-day a thousand years long 
 backwards, and a thousand years long forwards, 
 and makes the sun so warm, and the air so sweet, 
 and the butterflies so lovely, and the hum of the 
 bees, and everything so delicious. We cannot 
 have enough of it." 
 
 " No, that we cannot," said Guido. " Go on, 
 you talk so nice and low. I feel sleepy and jolly. 
 Talk away, old Wheat." 
 
 u Let me see," said the Wheat. " Once on a 
 time while the men were knocking us out of the 
 ear on a floor with flails, which are sticks with 
 little hinges " 
 
 " As if I did not know what a flail was ! " said
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 Guido. "I hit old John with the flail, and Ma 
 gave him a shilling not to be cross." 
 
 " While they were knocking us with the hard 
 sticks," the Wheat went on, " we heard them 
 talking about a king who was shot with an arrow 
 like yours in the forest it slipped from a tree, 
 and went into him instead of into the deer. And 
 long before that the men came up the river the 
 stream in the ditch there runs into the river in 
 rowing ships how you would like one to play 
 in, Guido ! For they were not like the ships 
 now which are machines, they were rowing ships 
 men's ships and came right up into the land 
 ever so far, all along the river up to the place 
 where the stream in the ditch runs in ; just where 
 your papa took you in the punt, and you got the 
 waterlilies, the white ones." 
 
 " And wetted my sleeve right up my arm oh, I 
 know ! I can row you, old Wheat ; I can row 
 as well as my papa can." 
 
 11 But since the rowing ships came, the ploughs 
 have turned up this ground a thousand times," said 
 the Wheat; "and each time the furrows smelt 
 sweeter, and this year they smelt sweetest of all. 
 The horses have such glossy coats, and such 
 fine manes, and they are so strong and beauti- 
 ful. They drew the ploughs along and made 
 the ground give up its sweetness and savour, and 
 14
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 while they were doing it, the spiders in the copse 
 spun their silk along from the ash poles, and the 
 mist in the morning weighed down their threads. 
 It was so delicious to come out of the clods as we 
 pushed our green leaves up and felt the rain, and 
 the wind, and the warm sun. Then a little bird 
 came in the copse and called, 'Sip sip, sip, sip, 
 sip,' such a sweet low song, and the larks ran 
 along the ground in between us, and there were 
 bluebells in the copse, and anemones ; till by- 
 and-by the sun made us yellow, and the blue 
 flowers that you have in your hand came out. I 
 cannot tell you how many there have been of 
 these flowers since the oak was struck by the light- 
 ning, in all the thousand years there must have 
 been altogether I cannot tell you how many." 
 
 " Why did n't I pick them all ? " said Guido. 
 
 " Do you know," said the Wheat, " we have 
 thought so much more, and felt so much more, 
 since your people took us, and ploughed for us, 
 and sowed us, and reaped us. We are not like 
 the same wheat we used to be before your people 
 touched us, when we grew wild, and there were 
 huge great things in the woods and marshes which 
 I will not tell you about lest you should be fright- 
 ened. Since we have felt your hands, and you 
 have touched us, we have felt so much more. 
 Perhaps that was why I was not very happy till 
 is
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 you came, for I was thinking quite as much about 
 your people as about us, and how all the flowers 
 of all those thousand years, and all the songs, and 
 the sunny days were gone, and all the people were 
 gone too, who had heard the blackbirds whistle in 
 the oak the lightning struck. And those that are 
 alive now there will be cuckoos calling, and the 
 eggs in the thrush's nests, and blackbirds whistling, 
 and blue cornflowers, a thousand years after every 
 one of them is gone. 
 
 " So that is why it is so sweet this minute, and 
 why I want you, and your people, dear, to be 
 happy now and to have all these things, and to 
 agree so as not to be so anxious and careworn, but 
 to come out with us, or sit by us, and listen to the 
 blackbirds, and hear the wind rustle us, and be 
 happy. Oh, I wish I could make them happy, 
 and do away with all their care and anxiety, and 
 give you all heaps and heaps of flowers ! Don't 
 go away, darling, do you lie still, and I will talk 
 and sing to you, and you can pick some more 
 flowers when you get up. There is a beautiful 
 shadow there, and I heard the streamlet say that 
 he would sing a little to you ; he is not very big, 
 he cannot sing very loud. By-and-by, I know, 
 the sun will make us as dry as dry, and darker, 
 and then the reapers will come while the spiders 
 are spinning their silk again this time it will 
 16
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 come floating in the blue air, for the air seems 
 blue if you look up. 
 
 " It is a great joy to your people, dear, when the 
 reaping time arrives : the harvest is a great joy to 
 you when the thistledown comes rolling along in 
 the wind. So that I shall be happy even when 
 the reapers cut me down, because I know it is for 
 you, and your people, my love. The strong men 
 will come to us gladly, and the women, and the 
 little children will sit in the shade and gather great 
 white trumpets of convolvulus, and come to tell 
 their mothers how they saw the young partridges 
 in the next field. But there is one thing we do 
 not like, and that is, all the labour and the misery. 
 Why cannot your people have us without so much 
 labour, and why are so many of you unhappy ? 
 Why cannot they be all happy with us as you are, 
 dear ? For hundreds and hundreds of years now 
 the wheat every year has been sorrowful for your 
 people, and I think we get more sorrowful every 
 year about it, because as I was telling you just now 
 the flowers go, and the swallows go, the old, old 
 oaks go, and that oak will go, under the shade of 
 which you are lying, Guido ; and if your people do 
 not gather the flowers now, and watch the swal- 
 lows, and listen to the blackbirds whistling, as you 
 are listening now while I talk, then, Guido, my 
 love, they will never pick any flowers, nor hear 
 
 * 17
 
 THE OPEN 
 
 any birds' songs. They think they will, they think 
 that when they have toiled, and worked a long 
 time, almost all their lives, then they will come to 
 the flowers, and the birds, and be joyful in the 
 sunshine. But no, it will not be so, for then they 
 will be old themselves, and their ears dull, and 
 their eyes dim, so that the birds will sound a 
 great distance off, and the flowers will not seem 
 bright. 
 
 "Of course, we know that the greatest part 
 of your people cannot help themselves, and must 
 labour on like the reapers till their ears are 
 full of the dust of age. That only makes us 
 more sorrowful, and anxious that things should 
 be different. I do not suppose we should think 
 about them had we not been in man's hand so 
 long that now we have got to feel with man. 
 Every year makes it more pitiful because then 
 there are more flowers gone, and added to the 
 vast numbers of those gone before, and never 
 gathered, or looked at, though they could have 
 given so much pleasure. And all the work and 
 labour, and thinking, and reading and learning 
 that your people do ends in nothing not even 
 one flower. We cannot understand why it should 
 be so. There are thousands of wheat-ears in this 
 field, more than you would know how to write 
 down with your pencil, though you have learned 
 18
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 your tables, sir. Yet all of us thinking, and talk- 
 ing, cannot understand why it is when we con- 
 sider how clever your people are, and how they 
 bring ploughs, and steam-engines, and put up 
 wires along the roads to tell you things when 
 you are miles away, and sometimes we are sown 
 where we can hear the hum, hum, all day of the 
 children learning in the school. The butterflies 
 flutter over us, and the sun shines, and the doves 
 are very, very happy at their nest, but the chil- 
 dren go on hum, hum inside this house, and 
 learn, learn. So we suppose you must be very 
 clever, and yet you cannot manage this. All your 
 work is wasted, and you labour in vain you dare 
 not leave it a minute. 
 
 " If you left it a minute it would all be gone ; it 
 does not mount up and make a store, so that all 
 of you could sit by it and be happy. Directly 
 you leave ofF you are hungry, and thirsty, and 
 miserable like the beggars that tramp along the 
 dusty road here. All the thousand years of labour 
 since this field was first ploughed have not stored 
 up anything for you. It would not matter about 
 the work so much if you were only happy ; the 
 bees work every year, but they are happy; the 
 doves build a nest every year, but they are very, 
 very happy. We think it must be because you 
 do not come out to us, and be with us, and think 
 19
 
 ^^ THE OPEN AIR 
 
 more as we do. It is not because your people 
 have not got plenty to eat and drink you have 
 as much as the bees. Why, just look at us ! 
 Look at the whea % t that grows all over the world ; 
 all the figures that were ever written in pencil 
 could not tell how much, it is such an immense 
 quantity. Yet your people starve and die of 
 hunger every now and then, and we have seen 
 the wretched beggars tramping along the road. 
 We have known of times when there was a 
 great pile of us, almost a hill piled up, it was 
 not in this country, it was in another warmer 
 country, and yet no one dared to touch it they 
 died at the bottom of the hill of wheat. The 
 earth is full of skeletons of people who have 
 died of hunger. They are dying now this min- 
 ute in your big cities, with nothing but stones all 
 round them, stone walls and stone streets ; not 
 jolly stones like those you threw in the water, 
 dear hard, unkind stones that make them cold 
 and let them die, while we are growing here, 
 millions of us, in the sunshine with the butter- 
 flies floating over us. This makes us unhappy ; 
 I was very unhappy this morning till you came 
 running over and played with us. 
 
 " It is not because there is not enough : it is 
 because your people are so short-sighted, so jeal- 
 ous and selfish, and so curiously infatuated with
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 things that are not so good as your old toys which 
 you have flung away and forgotten. And you teach 
 the children hum, hum, all day to care about such 
 silly things, and to work for them and to look to 
 them as the object of their lives. It is because 
 you do not share us among you without price or 
 difference; because you do not share the great 
 earth among you fairly, without spite and jealousy 
 and avarice; because you will not agree; you 
 silly, foolish people to let all the flowers wither 
 for a thousand years while you keep each other at 
 a distance, instead of agreeing and sharing them ! 
 Is there something in you as there is poison 
 in the nightshade, you know it, dear, your papa 
 told you not to touch it is there a sort of poison 
 in your people that works them up into a hatred 
 of one another ? Why, then, do you not agree 
 and have all things, all the great earth can give 
 you, just as we have the sunshine and the rain ? 
 How happy your people could be if they would 
 only agree ! But you go on teaching even the 
 little children to follow the same silly objects, 
 hum, hum, hum, all the day, and they will grow 
 up to hate each other, and to try which can get 
 the most round things you have one in your 
 pocket." 
 
 "Sixpence," said Guido. "It's quite a new 
 one."
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 "And other things quite as silly," the Wheat 
 continued. " All the time the flowers are flower- 
 ing, but they will go, even the oaks will go. We 
 think the reason you do not all have plenty, and 
 why you do not do only just a little work, and 
 why you die of hunger if you leave off", and why 
 so many of you are unhappy in body and mind, 
 and all the misery is because you have not got a 
 spirit like the wheat, like us ; you will not agree, 
 and you will not share, and you will hate each 
 other, and you will be so avaricious, and you will 
 not touch the flowers, or go into the sunshine (you 
 would rather half of you died among the hard 
 stones first), and you will teach your children 
 hum, hum, to follow in some foolish course that 
 has caused you all this unhappiness a thousand 
 years, and you will not have a spirit like us, and 
 feel like us. Till you have a spirit like us, and 
 feel like us, you will never, never be happy. Lie 
 still, dear; the shadow of the oak is broad and 
 will not move from you for a long time yet." 
 
 " But perhaps Paul will come up to my house, 
 and Percy and Morna." 
 
 " Look up in the oak very quietly, don't move, 
 just open your eyes and look," said the Wheat, 
 who was very cunning. Guido looked and saw 
 a lovely little bird climbing up a branch. It was 
 chequered, black and white, like a very small
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 magpie, only without such a long tail, and it 
 had a spot of red about its neck. It was a pied 
 woodpecker, not the large green woodpecker, but 
 another kind. Guido saw it go round the branch, 
 and then some way up, and round again till it 
 came to a place that pleased it, and then the 
 woodpecker struck the bark with its bill, tap-tap. 
 The sound was quite loud, ever so much more 
 noise than such a tiny bill seemed able to make. 
 Tap-tap ! If Guido had not been still so that the 
 bird had come close he would never have found 
 it among the leaves. Tap tap! After it had 
 picked out all the insects there, the woodpecker 
 flew away over the ash poles of the copse. 
 
 " I should just like to stroke him," said Guido. 
 " If I climbed up into the oak perhaps he would 
 come again, and I could catch him." 
 
 " No," said the Wheat, " he only comes once 
 a day." 
 
 "Then tell me stories," said Guido, imperiously. 
 
 " I will if I can," said the Wheat. " Once 
 upon a time, when the oak the lightning struck 
 was still living, and when the wheat was green in 
 this very field, a man came staggering out of the 
 wood, and walked out into it. He had an iron 
 helmet on, and he was wounded, and his blood 
 stained the green wheat red as he walked. He 
 tried to get to the streamlet, which was wider then, 
 23
 
 I2K THE OPEN AIR 
 
 Guido dear, to drink, for he knew it was there, but 
 he could not reach it. He fell down and died in 
 the green wheat, dear, for he was very much hurt 
 with a sharp spea/, but more so with hunger and 
 thirst." 
 
 " I am so sorry," said Guido ; " and now I look 
 at you, why, you are all thirsty and dry, you nice 
 old Wheat, and the ground is as dry as dry under 
 you ; I will get you something to drink." 
 
 And down he scrambled into the ditch, setting 
 his foot firm on a root, for though he was so 
 young, he knew how to get down to the water 
 without wetting his feet, or falling in, and how 
 to climb up a tree, and everything jolly. Guido 
 dipped his hand in the streamlet, and flung the 
 water over the wheat five or six good sprinklings 
 till the drops hung on the wheat-ears. Then he 
 said, " Now you are better." 
 
 " Yes, dear, thank you, my love," said the 
 Wheat, who was very pleased, though of course 
 the water was not enough to wet its roots. Still it 
 was pleasant, like a very little shower. Guido lay 
 down on his chest this time, with his elbows on 
 the ground, propping his head up, and as he now 
 faced the wheat, he could see in between the 
 stalks. 
 
 " Lie still," said the Wheat, " the corncrake is 
 not very far off, he has come up here since your
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 papa told the mowers to mow the meadow, and 
 very likely if you stay quiet you will see him. If 
 you do not understand all I say, never mind, dear; 
 the sunshine is warm, but not too warm in the 
 shade, and we all love you, and want you to be 
 as happy as ever you can be." 
 
 " It is jolly to be quite hidden like this," said 
 Guido. " No one could find me ; if Paul were to 
 look all day he would never find me; even Papa could 
 not find me. Now go on and tell me stories." 
 
 "Ever so many times, when the oak the light- 
 ning struck was young," said the Wheat, " great 
 stags used to come out of the wood and feed on 
 the green wheat ; it was early in the morning 
 when they came. Such great stags, and so proud, 
 and yet so timid, the least thing made them go 
 bound, bound, bound." 
 
 " Oh, I know!" said Guido; "I saw some 
 jump over the fence in the forest I am going 
 there again soon. If I take my bow I will shoot 
 one ! " 
 
 " But there are no deer here now," said the 
 Wheat ; " they have been gone a long, long time ; 
 though I think your papa has one of their antlers." 
 
 " Now, how did you know that ? " said Guido ; 
 " you have never been to our house, and you can- 
 not see in from here because the fir copse is in the 
 way ; how do you find out these things ? " 
 25
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 " Oh ! " said the Wheat, laughing, u we have 
 lots of ways of finding out things. Don't you 
 remember the swallow that swooped down and 
 told you not to b$ frightened at the hare ? The 
 swallow has his nest at your house, and he often 
 flies by your windows and looks in, and he told 
 me. The birds tell us lots of things, and all about 
 what is over the sea." 
 
 " But that is not a story," said Guido. 
 
 "Once upon a time," said the Wheat, "when 
 the oak the lightning struck was alive, your papa's 
 papa's papa, ever so much farther back than that, 
 had all the fields round here, all that you can see 
 from Acre Hill. And do you know it happened 
 that in time every one of them was lost or sold, 
 and your family, Guido dear, were homeless 
 no house, no garden or orchard, and no dogs or 
 guns, or anything jolly. One day the papa that 
 was then came along the road with his little 
 Guido, and they were beggars, dear, and had no 
 place to sleep, and they slept all night in the wheat 
 in, this very field close to where the hawthorn bush 
 grows now where you picked the Mayflowers, 
 you know, my love. They slept there all the 
 summer night, and the fern owls flew to and fro, 
 and the bats and crickets chirped, and the stars 
 shone faintly, as if they were made pale by the 
 heat. The poor papa never had a house, but that 
 26
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 little Guido lived to grow up a great man, and he 
 worked so hard, and he was so clever, and every 
 one loved him, which was the best of all things. 
 He bought this very field, and then another, and 
 another, and got such a lot of the old fields back 
 again, and the goldfinches sang for joy, and so did 
 the larks and the thrushes, because they said what 
 a kind man he was. Then his son got some more 
 of them, till at last your papa bought ever so many 
 more. But we often talk about the little boy who 
 slept in the wheat in this field, which was his 
 father's father's field. If only the wheat then 
 could have helped him, and been kind to him, 
 you may be sure it would. We love you so 
 much we like to see the very crumbs left by the 
 men who do the hoeing when they eat their crusts ; 
 we wish they could have more to eat, but we like 
 to see their crumbs, which you know are made of 
 wheat, so that we have done them some good at 
 least." 
 
 " That 's not a story," said Guido. 
 
 " There 's a gold coin here somewhere," said 
 the Wheat, " such a pretty one, it would make a 
 capital button for your jacket, dear, or for your 
 mamma ; that is all any sort of money is good for; 
 I wish all the coins were made into buttons for 
 little Guido." 
 
 " Where is it ? " said Guido. 
 27
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 " I can't exactly tell where it is," said the 
 Wheat. " It was very near me once, and I 
 thought the next thunder's rain would wash it 
 down into the streamlet it has been here ever 
 so long, it came here first just after the oak the 
 lightning split died. And it has been rolled about 
 by the ploughs ever since, and no one has ever 
 seen it ; I thought it must go into the ditch at 
 last, but when the men came to hoe one of them 
 knocked it back, and then another kicked it along 
 it was covered with earth and then, one day, 
 a. rook came and split the clod open with his bill, 
 and pushed the pieces first one side and then the 
 other, and the coin went one way, but I did not 
 see; I must ask a humble-bee, or a mouse, or a 
 mole, or some one who knows more about it. It 
 is very thin, so that if the rook's bill had struck it, 
 his strong bill would have made a dint in it, and 
 there is, I think, a ship marked on it." 
 
 " Oh, I must have it ! A ship ! Ask a humble- 
 bee directly ; be quick ! " 
 
 Bang ! There was a loud report, a gun had 
 gone off in the copse. 
 
 " That 's my papa," shouted Guido. " I 'm 
 sure that was my papa's gun ! " Up he jumped, 
 and getting down the ditch, stepped across the 
 water, and, seizing a hazel-bough to help him- 
 self, climbed up the bank. At the top he slipped 
 28
 
 SAINT GUIDO 
 
 through the fence by the oak and so into the copse. 
 He was in such a hurry he did not mind the 
 thistles or the boughs that whipped him as they 
 sprang back, he scrambled through, meeting the 
 vapour of the gunpowder and the smell of sulphur. 
 In a minute he found a green path, and in the path 
 was his papa, who had just shot a cruel crow. 
 The crow had been eating the birds' eggs, and 
 picking the little birds to pieces. 
 
 49
 
 GOLDEN-BROWN 
 
 THREE fruit-pickers women were 
 the first people I met near the village 
 (in Kent). They were clad in " rags 
 and jags," and the face of the eldest 
 was in " jags " also. It was torn and scarred by 
 time and weather ; wrinkled, and in a manner 
 twisted like the fantastic turns of a gnarled tree- 
 trunk, hollow and decayed. Through these jags 
 and tearings of weather, wind, and work, the 
 nakedness of the countenance the barren frame- 
 work was visible ; the cheekbones like knuckles, 
 the chin of brown stoneware, the upper lip smooth, 
 and without the short groove which should appear 
 between lip and nostrils. Black shadows dwelt in 
 the hollows of the cheeks and temples, and there 
 was a blackness about the eyes. This blackness 
 gathers in the faces of the old who have been 
 much exposed to the sun, the fibres of the skin 
 are scorched and half charred, like a stick thrust in 
 the fire and withdrawn before the flames seize it. 
 Beside her were two young women, both in the 
 freshness of youth and health. Their faces glowed 
 _ 3 o _
 
 GOLDEN-BROWN 
 
 with a golden-brown, and so great is the effect of 
 colour that their plain features were transfigured. 
 The sunlight under their faces made them beauti- 
 ful. The summer light had been absorbed by the 
 skin, and now shone forth from it again ; as certain 
 substances exposed to the day absorb light and emit 
 a phosphorescent gleam in the darkness of night, so 
 the sunlight had been drunk up by the surface of 
 the skin, and emanated from it. 
 
 Hour after hour ,in the gardens and orchards 
 they worked in the full beams of the sun, gather- 
 ing fruit for the London market, resting at midday 
 in the shade of the elms in the corner. Even 
 then they were in the sunshine even in the 
 shade, for the air carries it, or its influence, as it 
 carries the perfumes of flowers. The heated air 
 undulates over the field in waves which are visible 
 at a distance ; near at hand they are not seen, but 
 roll in endless ripples through the shadows of the 
 trees, bringing with them the actinic power of the 
 sun. Not actinic alchemic some intangible, 
 mysterious power which cannot be supplied in any 
 other form but the sun's rays. It reddens the 
 cherry, it gilds the apple, it colours the rose, it 
 ripens the wheat, it touches a woman's face with 
 the golden-brown of ripe life ripe as a plum. 
 There is no other hue so beautiful as this human 
 sunshine tint. 
 
 3'
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 The great painters knew it Rubens, for in- 
 stance; perhaps he saw it on the faces of the 
 women who gathered fruit or laboured at the har- 
 vest in the Low Countries centuries since. He 
 could never have seen it in a city of these north- 
 ern climes, that is certain. Nothing in nature 
 that I know, except the human face, ever attains 
 this colour. Nothing like it is ever seen in the 
 sky, either at dawn or sunset ; the dawn is often 
 golden, often scarlet, or purple and gold ; the sun- 
 set crimson, flaming bright, or delicately grey and 
 scarlet ; lovely colours all of them, but not like 
 this. Nor is there any flower comparable to it, 
 nor any gem. It is purely human, and it is only 
 found on the human face which has felt the sun- 
 shine continually. There must, too, I suppose, be 
 a disposition towards it, a peculiar and exceptional 
 condition of the fibres which build up the skin ; 
 for of the numbers who work out-of-doors, very, 
 very few possess it ; they become brown, red, or 
 tanned, sometimes of a parchment hue they do 
 not get this colour. 
 
 These two women from the fruit gardens had 
 the golden-brown in their faces, and their plain 
 features were transfigured. They were walking in 
 the dusty road ; there was as background a high, 
 dusty hawthorn hedge which had lost the fresh- 
 ness of spring and was browned by the work of 
 31
 
 GOLDEN-BROWN ^^^^^3 
 
 caterpillars ; they were in rags and jags, their shoes 
 had split, and their feet looked twice as wide in 
 consequence. Their hands were black ; not grimy, 
 but absolutely black, and neither hands nor necks 
 ever knew water, I am sure. There was not the 
 least shape to their garments ; their dresses simply 
 hung down in straight ungraceful lines ; there was 
 no colour of ribbon or flower, to light up the din- 
 giness. But they had the golden-brown in their 
 faces, and they were beautiful. 
 
 The feet, as they walked, were set firm on the 
 ground, and the body advanced with measured, de- 
 liberate, yet lazy and confident grace ; shoulders 
 thrown back square, but not over-square (as 
 those who have been drilled ) ; hips swelling at 
 the side in lines like the full bust, though longer 
 drawn ; busts well filled and shapely, despite the 
 rags and jags and the washed-out gaudiness of 
 the shawl. There was that in their cheeks that 
 all the wealth of London could not purchase a 
 superb health in their carriage princesses could not 
 obtain. It came, then, from the air and sunlight, 
 and still more, from some alchemy unknown to the 
 physician or the physiologist, some faculty exercised 
 by the body, happily endowed with a special power 
 of extracting the utmost richness and benefit from 
 the rudest elements. Thrice blessed and fortu- 
 nate, beautiful golden-brown in their cheeks, superb 
 3 33
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 health in their gait, they walked as the immortals on 
 earth. 
 
 As they passed they regarded me with bitter 
 envy, jealousy, and hatred written in their eyes ; 
 they cursed me in their hearts. I verily believe 
 so unmistakably hostile were their glances 
 that had opportunity been given, in the dead of 
 night and far from help, they would gladly have 
 taken me unawares with some blow of stone or 
 club, and, having rendered me senseless, would 
 have robbed me, and considered it a righteous 
 act. Not that there was any bloodthirstiness or 
 exceptional evil in their nature more than in that 
 of the thousand-and-one toilers that are met on the 
 highway, but simply because they worked such 
 hard work of hands and stooping backs, and I was 
 idle, for all they knew. Because they were going 
 from one field of labour to another field of labour, 
 and I walked slowly and did no visible work. My 
 dress showed no stain, the weather had not bat- 
 tered it ; there was no rent, no rags and jags. At 
 an hour when they were merely changing one place 
 of work for another place of work, to them it ap- 
 peared that I had found idleness indoors wearisome 
 and had just come forth to exchange it for another 
 idleness. They saw no end to their labour; they 
 had worked from childhood, and could see no pos- 
 sible end to labour until limbs failed or life closed. 
 34
 
 E^CS; GOLDEN-BROWN 
 
 Why should they be like this ? Why should I do 
 nothing ? They were as good as I was, and they 
 hated me. Their indignant glances spoke it as 
 plain as words, and far more distinctly than I can 
 write it. You cannot read it with such feeling as 
 I received their looks. 
 
 Beautiful golden-brown, superb health, what 
 would I not give for these ? To be the thrice- 
 blessed and chosen of nature, what inestimable 
 fortune ! To be indifferent to any circumstances 
 to be quite thoughtless as to draughts and chills, 
 careless of heat, indifferent to the character of din- 
 ners, able to do well on hard, dry bread, capable 
 of sleeping in the open under a rick, or some slight 
 structure of a hurdle, propped on a few sticks and 
 roughly thatched with straw, and to sleep sound as 
 an oak, and wake strong as an oak in the morn- 
 ing gods, what a glorious life ! I envied them ; 
 they fancied I looked askance at their rags and 
 jags. I envied them, and considered their health 
 and hue ideal. I envied them that unwearied step, 
 that firm uprightness, and measured yet lazy gait, 
 but most of all the power which they possessed, 
 though they did not exercise it intentionally, of 
 being always in the sunlight, the air, and abroad 
 upon the earth. If so they chose, and without 
 stress or strain, they could see the sunrise, they 
 could be with him as it were unwearied and 
 35
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 without distress the livelong day ; they could 
 stay on while the moon rose over the corn, and 
 till the silent stars at silent midnight shone in the 
 cool summer night, and on and on till the cock 
 crew and the faint dawn appeared. The whole 
 time in the open air, resting at midday under 
 the elms with the ripple of heat flowing through 
 the shadow ; at midnight between the ripe corn 
 and the hawthorn hedge on the white wild camo- 
 mile and the poppy pale in the duskiness, with 
 face upturned to the thoughtful heaven. 
 
 Consider the glory of it, the life above this life 
 to be obtained from constant presence with the 
 sunlight and the stars. I thought of them all day, 
 and envied them (as they envied me), and in the 
 evening I found them again. It was growing 
 dark, and the shadow took away something of the 
 coarseness of the group outside one of the village 
 "pothouses." Green foliage overhung them and 
 the men with whom they were drinking; the white 
 pipes, the blue smoke, the flash of a match, the red 
 sign which had so often swung to and fro in the 
 gales now still in the summer eve, the rude seats 
 and blocks, the reaping-hooks bound about the 
 edge with hay, the white dogs creeping from knee 
 to knee, some such touches gave an interest to the 
 scene. But a quarrel had begun j the men swore, 
 but the women did worse. It is impossible to give 
 -36-
 
 E3WE3K GOLDEN-BROWN 
 
 a hint of the language they used, especially the 
 elder of the three whose hollow face was blackened 
 by time and exposure. The two golden-brown 
 girls were so heavily intoxicated they could but 
 stagger to and fro and mouth and gesticulate, and 
 one held a quart from which, as she moved, she 
 spilled the ale. 
 
 37
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 FIR tree is not a flower, and yet it 
 is associated in my mind with prim- 
 roses. There was a narrow lane 
 leading into a wood, where I used 
 to go almost every day in the early months of 
 the year, and at one corner it was overlooked by 
 three spruce firs. The rugged lane there began to 
 ascend the hill, and I paused a moment to look 
 back. Immediately the high fir trees guided the 
 eye upwards, and from their tops to the deep azure 
 of the March sky over, but a step from the tree to 
 the heavens. So it has ever been to me, by day or 
 by night, summer or winter, beneath trees the heart 
 feels nearer to that depth of life the far sky means. 
 The rest of spirit found only in beauty, ideal and 
 pure, comes there because the distance seems within 
 touch of thought. To the heaven thought can 
 reach lifted by the strong arms of the oak, carried 
 up by the ascent of the flame-shaped fir. Round 
 the spruce top the blue was deepened, concentrated 
 by the fixed point ; the memory of that spot, as 
 it were, of the sky is still fresh I can see it 
 _ 3 8_
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 distinctly still beautiful and full of meaning. 
 It is painted in bright colour in my mind, colour 
 thrice laid, and indelible ; as one passes a shrine 
 and bows the head to the Madonna, so I recall 
 the picture and stoop in spirit to the aspiration 
 it yet arouses. For there is no saint like the sky, 
 sunlight shining from its face. 
 
 The fir tree flowered thus before the primroses 
 the first of all to give me a bloom, beyond reach 
 but visible, while even the hawthorn buds hesitated 
 to open. Primroses were late there, a high district 
 and thin soil ; you could read of them as found 
 elsewhere in January ; they rarely came much 
 before March, and but sparingly then. On the 
 warm red sand (red, at least, to look at, but green 
 by geological courtesy, I think) of Sussex, round 
 about Hurst of the Pierrepoints, primroses are seen 
 soon after the year has turned. In the lanes about 
 that curious old mansion, with its windows reaching 
 from floor to roof, that stands at the base of Wol- 
 stanbury Hill, they grow early, and ferns linger 
 in sheltered overhung banks. The South Down 
 range, like a great wall, shuts ofF the sea, and has 
 a different climate on either hand ; south by the 
 sea hard, harsh, flowerless, almost grassless, 
 bitter, and cold ; on the north side, just over the 
 hill warm, soft, with primroses and fern, 
 willows budding and birds already busy. It is 
 39
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 a double England there, two countries side by 
 side. 
 
 On a summer's day Wolstanbury Hill is an 
 island in sunshine.^ you may lie on the grassy 
 rampart, high up in the most delicate air Grecian 
 air, pellucid alone, among the butterflies and 
 humming bees at the thyme, alone and isolated ; 
 endless masses of hills on three sides, endless weald 
 or valley on the fourth ; all warmly lit with sun- 
 shine, deep under liquid sunshine like the sands 
 under the liquid sea, no harshness of man-made 
 sound to break the insulation amid nature, on an 
 island in a far Pacific of sunshine. Some people 
 would hesitate to walk down the staircase cut in 
 the turf to the beech trees beneath; the woods look 
 so small beneath, so far down and steep, and no 
 handrail. Many go to the Dyke, but none to Wol- 
 stanbury Hill. To come over the range reminds 
 one of what travellers say of coming over the Alps 
 into Italy; from harsh sea-slopes, made dry with 
 salt as they sow salt on razed cities that naught may 
 grow, to warm plains rich in all things, and with 
 great hills as pictures hung on a wall to gaze at. 
 Where there are beech trees the land is always 
 beautiful; beech trees at the foot of this hill, beech 
 trees at Arundel in that lovely park which the Duke 
 of Norfolk, to his glory, leaves open to all the world, 
 and where the anemones flourish in unusual size and 
 _ 4 o_
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 number; beech trees in Marlborough Forest; beech 
 trees at the summit to which the lane leads that was 
 spoken of just now. Beech and beautiful scenery 
 go together. 
 
 But the primroses by that lane did not appear till 
 late ; they covered the banks under the thousand 
 thousand ash poles ; foxes slipped along there fre- 
 quently, whose friends in scarlet coats could not 
 endure the pale flowers, for they might chink their 
 spurs homewards. In one meadow near primroses 
 were thicker than the grass, with gorse interspersed, 
 and the rabbits that came out fed among flowers. 
 The primroses last on to the celandines and cowslips, 
 through the time of the bluebells, past the violets 
 one dies, but passes on the life to another, one sets 
 light to the next, till the ruddy oaks and singing 
 cuckoos call up the tall mowing grass to fringe 
 summer. 
 
 Before I had any conscious thought it was a de- 
 light to me to find wild flowers, just to see them. 
 It was a pleasure to gather them and to take them 
 home ; a pleasure to show them to others to 
 keep them as long as they would live, to decorate 
 the room with them, to arrange them carelessly with 
 grasses, green sprays, tree-bloom large branches 
 of chestnut snapped off, and set by a picture per- 
 haps. Without conscious thought of seasons and 
 the advancing hours to light on the white wild vio- 
 41
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 let, the meadow orchis, the blue veronica, the blue 
 meadow cranesbill ; feeling the warmth and delight 
 of the increasing sun-rays, but not recognising 
 whence or why it < was joy. All the world is young 
 to a boy, and thought has not entered into it ; even 
 the old men with grey hair do not seem old j dif- 
 ferent but not aged, the idea of age has not been 
 mastered. A boy has to frown and study, and then 
 does not grasp what long years mean. The vari- 
 ous hues of the petals pleased without any knowl- 
 edge of colour contrasts, no note even of colour 
 except that it was bright, and the mind was made 
 happy without consideration of those ideals and 
 hopes afterwards associated with the azure sky 
 above the fir tree. A fresh footpath, a fresh 
 flower, a fresh delight. The reeds, the grasses, the 
 rushes unknown and new things at every step 
 something always to find ; no barren spot any- 
 where, or sameness. Every day the grass painted 
 anew, and its green seen for the first time ; not the 
 old green, but a novel hue and spectacle, like the 
 first view of the sea. 
 
 If we had never before looked upon the earth, 
 but suddenly came to it man or woman grown, set 
 down in the midst of a summer mead, would it not 
 seem to us a radiant vision? The hues, the shapes, 
 the song and life of birds, above all the sunlight, the 
 breath of heaven, resting on it ; the mind would be 
 42
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 filled with its glory, unable to grasp it, hardly be- 
 lieving that such things could be mere matter and 
 no more. Like a dream of some spirit-land it 
 would appear, scarce fit to be touched lest it should 
 fall to pieces, too beautiful to be long watched lest 
 it should fade away. So it seemed to me as a boy, 
 sweet and new like this each morning ; and even 
 now, after the years that have passed, and the lines 
 they have worn in the forehead, the summer mead 
 shines as bright and fresh as when my foot first 
 touched the grass. It has another meaning now ; 
 the sunshine and the flowers speak differently, for 
 a heart that has once known sorrow reads behind 
 the page, and sees sadness in joy. But the fresh- 
 ness is still there, the dew washes the colours be- 
 fore dawn. Unconscious happiness in finding 
 wild flowers unconscious and unquestioning, and 
 therefore unbounded. 
 
 I used to stand by the mower and follow the 
 scythe sweeping down thousands of the broad- 
 flowered daisies, the knotted knapweeds, the blue 
 scabious, the yellow rattles, sweeping so close and 
 true that nothing escaped ; and yet, although I 
 had seen so many hundred of each, although I had 
 lifted armfuls day after day, still they were fresh. 
 They never lost their newness, and even now each 
 time I gather a wild flower it feels a new thing. 
 The greenfinches came to the fallen swathe so near 
 
 43
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 to us they seemed to have no fear ; but I remember 
 the yellowhammers most, whose colour, like that of 
 the wild flowers and the sky, has never faded from 
 my memory. The, greenfinches sank into the fallen 
 swathe, the loose grass gave under their weight 
 and let them bathe in flowers. 
 
 One yellowhammer sat on a branch of ash the 
 livelong morning, still singing in the sun ; his 
 bright head, his clean bright yellow, gaudy as 
 Spain, was drawn like a brush charged heavily 
 with colour across the retina, painting it deeply, 
 for there on the eye's memory it endures, though 
 that was boyhood and this is manhood, still un- 
 changed. The field Stewart's Mash the very 
 tree, young ash timber, the branch projecting over 
 the sward, I could make a map of them. Some- 
 times I think sun-painted colours are brighter to 
 me than to many, and more strongly affect the 
 nerves of the eye. Straw going by the road on a 
 dusky winter's day seems so pleasantly golden, the 
 sheaves lying aslant at the top, and these bundles 
 of yellow tubes thrown up against the dark ivy on 
 the opposite wall. Tiles, red burned, or orange 
 coated, the sea sometimes cleanly definite, the 
 shadows of trees in a thin wood where there is 
 room for shadows to form and fall ; some such 
 shadows are sharper than light, and have a faint 
 blue tint. Not only in summer but in cold win- 
 
 A A ,
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 ter, and not only romantic things but plain matter- 
 of-fact things, as a wagon freshly painted red beside 
 the wright's shop, stand out as if wet with colour 
 and delicately pencilled at the edges. It must be 
 out-of-doors ; nothing indoors looks like this. 
 
 Pictures are very dull and gloomy to it, and very 
 contrasted colours like those the French use are 
 necessary to fix the attention. Their dashes of 
 pink and scarlet bring the faint shadow of the sun 
 into the room. As for our painters, their works 
 are hung behind a curtain, and we have to peer 
 patiently through the dusk of evening to see what 
 they mean. Out-of-door colours do not need to 
 be gaudy a mere dull stake of wood thrust in 
 the ground often stands out sharper than the pink 
 flashes of the French studio ; a faggot ; the outline 
 of a leaf; low tints without reflecting power strike 
 the eye as a bell the ear. To me they are intensely 
 clear, and the clearer the greater the pleasure. It 
 is often too great, for it takes me away from solid 
 pursuits merely to receive the impression, as water 
 is still to reflect the trees. To me it is very pain- 
 ful when illness blots the definition of outdoor 
 things, so wearisome not to see them rightly, and 
 more oppressive than actual pain. I feel as if I 
 was struggling to wake up with dim, half-opened 
 lids and heavy mind. This one yellowhammer 
 still sits on the ash branch in Stewart's Mash 
 45
 
 E^33SE^* THE OPEN AIR 
 
 over the sward, singing in the sun, his feathers 
 freshly wet with colour, the same sun-song, and 
 will sing to me so long as the heart shall beat. 
 
 The first conscious thought about wild flowers 
 was to find out their names, the first conscious 
 pleasure, and then I began to see so many that 
 I had not previously noticed. Once you wish to 
 identify them there is nothing escapes, down to the 
 little white chickweed of the path and the moss of 
 the wall. I put my hand on the bridge across the 
 brook to lean over and look down into the water. 
 Are there any fish ? The bricks of the pier are 
 covered with green, like a wall-painting to the sur- 
 face of the stream, mosses along the lines of the 
 mortar, and among the moss little plants what 
 are these ? In the dry sunlit lane I look up to 
 the top of the great wall about some domain, where 
 the green figs look over upright on their stalks ; 
 there are dry plants on the coping what are 
 these ? Some growing thus, high in the air, on 
 stone, and in the chinks of the tower, suspended 
 in dry air and sunshine ; some low down under 
 the arch of the bridge over the brook, out of sight 
 utterly, unless you stoop by the brink of the water 
 and project yourself forward to examine under. 
 The kingfisher sees them as he shoots through the 
 barrel of the culvert. There the sun direct never 
 shines upon them, but the sunlight thrown up by 
 _ 4 6-
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 the ripples runs all day in bright bars along the 
 vault of the arch, playing on them. The stream 
 arranges the sand in the shallow in bars, minute 
 fixed undulations ; the stream arranges the sun- 
 shine in successive flashes, undulating as if the 
 sun, drowsy in the heat, were idly closing and un- 
 closing his eyelids for sleep. Plants everywhere, 
 hiding behind every tree, under the leaves, in the 
 shady places, beside the dry furrows of the field ; 
 they are only just behind something, hidden openly. 
 The instant you look for them they multiply a hun- 
 dredfold ; if you sit on the beach and begin to count 
 the pebbles by you, their number instantly increases 
 to infinity by virtue of that con-scious act. 
 
 The bird's-foot lotus was the first. The boy 
 must have seen it, must have trodden on it in the 
 bare woodland pastures, certainly run about on it, 
 with wet naked feet from the bathing ; but the boy 
 was not conscious of it. This was the first, when 
 the desire came to identify and to know, fixing 
 upon it by means of a pale and feeble picture. 
 In the largest pasture there were different soils and 
 climates ; it was so large it seemed a little country 
 of itself then the more so because the ground 
 rose and fell, making a ridge to divide the view 
 and enlarge by uncertainty. The high sandy soil 
 on the ridge where the rabbits had their warren ; 
 the rocky soil of the quarry ; the long grass by the 
 47
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 elms where the rooks built, under whose nests there 
 were vast unpalatable mushrooms the true mush- 
 rooms with salmon gills grew nearer the warren ; the 
 slope towards the nut-tree hedge and spring. Several 
 climates in one field : the wintry ridge over which 
 leaves were always driving in all four seasons of the 
 year ; the level sunny plain and fallen cromlech still 
 tall enough for a gnomon and to cast its shadow in 
 the treeless drought ; the moist, warm, grassy de- 
 pression ; the lotus-grown slope, warm and dry. 
 
 If you have been living in one house in the 
 country for some time, and then go on a visit to 
 another, though hardly half a mile distant, you 
 will find a change in the air, the feeling, and tone 
 of the place. It is close by, but it is not the same. 
 To discover these minute differences, which make 
 one locality healthy and home happy, and the next 
 adjoining unhealthy, the Chinese have invented the 
 science of Feng-shui, spying about with cabalistic 
 mystery, casting the horoscope of an acre. There 
 is something in all superstitions ; they are often 
 the foundation of science. Superstition having 
 made the discovery, science composes a lecture on 
 the reason why, and claims the credit. Bird's-foot 
 lotus means a fortunate spot, dry, warm so far 
 as soil is concerned. If you were going to live out- 
 of-doors, you might safely build your kibitka where 
 you found it. Wandering with the pictured flower- 
 - 4 8_
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 book, just purchased, over the windy ridge where 
 last year's skeleton leaves, blown out from the al- 
 der copse below, came on with grasshopper motion 
 lifted and laid down by the wind, lifted and laid 
 down I sat on the sward of the sheltered slope, 
 and instantly recognised the orange-red claws of 
 the flower beside me. That was the first ; and 
 this very morning, I dread to consider how many 
 years afterwards, I found a plant on a wall which 
 I do not know. I shall have to trace out its gen- 
 ealogy and emblazon its shield. So many years and 
 still only at the beginning the beginning, too, 
 of the beginning for as yet 1 have not thought 
 of the garden or conservatory flowers (which are 
 wild flowers somewhere), or of the tropics, or the 
 prairies. 
 
 The great stone of the fallen cromlech, crouch- 
 ing down afar off in the plain behind me, cast its 
 shadow in the sunny morn as it had done, so many 
 summers, for centuries for thousands of years : 
 worn white by the endless sunbeams the cease- 
 less flood of light the sunbeams of centuries, the 
 impalpable beams polishing and grinding like rush- 
 ing water : silent, yet witnessing of the Past ; shad- 
 owing the Present on the dial of the field : a mere 
 dull stone ; but what is it the mind will not em- 
 ploy to express to itself its own thoughts ? 
 
 There was a hollow near in which hundreds of 
 4 49
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 skeleton leaves had settled, a stage on their journey 
 from the alder copse, so thick as to cover the thin 
 grass, and at the side of the hollow a wasp's nest 
 had been torn out, t by a badger. On the soft and 
 spreading sand thrown out from his burrow the 
 print of his foot looked as large as an elephant 
 might make. The wild animals of our fields are 
 so small that the badger's foot seemed foreign in 
 its size, calling up the thought of the great game 
 of distant forests. He was a bold badger to make 
 his burrow there in the open warren, unprotected 
 by park walls or preserve laws, where every one 
 might see who chose. I never saw him by day- 
 light : that they do get about in daytime is, how- 
 ever, certain, for one was shot in Surrey recently 
 by sportsmen ; they say he weighed forty pounds. 
 
 In the mind all things are written in pictures 
 there is no alphabetical combination of letters and 
 words; all things are pictures and symbols. The 
 bird's-foot lotus is the picture to me of sunshine 
 and summer, and of that summer in the heart 
 which is known only in youth, and then not alone. 
 No words could write that feeling: the bird's-foot 
 lotus writes it. 
 
 When the efforts to photograph began, the 
 
 difficulty was to fix the scene thrown by the lens 
 
 upon the plate. There the view appeared perfect 
 
 to the least of details, worked out by the sun, and 
 
 50
 
 WILD FLOWERS SSE3J 
 
 made as complete in miniature as that he shone upon 
 in nature. But it fade'd like the shadows as the 
 summer sun declines. Have you watched them in 
 the fields among the flowers ? the deep strong 
 mark of the noonday shadow of a tree such as 
 the pen makes drawn heavily on the paper; gradu- 
 ally it loses its darkness and becomes paler and 
 thinner at the edge as it lengthens and spreads, till 
 shadow and grass mingle together. Image after 
 image faded from the plates, no more to be fixed 
 than the reflection in water of the trees by the 
 shore. Memory, like the sun, paints to me bright 
 pictures of the golden summer time of lotus ; I can 
 see them, but how shall I fix them for you ? By 
 no process can that be accomplished. It is like a 
 story that cannot be told because he who knows 
 it is tongue-tied and dumb. Motions of hands, 
 wavings and gestures, rudely convey the framework, 
 but the finish is not there. 
 
 To-day, and day after day, fresh pictures are 
 coloured instantaneously in the retina as bright 
 and perfect in detail and hue. This very power 
 is often, I think, the cause of pain to me. To 
 see so clearly is to value so highly and to feel too 
 deeply. The smallest of the pencilled branches 
 of the bare ash tree drawn distinctly against the 
 winter sky, waving lines one within the other, 
 yet following and partly parallel, reproducing in 
 51
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 the curve of the twig the curve of the great 
 trunk; is it not a pleasure to trace each to its 
 ending ? The raindrops as they slide from leaf 
 to leaf in June, the 4 balmy shower that reperfumes 
 each wild flower and green thing, drops lit with 
 the sun, and falling to the chorus of the refreshed 
 birds; is not this beautiful to see ? On the grasses 
 tall and heavy the purplish blue pollen, a shim- 
 mering dust, sown broadcast over the ripening 
 meadow from July's warm hand the bluish 
 pollen, the lilac pollen of the grasses, a delicate 
 mist of blue floating on the surface, has always 
 been an especial delight to me. Finches shake 
 it from the stalks as they rise. No day, no hour 
 of summer, no step but brings new mazes there 
 is no word to express design without plan, and 
 these designs of flower and leaf and colours of 
 the sun cannot be reduced to set order. The 
 eye is for ever drawn onward and finds no end. 
 To see these always so sharply, wet and fresh, 
 is almost too much sometimes for the wearied 
 yet insatiate eye. I am obliged to turn away 
 to shut my eyes and say I will not see, I will 
 not observe ; I will concentrate my mind on my 
 own little path of life, and steadily gaze down- 
 wards. In vain. Who can do so ? who can care 
 alone for his or her petty trifles of existence, that 
 has once entered amongst the wild flowers ? How
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 shall I shut out the sun ? Shall I deny the con- 
 stellations of the night ? They are there j the 
 Mystery is for ever about us the question, the 
 hope, the aspiration cannot be put out. So that 
 it is almost a pain not to be able to cease observ- 
 ing and tracing the untraceable maze of beauty. 
 
 Blue veronica was the next identified, sometimes 
 called germander speedwell, sometimes bird's-eye, 
 whose leaves are so plain and petals so blue. 
 Many names increase the trouble of identification, 
 and confusion is made certain by the use of vari- 
 ous systems of classification. The flower itself 
 I knew, its name I could not be sure of not 
 even from the illustration, which was incorrectly 
 coloured ; the central white spot of the flower 
 was reddish in the plate. This incorrect colour- 
 ing spoils much of the flower-picturing done; pic- 
 tures of flowers and birds are rarely accurate unless 
 hand-painted. Any one else, however, would have 
 been quite satisfied that the identification was right. 
 I was too desirous to be correct, too conscientious, 
 and thus a summer went by with little progress. 
 If you really wish to identify with certainty, and 
 have no botanist friend and no magnum opus of 
 Sowerby to refer to, it is very difficult indeed 
 to be quite sure. There was no Sowerby, no 
 Bentham, no botanist friend no one even to 
 give the common country names j for it is a curi- 
 53
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 ous fact that the country people of the time rarely 
 know the names put down as the vernacular for 
 flowers in the books. 
 
 No one there culd tell me the name of the 
 marsh-marigold which grew thickly in the water- 
 meadows "A sort of big buttercup," that was 
 all they knew. Commonest of common plants 
 is the " sauce alone " in every hedge, on every 
 bank, the whitish-green leaf is found yet I could 
 not make certain of it. If some one tells you a 
 plant, you know it at once and never forget it, 
 but to learn it from a book is another matter; it 
 does not at once take root in the mind, it has 
 to be seen several times before you are satisfied 
 you waver in your convictions. The leaves 
 were described as large and heart-shaped, and to 
 remain green (at the ground ) through the winter; 
 but the colour of the flower was omitted, though 
 it was stated that the petals of the hedge-mustard 
 were yellow. The plant that seemed to me to 
 be probably " sauce alone " had leaves somewhat 
 heart-shaped, but so confusing is partial descrip- 
 tion that I began to think I had hit on " ramsons " 
 instead of " sauce alone," especially as ramsons was 
 said to be a very common plant. So it is in some 
 counties, but, as I afterwards found, there was 
 not a plant of ramsons, or garlic, throughout the 
 whole of that district. When, some years after- 
 54
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 wards, I saw a white-flowered plant with leaves 
 like the lily of the valley, smelling of garlic, in 
 the woods of Somerset, I recognised it immedi- 
 ately. The plants that are really common 
 common everywhere are not numerous, and if 
 you are studying you must be careful to un- 
 derstand that word locally. My " sauce alone " 
 identification was right ; to be right and not cer- 
 tain is still unsatisfactory. 
 
 There shone on the banks white stars among the 
 grass. Petals delicately white in a whorl of rays 
 light that had started radiating from a centre and 
 become fixed shining among the fiowerless green. 
 The slender stem had grown so fast it had drawn 
 its own root partly out of the ground, and when 
 I tried to gather it, flower, stem, and root came 
 away together. The wheat was springing, the 
 soft air full of the growth and moisture, black- 
 birds whistling, wood-pigeons nesting, young oak- 
 leaves out; a sense of swelling, sunny fulness in 
 the atmosphere. The plain road was made beauti- 
 ful by the advanced boughs that overhung and cast 
 their shadows on the dust boughs of ash-green, 
 shadows that lay still, listening to the nightingale. 
 A place of enchantment in the mornings, where 
 was felt the power of some subtle influence work- 
 ing behind bough and grass and bird-song. The 
 orange-golden dandelion in the sward was deeply 
 55
 
 : THE OPEN AIR 
 
 laden with colour brought to it anew again and 
 again by the ships of the flowers, the humble-bees 
 to their quays they come, unlading priceless 
 essences of sweet., odours brought from the East 
 over the green seas of wheat, unlading priceless 
 colours on the broad dandelion disks, bartering 
 these things for honey and pollen. Slowly tack- 
 ing aslant, the pollen ship hums in the south 
 wind. The little brown wren finds her way 
 through the great thicket of hawthorn. How 
 does she know her path, hidden by a thousand 
 thousand leaves ? Tangled and crushed together 
 by their own growth, a crown of thorns hangs 
 over the thrush's nest ; thorns for the mother, 
 hope for the young. Is there a crown of thorns 
 over your heart ? A spike has gone deep enough 
 into mine. The stile looks farther away because 
 boughs have pushed forward and made it smaller. 
 The willow scarce holds the sap that tightens the 
 bark and would burst it if it did not enlarge to the 
 pressure. 
 
 Two things can go through the solid oak : the 
 lightning of the clouds that rends the iron timber, 
 the lightning of the spring the electricity of the 
 sunbeams forcing him to stretch forth and lengthen 
 his arms with joy. Bathed in buttercups to the 
 dewlap, the roan cows standing in the golden lake 
 watched the hours with calm frontlet ; watched 
 -56-
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 the light descending, the meadows filling, with 
 knowledge of long months of succulent clover. 
 On their broad brows the year falls gently ; their 
 great, beautiful eyes, which need but a tear or a 
 smile to make them human, without these, such 
 eyes, so large and full, seem above human life, 
 eyes of the immortals enduring without passion, 
 in these eyes, as a mirror, nature is reflected. 
 
 I came every day to walk slowly up and down 
 the plain road, by the starry flowers under the 
 ash-green boughs ; ash is the coolest, softest green. 
 The bees went drifting over by my head j as they 
 cleared the hedges they passed by my ears, the 
 wind singing in their shrill wings. White tent- 
 walls of cloud a warm white, being full to 
 overflowing of sunshine stretched across from 
 ash-top to ash-top, a cloud-canvas roof, a tent- 
 palace of the delicious air. For of all things 
 there is none so sweet as sweet air one great 
 flower it is, drawn round about, over, and enclos- 
 ing, like Aphrodite's arms ; as if the dome of the 
 sky were a bell-flower drooping down over us, and 
 the magical essence of it filling all the room of 
 the earth. Sweetest of all things is wild-flower 
 air. Full of their ideal the starry flowers strained 
 upwards on the bank, striving to keep above the 
 rude grasses that pushed by them ; genius has ever 
 had such a struggle. The plain road was made 
 57
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 beautiful by the many thoughts it gave. I came 
 every morning to stay by the star-lit bank. 
 
 A friend said, " Why do you go the same road 
 every day ? Why. x not have a change and walk 
 somewhere else sometimes? Why keep on up and 
 down the same place ? " I could not answer ; till 
 then it had not occurred to me that I did always 
 go one way ; as for the reason of it I could not 
 tell; I continued in my old mind while the sum- 
 mers went away. Not till years afterwards was I 
 able to see why I went the same round and did not 
 care for change. I do not want change : I want 
 the same old and loved things, the same wild 
 flowers, the same trees and soft ash-green ; the 
 turtledoves, the blackbirds, the coloured yellow- 
 hammer sing, sing, singing so long as there is light 
 to cast a shadow on the dial, for such is the measure 
 of his song, and I want them in the same place. 
 Let me find them morning after morning, the starry- 
 white petals radiating, striving upwards to their ideal. 
 Let me see the idle shadows resting on the white 
 dust ; let me hear the humble-bees, and stay to 
 look down on the rich dandelion disk. Let me 
 see the very thistles opening their great crowns I 
 should miss the thistles ; the reed-grasses hiding 
 the moorhen ; the bryony bine, at first crudely 
 ambitious and lifted by force of youthful sap 
 straight above the hedgerow to sink of its own 
 -58-
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 weight presently and progress with crafty tendrils; 
 swifts shot through the air with outstretched wings 
 like crescent-headed shaftless arrows darted from 
 the clouds ; the chaffinch with a feather in her 
 bill ; all the living staircase of the spring, step by 
 step, upwards to the great gallery of the summer 
 let me watch the same succession year by year. 
 
 Why, I knew the very dates of them all the 
 reddening elm, the arum, the hawthorn leaf, the 
 celandine, the may ; the yellow iris of the waters, 
 the heath of the hillside. The time of the nightin- 
 gale the place to hear the first note ; onwards to 
 the drooping fern and the time of the redwing the 
 place of his first note, so welcome to the sportsman 
 as the acorn ripens and the pheasant, come to the 
 age of manhood, feeds himself; onwards to the 
 shadowless days the long, shadowless winter, 
 for in winter it is the shadows we miss as much 
 as the light. They lie over the summer sward, 
 design upon design, dark lace on green and gold ; 
 they glorify the sunlight : they repose on the 
 distant hills like gods upon Olympus ; without 
 shadow, what even is the sun ? At the foot of 
 the great cliffs by the sea you may know this, it 
 is dry glare; mighty ocean is dearer as the shadows 
 of the clouds sweep over as they sweep over the 
 green corn. Past the shadowless winter, when it 
 is all shade, and therefore no shadow ; onwards to 
 59
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 the first coltsfoot and on to the seedtime again ; I 
 knew the dates of all of them. I did not want 
 change ; I wanted the same flowers to return on 
 the same day, the -titlark to rise soaring from the 
 same oak to fetch down love with a song from 
 heaven to his mate on the nest beneath. No 
 change, no new thing ; if I found a fresh wild 
 flower in a fresh place, still it wove at once into 
 the old garland. In vain, the very next year was 
 different even in the same place that had been a 
 year of rain, and the flag flowers were wonderful 
 to see; this was a dry year, and the flags not half 
 the height, the gold of the flower not so deep ; 
 next year the fatal billhook came and swept away 
 a slow-grown hedge that had given me crab-blossom 
 in cuckoo-time and hazelnuts in harvest. Never 
 again the same, even in the same place. 
 
 A little feather droops downwards to the ground 
 a swallow's feather fuller of miracle than the 
 Pentateuch how shall that feather be placed 
 again in the breast where it grew ? Nothing twice. 
 Time changes the places that knew us, and if we 
 go back in after years, still even then it is not the 
 old spot; the gate swings differently, new thatch 
 has been put on the old gables, the road has been 
 widened, and the sward the driven sheep lingered 
 on is gone. Who dares to think then ? For faces 
 fade as flowers, and there is no consolation. So 
 60
 
 WILD FLOWERS 
 
 now I am sure I was right in always walking the 
 same way by the starry flowers striving upwards 
 on a slender ancestry of stem ; I would follow the 
 plain old road to-day if I could. Let change be 
 far from me ; that irresistible change must come 
 is bitter indeed. Give me the old road, the same 
 flowers they were only stitchwort the old suc- 
 cession of days and garland, ever weaving into it 
 fresh wild flowers from far and near. Fetch them 
 from distant mountains, discover them on decaying 
 walls, in unsuspected corners ; though never seen 
 before, still they are the same : there has been a 
 place in the heart waiting for them.
 
 SUNNY BRIGHTON 
 
 OME of the old streets opening out of 
 the King's Road look very pleasant on 
 a sunny day. They run to the north, so 
 that the sun over the sea shines nearly 
 straight up them, and at the farther end, where the 
 houses close in on higher ground, the deep blue 
 sky descends to the rooftrees. The old red tiles, 
 the red chimneys, the green jalousies, give some 
 colour ; and beneath there are shadowy corners and 
 archways. They are not too wide to whisper 
 across, for it is curious that to be interesting a 
 street must be narrow, and the pavements are but 
 two or three bricks broad. These pavements are 
 not for the advantage of foot passengers ; they are 
 merely to prevent cart-wheels from grating against 
 the houses. There is nothing ancient or carved 
 in these streets, they are but moderately old, yet 
 turning from the illuminated sea it is pleasant to 
 glance up them as you pass, in their stillness and 
 shadow, lying outside the inconsiderate throng 
 walking to and fro, and contrasting in their irregu- 
 larity with the set facades of the front. Opposite, 
 62
 
 SUNNY BRIGHTON a^gaE^g 
 
 across the King's Road, the mastheads of the fishing- 
 boats on the beach just rise above the rails of 
 the cliff, tipped with fluttering pennants, or fish- 
 shaped vanes changing to the wind. They have a 
 pulley at the end of a curved piece of iron for 
 hauling up the lantern to the top of the mast 
 when trawling ; this thin curve, with a dot at the 
 extremity surmounting the straight and rigid mast, 
 suits the artist's pencil. The gold-plate shop 
 there is a bust of Psyche in the doorway often 
 attracts the eye in passing ; gold and silver plate in 
 large masses is striking, and it is a very good place 
 to stand a minute and watch the passers-by. 
 
 It is a Piccadilly crowd by the sea exactly the 
 same style of people you meet in Piccadilly, but 
 freer in dress, and particularly in hats. All fash- 
 ionable Brighton parades the King's Road twice a 
 day, morning and afternoon, always on the side of 
 the shops. The route is up and down the King's 
 Road as far as Preston Street, back again and up 
 East Street. Riding and driving Brighton extends 
 its Rotten Row sometimes to Third Avenue, 
 Hove. These well-dressed and leading people 
 never look at the sea. Watching by the gold- 
 plate shop, you will not observe a single glance in 
 the direction of the sea, beautiful as it is, gleaming 
 under the sunlight. They do not take the slightest 
 interest in sea, or sun, or sky, or the fresh breeze 
 -63-
 
 3K THE OPEN AIR 
 
 calling white horses from the deep. Their pursuits 
 are purely " social, " and neither ladies nor gentle- 
 men ever go on the beach or lie where the surge 
 comes to the feet. The beach is ignored ; it is 
 almost, perhaps quite vulgar ; or rather it is entirely 
 outside the pale. No one rows, very few sail ; 
 the sea is not " the thing " in Brighton, which is 
 the least nautical of seaside places. There is more 
 talk of horses. 
 
 The wind coming up the cliff seems to bring 
 with it whole armfuls of sunshine, and to throw 
 the warmth and light against you as you linger. 
 The walls and glass reflect the light and push back 
 the wind in puffs and eddies ; the awning flutters ; 
 light and wind spring upwards from the pavement ; 
 the sky is richly blue against the parapets overhead ; 
 there are houses on one side, but on the other open 
 space and sea, and dim clouds in the extreme dis- 
 tance. The atmosphere is full of light, and gives 
 a sense of liveliness ; every atom of it is in motion. 
 How delicate are the fore legs of these thorough- 
 bred horses passing ! Small and slender, the hoof, 
 as the limb rises, seems to hang by a thread, yet 
 there is strength and speed in those sinews. Strength 
 is often associated with size, with the mighty flank, 
 the round barrel, the great shoulder. But I mar- 
 vel more at the manner in which that strength is 
 conveyed through these slender sinews ; the huge 
 _6 4 _
 
 SUNNY BRIGHTON 
 
 brawn and breadth of flesh all depend upon these 
 little cords. It is at these junctions that the 
 wonder of life is most evident. The succession of 
 well-shaped horses, overtaking and passing, cross- 
 ing, meeting, their high-raised heads and action 
 increase the impression of pleasant movement. 
 Quick wheels, sometimes a tandem, or a painted 
 coach, towering over the line, so rolls the pro- 
 cession of busy pleasure. There is colour in hat 
 and bonnet, feathers, flowers, and mantles, not 
 brilliant but rapidly changing, and in that sense 
 bright. Faces on which the sun shines and the 
 wind blows whether cared for or not, and lit up 
 thereby ; faces seen for a moment and immediately 
 followed by others as interesting ; a flowing gal- 
 lery of portraits ; all life, life ! Waiting unob- 
 served under the awning, occasionally, too, I hear 
 voices as the throng goes by on the pavement 
 pleasant tones of people chatting and the human 
 sunshine of laughter. The atmosphere is full of 
 movement, full of light, and life streams to and 
 fro. 
 
 Yonder, over the road, a row of fishermen lean 
 against the rails of the cliff, some with their backs 
 to the sea, some facing it. " The cliff " is rather 
 a misnomer, it is more like a sea-wall in height. 
 This row of stout men in blue jerseys, or copper- 
 hued tan frocks, seems to be always there, always 
 
 5 -6 5 _
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 waiting for the tide or nothing. Each has his 
 particular position ; one, shorter than the rest, leans 
 with his elbows backwards on the low rail ; another 
 hangs over and loqks down at the site of the fish- 
 market ; an older man stands upright, and from 
 long habit looks steadily out to sea. They have 
 their hands in their pockets ; they appear fat and 
 jolly, as round as the curves of their smacks drawn 
 up on the beach beneath them. They are of such 
 that " sleep o' nights ; " no anxious ambition dis- 
 turbs their placidity. No man in this world knows 
 how to absolutely do nothing, like a fisherman. 
 Sometimes he turns round, sometimes he does not, 
 that is all. The sun shines, the breeze comes up 
 the cliff, far away a French fishing lugger is busy 
 enough. The boats on the beach are idle, and 
 swarms of boys are climbing over them, swinging 
 on a rope from the bowsprit, or playing at marbles 
 under the cliff. Bigger boys collect under the 
 lee of a smack, and do nothing cheerfully. The 
 fashionable throng hastens to and fro, but the row 
 leaning against the railings do not stir. 
 
 Doleful tales they have to tell any one who in- 
 quires about the fishing. There have been " no 
 herrings " these two years. One man went out 
 with his smack, and after working for hours re- 
 turned with one sole. I can never get this one sole 
 out of my mind when I see the row by the rails. 
 66
 
 SUNNY BRIGHTON^E: 
 
 While the fisherman was telling me this woeful 
 story, I fancied I heard voices from a crowd of the 
 bigger boys collected under a smack, voices that 
 said, " Ho ! ho ! Go on ! you 're kidding the 
 man ! " Is there much " kidding " in this busi- 
 ness of fish ? Another man told me (but he was 
 not a smack proprietor) that 50, 70, or .80 
 was a common night's catch. Some people say 
 that the smacks never put to sea until the men 
 have spent every shilling they have got, and are 
 obliged to sail. If truth lies at the bottom of a 
 well, it is the well of a fishing-boat, for there is 
 nothing so hard to get at as the truth about fish. 
 At the time when society was pluming itself on 
 the capital results attained by the Fisheries Exhi- 
 bition in London, and gentlemen described in the 
 papers how they had been to market and purchased 
 cod at sixpence a pound, one shilling and eightpence 
 a pound was the price in the Brighton fishmongers' 
 shops, close to the sea. Not the least effect was 
 produced in Brighton ; fish remains at precisely the 
 same price as before all this ridiculous trumpeting. 
 But while the fishmongers charge twopence each 
 for fresh herrings, the old women bring them to 
 the door at sixteen a shilling. The poor who live 
 in the old part of Brighton, near the markets, use 
 great quantities of the smaller and cheaper fish, 
 and their children weary of the taste to such a de- 
 67
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 gree that when the girls go out to service they ask 
 to be excused from eating it. 
 
 The fishermen say they can often find a better 
 market by sending^, their fish to Paris; much of the 
 fish caught off Brighton goes there. It is fifty miles 
 to London, and 250 to Paris ; how then can this 
 be ? Fish somehow slip through ordinary rules, 
 being slimy of surface ; the maxims of the writers 
 on demand and supply are quite ignored, and there 
 is no groping to the bottom of this well of truth. 
 
 Just at the corner of some of the old streets that 
 come down to the King's Road one or two old fish- 
 ermen often stand. The front one props himself 
 against the very edge of the buildings, and peers 
 round into the broad sunlit thoroughfare; his brown 
 copper frock makes a distinct patch of colour at the 
 edge of the house. There is nothing in common 
 between him and the moving throng : he is quite 
 separate and belongs to another race ; he has come 
 down from the shadow of the old street, and his 
 copper-hued frock might have come out of the last 
 century. 
 
 The fishing-boats and the fishing, the nets and all 
 the fishing work are a great ornament to Brighton. 
 They are real ; there is something about them that 
 forms a link with the facts of the sea, with the 
 forces of the tides and winds, and the sunlight 
 gleaming on the white crests of the waves. They 
 
 68
 
 SUNNY BRIGHTON 
 
 speak to thoughts lurking in the mind ; they float 
 between life and death as with a billow on either 
 hand ; their anchors go down to the roots of exist- 
 ence. This is real work, real labour of man, to 
 draw forth food from the deep as the plough draws 
 it from the earth. It is in utter contrast to the 
 artificial work the feathers, the jewellery, the 
 writing at desks of the town. The writings of 
 a thousand clerks, the busy factory work, the 
 trimmings and feathers, and counter-attendance do 
 not touch the real. They are all artificial. For 
 food you must still go to the earth and to the sea, 
 as in primeval days. Where would your thousand 
 clerks, your trimmers, and counter-salesmen be 
 without a loaf of bread, without meat, without 
 fish ? The old brown sails and the nets, the an- 
 chors and tarry ropes, go straight to nature. You 
 do not care for nature now ? Well ! all I can say 
 is, you will have to go to nature one day when 
 you die : you will find nature very real then. I 
 rede you to recognise the sunlight and the sea, the 
 flowers and woods now . 
 
 I like to go down on the beach among the fishing- 
 boats, and to recline on the shingle by a smack 
 when the wind comes gently from the west, and the 
 low wave breaks but a few yards from my feet. I 
 like the occasional passing scent of pitch : they are 
 melting it close by. I confess I like tar: one's 
 -69-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 hands smell nice after touching ropes. It is more 
 like home down on the beach here ; the men are 
 doing something real, sometimes there is the clink 
 of a hammer ; behind me there is a screen of brown 
 net, in which rents are being repaired ; a big rope 
 yonder stretches as the horse goes round, and the 
 heavy smack is drawn slowly up over the pebbles. 
 The full curves of the rounded bows beside me are 
 pleasant to the eye, as any curve is that recalls those 
 of woman. Mastheads stand up against the sky, 
 and a loose rope swings as the breeze strikes it ; a 
 veer of the wind brings a puff of smoke from the 
 funnel of a cabin, where some one is cooking, but 
 it is not disagreeable, like smoke from a house 
 chimney-pot ; another veer carries it away again, 
 depend upon it the simplest thing cooked there is 
 nice. Shingle rattles as it is shovelled up for ballast 
 the sound of labour makes me more comfortably 
 lazy. They are not in a hurry j nor " chivy " over 
 their work either; the tides rise and fall slowly, 
 and they work in correspondence. No infernal 
 fidget and fuss. Wonder how long it would take 
 me to pitch a pebble so as to lodge on the top of 
 that large brown pebble there ? I try, once now 
 and then. 
 
 Far out over the sea there is a peculiar bank of 
 clouds. I was always fond of watching clouds ; 
 these do not move much. In my pocket-book I 
 70
 
 S U N N Y B R I G H T O N 
 
 see I have several notes about these peculiar sea- 
 clouds. They form a band not far above the 
 horizon, not very thick but elongated laterally. 
 The upper edge is curled or wavy, not so heavily 
 as what is called mountainous, not in the least 
 threatening ; this edge is white. The body of the 
 vapour is a little darker, either because thicker, or 
 because the light is reflected at a different angle. 
 But it is the lower edge which is singular : in direct 
 contrast with the curled or wavy edge above, the 
 under edge is perfectly straight and parallel to the line 
 of the horizon. It looks as if the level of the 
 sea made this under line. This bank moves very 
 slowly scarcely perceptibly but in course of 
 hours rises, and as it rises spreads, when the extrem- 
 ities break off in detached pieces, and these grad- 
 ually vanish. Sometimes when travelling I have 
 pointed out the direction of the sea, feeling sure it 
 was there, and not far off, though invisible, on 
 account of the appearance of the clouds, whose 
 under edge was cut across so straight. When 
 this peculiar bank appears at Brighton it is an 
 almost certain sign of continued fine weather, and 
 I have noticed the same thing elsewhere ; once 
 particularly it remained fine after this appearance 
 despite every threat the sky could offer of a storm. 
 All the threats came to nothing for three weeks, 
 not even thunder and lightning could break it up, 
 71
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 " deceitful flashes," as the Arabs say ; for, like 
 the sons of the desert, just then the farmers longed 
 for rain on their parched fields. To me, while on 
 the beach among the boats, the value of these 
 clouds lies in their slowness of movement, and 
 consequent effect in soothing the mind. Outside 
 the hurry and drive of life a rest comes through 
 the calm of nature. As the swell of the sea 
 carries up the pebbles, and arranges the largest 
 farthest inland, where they accumulate and stay 
 unmoved, so the drifting of the clouds, and the 
 touch of the wind, the sound of the surge, arrange 
 the molecules of the mind in still layers. It is 
 then that a dream fills it, and a dream is sometimes 
 better than the best reality. Laugh at the idea of 
 dreaming where there is an odour of tar if you like, 
 but you see it is outside intolerable civilisation. 
 It is a hundred miles from the King's Road, though 
 but just under it. 
 
 There is a scheme on foot for planking over 
 the ocean, beginning at the bottom of West Street. 
 An immense central pier is proposed, which would 
 occupy the only available site for beaching the 
 smacks. If carried out, the whole fishing industry 
 must leave Brighton, to the fishermen the injury 
 would be beyond compensation, and the aspect 
 of Brighton itself would be destroyed. Brighton 
 ought to rise in revolt against it. 
 71
 
 SUNNY BRIGHTON SSEH3CS>E^K 
 
 All Brighton chimney-pots are put on with 
 giant cement, in order to bear the strain of the 
 tremendous winds rushing up from the sea. Heavy 
 as the gales are they seldom do much mischief to 
 the roofs, such as are recorded inland. On the 
 King's Road a plate-glass window is now and then 
 blown in, so that on hurricane days the shutters 
 are generally half shut. It is said that the wind 
 gets between the iron shutters and the plate glass 
 and shakes the windows loose. The heaviest 
 waves roll in by the West Pier, and at the bottom 
 of East Street. Both sides of the West Pier are 
 washed by larger waves than can be seen all along 
 the coast from the Quarter Deck. Great rollers 
 come in at the concrete groyne at the foot of East 
 Street. Exposed as the coast is, the waves do not 
 convey so intense an idea of wildness, confusion, 
 and power as they do at Dover. To see waves in 
 their full vigour go to the Admiralty Pier and 
 watch the seas broken by the granite wall. Windy 
 Brighton has not an inch of shelter anywhere in a 
 gale, and the salt rain driven by the wind penetrates 
 the thickest coat. The windiest spot is at the 
 corner of Second Avenue, Hove ; the wind just 
 there is almost enough to choke those who face it. 
 Double windows Russian fashion are common 
 all along the sea-front, and are needed. 
 
 After a gale, when the wind changes, as it 
 73
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 usually does, it is pleasant to see the ships work in 
 to the verge of the shore. The sea is turbid and 
 yellow with sand beaten up by the recent billows, 
 this yellowness extends outwards to a certain line, 
 and is there succeeded by the green of clearer 
 water. Beyond this again the surface looks dark 
 as if still half angry, and clouds hang over it, loth 
 to retire from the strife. As bees come out of 
 their hives when the rain ceases and the sun shines, 
 so the vessels which have been lying-to in harbour, 
 or under shelter of promontories, are now eagerly 
 making their way down Channel, and, in order to 
 get as long a tack and as much advantage as pos- 
 sible, they are brought to the edge of the shallow 
 water. Sometimes fifteen or twenty or more stand 
 in ; all sizes from the ketch to the three-master. 
 The wind is not strong, but that peculiar drawing 
 breeze which seems to pull a ship along as if with 
 a tow-rope. The brig stands straight for the 
 beach, with all sail set ; she heels a little, not much ; 
 she scarcely heaves to the swell, and is not checked 
 by meeting waves ; she comes almost to the yellow 
 line of turbid water, when round she goes, and you 
 can see the sails shiver as the breeze touches them 
 on both surfaces for a moment. Then again she 
 shows her stern and away she glides, while another 
 approaches: and all day long they pass. There is 
 always something shadowy, not exactly unreal, but 
 74
 
 LTNNY BRIGHTON 
 
 shadowy about a ship ; it seems to carry a romance, 
 and the imagination fashions a story to the swelling 
 sails. 
 
 The bright light of Brighton brings all things 
 into clear relief, giving them an edge and outline ; 
 as steel burns with a flame like wood in oxygen, so 
 the minute particles of iron in the atmosphere seem 
 to burn and glow in the sunbeams, and a twofold 
 illumination fills the air. Coming back to the 
 place after a journey this brilliant light is very 
 striking, and most new visitors notice it. Even 
 a room with a northern aspect is full of light, too 
 strong for some eyes, till accustomed to it. I am 
 & great believer in light sunlight and of my 
 free will never let it be shut out with curtains. 
 Light is essential to life, like air ; life is thought ; 
 light is as fresh air to the mind. Brilliant sunshine 
 is reflected from the houses and fills the streets. 
 The walls of the houses are clean and less dis- 
 coloured by the deposit of carbon than usual in 
 most towns, so that the reflection is stronger from 
 these white serfaces. Shadow there is none in 
 summer, for the shadows are lit up by diffusion. 
 Something in the atmosphere throws light down 
 into shaded places as if from a mirror. Waves 
 beat ceaselessly on the beach, and the undulations of 
 light flow continuously forwards into the remotest 
 corners. Pure air, free from suspended matter, lets 
 75
 
 THE OPEN AIR : 
 
 the light pass freely, and perhaps this absence of 
 suspended material is the reason that the heat is 
 not so oppressive as would be supposed considering 
 the glare. Certainly it is not so hot as London ; 
 on going up to town on a July or August day it 
 seems much hotter there, so much so that one 
 pants for air. Conversely in winter, London 
 appears much colder, the thick dark atmosphere 
 seems to increase the bitterness of the easterly 
 winds, and returning to Brighton is entering a 
 warmer because clearer air. Many complain of 
 the brilliance of the light ; they say the glare is 
 overpowering, but the eyes soon become acclima- 
 tised. This glare is one of the great recommenda- 
 tions of Brighton ; the strong light is evidently one 
 of the causes of its healthfulness to those who need 
 change. There is no such glowing light elsewhere 
 along the south coast ; these things are very local. 
 A demand has been made for trees, to plant the 
 streets and turn them into boulevards for shade, 
 than which nothing could be more foolish. It is 
 the dryness of the place that gives it its character. 
 After a storm, after heavy rain for days, in an hour 
 the pavements are not only dry but clean j no dirt, 
 sticky and greasy, remains. The only dirt in 
 Brighton, for three-fourths of the year, is that 
 made by the water-carts. Too much water is 
 used, and a good clean road covered with mud an 
 - 7 6_
 
 SUNNY BRIGHTON*^ 
 
 inch thick in August ; but this is not the fault of 
 Brighton it is the lack of observation on the part 
 of the Cadi who ought to have noticed the wretched 
 condition of ladies' boots when compelled to cross 
 these miry promenades. Trees are not wanted in 
 Brighton ; it is the peculiar glory of Brighton to 
 be treeless. Trees are the cause of damp, they 
 suck down moisture, and fill a circle round them 
 with humidity. Places full of trees are very trying 
 in spring and autumn even to robust people, much 
 more so to convalescents and delicate persons. 
 Have nothing to do with trees, if Brighton is to 
 retain its value. Glowing light, dry, clear, and 
 clean air, general dryness these are the qualities 
 that rendered Brighton a sanatorium ; light and 
 glow without oppressive, moist heat ; in winter a 
 clear cold. Most terrible of all to bear is cold 
 when the atmosphere is saturated with water. If 
 any reply that trees have no leaves in winter and 
 so do not condense moisture, I at once deny the 
 conclusion ; they have no leaves, but they condense 
 moisture nevertheless. This is effected by the 
 minute twigs, thousands of twigs and little branches, 
 on which the mists condense, and distil in drops. 
 Under a large tree, in winter, there is often a per- 
 fect shower, enough to require an umbrella, and it 
 lasts for hours. Eastbourne is a pleasant place, 
 but visit Eastbourne, which is proud of its trees, in 
 77
 
 JE3E3K THE OPEN AIR 
 
 October, and feel the damp fallen leaves under 
 your feet, and you would prefer no trees. 
 
 Let nothing check the descent of those glorious 
 beams of sunlight vyhich fall at Brighton. Watch 
 the pebbles on the beach ; the foam runs up and 
 wets them, almost before it can slip back the sun- 
 shine has dried them again. So they are alternately 
 wetted and dried. Bitter sea and glowing light, 
 bright clear air, dry as dry, that describes the 
 place. Spain is the country of sunlight, burning 
 sunlight ; Brighton is a Spanish town in England, 
 a Seville. Very bright colours can be worn in 
 summer because of this powerful light; the brightest 
 are scarcely noticed, for they seem to be in concert 
 with the sunshine. Is it difficult to paint in so 
 strong a light ? Pictures in summer look dull 
 and out of tune when this Seville sun is shining. 
 Artificial colours of the palette cannot live in it. 
 As a race we do not seem to care much for colour 
 or art I mean in the common things of daily 
 life else a great deal of colour might be effectively 
 used in Brighton in decorating houses and wood- 
 work. Much more colour might be put in the win- 
 dows, brighter flowers and curtains; more, too, inside 
 the rooms ; the sober hues of London furniture and 
 carpets are not in accord with Brighton light. Gold 
 and ruby and blue, the blue of transparent glass, or 
 purple, might be introduced, and the romance of 
 -78-
 
 SUNNY 
 
 colour freely indulged. At high tide of summer 
 Spanish mantillas, Spanish fans, would not be out 
 of place in the open air. No tint is too bright 
 scarlet, cardinal, anything the imagination fancies ; 
 the brightest parasol is a matter of course. Stand, 
 for instance, by the West Pier, on the Esplanade, 
 "looking east on a full-lit August day. The sea is 
 blue, streaked with green, and is stilled with heat ; 
 the low undulations can scarcely rise and fall for 
 somnolence. The distant cliffs are white; the 
 houses yellowish-white; the sky blue, more blue 
 than fabled Italy. Light pours down, and the bitter 
 salt sea wets the pebbles ; to look at them makes 
 the mouth dry, in the unconscious recollection of 
 the saltness and bitterness. The flags droop, the 
 sails of the fishing-boats hang idle ; the land and 
 the sea are conquered by the great light of the sun. 
 Some people become famous by being always in 
 one attitude. Meet them when you will, they have 
 invariably got an arm the same arm crossed 
 over the breast, and the hand thrust in between the 
 buttons of the coat to support it. Morning, noon, 
 or evening, in the street, the carriage, sitting, reading 
 the paper, always the same attitude ; thus they 
 achieve social distinction ; it takes the place of a 
 medal or the red ribbon. What is a general or 
 a famous orator compared to a man always in the 
 same attitude ? Simply nobody, nobody knows 
 79
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 him, everybody knows the mono-attitude man. 
 Some people make their mark by invariably wearing 
 the same short pilot coat. Doubtless it has been 
 many times renewed, still it is the same coat. In 
 winter it is thick, in summer thin, but identical in 
 cut and colour. Some people sit at the same 
 window of the reading-room at the same hour 
 every day, all the year round. This is the 
 way to become marked and famous ; winning a 
 battle is nothing to it. When it was arranged that 
 a military band should play on the Brunswick 
 Lawns, it became the fashion to stop carriages in 
 the road and listen to it. Frequently there were 
 carriages four deep, while the gale blew the music 
 out to sea and no one heard a note. Still they sat 
 content. 
 
 There are more handsome women in Brighton 
 than anywhere else in the world. They are so 
 common that gradually the standard of taste in the 
 mind rises, and good-looking women who would 
 be admired in other places pass by without notice. 
 Where all the flowers are roses, you do not see a 
 rose. They are all plump, not to say fat, which 
 would be rude ; very plump, and have the glow and 
 bloom of youth upon the cheeks. They do not 
 suffer from " pernicious anaemia," that evil blood- 
 lessness which London physicians are not unfre- 
 quently called upon to cure, when the cheeks are 
 80
 
 E^^SUNNY BRIGHTON 
 
 white as paper and have to be rosied with minute 
 doses of arsenic. They extract their arsenic from 
 the air. The way they step and the carriage of 
 the form show how full they are of life and spirits. 
 Sarah Bernhardt will not come to Brighton if she 
 can help it, lest she should lose that high art angu- 
 larity and slipperiness of shape which suits her role. 
 Dresses seem always to fit well, because people 
 somehow expand to them. It is pleasant to see 
 the girls walk, because the limbs do not drag, the 
 feet are lifted gaily and with ease. Horse-exercise 
 adds a deeper glow to the face ; they ride up on the 
 Downs first, out of pure cunning, for the air there 
 is certain to impart a freshness to the features like 
 dew on a flower, and then return and walk their 
 horses to and fro the King's Road, certain of ad- 
 miration. However often these tricks are played, 
 they are always successful. Those philanthropic 
 folk who want to reform women's dress, and call 
 upon the world to observe how the present style 
 contracts the chest, and forces the organs of the 
 body out of place (what a queer expression it 
 seems, " organs " !) have not a chance in Brighton. 
 Girls lace tight and " go in " for the tip of the fash- 
 ion, yet they bloom and flourish as green bay trees, 
 and do not find their skirts any obstacle in walking 
 or tennis. The horse-riding that goes on is a thing 
 to be chronicled ; they are always on horseback, and
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 you may depend upon it that it is better for them 
 than all the gymnastic exercises ever invented. The 
 liability to strain, and even serious internal injury, 
 which is incurred in gymnastic exercises, ought to 
 induce sensible people to be extremely careful how 
 they permit their daughters to sacrifice themselves 
 on this scientific altar. Buy them horses to ride, if 
 you want them to enjoy good health and sound con- 
 stitutions. Nothing like horses for women. Send 
 the professors to Suakim, and put the girls on horse- 
 back. Whether Brighton grows handsome girls, 
 or whether they flock there drawn by instinct, or 
 become lovely by staying there, is an inquiry too 
 difficult to pursue. 
 
 There they are, one at least in every group, and 
 you have to walk, as the Spaniards say, with your 
 beard over your shoulder, continually looking back 
 at those who have passed. The only antidote 
 known is to get married before you visit the place, 
 and doubts have been expressed as to its efficacy. 
 In the south-coast Seville there is nothing done but 
 heart-breaking ; it is so common it is like hammer- 
 ing flints for road-mending; nobody cares if your 
 heart is in pieces. They break hearts on horse- 
 back, and while walking, playing tennis, shopping 
 actually at shopping, not to mention parties of 
 every kind. No one knows where the next dan- 
 ger will be encountered at the very next corner
 
 SUNNY BRIGHTONSEE 
 
 perhaps. Feminine garments have an irresistible 
 flutter in the sea-breeze; feathers have a beckon- 
 ing motion. No one can be altogether good in 
 Brighton, and that is the great charm of it. The 
 language of the eyes is cultivated to a marvellous 
 degree ; as we say of dogs, they quite talk with 
 their eyes. Even when you do not chance to meet 
 an exceptional beauty, still the plainer women are 
 not plain like the plain women in other places. 
 The average is higher among them, and they are 
 not so irredeemably uninteresting. The flash of 
 an eye, the shape of a shoulder, the colour of the 
 hair something or other pleases. Women with- 
 out a single good feature are often good-looking in 
 New Seville because of an indescribable style or 
 manner. They catch the charm of the good- 
 looking by living among them, so that if any 
 young lady desires to acquire the art of attrac- 
 tion she has only to take train and join them. 
 Delighted with our protectorate of Paphos, Venus 
 has lately decided to reside on these shores. Every 
 morning the girls' schools go for their constitutional 
 walks ; there seem no end of these schools the 
 place has a garrison of girls, and the same thing is 
 noticeable in their ranks. Too young to have de- 
 veloped actual loveliness, some in each band dis- 
 tinctly promise future success. After long residence 
 the people become accustomed to good looks, and 
 -83-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 do not see anything especial around them, but on 
 going away for a few days soon miss these pleasant 
 faces. 
 
 In reconstructing Brighton station, one thing 
 was omitted a balcony from which to view the 
 arrival and departure of the trains in summer and 
 autumn. The scene is as lively and interesting as 
 the stage when a good play is proceeding. So many 
 happy expectant faces, often very beautiful ; such 
 a mingling of colours, and succession of different 
 figures ; now a brunette, now golden hair : it is a 
 stage, only it is real. The bustle, which is not the 
 careworn anxious haste of business ; the rushing 
 to and fro ; the greetings of friends ; the smiles ; 
 the shifting of the groups, some coming, and some 
 going plump and rosy, it is really charming. 
 One has a fancy dog, another a bright-bound 
 novel ; very many have cavaliers ; and look at 
 the piles of luggage ! What dresses, what changes 
 and elegance concealed therein ! conjurors' trunks 
 out of which wonders will spring. Can anything 
 look jollier than a cab overgrown with luggage, like 
 huge barnacles, just starting away with its freight ? 
 One can imagine such a fund of enjoyment on its 
 way in that cab. This happy throng seems to ex- 
 press something that delights the heart. I often 
 used to walk up to the station just to see it, and 
 left feeling better. 
 
 -8 4 _
 
 THE PINE WOOD 
 
 SPHERE was a humming in the tops of 
 the young pines as if a swarm of bees 
 were busy at the green cones. They 
 were not visible through the thick 
 needles, and on listening longer it seemed as if the 
 sound was not exactly the note of the bee a 
 slightly different pitch, and the hum was different, 
 while bees have a habit of working close together. 
 Where there is one bee there are usually five or 
 six, and the hum is that of a group ; here there 
 only appeared one or two insects to a pine. Nor 
 was the buzz like that of the humble-bee, for every 
 now and then one came along low down, flying 
 between the stems, and his note was much deeper. 
 By-and-by, crossing to the edge of the plantation, 
 where the boughs could be examined, being within 
 reach, I found it was wasps. A yellow wasp wan- 
 dered over the blue-green needles till he found 
 a pair with a drop of liquid like dew between 
 them. There he fastened himself and sucked at it ; 
 you could see the drop gradually drying up till it was 
 gone. The largest of these drops were generally 
 -85-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 between two needles those of the Scotch fir or 
 pine grow in pairs but there were smaller drops 
 on the outside of other needles. In searching for 
 this exuding turpentine the wasps filled the whole 
 plantation with the sound of their wings. There 
 must have been many thousands of them. They 
 caused no inconvenience to any one walking in the 
 copse, because they were high overhead. 
 
 Watching these wasps, I found two cocoons of 
 pale yellow silk on a branch of larch, and by them 
 a green spider. He was quite green two shades, 
 lightest on the back, but little lighter than the 
 green larch bough. An ant had climbed up a pine 
 and over to the extreme end of a bough ; she seemed 
 slow and stupefied in her motions, as if she had 
 drunken of the turpentine and had lost her intelli- 
 gence. The soft cones of the larch could be easily 
 cut down the centre with a penknife, showing the 
 structure of the cone and the seeds inside each 
 scale. It is for these seeds that birds frequent the 
 fir copses, shearing off the scales with their beaks. 
 One larch cone had still the tuft at the top a 
 pineapple in miniature. The loudest sound in the 
 wood was the humming in the trees; there was 
 no wind, no sunshine ; a summer day, still and 
 shadowy, under large clouds high up. To this 
 low humming the sense of hearing soon became 
 accustomed, and it served but to render the silence
 
 PINE WOOD ^^3 
 
 deeper. In time, as I sat waiting and listening, 
 there came the faintest far-off song of a bird away 
 in the trees ; the merest thin upstroke of sound, 
 slight in structure, the echo of the strong spring 
 singing. This was the summer repetition, dying 
 away. A willow-wren still remembered his love, 
 and whispered about it to the silent fir tops, as in 
 after days we turn over the pages of letters, withered 
 as leaves, and sigh. So gentle, so low, so tender a 
 song the willow-wren sang that it could scarce be 
 known as the voice of a bird, but was like that of 
 some yet more delicate creature with the heart of a 
 woman. 
 
 A butterfly with folded wings clung to a stalk of 
 grass ; upon the under side of his wing thus ex- 
 posed there were buff spots, and dark dots and 
 streaks drawn on the finest ground of pearl-grey, 
 through which there came a tint of blue ; there 
 was a blue, too, shut up between the wings, visible 
 at the edges. The spots, and dots, and streaks 
 were not exactly the same on each wing ; at first 
 sight they appeared similar, but, on comparing one 
 with the other, differences could be traced. The 
 pattern was not mechanical ; it was hand-painted 
 by Nature, and the painter's eye and fingers varied 
 in their work. 
 
 How fond Nature is of spot-markings ! the 
 wings of butterflies, the feathers of birds, the surface 
 -87-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 of eggs, the leaves and petals of plants are con- 
 stantly spotted ; so, too, fish as trout. From 
 the wing of the butterfly I looked involuntarily at 
 the foxglove I had just gathered ; inside, the bells 
 were thickly spotted dots and dustings that 
 might have been transferred to a butterfly's wing. 
 The spotted meadow-orchis ; the brown dots on 
 the cowslips; brown, black, greenish, reddish dots 
 and spots and dustings on the eggs of the finches, 
 the whitethroats, and so many others some of 
 the spots seem as if they had been splashed on and 
 had run into short streaks, some mottled, some 
 gathered together at the end ; all spots, dots, dustings 
 of minute specks, mottlings, and irregular markings. 
 The histories, the stories, the library of knowledge 
 contained in those signs ! It was thought a won- 
 derful thing when at last the strange inscriptions 
 of Assyria were read, made of nail-headed charac- 
 ters whose sound was lost ; it was thought a 
 triumph when the yet older hieroglyphics of Egypt 
 were compelled to give up their messages, and the 
 world hoped that we should know the secrets of 
 life. That hope was disappointed ; there was 
 nothing in the records but superstition and useless 
 ritual. But here we go back to the beginning ; 
 the antiquity of Egypt is nothing to the age of 
 these signs they date from unfathomable time. 
 In them the sun has written his commands, and
 
 SEE^BKSSSIg THE PINE WOOD SE^sa^a? 
 
 the wind inscribed deep thought. They were 
 before superstition began ; they were composed in 
 the old, old world, when the Immortals walked on 
 earth. They have been handed down thousands 
 upon thousands of years to tell us that to-day we 
 are still in the presence of the heavenly visitants, if 
 only we will give up the soul to these pure influ- 
 ences. The language in which they are written 
 has no alphabet, and cannot be reduced to order. 
 It can only be understood by the heart and spirit. 
 Look down into this foxglove bell and you will 
 know that ; look long and lovingly at this blue 
 butterfly's underwing, and a feeling will rise to 
 your consciousness. 
 
 Some time passed, but the butterfly did not move ; 
 a touch presently disturbed him, and flutter, flutter 
 went his blue wings, only for a few seconds, to 
 another grass-stalk, and so on from grass-stalk to 
 grass-stalk as compelled, a yard flight at most. 
 He would not go farther ; he settled as if it had 
 been night. There was no sunshine, and under 
 the clouds he had no animation. A swallow went 
 by singing in the air, and as he flew his forked 
 tail was shut, and but one streak of feathers drawn 
 past. Though but young trees, there was a 
 coating of fallen needles under the firs an inch 
 thick, and beneath it the dry earth touched warm. 
 A fern here and there came up through it, the 
 -89-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 palest of pale green, quite a different colour to the 
 same species growing in the hedges away from the 
 copse. A yellow fungus, streaked with scarlet as 
 if blood had soaked into it, stood at the foot of a 
 tree occasionally. Black fungi, dry, shrivelled, 
 and dead, lay fallen about, detached from the 
 places where they had grown, and crumbling if 
 handled. Still more silent after sunset, the wood 
 was utterly quiet ; the swallows no longer passed 
 twittering, the willow-wren was gone, there was 
 no hum or rustle; the wood was as silent as a 
 shadow. 
 
 But before the darkness a song and an answer 
 arose in a tree, one bird singing a few notes and 
 another replying side by side. Two goldfinches 
 sat on the cross of a larch-fir and sang, looking 
 towards the west, where the light lingered. High 
 up, the larch-fir boughs with the top shoot form a 
 cross ; on this one goldfinch sat, the other was 
 immediately beneath. At even the birds often 
 turn to the west as they sing. 
 
 Next morning the August sun shone, and the 
 wood was all a-hum with insects. The wasps 
 were working at the pine boughs high overhead ; 
 the bees by dozens were crowding to the bramble 
 flowers ; swarming on them, they seemed so de- 
 lighted ; humble-bees went wandering among the 
 ferns in the copse and in the ditches they some- 
 90
 
 HE PINE WOOD 
 
 times alight on fern and calling at every purple 
 heath-blossom, at the purple knapweeds, purple 
 thistles, and broad handfuls of yellow-weed flowers. 
 Wasp-like flies barred with yellow suspended them- 
 selves in the air between the pine-trunks like 
 hawks hovering, and suddenly shot themselves a 
 yard forward or to one side, as if the rapid vibra- 
 tion of their wings while hovering had accumulated 
 force which drove them as if discharged from a 
 cross-bow. The sun had set all things in motion. 
 There was a hum under the oak by the hedge, 
 a hum in the pine wood, a humming among the 
 heath and the dry grass which heat had browned. 
 The air was alive and merry with sound, so that 
 the day seemed quite different and twice as pleasant. 
 Three blue butterflies fluttered in one flowery 
 corner, the warmth gave them vigour; two had a 
 silvery edging to their wings, one was brown and 
 blue. The nuts reddening at the tips appeared 
 ripening like apples in the sunshine. This corner 
 is a favourite with wild bees and butterflies ; if 
 the sun shines they are sure to be found there at the 
 heath-bloom and tall yellow-weed, and among the 
 dry seeding bennets or grass-stalks. All things, 
 even butterflies, are local in their habits. Far up 
 on the hillside the blue green of the pines beneath 
 shone in the sun a burnished colour; the high 
 hillside is covered with heath and heather. Where 
 91
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 there are open places a small species of gorse, 
 scarcely six inches high, is in bloom, the yellow 
 blossom on the extremity of the stalk. 
 
 Some of these gorse plants seemed to have a 
 different flower growing at the side of the stem, 
 instead of at the extremity. These florets were 
 cream-coloured, so that it looked like a new species 
 of gorse. On gathering it to examine the thick-set 
 florets, it was found that a slender runner or creeper 
 had been torn up with it. Like a thread the 
 creeper had wound itself round and round the 
 furze, buried in and hidden by the prickles, and it 
 was this creeper that bore the white or cream flor- 
 ets. It was tied round as tightly as thread could be, 
 so that the florets seemed to start from the stem, 
 deceiving the eye at first. In some places this 
 parasite plant had grown up the heath and strangled 
 it, so that the tips turned brown and died. The 
 runners extended in every direction across the 
 ground, like those of strawberries. One creeper 
 had climbed up a bennet, or seeding grass-stalk, 
 binding the stalk and a blade of the grass together, 
 and flowering there. On the ground there were 
 patches of grey lichen ; many of the pillar-like 
 stems were crowned with a red top. Under a 
 small boulder stone there was an ants' nest. 
 These boulders, or, as they are called locally, 
 " bowlers," were scattered about the heath. Many 
 91
 
 ^3? THE PINE WOOD s^r 
 
 of the lesser stones were spotted with dark dots of 
 lichen, not unlike a toad. 
 
 Thoughtlessly turning over a boulder about nine 
 inches square, lo ! there was subject enough for 
 thinking underneath it a subject that has been 
 thought about many thousand years ; for this piece 
 of rock had formed the roof of an ants' nest. The 
 stone had sunk three inches deep into the dry soil 
 of sand and peaty mould, and in the floor of the 
 hole the ants had worked out their excavations, 
 which resembled an outline map. The largest 
 excavation was like England ; at the top, or north, 
 they had left a narrow bridge, an eighth of an inch 
 wide, under which to pass into Scotland, and from 
 Scotland again another narrow arch led to the 
 Orkney Islands ; these last, however, were dug in 
 the perpendicular side of the hole. In the corners 
 of these excavations tunnels ran deeper into the 
 ground, and the ants immediately began hurrying 
 their treasures, the eggs, down into these cellars. 
 At one angle a tunnel went beneath the heath into 
 further excavations beneath a second boulder stone. 
 Without, a fern grew, and the dead dry stems of 
 heather crossed each other. 
 
 This discovery led to the turning over of another 
 boulder stone not far off", and under it there ap- 
 peared a much more extensive and complete series 
 of galleries, bridges, cellars, and tunnels. In these 
 93
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 the whole life-history of the ant was exposed at a 
 single glance, as if one had taken off the roofs of 
 a city. One cell contained a dust-like deposit, 
 another a collection resembling the dust, but now 
 elongated and a little greenish; a third treasury, 
 much larger, was piled up with yellowish grains 
 about the size of wheat, each with a black dot on 
 the top, and looking like minute hop-pockets. Be- 
 sides these, there was a pure white substance in a 
 corridor, which the irritated ants seemed particu- 
 larly anxious to remove out of sight, and quickly 
 carried away. Among the ants rushing about 
 there were several with wings ; one took flight ; 
 one was seized by a wingless ant and dragged 
 down into a cellar, as if to prevent its taking wing. 
 A helpless green fly was in the midst, and round 
 the outside galleries there crept a creature like a 
 spider, seeming to try to hide itself. If the nest 
 had been formed under glass, it could not have 
 been more open to view. The stone was carefully 
 replaced. 
 
 Below the pine wood on the slope of the hill a 
 plough was already at work, the crop of peas having 
 been harvested. The four horses came up the 
 slope, and at the ridge swept round in a fine curve 
 to go back and open a fresh furrow. As soon as 
 they faced down-hill they paused, well aware of 
 what had to be done, and the ploughman in a 
 94
 
 THE PINE WOOD 
 
 manner knocked his plough to pieces, putting it 
 together again the opposite way, that the earth he 
 was about to cut with the share might fall on what 
 he had just turned. With a piece of iron he 
 hammered the edge of the share, to set it, for the 
 hard ground had bent the edge, and it did not cut 
 properly. I said his team looked light ; they were 
 not so heavily built as the cart-horses used in many 
 places. No, he said, they did not want heavy 
 horses. " Dese yer thick-boned hosses be more 
 clutter-headed over the clots, " as he expressed it, 
 /. e. more clumsy or thick-headed over the clods. 
 He preferred comparatively light cart-horses to 
 step well. In the heat of the sun the furze-pods 
 kept popping and bursting open ; they are often 
 as full of insects as seeds, which come creeping 
 out. A green and black lady-bird exactly like 
 a tortoise flew on to my hand. Again on the 
 heath, and the grasshoppers rose at every step, 
 sometimes three or four springing in as many di- 
 rections. They were winged, and as soon as they 
 were up spread their vanes and floated forwards. 
 As the force of the original hop decreased, the 
 wind took their wings and turned them aside from 
 the straight course before they fell. Down the 
 dusty road, inches deep in sand, comes a sulphur 
 butterfly, rushing as quick as if hastening to a 
 butterfly fair. If only rare, how valued he would 
 95
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 be ! His colour is so evident and visible ; he fills 
 the road, being brighter than all, and for the 
 moment is more than the trees and flowers. 
 
 Coming so suddenly over the hedge into the 
 road close to me, he startled me as if I had been 
 awakened from a dream I had been thinking it 
 was August, and woke to find it February for 
 the sulphur butterfly is the February pleasure. 
 Between the dark storms and wintry rains there is 
 a warm sunny interval of a week in February. 
 Away one goes for a walk, and presently there 
 appears a bright yellow spot among the furze, 
 dancing along like a flower let loose. It is a sul- 
 phur butterfly, who thus comes before the earliest 
 chifF-chaff" before the watch begins for the first 
 swallow. I call it the February pleasure, as each 
 month has its delight. So associated as this butter- 
 fly is with early spring, to see it again after months 
 of leaf and flower after June and July with 
 the wheat in shock and the scent of harvest in the 
 land, is startling. The summer, then, is a dream ! 
 It is still winter ; but no, here are the trees in leaf, 
 the nuts reddening, the hum of bees, and dry 
 summer dust on the high wiry grass. The sulphur 
 butterfly comes twice ; there is a second brood ; 
 but there are some facts that are always new and 
 surprising, however well known. I may say again, 
 if only rare, how this butterfly would be prized ! 
 -96-
 
 THE PINE WOOD 
 
 Along the hedgerow there are several spiders' webs. 
 In the centre they are drawn inwards, forming a 
 funnel, which goes back a few inches into the 
 hedge, and at the bottom of this the spider waits. 
 If you look down the funnel you see his claws 
 at the bottom, ready to run up and seize a fly. 
 
 Sitting in the garden after a walk, it is pleasant to 
 watch the eave-swallows feeding their young on the 
 wing. The young bird follows the old one ; then 
 they face each other and stay a moment in the air, 
 while the insect food is transferred from beak to 
 beak; with a loud note they part. There was a 
 constant warfare between the eave-swallows and the 
 sparrows frequenting a house where I was staying 
 during the early part of the summer. The sparrows 
 strove their utmost to get possession of the nests 
 the swallows built, and there was no peace between 
 them. It is common enough for one or two 
 swallows' nests to be attacked in this way, but here 
 every nest along the eaves was fought for, and the 
 sparrows succeeded in conquering many of them. 
 The driven-out swallows after a while began to 
 build again, and I noticed that more than a pair 
 seemed to work at the same nest. One nest was 
 worked at by four swallows ; often all four came 
 together and twittered at it. 
 
 97
 
 NATURE ON THE ROOF 
 
 "w'NCREASED activity on the housetop marks 
 I the approach of spring and summer exactly as 
 I in the woods and hedges, for the roof has its 
 J_L migrants, its semi-migrants, and its residents. 
 When the first dandelion is opening on a sheltered 
 bank, and the pale-blue field veronica flowers in 
 the waste corner, the whistle of the starling comes 
 from his favourite ledge. Day by day it is heard 
 more and more, till, when the first green spray ap- 
 pears on the hawthorn, he visits the roof continu- 
 ally. Besides the roof-tree and the chimney-pot, 
 he has his own special place, sometimes under an 
 eave, sometimes between two gables ; and as I sit 
 writing, I can see a pair who have a ledge which 
 slightly projects from the wall between the eave 
 and the highest window. This was made by the 
 builder for an ornament ; but my two starlings 
 consider it their own particular possession. They 
 alight with a sort of half-scream, half-whistle just 
 over the window, flap their wings, and whistle 
 again, run along the ledge to a spot where there 
 is a gable, and with another note, rise up and enter 
 _ 9 8_
 
 NATURE ON THE ROOF 
 
 an aperture between the slates and the wall. There 
 their nest will be in a little time, and busy indeed 
 they will be when the young require to be fed, to 
 and fro the fields and the gable the whole day 
 through ; the busiest and the most useful of birds, 
 for they destroy thousands upon thousands of in- 
 sects, and if farmers were wise, they would never 
 have one shot, no matter how the thatch was pulled 
 about. 
 
 My pair of starlings were frequently at this ledge 
 last autumn, very late in autumn, and I suspect 
 they had a winter brood there. The starling does 
 rear a brood sometimes in the midst of the winter, 
 contrary as that may seem to our general ideas of 
 natural history. They may be called roof residents, 
 as they visit it all the year round ; they nest in the 
 roof, rearing two and sometimes three broods ; and 
 use it as their club and place of meeting. Towards 
 July the young starlings and those that have for the 
 time at least finished nesting, flock together and pass 
 the day in the fields, returning now and then to 
 their old home. These flocks gradually increase ; 
 the starling is so prolific that the flocks become 
 immense, till in the latter part of the autumn in 
 southern fields it is common to see a great elm tree 
 black with them, from the highest bough down- 
 wards, and the noise of their chattering can be 
 heard a long distance. They roost in firs or in 
 99
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 osier-beds. But in the blackest days of winter, 
 when frost binds the ground hard as iron, the 
 starlings return to the roof almost every day ; 
 they do not whistle much, but have a peculiar 
 chuckling whistle at the instant of alighting. In 
 very hard weather, especially snow, the starlings 
 find it difficult to obtain a living, and at such times 
 will come to the premises at the rear, and at farm- 
 houses where cattle are in the yards, search about 
 among them for insects. 
 
 The whole history of the starling is interesting, 
 but I must here only mention it as a roof bird. 
 They are very handsome in their full plumage, 
 which gleams bronze and green among the darker 
 shades ; quick in their motions, and full of spirit ; 
 loaded to the muzzle with energy, and never still. 
 I hope none of those who are so good as to read 
 what I have written will ever keep a starling in a 
 cage ; the cruelty is extreme. As for shooting 
 pigeons at a trap, it is mercy in comparison. 
 
 Even before the starling whistles much, the 
 sparrows begin to chirp : in the dead of winter 
 they are silent ; but so soon as the warmer winds 
 blow, if only for a day, they begin to chirp. In 
 January this year I used to listen' to the sparrows 
 chirping, the starlings whistling, and the chaf- 
 finches' " chink, chink " about eight o'clock, or 
 earlier, in the morning: the first two on the roof j
 
 NATURE ON THE ROOF 3E=: 
 
 the latter, which is not a roof bird, in some garden 
 shrubs. As the spring advances, the sparrows sing 
 
 it is a short song, it is true, but still it is singing 
 
 perched at the edge of a sunny wall. There is 
 not a place about the house where they will not 
 build under the eaves, on the roof, anywhere 
 where there is a projection or shelter, deep in the 
 thatch, under the tiles, in old cave-swallows' nests. 
 The last place I noticed as a favourite one in towns 
 is on the half-bricks left projecting in perpendicu- 
 lar rows at the sides of unfinished houses. Half a 
 dozen nests may be counted at the side of a house 
 on these bricks ; and like the starlings, they rear 
 several broods, and some are nesting late in the 
 autumn. By degrees as the summer advances 
 they leave the houses for the corn, and gather in 
 vast flocks, rivalling those of the starlings. At this 
 time they desert the roofs, except those who still 
 have nesting duties. In winter and in the begin- 
 ning of the new year, they gradually return ; migra- 
 tion thus goes on under the eyes of those who care 
 to notice it. In London, some who fed sparrows 
 on the roof found that rooks also came for the 
 crumbs placed out. I sometimes, see a sparrow 
 chasing a rook, as if angry, and trying to drive 
 it away over the roofs where I live. The thief 
 does not retaliate, but, like a thief, flees from the 
 scene of his guilt. This is not only in the breed-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 ing season, when the rook steals eggs, but in win- 
 ter. Town residents are apt to despise the sparrow, 
 seeing him always black; but in the country the 
 sparrows are as clean as a pink ; and in them- 
 selves they are the most animated, clever little 
 creatures. 
 
 They are easily tamed. The Parisians are fond 
 of taming them. At a certain hour in the Tuileries 
 Gardens, you may see a man perfectly surrounded 
 with a crowd of sparrows some perching on his 
 shoulder ; some fluttering in the air immediately 
 before his face ; some on the ground like a tribe 
 of followers; and others on the marble seats. He 
 jerks a crumb of bread into the air a sparrow dex- 
 terously seizes it as he would a flying insect; he puts 
 a crumb between his lips a sparrow takes it out 
 and feeds from his mouth. Meantime they keep 
 up a constant chirping ; those that are satisfied still 
 stay by and adjust their feathers. He walks on, 
 giving a little chirp with his mouth, and they follow 
 him along the path a cloud about his shoulders, 
 and the rest flying from shrub to shrub, perching, 
 and then following again. They are all perfectly 
 clean a contrast to the London sparrow. I came 
 across one of these sparrow-tamers by chance, and 
 was much amused at the scene, which, to any one 
 not acquainted with birds, appears marvellous ; but 
 it is really as simple as possible, and you can repeat
 
 NATURE ON THE ROOF 
 
 it for yourself if you have patience, for they are so 
 sharp they soon understand you. They seem to 
 play at nest-making before they really begin ; tak- 
 ing up straws in their beaks, and carrying them half- 
 way to the roof, then letting the straws float away ; 
 and the same with stray feathers. Neither of these, 
 starlings nor sparrows, seem to like the dark. Un- 
 der the roof, between it and the first ceiling, there 
 is a large open space ; if the slates or tiles are kept 
 in good order, very little light enters, and this space 
 is nearly dark in daylight. Even if chinks admit a 
 beam of light, it is not enough ; they seldom enter 
 or fly about there, though quite accessible to them. 
 But if the roof is in bad order, and this space light, 
 they enter freely. Though nesting in holes, yet 
 they like light. The swallows could easily go in 
 and make nests upon the beams, but they will not, 
 unless the place is well lit. They do not like 
 darkness in the daytime. 
 
 The swallows bring us the sunbeams on their 
 wings from Africa to fill the fields with flowers. 
 From the time of the arrival of the first swallow 
 the flowers take heart ; the few and scanty plants 
 that had braved the earlier cold are succeeded by a 
 constantly enlarging list, till the banks and lanes 
 are full of them. The chimney-swallow is usually 
 the forerunner of the three house-swallows ; and 
 perhaps no fact in natural history has been so much 
 103
 
 I3K THE OPEN AIR 
 
 studied as the migration of these tender birds. The 
 commonest things are always the most interesting. 
 In summer there is no bird so common everywhere 
 as the swallow, and for that reason many overlook 
 it, though they rush to see a " white " elephant. 
 But the deepest thinkers have spent hours and 
 hours in considering the problem of the swallow 
 its migrations, its flight, its habits; great poets have 
 loved it; great artists and art-writers have curiously 
 studied it. The idea that it is necessary to seek 
 the wilderness or the thickest woods for nature is 
 a total mistake ; nature is at home, on the roof, 
 close to every one. Eave-swallows, or house- 
 martins (easily distinguished by the white bar 
 across the tail), build sometimes in the shelter of 
 the porches of old houses. 
 
 As you go in or out, the swallows visiting or 
 leaving their nests fly so closely as almost to brush 
 the face. Swallow means porch-bird, and for cen- 
 turies and centuries their nests have been placed 
 in the closest proximity to man. They might 
 be called man's birds, so attached are they to the 
 human race. I think the greatest ornament a 
 house can have is the nest of an eave-swallow 
 under the eaves far superior to the most elaborate 
 carving, colouring, or arrangement the architect can 
 devise. There is no ornament like the swallow's 
 nest; the home of a messenger between man and 
 104
 
 NATURE ON THE ROOF 
 
 the blue heavens, between us and the sunlight, and 
 all the promise of the sky. The joy of life, the 
 highest and tenderest feelings, thoughts that soar on 
 the swallow's wings, come to the round nest under 
 the roof. Not only to-day, not only the hopes of 
 future years, but all the past dwells there. Year 
 after year the generations and descent of the 
 swallow have been associated with our homes, and 
 all the events of successive lives have taken place 
 under their guardianship. The swallow is the 
 genius of good to a house. Let its nest, then, 
 stay ; to me it seems the extremity of barbarism, 
 or rather stupidity, to knock it down. I wish I 
 could induce them to build under the eaves of this 
 house ; I would if I could discover some means of 
 communicating with them. 
 
 It is a peculiarity of the swallow that you cannot 
 make it afraid of you ; just the reverse of other 
 birds. The swallow does not understand being 
 repulsed, but comes back again. Even knocking 
 the nest down will not drive it away, until the 
 stupid process has been repeated several years. 
 The robin must be coaxed ; the sparrow is suspi- 
 cious, and though easy to tame, quick to notice the 
 least alarming movement. The swallow will not 
 be driven away. He has not the slightest fear of 
 man; he flies to his nest close to the window, 
 under the low eave, or on the beams in the out- 
 105
 
 SES335EE3: THE OPEN AIR 
 
 houses, no matter if you are looking on or not. 
 Bold as the starlings are, they will seldom do this. 
 But in the swallow the instinct of suspicion is re- 
 versed; an instinct of confidence occupies its place. 
 In addition to the eave-swallow, to which I have 
 chiefly alluded, and the chimney-swallow, there is 
 the swift, also a roof-bird, and making its nest in 
 the slates of houses in the midst of towns. These 
 three are migrants in the fullest sense, and come to 
 our houses over thousands of miles of land and sea. 
 Robins frequently visit the roof for insects, 
 especially when it is thatched ; so do wrens ; and 
 the latter, after they have peered along, have a 
 habit of perching at the extreme angle of a gable, 
 or the extreme edge of a corner, and uttering their 
 song. Finches occasionally fly up to the roofs of 
 country-houses if shrubberies are near, also in 
 pursuit of insects; but they are not truly roof- 
 birds. Wagtails perch on roofs ; they often have 
 their nests in the ivy, or creepers trained against 
 walls ; they are quite at home, and are frequently 
 seen on the ridges of farmhouses. Tits of several 
 species, particularly the great titmouse and the blue 
 tit, come to thatch for insects, both in summer and 
 winter. In some districts where they are common, 
 it is not unusual to see a goatsucker or fern-owl 
 hawk along close to the eaves in the dusk of the 
 evening for moths. The white owl is a roof-bird 
 106
 
 NATURE ON THE ROOF 
 
 (though not often of the house), building inside the 
 roof, and sitting there all day in some shaded corner. 
 They do sometimes take up their residence in the 
 roofs of outhouses attached to dwellings, but not 
 often nowadays, though still residing in the roofs 
 of old castles. Jackdaws, again, are roof-birds, 
 building in the roofs of towers. Bats live in 
 roofs, and hang there wrapped up in their mem- 
 branous wings till the evening calls them forth. 
 They are residents in the full sense, remaining 
 all the year round, though principally seen in the 
 warmer months ; but they are there in the colder, 
 hidden away, and if the temperature rises, will 
 venture out and hawk to and fro in the midst of 
 the winter. Tame pigeons and doves hardly come 
 into this paper, but still it is their habit to use roofs 
 as tree-tops. Rats and mice creep through the 
 crevices of roofs, and in old country-houses hold 
 a sort of nightly carnival, racing to and fro under 
 the roof. Weasels sometimes follow them indoors 
 and up to their roof strongholds. 
 
 When the first warm rays of spring sunshine 
 strike against the southern side of the chimney, 
 sparrows perch there and enjoy it; and again in 
 autumn, when the general warmth of the atmos- 
 phere is declining, they still find a little pleasant 
 heat there. They make use of the radiation of 
 heat, as the gardener does who trains his fruit- 
 107
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 trees to a wall. Before the autumn has thinned 
 the leaves, the swallows gather on the highest ridge 
 of the roof in a row and twitter to each other ; they 
 know the time is. approaching when they must de- 
 part for another climate. In winter, many birds 
 seek the thatched roofs to roost. Wrens, tits, and 
 even blackbirds roost in the holes left by sparrows 
 or starlings. 
 
 Every crevice is the home of insects, or used 
 by them for the deposit of their eggs under the 
 tiles or slates, where mortar has dropped out be- 
 tween the bricks, in the holes of thatch, and on 
 the straws. The number of insects that frequent 
 a large roof must be very great all the robins, 
 wrens, bats, and so on, can scarcely affect them ; 
 nor the spiders, though these, too, are numerous. 
 Then there are the moths, and those creeping 
 creatures that work out of sight, boring their 
 way through the rafters and beams. Sometimes a 
 sparrow may be seen clinging to the bare wall of 
 the house; tits do the same thing. It is surpris- 
 ing how they manage to hold on. They are taking 
 insects from the apertures of the mortar. Where the 
 slates slope to the south, the sunshine soon heats 
 them, and passing butterflies alight on the warm 
 surface, and spread out their wings, as if hover- 
 ing over the heat. Flies are attracted in crowds 
 sometimes to heated slates and tiles, and wasps 
 108
 
 ^ar NATURE ON THE ROOF ag=r^ 
 
 will occasionally pause there. Wasps are ad- 
 dicted to haunting houses, and, in the autumn, 
 feed on the flies. Floating germs carried by the 
 air must necessarily lodge in numbers against 
 roofs ; so do dust and invisible particles ; and 
 together, these make the rain-water collected in 
 water-butts after a storm turbid and dark ; and 
 it soon becomes full of living organisms. 
 
 Lichen and moss grow on the mortar wherever 
 it has become slightly disintegrated ; and if any 
 mould, however minute, by any means accumu- 
 lates between the slates, there, too, they spring 
 up, and even on the slates themselves. Tiles 
 are often coloured yellow by such growths. On 
 some old roofs, which have decayed, and upon 
 which detritus has accumulated, wallflowers may 
 be found ; and the house-leek takes capricious root 
 where it fancies. The stonecrop is the finest of 
 roof-plants, sometimes forming a broad patch of 
 brilliant yellow. Birds carry up seeds and grains, 
 and these germinate in moist thatch. Groundsel, 
 for instance, and stray stalks of wheat, thin and 
 drooping for lack of soil, are sometimes seen there, 
 besides grasses. Ivy is familiar as a roof-creeper. 
 Some ferns and the pennywort will grow on the 
 wall close to the roof. A correspondent tells me 
 th'lt in Wales he found a cottage perfectly roofed 
 with fern it grew so thickly as to conceal the 
 109
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 roof. Had a painter put this in a picture, many 
 would have exclaimed : " How fanciful ! He must 
 have made it up ; it could never have grown like 
 that ! " Not long after receiving my correspond- 
 ent's kind letter, I chanced to find a roof near 
 London upon which the same fern was growing 
 in lines along the tiles. It grew plentifully, but 
 was not in so flourishing a condition as that found 
 in Wales. Painters are sometimes accused of call- 
 ing upon their imagination when they are really de- 
 picting fact, for the ways of nature vary very much in 
 different localities, and that which may seem impos- 
 sible in one place is common enough in another. 
 
 Where will not ferns grow ? We saw one 
 attached to the under-side of a glass coal-hole 
 cover ; its green could be seen through the thick 
 glass on which people stepped daily. 
 
 Recently, much attention has been paid to the 
 dust which is found on roofs and ledges at great 
 heights. This meteoric dust, as it is called, con- 
 sists of minute particles of iron, which are thought 
 to fall from the highest part of the atmosphere, or 
 possibly to be attracted to the earth from space. 
 Lightning usually strikes the roof. The whole sub- 
 ject of lightning-conductors has been re-opened of 
 late years, there being reason to think that mistakes 
 have been made in the manner of their erection. 
 The reason English roofs are high-pitched is not
 
 NATURE ON THE ROOF 
 
 only because of the rain, that it may shoot off 
 quickly, but on account of snow. Once now 
 and then there comes a snow-year, and those 
 who live in houses with flat surfaces anywhere 
 on the roof soon discover how inconvenient they 
 are. The snow is sure to find its way through, dam- 
 aging ceilings, and doing other mischief. Some- 
 times, in fine summer weather, people remark how 
 pleasant it would be if the roof were flat, so that 
 it could be used as a terrace, as it is in warmer 
 climates. But the fact is, the English roof, al- 
 though now merely copied and repeated without 
 a thought of the reason of its shape, grew up 
 from experience of severe winters. Of old, great 
 care and ingenuity what we should now call 
 artistic skill were employed in constructing the 
 roof. It was not only pleasant to the eye with 
 its gables, but the woodwork was wonderfully 
 well done. Such roofs may still be seen on 
 ancient mansions, having endured for centuries. 
 They are splendid pieces of workmanship, and 
 seen from afar among foliage, are admired by 
 every one who has the least taste. Draughts- 
 men and painters value them highly. No matter 
 whether reproduced on a large canvas or in a little 
 woodcut, their proportions please. The roof is 
 much neglected in modern houses ; it is either 
 conventional, or it is full indeed of gables, but
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 gables that do not agree, as it were, with each 
 other that are obviously put there on purpose 
 to look artistic, and fail altogether. Now, the an- 
 cient roofs were f rue works of art, consistent, and 
 yet each varied to its particular circumstances, and 
 each impressed with the individuality of the place 
 and of the designer. The finest old roofs were 
 built of oak or chestnut ; the beams are black 
 with age, and, in that condition, oak is scarcely 
 distinguishable from chestnut. 
 
 So the roof has its natural history, its science 
 and art ; it has its seasons, its migrants and resi- 
 dents, of whom a housetop calendar might be 
 made. The fine old roofs which have just been 
 mentioned are often associated with historic events 
 and the rise of families ; and the roof-tree, like the 
 hearth, has a range of proverbs or sayings and 
 ancient lore to itself. More than one great monarch 
 has been slain by a tile thrown from the housetop, 
 and numerous other incidents have occurred in 
 connection with it. The most interesting is the 
 story of the Grecian mother who, with her infant, 
 was on the roof, when, in a moment of inattention, 
 the child crept to the edge, and was balanced on 
 the very verge. To call to it, to touch it, would 
 have insured its destruction ; but the mother, with- 
 out a second's thought, bared her breast, and the 
 child eagerly turning to it, was saved !
 
 ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS 
 
 I 
 
 'F any one were to get up about half-past five 
 on an August morning and look out of an 
 eastern window in the country, he would see 
 the distant trees almost hidden by a white 
 mist. The tops of the larger groups of elms would 
 appear above it, and by these the line of the hedge- 
 rows could be traced. Tier after tier they stretch 
 along, rising by degrees on a gentle slope, the space 
 between filled with haze. Whether there were 
 cornfields or meadows under this white cloud he 
 could not tell a cloud that might have come 
 down from the sky, leaving it a clear azure. This 
 morning haze means intense heat in the day. It is 
 hot already, very hot, for the sun is shining with 
 all his strength, and if you wish the house to be 
 cool it is time to set the sunblinds. 
 
 Roger, the reaper, had slept all night in the cow- 
 house, lying on the raised platform of narrow planks 
 put up for cleanliness when the cattle were there. 
 He had set the wooden window wide open and left 
 the door ajar when he came stumbling in overnight,
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 long after the late swallows had settled in their 
 nests on the beams, and the bats had wearied of 
 moth catching. One of the swallows twittered a 
 little, as much as to say to his mate, " My love, it 
 is only a reaper, we need not be afraid," and all 
 was silence and darkness. Roger did not so much 
 as take off his boots, but flung himself on the boards 
 crash, curled himself up hedgehog fashion with some 
 old sacks, and immediately began to breathe heavily. 
 He had no difficulty in sleeping, first because his 
 muscles had been tried to the utmost, and next 
 because his skin was full to the brim, not of jolly 
 " good ale and old," but of the very smallest and 
 poorest of wish-washy beer. In his own words, it 
 "blowed him up till he very nigh bust." Now the 
 great authorities on dyspepsia, so eagerly studied 
 by the wealthy folk whose stomachs are deranged, 
 tell us that a very little flatulence will make the 
 heart beat irregularly and cause the most distressing 
 symptoms. 
 
 Roger had swallowed at least a gallon of a liquid 
 chemically designed, one might say, on purpose to 
 utterly upset the internal economy. Harvest beer 
 is probably the vilest drink in the world. The men 
 say it is made by pouring muddy water into empty 
 casks returned sour from use, and then brushing 
 them round and round inside with a besom. This 
 liquid leaves a stickiness on the tongue and a harsh 
 114
 
 ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS2E- 
 
 feeling at the back of the mouth which soon turns 
 to thirst, so that having once drunk a pint the 
 drinker must go on drinking. The peculiar dryness 
 caused by this beer is not like any other throat 
 drought worse than dust, or heat, or thirst from 
 work; there is no satisfying it. With it there go 
 down the germs of fermentation, a sour, yeasty, and, 
 as it were, secondary fermentation j not that kind 
 which is necessary to make beer, but the kind that 
 unmakes and spoils beer. It is beer rotting and 
 decomposing in the stomach. Violent diarrhoea 
 often follows, and then the exhaustion thus caused 
 induces the men to drink more in order to regain 
 the strength necessary to do their work. The 
 great heat of the sun and the heat of hard labour, 
 the strain and perspiration, of course try the body 
 and weaken the digestion. To distend the stomach 
 with half a gallon of this liquor, expressly com- 
 pounded to ferment, is about the most murderous 
 thing a man could do murderous because it 
 exposes him to the risk of sunstroke. So vile a 
 drink there is not elsewhere in the world; arrack, 
 and potato-spirit, and all the other killing extracts 
 of the distiller are not equal to it. Upon this 
 abominable mess the golden harvest of English 
 fields is gathered in. 
 
 Some people have in consequence endeavoured 
 to induce the harvesters to accept a money payment 
 115
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 in place of beer, and to a certain extent successfully. 
 Even then, however, they must drink something. 
 Many manage on weak tea after a fashion, but 
 not so well as the abstainers would have us think. 
 Others have brewed for their men a miserable 
 stuff in buckets, an infusion of oatmeal, and got a 
 few to drink it ; but English labourers will never 
 drink oatmeal-water unless they are paid to do it. 
 If they are paid extra beer-money and oatmeal- 
 water is made for them gratis, some will, of course, 
 imbibe it, especially if they see that thereby they 
 may obtain little favours from their employer by 
 yielding to his fad. By drinking the crotchet 
 perhaps they may get a present now and then 
 food for themselves, cast-off clothes for their fami- 
 lies, and so on. For it is a remarkable feature of 
 human natural history, the desire to proselytise. 
 The spectacle of John Bull jovial John Bull 
 offering his men a bucket of oatmeal liquor is not 
 a pleasant one. Such a John Bull ought to be 
 ashamed of himself. 
 
 The truth is the English farmer's man was and 
 is, and will be, a drinker of beer. Neither tea, 
 nor oatmeal, nor vinegar and water (coolly recom- 
 mended by indoor folk) will do for him. His nat- 
 ural constitution rebels against such " peevish " 
 drink. In winter he wants beer against the cold 
 and the frosty rime and the heavy raw mist that
 
 ONE OF THE NEW 
 
 hangs about the hollows; in spring and autumn 
 against the rain, and in summer to support him 
 under the pressure of additional work and pro- 
 longed hours. Those who really wish well to the 
 labourer cannot do better than see that he really 
 has beer to drink real beer, genuine brew of 
 malt and hops, a moderate quantity of which will 
 supply force to his thews and sinews, and will not 
 intoxicate or injure. If by giving him a small 
 money payment in lieu of such large quantities you 
 can induce him to be content with a little, so much 
 the better. If an employer followed that plan, and 
 at the same time once or twice a day sent out a mod- 
 erate supply of genuine beer as a gift to his men, 
 he would do them all the good in the world, and 
 at the same time obtain for himself their goodwill 
 and hearty assistance, that hearty work which is 
 worth so much. 
 
 Roger breathed heavily in his sleep in the cow- 
 house, because the vile stuff he had taken puffed 
 him up and obstructed nature. The tongue in his 
 open mouth became parched and cracked, swollen 
 and dry ; he slept, indeed, but he did not rest ; he 
 groaned heavily at times and rolled aside. Once 
 he awoke choking he could not swallow, his 
 tongue was so dry and large ; he sat up, swore, 
 and again lay down. The rats in the sties had 
 already discovered that a man slept in the cow-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 house, a place they rarely visited, as there was 
 nothing there to eat ; how they found it out no 
 one knows. They are clever creatures, the de- 
 spised rats. They came across in the night and 
 looked under his bed, supposing that he might 
 have eaten his bread-and-cheese for supper there, 
 and that fragments might have dropped between 
 the boards. There were none. They mounted 
 the boards and sniffed round him ; they would have 
 stolen the food from his very pocket if it had been 
 there. Nor could they find a bundle in a hand- 
 kerchief, which they would have gnawn through 
 speedily. Not a scrap of food was there to be 
 smelt at, so they left him. Roger had indeed gone 
 supperless, as usual ; his supper he had swilled and 
 not eaten. His own fault ; he should have exer- 
 cised self-control. Well, I don't know ; let us 
 consider further before we judge. 
 
 In houses the difficulty often is to get the servants 
 up in the morning ; one cannot wake, and the rest 
 sleep too sound much the same thing; yet they 
 have clocks and alarums. The reapers are never 
 behind. Roger got off his planks, shook himself, 
 went outside the shed, and tightened his shoelaces 
 in the bright light. His rough hair he just pushed 
 back from his forehead, and that was his toilet. 
 His dry throat sent him to the pump, but he did 
 not swallow much of the water he washed his 
 118
 
 ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS 
 
 mouth out, and that was enough ; and so without 
 breakfast he went to his work. Looking down 
 from the stile on the high ground, there seemed to 
 bo a white cloud resting on the valley, through 
 which the tops of the high trees penetrated ; the 
 hedgerows beneath were concealed, and their course 
 could only be traced by the upper branches of 
 the elms. Under this cloud the wheatfields were 
 blotted out ; there seemed neither corn nor grass, 
 work for man nor food for animal ; there could be 
 nothing doing there surely. In the stillness of the 
 August morning, without song of bird, the sun, 
 shining brilliantly high above the mist, seemed to 
 be the only living thing, to possess the whole and 
 reign above absolute peace. It is a curious sight 
 to see the early harvest morn all hushed under 
 the burning sun, a morn that you know is full of 
 life and meaning, yet quiet as if man's foot had 
 never trodden the land. Only the sun is there, 
 rolling on his endless way. 
 
 Roger's head was bound with brass, but had it 
 not been he would not have observed anything in 
 the aspect of the earth. Had a brazen band been 
 drawn firmly round his forehead, it could not have 
 felt more stupefied. His eyes blinked in the sun- 
 light ; every now and then he stopped to save him- 
 self from staggering ; he was not in a condition to 
 think. It would have mattered not at all if his head 
 119
 
 THE OPEN AIR 3^saEZ3S 
 
 had been clear; earth, sky, and sun were nothing 
 to him ; he knew the footpath, and saw that the 
 day would be fine and hot, and that was sufficient 
 for him, because .his eyes had never been opened. 
 
 The reaper had risen early to his labour, but the 
 birds had preceded him hours. Before the sun was 
 up the swallows had left their beams in the cow- 
 shed and twittered out into the air. The rooks and 
 wood-pigeons and doves had gone to the corn, the 
 blackbird to the stream, the flinch to the hedgerow, 
 the bees to the heath on the hills, the humble-bees 
 to the clover in the plain. Butterflies rose from 
 the flowers by the footpath, and fluttered before 
 him to and fro and round and back again to the 
 place whence they had been driven. Goldfinches 
 tasting the first thistledown rose from the corner 
 where the thistles grew thickly. A hundred spar- 
 rows came rushing up into the hedge, suddenly fill- 
 ing the boughs with brown fruit j they chirped and 
 quarrelled in their talk, and rushed away again back 
 to the corn as he stepped nearer. The boughs were 
 stripped of their winged brown berries as quickly as 
 they had grown. Starlings ran before the cows 
 feeding in the aftermath, so close to their mouths 
 as to seem in danger of being licked up by their 
 broad tongues. All creatures, from the tiniest in- 
 sect upward, were in reality busy under that cur- 
 tain of white-heat haze. It looked so still, so quiet,
 
 ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS 
 
 from afar; entering it and passing among the fields, 
 all that lived was found busy at its long day's work. 
 Roger did not interest himself in these things, in 
 the wasps that left the gate as he approached, 
 they were making papier-mache from the wood of 
 the top bar, in the bright poppies brushing against 
 his drab unpolished boots, in the hue of the wheat 
 or the white convolvulus ; they were nothing to 
 him. 
 
 Why should they be ? His life was work with- 
 out skill or thought, the work of the horse, of the 
 crane that lifts stones and timber. His food was 
 rough, his drink rougher, his lodging dry planks. 
 His books were none ; his picture-gallery a 
 coloured print at the alehouse a dog, dead, by a 
 barrel, "Trust is dead; Bad Pay killed him." 
 Of thought he thought nothing ; of hope his idea 
 was a shilling a week more wages ; of any future 
 for himself of comfort such as even a good cottage 
 can give of any future whatever he had no 
 more conception than the horse in the shafts of the 
 waggon. A human animal simply in all this, yet 
 if you reckoned upon him as simply an animal 
 as has been done these centuries you would now 
 be mistaken. But why should he note the colour 
 of the butterfly, the bright light of the sun, the hue 
 of the wheat ? This loveliness gave him no cheese 
 for breakfast ; of beauty in itself, for itself, he had
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 no idea. How should he ? To many of us the 
 harvest the summer is a time of joy in light 
 and colour ; to him it was a time for adding yet 
 another crust of hardness to the thick skin of his 
 hands. 
 
 Though the haze looked like a mist, it was 
 perfectly dry ; the wheat was as dry as noon ; not 
 a speck of dew, and the pimpernels wide open for 
 a burning day. The reaping-machine began to 
 rattle as he came up, and work was ready for him. 
 At breakfast-time his fellows lent him a quarter of 
 a loaf, some young onions, and a drink from their 
 tea. He ate little, and the tea slipped from his 
 hot tongue like water from the bars of a grate ; his 
 tongue was like the heated iron the housemaid tries 
 before using it on the linen. As the reaping- 
 machine went about the gradually decreasing square 
 of corn, narrowing it by a broad band each time, 
 the wheat fell flat on the short stubble. Roger 
 stooped, and, gathering sufficient together, took a 
 few straws, knotted them to another handful as 
 you might tie two pieces of string, and twisted the 
 band round the sheaf. He worked stooping to 
 gather the wheat, bending to tie it in sheaves ; 
 stooping, bending, stooping, bending, and so 
 across the field. Upon his head and back the 
 fiery sun poured down the ceaseless and increasing 
 heat of the August day. His face grew red, his
 
 ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS 
 
 neck black ; the drought of the dry ground rose up 
 and entered his mouth and nostrils, a warm air 
 seemed to rise from the earth and fill his chest. 
 His body ached from the ferment of the vile beer, 
 his back ached with stooping, his forehead was 
 bound tight with a brazen band. They brought 
 some beer at last ; it was like the spring in the 
 desert to him. The vicious liquor " a hair of 
 the dog that bit him " sank down his throat, 
 grateful and refreshing to his disordered palate as 
 if he had drunk the very shadow of green boughs. 
 Good ale would have seemed nauseous to him at 
 that moment, his taste and stomach destroyed by so 
 many gallons of this. He was " pulled together," 
 and worked easier ; the slow hours went on, and it 
 was luncheon. He could have borrowed more 
 food, but he was content instead with a screw of 
 tobacco for his pipe and his allowance of beer. 
 
 They sat in the corner of the field. There 
 were no trees for shade ; they had been cut down 
 as injurious to corn, but there were a few maple 
 bushes and thin ash sprays, which seemed better 
 than the open. The bushes cast no shade at all, 
 the sun being so nearly overhead, but they formed 
 a kind of enclosure, an open-air home, for men 
 seldom sit down if they can help it on the bare 
 and level plain ; they go to the bushes, to the 
 corner, or even to some hollow. It is not really 
 123
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 any advantage ; it is habit ; or shall we not rather 
 say that it is nature ? Brought back as it were in, 
 the open field to the primitive conditions of life, 
 they resumed the same instincts that controlled 
 man in the ages past. Ancient man sought the 
 shelter of trees and banks, of caves and hollows, 
 and so the labourers under somewhat the same 
 conditions came to the corner where the bushes 
 grew. There they left their coats and slung up 
 their luncheon-bundles to the branches ; there the 
 children played and took charge of the infants ; 
 there the women had their hearth and hung their 
 kettle over a fire of sticks. 
 
 II 
 
 IN August the unclouded sun, when there is no 
 wind, shines as fervently in the harvest-field as in 
 Spain. It is doubtful if the Spanish people feel the 
 heat so much as our reapers ; they have their siesta ; 
 their habits have become attuned to the sun, and 
 it is no special strain upon them. In India our 
 troops are carefully looked after in the hot weather, 
 and everything made as easy for them as possible; 
 without care and special clothing and coverings for 
 the head they could not long endure. The Eng- 
 lish simoon of heat drops suddenly on the heads of 
 the harvesters and finds them entirely unprepared ; 
 124
 
 
 OF THE NEW VOTERS 
 
 they have not so much as a cooling drink ready ; 
 they face it, as it were, unarmed. The sun spares 
 not ; it is fire from morn till night. Afar in the 
 town the sunblinds are up, there is a tent on the 
 lawn in the shade, people drink claret-cup and use 
 ice ; ice has never been seen in the harvest-field. 
 Indoors they say they are melting lying on a sofa 
 in a darkened room, made dusky to keep out the 
 heat. The fire falls straight from the sky on the 
 heads of the harvesters men, women, and chil- 
 dren and the white-hot light beats up again from 
 the dry straw and the hard ground. 
 
 The tender flowers endure; the wide petal of 
 the poppy, which withers between the fingers, lies 
 afloat on the air as the lilies on water, afloat and 
 open to the weight of the heat. The red pim- 
 pernel looks straight up at the sky from the early 
 morning till its hour of closing in the afternoon. 
 Pale blue speedwell does not fade ; the pale blue 
 stands the warmth equally with the scarlet. Far 
 in the thick wheat the streaked convolvulus winds 
 up the stalks, and is not smothered for want of air 
 though wrapped and circled with corn. Beautiful 
 though they are, they are bloodless, not sensitive ; 
 we have given to them our feelings, they do not 
 share our pain or pleasure. Heat has gone into 
 the hollow stalks of the wheat and down the yel- 
 low tubes to the roots, drying them in the earth. 
 125
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 Heat has dried the leaves upon the hedge, and they 
 touch rough dusty rough, as books touch that 
 have been lying unused ; the plants on the bank 
 are drying up ancl turning white. Heat has gone 
 down into the cracks of the ground ; the bar of 
 the stile is so dry and powdery in the crevices that 
 if a reaper chanced to drop a match on it there 
 would seem risk of fire. The still atmosphere is 
 laden with heat, and does not move in the corner 
 of the field between the bushes. 
 
 Roger the reaper smoked out his tobacco ; the 
 children played round and watched for scraps of 
 food; the women complained of the heat; the 
 men said nothing. It is seldom that a labourer 
 grumbles much at the weather, except as interfering 
 with his work. Let the heat increase, so it would 
 only keep fine. The fire in the sky meant money. 
 Work went on again ; Roger had now to go to 
 another field to pitch that is, help to load the 
 waggon ; as a young man, that was one of the jobs 
 allotted to him. This was the reverse. Instead 
 of stooping he had now to strain himself upright 
 and lift sheaves over his head. His stomach empty 
 of everything but small ale did not like this any 
 more than his back had liked the other ; but those 
 who work for bare food must not question their 
 employment. Heavily the day drove on ; there 
 was more beer, and again more beer, because it
 
 ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS 
 
 was desired to clear some fields that evening. 
 Monotonously pitching the sheaves, Roger laboured 
 by the waggon till the last had been loaded till 
 the moon was shining. His brazen forehead 
 was unbound now ; in spite of the beer the work 
 and the perspiration had driven off the aching. 
 He was weary but well. Nor had he been dull 
 during the day; he had talked and joked cum- 
 brously in labourers' fashion with his fellows. 
 His aches, his empty stomach, his labour, and the 
 heat had not overcome the vitality of his spirits. 
 There was life enough left for a little rough play 
 as the group gathered together and passed out 
 through the gateway. Life enough left in him to 
 go with the rest to the alehouse ; and what else, oh 
 moralist, would you have done in his place ? This, 
 remember, is not a fancy sketch of rural poetry ; 
 this is the reaper's real existence. 
 
 He had been in the harvest-field fourteen hours, 
 exposed to the intense heat, not even shielded by a 
 pith helmet ; he had worked the day through with 
 thew and sinew ; he had had for food a little dry 
 bread and a few onions, for drink a little weak tea 
 and a great deal of small beer. The moon was 
 now shining in the sky, still bright with sunset 
 colours. Fourteen hours of sun and labour and 
 hard fare ! Now tell him what to do. To go 
 straight to his plank-bed in the cow-house ; to eat a
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 little more dry bread, borrow some cheese or greasy 
 bacon, munch it alone, and sit musing till sleep 
 came he who had nothing to muse about. I 
 think it would i>eed a very clever man indeed to 
 invent something for him to do, some way for him 
 to spend his evening. Read ! To recommend a 
 man to read after fourteen hours' burning sun is 
 indeed a mockery ; darn his stockings would be 
 better. There really is nothing whatsoever that 
 the cleverest and most benevolent person could 
 suggest. Before any benevolent or well-meaning 
 suggestions could be effective the preceding circum- 
 stances must be changed the hours and conditions 
 of labour, everything; and can that be done? The 
 world has been working these thousands of years, 
 and still it is the same ; with our engines, our 
 electric light, our printing-press, still the coarse 
 labour of the mine, the quarry, the field has to be 
 carried out by human hands. While that is so, it 
 is useless to recommend the weary reaper to read. 
 For a man is not a horse : the horse's day's work 
 is over; taken to his stable he is content, his mind 
 goes no deeper than the bottom of his manger, and 
 so long as his nose does not feel the wood, so long 
 as it is met by corn and hay, he will endure happily. 
 But Roger the reaper is not a horse. 
 
 Just as his body needed food and drink, so did 
 his mind require recreation, and that chiefly con-
 
 ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS g^ 
 
 sists of conversation. The drinking and the 
 smoking are in truth but the attributes of the 
 labourer's public-house evening. It is conversation 
 that draws him thither, just as it draws men with 
 money in their pockets to the club and the houses 
 of their friends. Any one can drink or smoke 
 alone ; it needs several for conversation, for com- 
 pany. You pass a public-house the reaper's 
 house in the summer evening. You see a num- 
 ber of men grouped about trestle-tables out-of- 
 doors, and others sitting at the open window ; there 
 is an odour of tobacco, a chink of glasses and mugs. 
 You can smell the tobacco and see the ale ; you 
 cannot see the indefinite power which holds men 
 there the magnetism of company and conversa- 
 tion. Their conversation, not your conversation ; 
 not the last book, the last play ; not saloon con- 
 versation ; but theirs talk in which neither you 
 nor any one of your condition could really join. Xo 
 us there would seem nothing at all in that con- 
 versation, vapid and subjectless ; to them it means 
 much. We have not been through the same cir- 
 cumstances : our day has been differently spent^ 
 and the same words have therefore a varying value. 
 Certain it is, that it is conversation that takes men 
 to the public-house. Had Roger been a horse he 
 would have hastened to borrow some food, and, 
 having eaten that, would have cast himself at once 
 9 129
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 upon his rude bed. Not being an animal, though 
 his life and work were animal, he went with his 
 friends to talk. Let none unjustly condemn him 
 as a blackguard ./or that no, not even though 
 they had seen him at ten o'clock unsteadily walking 
 to his shed, and guiding himself occasionally with 
 his hands to save himself from stumbling. He 
 blundered against the door, and the noise set the 
 swallows on the beams twittering. He reached 
 his bedstead, and sat down and tried to unlace his 
 boots, but could not. He threw himself upon the 
 sacks and fell asleep. Such was one twenty-four 
 hours of harvest-time. 
 
 The next and the next, for weeks, were almost 
 exactly similar; now a little less beer, now a little 
 more; now tying up, now pitching, now cutting a 
 small field or corner with a fagging-hook. Once 
 now and then there was a great supper at the farm. 
 Once he fell out with another fellow, and they had 
 a fight ; Roger, however, had had so much ale, 
 and his opponent so much whisky, that their blows 
 were soft and helpless. They both fell, that is, 
 they stumbled, they were picked up, there was 
 some more beer, and it was settled. One afternoon 
 Roger became suddenly giddy, and was so ill that 
 he did no more work that day, and very little on 
 the following. It was something like a sunstroke, 
 but fortunately a slight attack ; on the third day he 
 -130
 
 ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS 
 
 resumed his place. Continued labour in the sun, 
 little food and much drink, stomach derangement, 
 in short, accounted for his illness. Though he 
 resumed his place and worked on, he was not so 
 well afterwards; the work was more of an effort 
 to him, and his face lost its fulness, and became 
 drawn and pointed. Still he laboured, and would 
 not miss an hour, for harvest was coming to an 
 end, and the extra wages would soon cease. For 
 the first week or so of haymaking or reaping the 
 men usually get drunk, delighted with the prospect 
 before them, then they settle down fairly well. 
 Towards the end they struggle hard to recover lost 
 time and the money spent in ale. 
 
 As the last week approached, Roger went up 
 into the village and ordered the shoemaker to make 
 him a good pair of boots. He paid partly for them 
 then, and the rest next pay-day. This was a 
 tremendous effort. The labourer usually pays a 
 shilling at a time, but Roger mistrusted himself. 
 Harvest was practically over, and after all the 
 labour and the long hours, the exposure to the 
 sun and the rude lodging, he found he should 
 scarcely have thirty shillings. With the utmost 
 ordinary care he could have saved a good lump of 
 money. He was a single man, and his actual keep 
 cost but little. Many married labourers, who had 
 been forced by hard necessity to econony, contrived 
 131
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 to put by enough to buy clothes for their families. 
 The single man, with every advantage, hardly had 
 thirty shillings, and even then it showed extraor- 
 dinary prudence .on his part to go and purchase a 
 pair of boots for the winter. Very few in his place 
 would have been as thoughtful as that ; they would 
 have got boots somehow in the end, but not before- 
 hand. This life of animal labour does not grow 
 the spirit of economy. Not only in farming, but 
 in navvy work, in the rougher work of factories 
 and mines, the same fact is evident. The man 
 who labours with thew and sinew at' horse labour 
 crane labour not for himself, but for others, is 
 not the man who saves. If he worked for his own 
 hand possibly he might, no matter how rough his 
 labour and fare ; not while working for another. 
 Roger reached his distant home among the meadows 
 at last, with one golden half-sovereign in his pocket. 
 That and his new pair of boots, not yet finished, 
 represented the golden harvest to him. He lodged 
 with his parents when at home ; he was so far 
 fortunate that he had a bed to go to ; therefore in 
 the estimation of his class he was not badly off. 
 But if we consider his position as regards his own 
 life we must recognise that he was very badly off 
 indeed, so much precious time and the strength of 
 his youth having been wasted. 
 
 Often it is stated that the harvest wages recoup 
 132
 
 OF THE NEW VOTERS^E 
 
 the labourer for the low weekly receipts of the year, 
 and if the money be put down in figures with pen 
 and ink it is so. But in actual fact the pen-and-ink 
 figures do not represent the true case; these extra 
 figures have been paid for, and gold may be bought 
 too dear. Roger had paid heavily for his half- 
 sovereign and his boots; his pinched face did not 
 look as if he had benefited greatly. His cautious 
 old father, rendered frugal by forty years of labour, 
 had done fairly well ; the young man not at all. 
 The old man, having a cottage, in a measure 
 worked for his own hand. The young man, 
 with none but himself to think of, scattered his 
 money to the winds. Is money earned with such 
 expenditure of force worth the having ? Look 
 at the arm of a woman labouring in the harvest- 
 field thin, muscular, sinewy, black almost, it tells 
 of continual strain. After much of this she becomes 
 pulled out of shape, the neck loses its roundness 
 .and shows the sinews, the chest flattens. In time 
 the women find the strain of it tell severely. I am 
 not trying to make out a case of special hardship, 
 being aware that both men, women, and children 
 work as hard and perhaps suffer more in cities; I 
 am simply describing the realities of rural life behind 
 the scenes. The golden harvest is the first scene ; 
 the golden wheat, glorious under the summer sun. 
 Bright poppies flower in its depths, and convolvulus 
 133
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 climbs the stalks. Butterflies float slowly over the 
 yellow surface as they might over a lake of colour. 
 To linger by it, to visit it day by day, at even to watch 
 the sunset by it, and see it pale under the changing 
 light, is a delight to the thoughtful mind. There is 
 so much in the wheat, there are books of meditation 
 in it, it is dear to the heart. Behind these beautiful 
 aspects comes the reality of human labour hours 
 upon hours of heat and strain ; there comes the 
 reality of a rude life, and in the end little enough of 
 gain. The wheat is beautiful, but human life is 
 labour. 
 
 134
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 I 
 
 iHE wild red deer can never again come 
 down to drink at the Thames in the 
 dusk of the evening as once they did. 
 While modern civilisation endures, the 
 larger fauna must necessarily be confined to parks 
 or restrained to well-marked districts ; but for that 
 very reason the lesser creatures of the wood, the 
 field, and the river should receive the more protec- 
 tion. If this applies to the secluded country, far 
 from the stir of cities, still more does it apply to 
 the neighbourhood of London. From a sportsman's 
 point of view, or from that of a naturalist, the state 
 of the river is one of chaos. There is no order. 
 The Thames appears free even from the usual rules 
 which are in force upon every highway. A man 
 may not fire a gun within a certain distance of a 
 road under a penalty a law enacted for the safety 
 of passengers, who were formerly endangered by 
 persons shooting small birds along the hedges bor- 
 dering roads. Nor may he shoot at all, not so 
 much as fire off a pistol (as recently publicly 
 135
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 proclaimed by the Metropolitan police to restrain 
 the use of revolvers), without a license. But on 
 the river people do as they choose, and there does 
 not seem to be any law at all or at least there is 
 no authority to enforce it, if it exists. Shooting 
 from boats and from the towing-path is carried on 
 in utter defiance of the licensing law, of the game 
 law (as applicable to wild fowl), and of the safety 
 of persons who may be passing. The moorhens 
 are shot, the kingfishers have been nearly extermi- 
 nated or driven away from some parts, the once 
 common black-headed bunting is comparatively 
 scarce in the more frequented reaches, and if there 
 is nothing else to shoot at, then the swallows are 
 slaughtered. Some have even taken to shooting at 
 the rooks in the trees or fields by the river with 
 small-bore rifles a most dangerous thing to do. 
 The result is that the osier-beds on the eyots and 
 by the backwaters the copses of the river are 
 almost devoid of life. A few moorhens creep under 
 the aquatic grasses and conceal themselves beneath 
 the bushes, water-voles hide among the flags, but the 
 once extensive host of water-fowl and river life has 
 been reduced to the smallest limits. Waterfowl 
 cannot breed because they are shot on the nest, 
 or their eggs taken. As for rarer birds, of course 
 they have not the slightest chance. 
 
 The fish have fared better because they have re- 
 -136-
 
 g^cg THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 ceived the benefit of close seasons, enforced with 
 more or less vigilance all along the river. They 
 are also protected by regulations making it illegal 
 to capture them except in a sportsmanlike manner; 
 snatching, for instance, is unlawful. Riverside pro- 
 prietors preserve some reaches, piscatorial societies 
 preserve others, and the complaint indeed is that 
 the rights of the public have been encroached upon. 
 The too exclusive preservation of fish is in a meas- 
 ure responsible for the destruction of water-fowl, 
 which are cleared off preserved places in order that 
 they may not help themselves to fry or spawn. On 
 the other hand, the societies may claim to have 
 saved parts of the river from being entirely de- 
 prived of fish, for it is not long since it appeared 
 as if the stream would be quite cleared out. Large 
 quantities of fish have also been placed in the river 
 taken from ponds and bodily transported to the 
 Thames. So that upon the whole the fish have 
 been well looked after of recent years. 
 
 The more striking of the aquatic plants such 
 as white water-lilies have been much diminished 
 in quantity by the constant plucking, and injury is 
 said to have been done by careless navigation. In 
 things of this kind a few persons can do a great 
 deal of damage. Two or three men with guns, 
 and indifferent to the interests of sport or natural 
 history, at work every day, can clear a long stretch
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 of river of water-fowl, by scaring if not by actually 
 killing them. Imagine three or four such gentry 
 allowed to wander at will in a large game preserve 
 in a week they, would totally destroy it as a pre- 
 serve. The river, after all, is but a narrow band, 
 as it were, and is easily commanded by a gun. So, 
 too, with fish poachers ; a very few men with nets 
 can quickly empty a good piece of water ; and 
 flowers like water-lilies, which grow only in cer- 
 tain spots, are soon pulled or spoiled. This as- 
 pect of the matter the immense mischief which 
 can be effected by a very few persons should be 
 carefully borne in mind in framing any regulations. 
 For the mischief done on the river is really the 
 work of a small number, a mere fraction of the 
 thousands of all classes who frequent it. Not one 
 in a thousand probably perpetrates any intentional 
 damage to fish, fowl, or flowers. 
 
 As the river above all things is, and ought to be, a 
 place of recreation, care must be particularly taken 
 that in restraining these practices the enjoyment 
 of the many be not interfered with. The rational 
 pleasure of 999 people ought not to be checked be- 
 cause the last of the thousand acts as a blackguard. 
 This point, too, bears upon the question of steam- 
 launches. A launch can pass as softly and quietly 
 as a skifF floating with the stream. And there is 
 a good deal to be said on the other side, for the 
 -138-
 
 THE MODERN THAMES Jg^SK 
 
 puntsmen stick themselves very often in the way 
 of every one else ; and if you analyse fishing for 
 minnows from a punt you will not find it a noble 
 sport. A river like the Thames, belonging as it 
 does or as it ought to a city like London, 
 should be managed from the very broadest stand- 
 point. There should be pleasure for all, and there 
 certainly is no real difficulty in arranging matters 
 to that end. The Thames should be like a great 
 aquarium, in which a certain balance of life has to 
 be kept up. When aquaria first came into favour 
 such things as snails and weeds were excluded as 
 eyesores and injurious. But it was soon discovered 
 that the despised snails and weeds were absolutely 
 necessary ; an aquarium could not be maintained 
 in health without them, and now the most perfect 
 aquarium is the one in which the natural state is 
 most completely copied. On the same principle it 
 is evident that too exclusive preservation must be 
 injurious to the true interests of the river. Fish 
 enthusiasts, for instance, desire the extinction of 
 water-fowl there is not a single aquatic bird 
 which they do not accuse of damage to fry, spawn, 
 or full-grown fish ; no, not one, from the heron 
 down to the tiny grebe. They are nearly as bitter 
 against animals ; the poor water-vole (or water-rat) 
 even is denounced and shot. Any one who chooses 
 may watch the water-rat feeding on aquatic vege- 
 139
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 tation ; never mind, shoot him because he 's there. 
 There is no other reason. Bitterest, harshest, most 
 envenomed of all is the outcry and hunt directed 
 against the otter. .,, It is as if the otter were a wolf 
 as if he were as injurious as the mighty boar 
 whom Meleager and his companions chased in the 
 days of dim antiquity. What, then, has the otter 
 done ? Has he ravaged the fields ? does he threaten 
 the homesteads ? is he at Temple Bar ? are we to 
 run, as the old song says, from the Dragon ? The 
 fact is, the ravages attributed to the otter are of a 
 local character. They are chiefly committed in 
 those places where fish are more or less confined. 
 If you keep sheep close together in a pen the wolf 
 who leaps the hurdles can kill the flock if he 
 chooses. In narrow waters, and where fish are 
 maintained in quantities out of proportion to ex- 
 tent, an otter can work doleful woe. That is to 
 say, those who want too many fish are those who 
 give the otter his opportunity. 
 
 In a great river like the Thames a few otters 
 cannot do much or lasting injury except in par- 
 ticular places. The truth is, that the otter is an 
 ornament to the river, and more worthy of preser- 
 vation than any other creature. He is the last and 
 largest of the wild creatures who once roamed so 
 freely in the forests which enclosed Londinium, 
 that fort in the woods and marshes marshes 
 140
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 which to this day, though drained and built over, 
 enwrap the nineteenth century city in thick mists. 
 The red deer are gone, the boar is gone, the wolf 
 necessarily destroyed the red deer can never 
 again drink at the Thames in the dusk of the 
 evening while our civilisation endures. The otter 
 alone remains the wildest, the most thoroughly 
 self-supporting of all living things left a living 
 link going back to the days of Cassivelaunus. 
 London ought to take the greatest interest in the 
 otters of its river. The shameless way in which 
 every otter that dares to show itself is shot, trapped, 
 beaten to death, and literally battered out of exist- 
 ence, should rouse the indignation of every sports- 
 man and every lover of nature. The late Rev. 
 John Russell, who, it will be admitted, was a true 
 sportsman, walked three thousand miles to see an 
 otter. That was a different spirit, was it not ? 
 
 That is the spirit in which the otter in the 
 Thames should be regarded. Those who offer 
 money rewards for killing Thames otters ought to 
 be looked on as those who would offer rewards for 
 poisoning foxes in Leicestershire. I suppose we 
 shall not see the ospreys again ; but I should like to. 
 Again, on the other side of the boundary, in the 
 tidal waters, the same sort of ravenous destruction 
 is carried on against everything that ventures up. 
 A short time ago a porpoise came up to Mortlake ; 
 141
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 now, just think, a porpoise up from the great sea 
 that sea to which Londoners rush with such 
 joy past Gravesend, past Greenwich, past the 
 Tower, under London Bridge, past Westminster 
 and the Houses of Parliament, right up to Mort- 
 lake. It is really a wonderful thing that a denizen 
 of the sea so large and interesting as a porpoise 
 should come right through the vast City of London. 
 In an aquarium people would go to see it and 
 admire it, and take their children to see it. What 
 happened ? Some one hastened out in a boat, 
 armed with a gun or a rifle, and occupied himself 
 with shooting at it. He did not succeed in killing 
 it, but it was wounded. Some difference here to 
 the spirit of John Russell. If I may be permitted 
 to express an opinion, I think that there is not a 
 single creature, from the sand-marten and the black- 
 headed bunting to the broad-winged heron, from 
 the water-vole to the otter, from the minnow on 
 one side of the tidal boundary to the porpoise on 
 the other big and little, beasts and birds (of prey 
 or not) that should not be encouraged and 
 protected on this beautiful river, morally the prop- 
 erty of the greatest city in the world. 
 
 II 
 
 I LOOKED forward to living by the river with 
 delight, anticipating the long rows I should have 
 142
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 past the green eyots and the old houses red-tiled 
 among the trees. I should pause below the weir 
 and listen to the pleasant roar, and watch the 
 fisherman cast again and again with the " tran- 
 scendent patience " of genius by which alone the 
 Thames trout is captured. Twisting the end of a 
 willow bough round my wrist, I could moor myself 
 and rest at ease, though the current roared under 
 the skiff, fresh from the waterfall. A thousand 
 thousand bubbles rising to the surface would whiten 
 the stream a thousand thousand succeeded by 
 another thousand thousand and still flowing, no 
 multiple could express the endless number. That 
 which flows continuously by some sympathy is 
 acceptable to the mind, as if thereby it realised its 
 own existence without an end. Swallows would 
 skim the water to and fro as yachts tack, the sand- 
 piper would run along the strand, a black-headed 
 bunting would perch upon the willow; perhaps as 
 the man of genius fishing and myself made no 
 noise, a kingfisher might come, and we might see 
 him take his prey. 
 
 Or I might quit hold of the osier and, entering 
 a shallow backwater, disturb shoals of roach play- 
 ing where the water was transparent to the bottom, 
 after their wont. Winding in and out like an 
 Indian in his canoe, perhaps traces of an otter 
 might be found his kitchen modding and in 
 143
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 the sedges moorhens and wildfowl would hide from 
 me. From its banks I should gather many a 
 flower and notice many a plant ; there would be, 
 too, the beautifuJ. water-lily. Or I should row on 
 up the great stream by meadows full of golden 
 buttercups, past fields crimson with trifolium or 
 green with young wheat. Handsome sailing craft 
 would come down spanking before the breeze, laden 
 with bright girls laughter on board, and love the 
 golden fleece of their argosy. 
 
 I should converse with the ancient men of the 
 terries, and listen to their river lore; they would 
 show me the mark to which the stream rose in the 
 famous year of floods. On again to the cool 
 hostelry whose sign was reflected in the water, 
 where there would be a draught of fine ale for the 
 heated and thirsty sculler. On again till steeple or 
 tower rising over the trees marked my journey's 
 end for the day, some old town where, after rest and 
 refreshment, there would be a ruin or a timbered 
 house to look at, where I should meet folk full of 
 former days and quaint tales of yore. Thus to 
 journey on from place to place would be the great 
 charm of the river travelling by water, not merely 
 sculling to and fro, but really travelling. Upon a 
 lake I could but row across and back again, and 
 however lovely the scenery might be, still it would 
 always be the same. But the Thames, upon the 
 144
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 river I could really travel, day after day, from 
 Teddington Lock upwards to Windsor, to Oxford, 
 on to quiet Lechlade, or even farther deep into 
 the meadows by Cricklade. Every hour there 
 would be something interesting, all the freshwater 
 life to study, the very barges would amuse me, and 
 at last there would be the delicious ease of floating 
 home carried by the stream, repassing all that had 
 pleased before. 
 
 The time came. I lived by the river, not far 
 from its widest reaches, before the stream meets its 
 tide. I went down to the eyot for a boat, and my 
 difficulties began. The crowd of boats lashed to 
 each other in strings ready for the hirer disconcerted 
 me. There were so many I could not choose ; the 
 whole together looked like a broad raft. Others were 
 hauled on the shore. Over on the eyot, a little 
 island, there were more boats, boats launched, boats 
 being launched, boats being carried by gentlemen 
 in coloured flannels as carefully as mothers handle 
 their youngest infants, boats covered in canvas 
 mummy-cases, and dim boats under roofs, their 
 sharp prows projecting like crocodiles' snouts. 
 Tricksy outriggers, ready to upset on narrow keel, 
 were held firmly for the sculler to step daintily into 
 his place. A strong eight shot by up the stream, 
 the men all pulling together as if they had been 
 one animal. A strong sculler shot by down the 
 
 10 145
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 stream, his giant arms bare and the muscles visible 
 as they rose, knotting and unknotting with the 
 stroke. Every one on the bank and eyot stopped 
 to watch him they knew him, he was training. 
 How could an amateur venture out and make an 
 exhibition of himself after such splendid rowing ! 
 Still it was noticeable that plenty of amateurs did 
 venture out, till the waterway was almost concealed 
 boated over instead of bridged and how they 
 managed to escape locking their oars together, I 
 could not understand. 
 
 I looked again at the boats. Some were out- 
 riggers. I could not get into an outrigger after see- 
 ing the great sculler. The rest were one and all 
 after the same pattern, i.e. with the stern cushioned 
 and prepared for a lady. Some were larger, and 
 could carry three or four ladies, but they were 
 all intended for the same purpose. If the sculler 
 went out in such a boat by himself he must either 
 sit too far forward and so depress the stem and dig 
 himself, as it were, into the water at each stroke, 
 or he must sit too much to the rear and depress 
 the stern, and row with the stem lifted up, sniff- 
 ing the air. The whole crowd of boats on hire 
 were exactly the same ; in short, they were built 
 for woman and not for man, for lovely woman 
 to recline, parasol in one hand and tiller ropes 
 in the other, while man inferior man pulled 
 -146-
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 and pulled and pulled as an ox yoked to the 
 plough. They could only be balanced by man 
 and woman, that was the only way they could 
 be trimmed on an even keel; they were like 
 scales, in which the weight on one side must be 
 counterpoised by a weight in the other. They 
 were dead against bachelors. They belonged to 
 woman, and she was absolute mistress of the 
 river. 
 
 As I looked, the boats ground together a little, 
 chafing, laughing at me, making game of me, 
 asking distinctly what business a man had there 
 without at least one companion in petticoats ? 
 My courage ebbed, and it was in a feeble voice 
 that I inquired whether there was no such thing as 
 a little skiff a fellow might paddle about in ? No, 
 nothing of the kind ; would a canoe do ? Some- 
 how a canoe would not do. I never took kindly 
 to canoes, excepting always the Canadian birch- 
 bark pattern ; evidently there was no boat for me. 
 There was no place on the great river for an 
 indolent, dreamy particle like myself, apt to drift 
 up into nooks, and to spend much time absorb- 
 ing those pleasures which enter by the exquisite 
 sensitiveness of the eye colour, and shade, and 
 form, and the cadence of glittering ripple and 
 moving leaf. You must be prepared to pull 
 and push, and struggle for your existence on the 
 147
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 river, as in the vast city hard by men push and 
 crush for money. You must assert yourself, and 
 insist upon having your share of the waterway ; 
 you must be perfectly convinced that yours is the 
 very best style of rowing to be seen ; every one 
 ought to get out of your way. You must consult 
 your own convenience only, and drive right into 
 other people's boats, forcing them up into the wil- 
 lows, or against the islands. Never slip along the 
 shore, or into quiet backwaters ; always select the 
 more frequented parts, not because you want to go 
 there, but to make your presence known, and go 
 amongst the crowd ; and if a few sculls get broken, 
 it only proves how very inferior and how very 
 clumsy other people are. If you see another boat 
 coming down stream in the centre of the river 
 with a broad space on either side for others to 
 pass, at once head your own boat straight at her, 
 and take possession of the way. Or, better still, 
 never look ahead, but pull straight on, and let 
 things happen as they may. Annoy everybody, 
 and you are sure to be right, and to be respected ; 
 splash the ladies as you pass with a dexterous flip 
 of the scull, and soak their summer costumes ; it 
 is capital sport, and they look so sulky or is it 
 contemptuous ? 
 
 There was no such thing as a skiff in which 
 one could quietly paddle about, or gently make 
 -148-
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 way mile after mile up the beautiful stream. 
 The boating throng grew thicker, and my courage 
 less and less, till I desperately resorted to the ferry 
 at all events, I could be rowed over in the ferry- 
 boat, that would be something ; I should be on the 
 water, after a fashion and the ferryman would 
 know a good deal. The burly ferryman cared 
 nothing at all about the river, and merely an- 
 swered " Yes," or u No ; " he was full of the 
 Derby and Sandown ; did n't know about the fish- 
 ing ; supposed there were fish ; did n't see 'em, nor 
 eat 'em ; want a punt ? No. So he landed me, 
 desolate and hopeless, on the opposite bank, and I 
 began to understand how the souls felt after Charon 
 had got them over. They could not have been 
 more unhappy than I was on the towing-path, 
 as the ferry-boat receded and left me watching 
 the continuous succession of boats passing up 
 and down the river. 
 
 By-and-by an immense black hulk came drift- 
 ing round the bend an empty barge almost 
 broadside across the stream, for the current at 
 the curve naturally carried it out from the shore. 
 This huge helpless monster occupied the whole 
 river, and had no idea where it was going, for 
 it had no fins or sweeps to guide its course, and 
 the rudder could only induce it to submit itself 
 lengthways to the stream after the lapse of some 
 149
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 time. The fairway of the river was entirely 
 taken up by this irresponsible Frankenstein of 
 the Thames, which some one had started, but 
 which now did as it liked. Some of the small 
 craft got up into the willows and waited ; some 
 seemed to narrowly escape being crushed against 
 a wall on the opposite bank. The bright white 
 sails of a yacht shook and quivered as its steers- 
 man tried all he knew to coax his vessel an 
 inch more into the wind out of the monster's 
 path. In vain ! He had to drop down the 
 stream, and lose what it had taken him half 
 an hour's skill to gain. What a pleasing mon- 
 ster to meet in the narrow arches of a bridge ! 
 The man in charge leaned on the tiller, and 
 placidly gazed at the wild efforts of some un- 
 skilful oarsmen to escape collision. In fact, the 
 monster had charge of the man, and did as it 
 liked with him. 
 
 Down the river they drifted together, Franken- 
 stein swinging round and thrusting his blunt nose 
 first this way and then that ; down the river, block- 
 ing up the narrow passage by the eyot; stopping 
 the traffic at the lock ; out at last into the tidal 
 stream, there to begin a fresh life of annoyance, 
 and finally to endanger the good speed of many 
 a fine three-master and ocean steamer off the docks. 
 The Thames barge knows no law. No judge, no 
 150
 
 2E^<g THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 jury, no Palace of Justice, no Chancery, no appeal 
 to the Lords has any terror for the monster barge. 
 It drifts by the Houses of Parliament with no more 
 respect than it shows for the lodge of the lock- 
 keeper. It drifts by Royal Windsor, and cares 
 not. The guns of the Tower are of no account. 
 There is nothing in the world so utterly free as 
 this monster. 
 
 Often have I asked myself if the bargee at the 
 tiller, now sucking at his short black pipe, now 
 munching onions and cheese (the little onions 
 he pitches on the lawns by the river side, there 
 to take root and flourish) if this amiable man 
 has any notion of his own incomparable position. 
 Just some inkling of the irony of the situation 
 must, I fancy, now and then dimly dawn within 
 his grimy brow. To see all these gentlemen 
 shoved on one side ; to be lying in the way of 
 a splendid Australian clipper; to stop an incom- 
 ing vessel, impatient for her berth ; to swing, and 
 sway, and roll as he goes ; to bump the big ships, 
 and force the little ones aside ; to slip, and slide, 
 and glide with the tide, ripples dancing under the 
 prow, and be master of the world-famed Thames 
 from source to mouth, is not this a joy for ever? 
 Liberty is beyond price ; now no one is really free 
 unless he can crush his neighbour's interest under- 
 foot, like a horse-roller going over a daisy. Bargee
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 is free, and the ashes of his pipe are worth a king's 
 ransom. 
 
 Imagine a great van loaded at the East-end of 
 London with the heaviest merchandise, with bags 
 of iron nails, shot, leaden sheets in rolls, and pig 
 iron ; imagine four strong horses dray-horses 
 harnessed thereto. Then let the waggoner mount 
 behind in a seat comfortably contrived for him facing 
 the rear, and settle himself down happily among his 
 sacks, light his pipe, and fold his hands untroubled 
 with any worry of reins. Away they go through 
 the crowded city, by the Bank of England, and 
 across into Cheapside, cabs darting this way, car- 
 riages that, omnibuses forced up into side-streets, 
 foot traffic suspended till the monster has passed ; 
 up Fleet-street, clearing the road in front of them 
 right through the stream of lawyers always rushing 
 to and fro the Temple and the New Law Courts, 
 along the Strand, and finally in triumph into Rotten 
 Row at five o'clock on a June afternoon. See how 
 they scatter ! see how they run ! The Row is swept 
 clear from end to end beauty, fashion, rank, 
 what are such trifles of an hour ? The monster 
 vans grind them all to powder. What such a 
 waggoner might do on land, bargee does on the 
 river. 
 
 Of olden time the silver Thames was the chosen 
 mode of travel of Royalty the highest in the land
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 were rowed from palace to city, or city to palace, 
 between its sunlit banks. Noblemen had their 
 special oarsmen, and were in like manner conveyed, 
 and could any other mode of journeying be equally 
 pleasant ? The coal-barge has bumped them all 
 out of the way. 
 
 No man dares send forth the commonest cart 
 unless in proper charge, and if the horse is not under 
 control a fine is promptly administered. The coal- 
 barge rolls and turns and drifts as chance and the 
 varying current please. How huge must be the rent 
 in the meshes of the law to let so large a fish go 
 through ! But in truth there is no law about it, 
 and to this day no man can confidently affirm that he 
 knows to whom the river belongs. These curious 
 anomalies are part and parcel of our political sys- 
 tem, and as I watched the black monster slowly go 
 by with the stream it occurred to me that grimy 
 bargee, with his short pipe and his onions, was really 
 the guardian of the British Constitution. 
 
 Hardly had he gone past than a loud Pant! pant! 
 pant ! began some way down the river ; it came 
 from a tug, whose short puffs of steam produced a 
 giant echo against the walls and quays and houses 
 on the bank. These angry pants sounded high 
 above the splash of oars and laughter, and the 
 chorus of singers in a boat ; they conquered all 
 other sounds and noises, and domineered the place. 
 153
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 It was impossible to shut the ears to them, or to 
 f persuade the mind not to heed. The swallows 
 dipped their breasts ; how gracefully they drank on 
 the wing ! PantJ pant ! pant ! The sunlight 
 gleamed on the wake of a four-oar. Pant ! pant ! 
 pant ! The soft wind blew among the trees and 
 over the hawthorn hedge. Pant ! pant ! pant ! 
 Neither the eye nor ear could attend to aught but 
 this hideous uproar. The tug was weak, the stream 
 strong, the barges behind heavy, broad, and deeply 
 laden, so that each puff and pant and turn of the 
 screw barely advanced the mass a foot. There are 
 many feet in a mile, and for all that weary time 
 Pant ! pant ! pant ! This dreadful uproar, like that 
 which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza heard pro- 
 ceeding from the fulling-mill, must be endured. 
 Could not philosophy by stoic firmness shut out 
 the sound ? Can philosophy shut out anything that 
 is real ? A long black streak of smoke hung over 
 the water, fowling the gleaming surface. A noise 
 of Dante hideous, uncompromising as the rusty 
 hinge of the gate which forbids hope. Pant ! pant ! 
 pant ! 
 
 Once upon a time a Queen of England was 
 rowed adown the silver Thames to the sweet low 
 sound of the flute. 
 
 At last the noise grew fainter in the distance, 
 and the black hulls disappeared round the bend. 
 154
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 I walked on up the towing-path. Accidentally 
 lifting my hand to shade my eyes, I was hailed by 
 a ferryman on the watch. He conveyed me over 
 without much volition on my part, and set me 
 ashore by the inn of my imagination. The rooms 
 almost overhung the water : so far my vision was 
 fulfilled. Within there was an odour of spirits 
 and spilled ale, a rustle of sporting papers, talk of 
 racings, and the click of billiard-balls. Without 
 there were two or three loafers, half boatmen, half 
 vagabonds, waiting to pick up stray sixpences a 
 sort of leprosy of rascal and sneak in their faces 
 and the lounge of their bodies. These Thames- 
 side " beach-combers " are a sorry lot, a special 
 Pariah class of themselves. Some of them have 
 been men once : perhaps one retains his sculling 
 skill, and is occasionally engaged by a gentleman 
 to give him lessons. They regarded me eagerly 
 they " spotted " a Thames freshman who might be 
 made to yield silver ; but I walked away down the 
 road into the village. The spire of the church 
 interested me, being of shingles i.e. of wooden 
 slates as the houses are roofed in America, as 
 houses were roofed in Elizabethan England ; for 
 Young America reproduces Old England even in 
 roofs. Some of the houses so closely approached 
 the churchyard that the pantry windows on a level 
 with the ground were partly blocked up by the green 
 155
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 mounds of graves. Borage grew thickly all over 
 the yard, dropping its blue flowers on the dead. The 
 sharp note of a bugle rang in the air: they were 
 changing guard, I.,suppose, in Wolsey's Palace. 
 
 Ill 
 
 IN time I did discover a skiff moored in a little- 
 visited creek, which the boatman got out for me. 
 The sculls were rough and shapeless it is a re- 
 markable fact that sculls always are, unless you 
 have them made and keep them for your own use. 
 I paddled up the river; I paused by an osier-grown 
 islet; I slipped past the barges, and avoided an un- 
 skilful party ; it was the morning, and none of the 
 uproarious as yet were about. Certainly, it was 
 very pleasant. The sunshine gleamed on the water, 
 broad shadows of trees fell across ; swans floated in 
 the by-channels. A peacefulness which peculiarly 
 belongs to water hovered above the river. A house- 
 boat was moored near the willow-grown shore, and 
 it was evidently inhabited, for there was a fire smoul- 
 dering on the bank, and some linen that had been 
 washed spread on the bushes to bleach. All the 
 windows of this gipsy-van of the river were wide 
 open, and the air and light entered freely into 
 every part of the dwelling-house under which 
 flowed the stream. A lady was dressing herself 
 -156-
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 before one of these open windows, twining up 
 large braids of dark hair, her large arms bare to 
 the shoulder, and somewhat farther. I immedi- 
 ately steered out into the channel to avoid intru- 
 sion ; but I felt that she was regarding me with 
 all a matron's contempt for an unknown man a 
 mere member of the opposite sex, not introduced, 
 or of her " set." I was merely a man, no more 
 than a horse on the bank, and had she been in 
 her smock she would have been just as indifferent. 
 Certainly it was a lovely morning; the old red 
 palace of the Cardinal seemed to slumber amid its 
 trees, as if the passage of the centuries had stroked 
 and soothed it into indolent peace. The meadows 
 rested ; even the swallows, the restless swallows, 
 glided in an effortless way through the busy air. 
 I could see this, and yet I did not quite enjoy it ; 
 something drew me away from perfect content- 
 ment, and gradually it dawned upon me that it 
 was the current causing an unsuspected amount 
 of labour in sculling. The forceless particles of 
 water, so yielding to the touch, which slipped aside 
 at the motion of the oar, in their countless myriads 
 ceaselessly flowing grew to be almost a solid ob- 
 struction to the boat. I had not noticed it for a 
 mile or so ; now the pressure of the stream was 
 becoming evident. I persuaded myself that it was 
 nothing. I held on by the boathook to a root and 
 157
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 rested, and so went on again. Another mile or 
 more ; another rest : decidedly sculling against a 
 swift current is work downright work. You 
 have no energy ^ to spare over and above that 
 needed for the labour of rowing, not enough 
 even to look round and admire the green loveli- 
 ness of the shore. I began to think that I should 
 not get as far as Oxford after all. 
 
 By-and-by I began to question if rowing on a 
 river is as pleasant as rowing on a lake, where you 
 can rest on your oars without losing ground, where 
 no current opposes progress, and after the stroke 
 the boat slips ahead some distance of its own im- 
 petus. On the river the boat only travels as far as 
 you actually pull it at each stroke ; there is no life 
 in it after the scull is lifted, the impetus dies, and 
 the craft first pauses and then drifts backward. I 
 crept along the shore, so near that one scull oc- 
 casionally grounded, to avoid the main force of 
 the water, which is in the middle of the river. I 
 slipped behind eyots and tried all I knew. In vain, 
 the river was stronger than I, and my arms could 
 not for many hours contend with the Thames. So 
 faded another part of my dream. The idea of row- 
 ing from one town to another of expeditions and 
 travelling across the country, so pleasant to think 
 of in practice became impossible. An athlete 
 bent on nothing but athleticism a canoeist think- 
 _i S 8_
 
 THE MODERN THAMES SE^K 
 
 ing of nothing but his canoe could accomplish it, 
 setting himself daily so much work to do, and reso- 
 lutely performing it. A dreamer, who wanted to 
 enjoy his passing moment and not to keep regular 
 time with his strokes, who wanted to gather flow- 
 ers and indulge his luxurious eyes with effects of 
 light and shadow and colour, could not succeed. 
 The river is for the man of might. 
 
 With a weary back at last I gave up the struggle 
 at the foot of a weir, almost in the splash of the cas- 
 cade. My best friend, the boothook, kept me sta- 
 tionary without effort, and in time rest restored the 
 strained muscles to physical equanimity. The roar 
 of the river falling over the dam soothed the mind 
 the sense of an immense power at hand, work- 
 ing with all its might while you are at ease, has a 
 strangely soothing influence. It makes me sleepy 
 to see the vast beam of an engine regularly rise and 
 fall in ponderous irresistible labour. Now at last 
 some fragment of my fancy was realised a myr- 
 iad myriad rushing bubbles whitening the stream 
 burst, and were instantly succeeded by myriads 
 more ; the boat faintly vibrated as the wild waters 
 shot beneath it; the green cascade, smooth at its 
 first curve, dashed itself into the depth beneath, 
 broken to a million million particles ; the eddies 
 whirled, and sucked, and sent tiny whirlpools ro- 
 tating along the surface ; the roar rose or lessened 
 159
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 in intensity as the velocity of the wind varied ; sun- 
 light sparkled the warmth inclined the senses to 
 a drowsy idleness. Yonder was the trout fisher- 
 man, just as I had. imagined him, casting and cast- 
 ing again with that transcendental patience which is 
 genius ; his line and the top of his rod formed mo- 
 mentary curves pleasant to look at. The kingfisher 
 did not come no doubt he had been shot but 
 a reed-sparrow did, in velvet black cap and dainty 
 brown, pottering about the willow near me. This 
 was really like the beautiful river I had dreamed of. 
 If only we could persuade ourselves to remain qui- 
 escent when we are happy ! If only we would re- 
 main still in the armchair as the last curl of vapour 
 rises from a cigar that has been enjoyed ! If only 
 we would sit still in the shadow and not go indoors 
 to write that letter ! Let happiness alone. Stir not 
 an inch ; speak not a word : happiness is a coy 
 maiden hold her hand and be still. 
 
 In an evil moment I spied the corner of a news- 
 paper projecting from the pocket of my coat in the 
 stern-sheets. Folly led me to open that news- 
 paper, and in it I saw and read a ghastly paragraph. 
 Two ladies and a gentleman while boating had 
 been carried by the current against the piles of a 
 weir. The boat upset ; the ladies were rescued, 
 but the unfortunate gentleman was borne over 
 the fall and drowned. His body had not been 
 160
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 recovered j men were watching the pool day and 
 night till some chance eddy should bring it to the 
 surface. So perished my dream, and the coy- 
 maiden happiness left me because I could not be 
 content to be silent and still. The accident had 
 not happened at this weir, but it made no differ- 
 ence ; I could see all as plainly. A white face, 
 blurred and indistinct, seemed to rise up from be- 
 neath the rushing bubbles till, just as it was about 
 to jump to the surface, as things do that come up, 
 down it was drawn again by that terrible underpull 
 which has been fatal to so many good swimmers. 
 
 Who can keep afloat with a force underneath 
 dragging at the feet ? Who can swim when the 
 water all bubbles, that is, air gives no resistance 
 to the hands ? Hands and feet slip through the 
 bubbles. You might as well spring from the para- 
 pet of a house and think to float by striking out as 
 to swim in such a medium. Sinking under, a hun- 
 dred tons of water drive the body to the bottom ; 
 there it rotates, it rises, it is forced down again, 
 a hundred tons of water beat upon it ; the foot, 
 perhaps, catches among stones or woodwork, and 
 what was once a living being is imprisoned in death. 
 Enough of this. I unloosed the boathook, and 
 drifted down with the stream, anxious to get away 
 from the horrible weir. 
 
 These accidents, which are entirely preventable, 
 " 161
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 happen year after year with lamentable monotony. 
 Each weir is a little Niagara, and a boat once within 
 its influence is certain to be driven to destruction. 
 The current carries it against the piles, where it is 
 either broken or upset, the natural and reasonable 
 alarm of the occupants increasing the risk. In de- 
 scending the river every boat must approach the 
 weir, and must pass within a few yards of the 
 dangerous current. If there is a press of boats one 
 is often forced out of the proper course into the 
 rapid part of the stream without any negligence on 
 the part of those in it. There is nothing to prevent 
 this no fence, or boom ; no mark, even, between 
 what is dangerous and what is not ; no division 
 whatever. Persons ignorant of the river may just 
 as likely as not row right into danger. A vague 
 caution on a notice-board may or may not be seen ; 
 in either case it gives no directions, and is certainly 
 no protection. Let the matter be argued from 
 whatever point of view, the fact remains that these 
 accidents occur from the want of an efficient 
 division between the dangerous and the safe part of 
 the approach to a weir. A boom or some kind 
 of fence is required, and how extraordinary it 
 seems that nothing of the kind is done ! It is not 
 done because there is no authority, no control, no 
 one responsible. Two or three gentlemen ac- 
 quainted with aquatics could manage the river from 
 162
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 end to end, to the safety and satisfaction of all, if 
 they were entrusted with discretionary powers. Stiff 
 rules and rigid control are not needed ; what is 
 wanted is a rational power freely using its dis- 
 cretion. I do not mean a Board with its attendant 
 follies ; I mean a small committee, unfettered, un- 
 trammelled by " legal advisers" and so forth, merely 
 using their own good sense. 
 
 I drifted away from the weir now grown 
 hideous and out of hearing of its wailing dirge for 
 the unfortunate. I drifted past more barges coming 
 up, and more steam-tugs ; past river lawns, where 
 gay parties were now sipping claret-cup or playing 
 tennis. By-and-by I began to meet pleasure-boats 
 and to admire their manner of progress. First 
 there came a gentleman in white flannels, walking 
 on the tow-path, with a rope round his waist, 
 towing a boat in which two ladies were comfortably 
 seated. In a while came two more gentlemen in 
 striped flannels, one streaked with gold, the other 
 with scarlet, striding side by side and towing a boat 
 in which sat one lady. They were very earnestly 
 at work, pacing in step, their bodies slightly leaning 
 forwards, and every now and then they mopped 
 their faces with handkerchiefs which they carried 
 in their girdles. Something in their slightly bowed 
 attitude reminded me of the captives depicted on 
 Egyptian monuments, with cords about their necks. 
 -163-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 How curious is that instinct which makes each sex, 
 in different ways, the willing slave of the other ! 
 These human steam-tugs paced and pulled, and 
 drew the varnished craft swiftly against the stream, 
 evidently determined to do a certain distance by a 
 certain hour. As I drifted by without labour, I 
 admired them very much. An interval, and still 
 more gentlemen in flannel, labouring like galley- 
 slaves at the tow-rope, hot, perspiring, and happy 
 after their kind, and ladies under parasols, comfort- 
 ably seated, cool, and happy after their kind. 
 
 Considering upon these things, I began to dis- 
 cern the true and only manner in which the 
 modern Thames is to be enjoyed. Above all things 
 nothing heroic. Don't scull don't row 
 don't haul at tow-ropes don't swim don't 
 flourish a fishing-rod. Set your mind at ease. 
 Make friends with two or more athletes, thorough 
 good fellows, good-natured, delighting in their 
 thews and sinews. Explain to them that somehow, 
 don't you see, nature did not bless you with such 
 superabundant muscularity, although there is noth- 
 ing under the sun you admire so much. Forthwith 
 these good fellows will pet you, and your Thames 
 fortune is made. You take your place in the stern- 
 sheets, happily protected on either side by feminine 
 human nature, and the parasols meeting above 
 shield you from the sun. The tow-rope is ad- 
 164
 
 THE MODERN THAMES 
 
 justed, and the tugs start. The gliding motion 
 soothes the soul. Feminine boating nature has no 
 antipathy to the cigarette. A delicious odour, soft 
 as new-mown hay, a hint of spices and distant 
 flowers sunshine dried and preserved, sunshine 
 you can handle rises from the smouldering fibres. 
 This is smoking summer itself. Yonder in the 
 fore part of the craft I espy certain vessels of glass 
 on which is the label of Epernay. And of such 
 is peace. 
 
 Drifting ever downwards, I approached the 
 creek where my skiff had to be left ; but before I 
 reached it a " beach-comber," with a coil of cord 
 over his shoulder, asked me if he should tow me 
 " up to 'Ampton." I shook my head, whereupon 
 he abused me in such choice terms that I listened 
 abashed at my ignorance. It had never occurred to 
 me that swearing could be done like that. It is true 
 we have been swearing now, generation after gen- 
 eration, these eight thousand years for certain, and 
 language expands with use. It is also true that we 
 are all educated now. Shakespeare is credited with 
 knowing everything, past or future, but I doubt 
 if he knew how a Thames " beach-comber " can 
 curse in these days. 
 
 The Thames is swearing free. You must mod- 
 erate your curses on the Queen's highway ; you 
 must not be even profane in the streets, lest you 
 -165-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 be taken before the magistrates ; but on the 
 Thames you may swear as the wind blows 
 howsoever you list. You may begin at the mouth, 
 off the Nore, and <;urse your way up to Cricklade. 
 A hundred miles for swearing is a fine preserve. 
 It is one of the marvels of our civilisation. 
 
 Aided by scarce a touch of the sculls, the stream 
 drifted me up into the creek, and the boatman 
 took charge of his skiff. " Shall I keep her handy 
 for you, sir?" he said, thinking to get me down 
 every day as a newcomer. I begged him not to 
 put himself to any trouble, still he repeated that he 
 would keep her ready. But in the road I shook 
 off the dust of my feet against the river, and 
 earnestly resolved never, never again to have any- 
 thing to do with it (in the heroic way) lower 
 down than Henley. 
 
 166
 
 THE SINGLE-BARREL GUN 
 
 single-barrel gun has passed out of 
 modern sport; but I remember mine 
 with regret, and think I shall some day 
 buy another. I still find that the best 
 double-barrel seems top-heavy in comparison ; in 
 poising it the barrels have a tendency to droop. 
 Guns, of course, are built to balance and lie level 
 in the hand, so as to almost aim themselves as they 
 come to the shoulder ; and those who have always 
 shot with a double-barrel are probably quite satisfied 
 with the gun on that score. To me there seems 
 too much weight in the left hand and towards the 
 end of the gun. Quickness of firing keeps the 
 double-barrel to the front ; but suppose a repeater 
 were to be invented, some day, capable of dis- 
 charging two cartridges in immediate succession ? 
 And if two cartridges, why not three ? An easy 
 thought, but a very difficult one to realise. Some- 
 thing in the power of the double-barrel the over- 
 whelming odds it affords the sportsman over bird 
 and animal pleases. A man feels master of the 
 copse with a double-barrel ; and such a sense of 
 -167-
 
 TH E OPEN AIR 
 
 power, though only over feeble creatures, is fasci- 
 nating. Besides, there is the delight of effect ; for 
 a clever right and left is sure of applause, and 
 makes the gunner feel " good " in himself. Doubt- 
 less, if three barrels could be managed, three barrels 
 would be more salable than doubles. One gun- 
 maker has a four-barrel gun, quite a light weight 
 too, which would be a tremendous success if the 
 creatures would obligingly run and fly a little 
 slower, so that all four cartridges could be got 
 in. But that they will not do. For the present, 
 the double-barrel is the gun of the time. 
 
 Still I mean some day to buy a single-barrel, and 
 wander with it as of old along the hedges, aware 
 that if I am not skilful enough to bring down with 
 the first shot I shall lose my game. It is sur- 
 prising how confident of that one shot you may 
 get after a while. On the one hand, it is neces- 
 sary to be extremely keen ; on the other, to be sure 
 of your own self-control, not to fire uselessly. 
 The bramble-bushes on the shore of the ditch 
 ahead might cover a hare. Through the dank and 
 dark-green aftermath a rabbit might suddenly come 
 bounding, disturbed from the furrow where he had 
 been feeding. On the sandy paths which the 
 rabbits have made aslant up the mound, and on 
 their terraces, where they sit and look out from 
 under the boughs, acorns have dropped ripe from 
 
 168
 
 THE SINGLE-BARREL GUN 
 
 the tree. Where there are acorns there may be 
 pheasants; they may crouch in the fern and dry 
 grey grass of the hedge thinking you do not see 
 them, or else rush through and take wing on the 
 opposite side. The only chance of a shot is as 
 the bird passes a gap visible while flying a yard 
 just time to pull the trigger. But I would 
 rather have that chance than have to fire between 
 the bars of a gate ; for the horizontal lines cause 
 an optical illusion, making the object appear in a 
 different position from what it really is in, and 
 half the pellets are sure to be buried in the rails. 
 Wood-pigeons, when eagerly stuffing their crops 
 with acorns, sometimes forget their usual caution ; 
 and, walking slowly, I have often got right under- 
 neath one as unconscious of his presence as he 
 was of mine, till a sudden dashing of wings against 
 boughs and leaves announced his departure. This 
 he always makes on the opposite side of the oak, 
 so as to have the screen of the thick branches be- 
 tween himself and the gunner. The wood-pigeon, 
 starting like this from a tree, usually descends in the 
 first part of his flight, a gentle downward curve fol- 
 lowed by an upward rise, and thus comes into view 
 at the lower part of the curve. He still seems within 
 shot, and to afford a good mark ; and yet experience 
 has taught me that it is generally in vain to fire. 
 His stout quills protect him at the full range of the 
 169
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 gun. Besides, a wasted shot alarms everything 
 within several hundred yards ; and in stalking with 
 a single-barrel it needs as much knowledge to choose 
 when not to fire as. when you may. 
 
 The most exciting work with the single-barrel 
 was woodcock shooting ; woodcock being by virtue 
 of rarity a sort of royal game, and a miss at a 
 woodcock a terrible disappointment. They have 
 a trick of skimming along the very summit of a 
 hedge, and looking so easy to kill ; but, as they fly, 
 the tops of tall briers here, willow-rods next, or an 
 ash pole often intervene, and the result is apt to be 
 a bough cut off and nothing more. Snipes, on the 
 contrary, I felt sure of with the single-barrel, and 
 never could hit them so well with a double. Either 
 at starting, before the snipe got into his twist, or 
 waiting till he had finished that uncertain move- 
 ment, the single-barrel seemed to drop the shot with 
 certainty. This was probably because of its perfect 
 natural balance, so that it moved as if on a pivot. 
 With the single I had nothing to manage but my 
 own arms ; with the other I was conscious that I 
 had a gun also. With the single I could kill farther, 
 no matter what it was. The single was quicker at 
 short shots snap-shots, as at rabbits darting across 
 a narrow lane ; and surer at long shots, as at a hare 
 put out a good way ahead by the dog. 
 
 For everything but the multiplication of slaughter 
 170
 
 53C THE SINGLE-BARREL GUN SE 
 
 I liked the single best ; I had more of the sense of 
 woodcraft with it. When we consider how helpless 
 a partridge is, for instance, before the fierce blow 
 of shot, it does seem fairer that the gunner should 
 have but one chance at the bird. Partridges at least 
 might be kept for single-barrels: great bags of par- 
 tridges never seemed to me quite right. Somehow 
 it seems to me that to take so much advantage as 
 the double-barrel confers is not altogether in the 
 spirit of sport. The double-barrel gives no "law." 
 At least to those who love the fields, the streams, 
 and woods for their own sake, the single-barrel will 
 fill the bag sufficiently, and will permit them to enjoy 
 something of the zest men knew before the invention 
 of weapons not only of precision but of repetition : 
 inventions that rendered them too absolute masters 
 of the situation. A single-barrel will soon make a 
 sportsman the keenest of shots. The gun itself can 
 be built to an exquisite perfection lightness, handi- 
 ness, workmanship, and performance of the very best. 
 It is said that you can change from a single-barrel 
 shot-gun to a sporting rifle and shoot with the rifle 
 almost at once; while many who have been used to 
 the slap-dash double cannot do anything for some 
 time with a rifle. More than one African explorer 
 has found his single-barrel smooth-bore the most use- 
 ful of all the pieces in his battery ; though, of course, 
 of much larger calibre than required in our fields. 
 171
 
 THE HAU^T OF THE HARE 
 
 IT is never so much winter in the country as 
 it is in the town. The trees are still there, 
 and in and about them birds remain. "Quip! 
 whip ! " sounds from the elms ; " Whip ! 
 quip! " Redwing thrushes threaten with the "whip " 
 those who advance towards them; they spend much 
 of the day in the elm-tops. Thick tussocks of old 
 grass are conspicuous at the skirt of a hedge ; half 
 green, half grey, they contrast with the bare thorn. 
 From behind one of these tussocks a hare starts, his 
 black-tipped ears erect, his long hinder limbs throw- 
 ing him almost like a grasshopper over the sward 
 no creature looks so handsome or startling, and it is 
 always a pleasant surprise to see him. Pheasant or 
 partridge do not surprise in the least they are no 
 more than any other bird; but a hare causes quite a 
 different feeling. He is perfectly wild, unfed, un- 
 tended, and then he is the largest animal to be shot 
 in the fields. A rabbit slips along the mound, under 
 bushes and behind stoles, but a hare bolts for the 
 open and hopes in his speed. He leaves the strain- 
 ing spaniel behind, and the distance between them
 
 HAUNT OF THE 
 
 increases as they go. The spaniel's broad hind 
 paws are thrown wide apart as he runs, striking 
 outwards as well as backwards, and his large ears 
 are lifted by the wind of his progress. Overtaken 
 by the cartridge, still the hare, as he lies in the dewy 
 grass, is handsome ; lift him up and his fur is full 
 of colour, there are layers of tint, shadings of brown 
 within it, one under the other, and the surface is 
 exquisitely clean. The colours are not really bright, 
 at least not separately; but they are so clean and so 
 clear that they give an impression of warmth and 
 brightness. Even in the excitement of sport regret 
 cannot but be felt at the sight of those few drops of 
 blood about the mouth which indicate that all this 
 beautiful workmanship must now cease to be. Had 
 he escaped the sportsman would not have been 
 displeased. 
 
 The black bud-sheaths of the ash may furnish a 
 comparison for his ear-tips ; the brown brake in Oc- 
 tober might give one hue for his fur ; the yellow or 
 buff bryony leaf perhaps another ; the clematis is not 
 whiter than the white part. His colours, as those 
 of so many of our native wild creatures, appear 
 selected from the woods, as if they had been gath- 
 ered and skilfully mingled together. They can be 
 traced or paralleled in the trees, the bushes, grasses, 
 or flowers, as if extracted from them by a secret 
 alchemy. In the plumage of the partridge there 
 173
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 are tints that may be compared with the brown 
 corn, the brown ripe grains rubbed from the ear ; 
 it is in the cornfields that the partridge delights. 
 There the young brood are sheltered, there they feed 
 and grow plump. The red tips of other feathers 
 are reflections of the red sorrel of the meadows. 
 The grey fur of the rabbit resembles the grey ash 
 hue of the underwood in which he hides. 
 
 A common plant in moist places, the figwort, 
 bears small velvety flowers, much the colour of 
 the red velvet topknot of the goldfinch, the yellow 
 on whose wings is like the yellow bloom of the 
 furze which he frequents in the winter, perching 
 cleverly on its prickly extremities. In the woods, 
 in the bark of the trees, the varied shades of the 
 branches as their size diminishes, the adhering li- 
 chens, the stems of the underwood, now grey, now 
 green ; the dry stalks of plants, brown, white, or 
 dark, all the innumerable minor hues that cross and 
 interlace, there is suggested the woven texture of 
 tints found on the wings of birds. For brighter 
 tones the autumn leaves can be resorted to, and in 
 summer the finches rising from the grass spring up- 
 wards from among flowers that could supply them 
 with all their colours. But it is not so much the 
 brighter as the under tones that seem to have been 
 drawn from the woodlands or fields. Although no 
 such influence has really been exerted by the trees 
 174
 
 THE HAUNT OF THE 
 
 and plants upon the living creatures, yet it is pleas- 
 ant to trace the analogy. Those who would con- 
 vert it into a scientific fact are met with a dilemma 
 to which they are usually oblivious, /'. e. that most 
 birds migrate, and the very tints which in this 
 country might perhaps, by a stretch of argument, be 
 supposed to conceal them, in a distant climate with a 
 different foliage, or none, would render them con- 
 spicuous. Yet it is these analogies and imaginative 
 comparisons which make the country so delightful. 
 
 One day in autumn, after toiling with their guns, 
 which are heavy in the September heats, across the 
 fields and over the hills, the hospitable owner of the 
 place suddenly asked his weary and thirsty friend 
 which he would have, champagne, ale, or spirits. 
 They were just then in the midst of a cover, the 
 trees kept off the wind, the afternoon sun was warm, 
 and thirst very natural. They had not been shoot- 
 ing in the cover, but had to pass through to other 
 cornfields. It seemed a sorry jest to ask which 
 would be preferred in that lonely and deserted spot, 
 miles from home or any house whence refreshment 
 could be obtained wine, spirits, or ale ? an ab- 
 surd question, and irritating under the circumstan- 
 ces. As it was repeated persistently, however, the 
 reply was at length given, in no very good humour, 
 and wine chosen. Forthwith putting down his gun, 
 the interrogator pushed in among the underwood, 
 175
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 and from a cavity concealed beneath some bushes 
 drew forth a bottle of champagne. He had sev- 
 eral of these stores hidden in various parts of the 
 domain, ready whichever way the chance of sport 
 should direct their footsteps. 
 
 Now the dry wild parsnip, or " gicks," five feet 
 high, stands dead and dry, its jointed tube of dark 
 stem surmounted with circular frills or umbels ; 
 the teazle heads are brown, the great burdocks leaf- 
 less, and their burs, still adhering, are withered ; the 
 ground, almost free of obstruction, is comparatively 
 easy to search over, but the old sportsman is too 
 cunning to bury his wine twice in the same place, 
 and it is no use to look about. No birds in last 
 year's nest the winds have torn and upset the 
 mossy structures in the bushes ; no champagne in 
 last year's cover. The driest place is under the firs, 
 where the needles have fallen and strew the surface 
 thickly. Outside the wood, in the waggon track, the 
 beech leaves lie on the side of the mound, dry and 
 shrivelled at the top, but stir them, and under the top 
 layer they still retain the clear brown of autumn. 
 
 The ivy trailing on the bank is moist and freshly 
 green. There are two tints of moss ; one light, the 
 other deeper both very pleasant and restful to 
 the eye. These beds of moss are the greenest and 
 brightest of the winter's colours. Besides these 
 there are ale-hoof, or ground-ivy leaves (not the ivy 
 -176-
 
 HAUNT OF THE 
 
 that climbs trees), violet leaves, celandine mars, 
 primrose mars, foxglove mars, teazle mars, and 
 barren strawberry leaves, all green in the midst of 
 winter. One tiny white flower of barren straw- 
 berry has ventured to bloom. Round about the 
 lower end of each maple stick, just at the ground, 
 is a green wrap of moss. Though leafless above, 
 it is green at the foot. At the verge of the ploughed 
 field below, exposed as it is, chickweed, groundsel, 
 and shepherd's-purse are flowering. About a little 
 thorn there hang withered red berries of bryony, as 
 if the bare thorn bore fruit ; the bine of the climb- 
 ing plant clings to it still ; there are traces of " old 
 man's beard," the white fluffy relics of clematis 
 bloom, stained brown by the weather ; green cat- 
 kins droop thickly on the hazel. Every step pre- 
 sents some item of interest, and thus it is that it 
 is never so much winter in the country. Where 
 fodder has been thrown down in a pasture field for 
 horses, a black congregation of rooks has crowded 
 together in a ring. A solitary pole for trapping 
 hawks stands on the sloping ground outside the 
 cover. These poles are visited every morning 
 when the trap is there, and the captured crea- 
 ture put out of pain. Of the cruelty of the trap 
 itself there can be no doubt ; but it is very unjust 
 to assume that therefore those connected with sport 
 are personally cruel. In a farmhouse much fre- 
 i* 177
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 quented by rats, and from which they cannot be 
 driven out, these animals are said to have discov- 
 ered a means of defying the gin set for them. 
 One such gin was. placed in the cheese-room, near 
 a hole from which they issued, but they dragged 
 together pieces of straw, little fragments of wood, 
 and various odds and ends, and so covered the pan 
 that the trap could not spring. They formed, in 
 fact, a bridge over it. 
 
 Red and yellow fungi mark decaying places on 
 the trunks and branches of the trees ; their colour 
 is brightest when the boughs are bare. By a 
 streamlet wandering into the osier beds the winter 
 gnats dance in the sunshine, round about an old 
 post covered with ivy, on which green berries are 
 thick. The warm sunshine gladdens the hearts of 
 the moorhens floating on the water yonder by the 
 bushes, and their singular note, " coorg-ccorg," is 
 uttered at intervals. In the plantation close to the 
 house a fox resides as safe as King Louis in 
 " Quentin Durward," surrounded with his guards 
 and archers and fortified towers, though tokens of 
 his midnight rambles, in the shape of bones, strew 
 the front of his castle. He crosses the lawn in 
 sight of the windows occasionally, as if he really 
 knew and understood that his life is absolutely safe 
 at ordinary times,and that he need beware of nothing 
 but the hounds. 
 
 -178-
 
 THE BATHING SEASON 
 
 OST people who go on the West 
 Pier at Brighton walk at once 
 straight to the farthest part. This 
 is the order and custom of pier 
 promenading ; you are to stalk along the deck till 
 you reach the end, and there go round and round 
 the band in a circle like a horse tethered to an iron 
 pin, or else sit down and admire those who do go 
 round and round. No one looks back at the 
 gradually extending beach and the fine curve of 
 the shore. No one lingers where the surf breaks 
 immediately above it listening to the re- 
 morseful sigh of the dying wave as it sobs back to 
 the sea. There, looking downwards, the white 
 edge of the surf recedes in hollow crescents, curve 
 after curve for a mile or more, one succeeding 
 before the first can disappear and be replaced by a 
 fresh wave. A faint mistiness hangs above the 
 beach at some distance, formed of the salt particles 
 dashed into the air and suspended. At night, if 
 the tide chances to be up, the white surf rushing 
 in and returning immediately beneath has a strange 
 179
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 effect, especially in its pitiless regularity. If one 
 wave seems to break a little higher it is only in 
 appearance, and because you have not watched 
 long enough. In r< a certain number of times an- 
 other will break there again ; presently one will 
 encroach the merest trifle; after a while another 
 encroaches again, and the apparent irregularity is 
 really sternly regular. The free wave has no 
 liberty, it does not act for itself, no real gener- 
 ous wildness. " Thus far and no farther," is not 
 a merciful saying. Cold and dread and piti- 
 less, the wave claims its due it stretches its 
 arms to the fullest length, and does not pause or 
 hearken to the desire of any human heart. Hope- 
 less to appeal to is the unseen force that sends the 
 white surge underneath to darken the pebbles to a 
 certain line. The wetted pebbles are darker than 
 the dry ; even in the dusk they are easily distin- 
 guished. Something merciless, is there not, in this 
 conjunction of restriction and impetus ? Some- 
 thing outside human hope and thought indifferent 
 cold? 
 
 Considering in this way, I wandered about fifty 
 yards along the pier, and sat down in an abstracted 
 way on the seat on the right side. Beneath, the 
 clear green sea rolled in crestless waves towards 
 the shore they were moving "without the ani- 
 mation of the wind," which had deserted them two 
 180
 
 THE BATHING SEASON 
 
 days ago, and a hundred miles out at sea. Slower 
 and slower, with an indolent undulation, rising and 
 sinking of mere weight and devoid of impetus, the 
 waves passed on, scarcely seeming to break the 
 smoothness of the surface. At a little distance it 
 seemed level ; yet the boats every now and then 
 sank deeply into the trough, and even a large 
 fishing-smack rolled heavily. For it is the nature 
 of a groundswell to be exceedingly deceptive. 
 Sometimes the waves are so far apart that the sea 
 actually is level smooth as the surface of a 
 polished dining-table till presently there appears 
 a darker line slowly approaching, and a wave of 
 considerable size comes in,' advancing exactly like 
 the crease in the cloth which the housemaid spreads 
 on the table the air rolling along underneath it 
 forms a linen imitation of the groundswell. These 
 unexpected rollers are capital at upsetting boats 
 just touching the beach ; the boat is broadside on 
 and the occupants in the water in a second. To- 
 day the groundswell was more active, the waves 
 closer together, not having had time to forget the 
 force of the extinct gale. Yet the sea looked calm 
 as a millpond just the morning for a bath. 
 
 Along the yellow line where sand and pebbles 
 
 meet there stood a gallant band, in gay uniforms, 
 
 facing the water. Like the imperial legions who 
 
 were ordered to charge the ocean, and gather the 
 
 181
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 shells as spoils of war, the cohorts gleaming in 
 purple and gold extended their front rank their 
 fighting line one to a yard along the strand. Some 
 tall and stately ; some tall and slender ; some well 
 developed and firm on their limbs ; some gentle in 
 attitude, even in their war dress; some defiant; 
 perhaps forty or fifty, perhaps more, ladies ; a 
 splendid display of womanhood in the bright sun- 
 light. Blue dresses, pink dresses, purple dresses, 
 trimmings of every colour; a gallant show. The 
 eye had but just time to receive these impressions as 
 it were with a blow of the camera instantaneous 
 photography when, boom ! the groundswell was 
 on them, and, heavens, what a change ! They 
 disappeared. An arm projected here, possibly a 
 foot yonder, tresses floated on the surface like sea- 
 weed, but bodily they were gone. The whole 
 rank from end to end was overthrown more than 
 that, overwhelmed, buried, interred in water like 
 Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea. Crush ! It had 
 come on them like a mountain. The wave so 
 clear, so beautifully coloured, so cool and refreshing, 
 had struck their delicate bodies with the force of a 
 ton weight. Crestless and smooth to look at, in 
 reality that treacherous roller weighed at least a ton 
 to a yard. 
 
 Down went each fair bather as if hit with shot 
 from a Catling gun. Down she went, frantically, 
 182
 
 g=^g THE BATHING SEASON 
 
 and vainly grasping at a useless rope; down with 
 water driven into her nostrils, with a fragment, a tiny 
 blade, of seaweed forced into her throat, choking 
 her; crush on the hard pebbles, no feather bed, with 
 the pressure of a ton of water overhead, and the 
 strange rushing roar it makes in the ears. Down 
 she went, and at the same time was dragged head 
 foremost, sideways, anyhow, but dragged ground 
 along on the bitter pebbles some yards higher up 
 the beach, each pebble leaving its own particular 
 bruise, and the suspended sand filling the eyes. 
 Then the wave left her, and she awoke from the 
 watery nightmare to the bright sunlight, and the 
 hissing foam as it subsided, prone at full length, 
 high and dry like a stranded wreck. Perhaps her 
 head had tapped the wheel of the machine in a 
 friendly way a sort of genial battering ram. The 
 defeat was a perfect rout ; yet they recovered posi- 
 tion immediately. I fancy I did see one slip limply 
 to cover; but the main body rose manfully, and 
 picked their way with delicate feet on the hard, 
 hard stones back again to the water, again to meet 
 their inevitable fate. 
 
 The white ankles of the blonde gleaming in the 
 sunshine were distinguishable, even at that distance, 
 from the flesh tint of the brunette beside her, and 
 these again from the swarthiness of still darker 
 ankles, which did not gleam, but had a subdued 
 -183-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 colour like dead gold. The foam of a lesser wave 
 ran up and touched their feet submissively. Three 
 young girls in pink clustered together; one crouched 
 with her back to the sea and glanced over her timo- 
 rous shoulder. Another lesser wave ran up and 
 left a fringe of foam before them. I looked for a 
 moment out to sea and saw the smack roll heavily, 
 the big wave was coming. By now the bathers had 
 gathered confidence, and stepped, a little way at a 
 time, closer and closer down to the water. Some 
 even stood where each lesser wave rose to their 
 knees. Suddenly a few leant forwards, pulling 
 their ropes taut, and others turned sideways ; these 
 were the more experienced or observant. Boom ! 
 The big roller broke near the pier and then ran 
 along the shore ; it did not strike the whole length 
 at once, it came in aslant and rushed sideways. 
 The three in pink went first they were not far 
 enough from their machine to receive its full force, 
 it barely reached to the waist, and really I think it 
 was worse for them. They were lifted off their 
 feet and shot forward with their heads under water; 
 one appeared to be under the two others, a confused 
 mass of pink. Their white feet emerged behind the 
 roller, and as it sank it drew them back, grinding 
 them over the pebbles : every one knows how 
 pebbles grate and grind their teeth as a wave sub- 
 sides. Left lying on their faces, I guessed from 
 -184-
 
 THE BATHING SEASON 
 
 their attitudes that they had dug their finger-nails 
 into the pebbles in an effort to seize something that 
 would hold. Somehow they got on their knees and 
 crept up the slope of the beach. Beyond these three 
 some had been standing about up to their knees; 
 these were simply buried as before quite concealed 
 and thrown like beams of timber, head first, feet 
 first, high up on shore. Group after group went 
 down as the roller reached them, and the sea was 
 dyed for a minute with blue dresses, purple dresses, 
 pink dresses ; they coloured the wave which sub- 
 merged them. From end to end the whole rank 
 was again overwhelmed, nor did any position prove 
 of advantage ; those who sprang up as the wave 
 came were simply turned over and carried on their 
 backs, those who tried to dive under were swept 
 back by the tremendous under-rush. Sitting on the 
 beach, lying at full length, on hands and knees, lying 
 on this side or that, doubled up there they were, 
 as the roller receded, in every disconsolate attitude 
 imaginable; the curtain rose and disclosed the stage 
 in disorder. Again I thought I saw one or two 
 limp to their machines, but the main body adjusted 
 themselves and faced the sea. 
 
 Was there ever such courage? National untaught 
 courage inbred, and not built of gradual instruc- 
 tion as it were in hardihood. Yet some people 
 hesitate to give women the franchise ! actually, a 
 -185-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 miserable privilege which any poor fool of a man 
 may exercise. 
 
 I was philosophising admirably in this strain when 
 first a shadow cam$ and then the substance, that is, 
 a gentleman sat down by me and wished me good 
 morning, in a slightly different accent to that we usu- 
 ally hear. I looked wistfully at the immense length 
 of empty seats ; on both sides of the pier for two 
 hundred yards or more there extended an endless 
 empty seat. Why could not he have chosen a spot 
 to himself? Why must he place himself just here, 
 so close as to touch me? Four hundred yards of 
 vacant seats, and he could not find room for himself. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact in natural history that 
 one's elbow is sure to be jogged. It does not 
 matter what you do ; suppose you paint in the most 
 secluded spot, and insert yourself, moreover, in the 
 most inconspicuous part of that spot, some vacant 
 physiognomy is certain to intrude, glaring at you 
 with glassy eye. Suppose you do nothing (like 
 myself), no matter where you do it some inane 
 humanity obtrudes itself. I took out my note-book 
 once in a great open space at the Tower of London, 
 a sort of court or place of arms, quite open and a 
 gunshot across ; there was no one in sight, and if 
 there had been half a regiment they could have 
 passed (and would have passed) without interference. 
 I had scarcely written three lines when the pencil
 
 THE BATHING SEASON 
 
 flew up the page, some hulking lout having brushed 
 against me. He could not find room for himself. 
 A hundred yards of width was not room enough for 
 him to go by. He meant no harm,; it did not occur 
 to him that he could be otherwise than welcome. 
 He was the sort of man who calmly sleeps on your 
 shoulder in a train, and merely replaces his head 
 if you wake him twenty times. The very same thing 
 has happened to me in the parks, and in country 
 fields; particularly it happens at the British Museum 
 and the picture galleries, there is room sufficient in 
 all conscience ; but if you try to make a note or a 
 rough memorandum sketch you get a jog. There 
 is a jogger everywhere, just as there is a buzzing fly 
 everywhere in summer. The jogger travels, too. 
 
 One day, while studying in the Louvre, I am 
 certain three or four hundred French people went 
 by me, mostly provincials I fancy, countrv-folk, in 
 short, from their dress, which was not Parisian, and 
 their accent, which was not of the Boulevards. 
 Of all these not one interfered with me; they did 
 not approach within four or five feet. How grate- 
 ful I felt towards them ! One man and his sweet- 
 heart, a fine Southern girl with dark eyes and 
 sun-browned cheeks, sat down near me on one 
 of the scanty seats provided. The man put his 
 umbrella and his hat on the seat beside him. 
 What could be more natural ? No one else was 
 -187-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 there, and there was room for three more couples. 
 Instantly an official an authority ! stepped 
 hastily forward from the shadow of some sculpture 
 (beasts of prey abide in darkness), snatched up the 
 umbrella and hat, and rudely dashed them on the 
 floor. In a flow of speech he explained that noth- 
 ing must be placed on the seats. The man, who 
 had his handkerchief in his hand, quietly dropped it 
 into his hat on the floor and replied nothing. This 
 was an official "jogger." I felt indignant to see 
 and hear people treated in this rough manner ; but 
 the provincial was used to the jogger system and 
 heeded it not. My own jogger was coming. 
 Three to four hundred country-folk had gone by 
 gently and in a gentlemanly way. Then came an 
 English gentleman, middle-aged, florid, not much 
 tinctured with art or letters, but garnished with 
 huge gold watchchain and with wealth as it were 
 bulging out of his waistcoat pocket. This gentle- 
 man positively walked into me, pushed me 
 literally pushed me aside and took my place, a place 
 valuable to me at that moment for one special 
 aspect, and having shoved me aside, gazed about 
 him through his eyeglass, I suppose to discover 
 what it was interested me. He was a genuine, 
 thoroughbred jogger. The vast galleries of the 
 Louvre had not room enough for him. He was 
 one of the most successful joggers in the world, I
 
 THE BATHING SEASON 
 
 feel sure ; any family might be proud of him. 
 While I am thus digressing, the bathers have gone 
 over thrice. 
 
 The individual who had sat himself down by me 
 produced a little box and offered me a lozenge. I 
 did not accept it ; he took one himself in token 
 that they were harmless. Then he took a second, 
 and a third, and began to tell me of their virtues ; 
 they cured this and they alleviated that, they were 
 the greatest discovery of the age ; this universal 
 lozenge was health in the waistcoat pocket, a 
 medicine-chest between finger and thumb ; the 
 secret had been extracted at last, and nature had 
 given up the ghost as it were of her hidden physic. 
 His eloquence conjured up in my mind a vision of 
 the rocks beside the Hudson river papered over 
 with acres of advertising posters. But no ; by his 
 further conversation I found that I had mentally 
 slandered him ; he was not a proprietor of patent 
 medicine ; he was a man of education and private 
 means ; he belonged to a much higher profession, 
 in fact he was a "jogger" travelling about from 
 place to place " globe-trotting " from capital city 
 to watering-place all over the world in the exer- 
 cise of his function. I had wondered if his accent 
 was American (petroleum-American), or German, 
 or Italian, or Russian, or what. Now I wondered 
 no longer, for the jogger is cosmopolitan. When 
 -189-
 
 g^-^sra^gg THE OPEN AIR 
 
 he had exhausted his lozenge he told me how many 
 times the screw of the steamer revolved while 
 carrying him across the Pacific from Yokohama to 
 San Francisco. \ nearly suggested that it was 
 about equal to the number of times his tongue had 
 vibrated in the last ten minutes. The bathers 
 went over twice more. I was anxious to take 
 note of their bravery, and turned aside, leaning over 
 the iron back of the seat. He went on just the 
 same j a hint was no more to him than a feather 
 bed to an ironclad. 
 
 My rigid silence was of no avail ; so long as my 
 ears were open he did not care. He was a very 
 energetic jogger. However, it occurred to me to 
 try another plan : I turned towards him (he would 
 much rather have had my back) and began to talk 
 in the most strident tones I could command. I 
 pointed out to him that the pier was decked like a 
 vessel, that the cliffs were white, that a lady pass- 
 ing had a dark blue dress on, which did not suit 
 with the green sea, not because it was blue, but be- 
 cause it was the wrong tint of blue; I informed 
 him that the Pavilion was once the residence of 
 royalty, and similar novelties ; all in a string with- 
 out a semicolon. His eyes opened ; he fumbled 
 with his lozenge-box, said " Good morning," and 
 went on up the pier. I watched him go Eng- 
 lish-Americano-Germano-Franco-Prussian-Russian- 
 190
 
 THE BATHING SEASON 
 
 Chinese -New Zealander that he was. But he 
 was not a man of genius; you could choke him 
 off by talking. Still he had effectually jogged me 
 and spoiled my contemplative enjoyment of the 
 bathers' courage j upon the whole I thought I 
 would go down on the beach now and see them a 
 little closer. The truth is, I suppose, that it is 
 people like myself who are in the wrong, or are in 
 the way. What business had I to make a note in 
 the Tower yard, or study in the Louvre ? what 
 business have I to think, or indulge myself in an 
 idea? What business has any man to paint, or 
 sketch, or do anything of the sort ? I suppose 
 the joggers are in the right. 
 
 Dawdling down Whitehall one day a jogger 
 nailed me they come to me like flies to honey 
 and got me to look at his pamphlet. He went 
 about, he said, all his time distributing them as a 
 duty for the safety of the nation. The pamphlet 
 was printed in the smallest type, and consisted of 
 extracts from various prophetical authors, pointing 
 out the enormity of the Babylonian Woman, or 
 the City of Scarlet, or some such thing ; the gist 
 being the bitterest almost scurrilous attack on 
 the Church of Rome. The jogger told me, with 
 tears of pride in his eyes and a glorified counte- 
 nance, that only a few days before, in the waiting- 
 room of a railway station, he had the pleasure to 
 191
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 present his pamphlet to Cardinal Manning. And 
 the Cardinal bowed and put it in his pocket. 
 
 Just as everybody walks on the sunny side of 
 Regent-street, so, % there are certain spots on the 
 beach where people crowd together. This is one 
 of them ; just west of the West Pier there is a 
 fair between eleven and one every bright morn- 
 ing. Everybody goes because everybody else does. 
 Mamma goes down to bathe with her daughters 
 and the little ones ; they take two machines at 
 least ; the pater comes to smoke his cigar ; the 
 young fellows of the family party come to look at 
 " the women," as they irreverently speak of the sex. 
 So the story runs on ad infimtum, down to the shoe- 
 less ones that turn up everywhere. Every seat is 
 occupied ; the boats and small yachts are rilled ; 
 some of the children pour pebbles into the boats, 
 some carefully throw them out ; wooden spades are 
 busy ; sometimes they knock each other on the 
 head with them, sometimes they empty pails of 
 sea-water on a sister's frock. There is a squeal- 
 ing, squalling, screaming, shouting, singing, bawl- 
 ing, howling, whistling, tin-trumpeting, and every 
 luxury of noise. Two or three bands work away ; 
 niggers clatter their bones ; a conjurer in red throws 
 his heels in the air ; several harps strum merrily 
 different strains ; fruit-sellers push baskets into 
 folks' faces; sellers of wretched needlework and 
 _, 9 a_
 
 THE BATHING SEASON 
 
 singular baskets coated with shells thrust their rub- 
 bish into people's laps. These shell baskets date from 
 George IV. The gingerbeer men and the newsboys 
 cease not from troubling. Such a volume of uproar, 
 such a complete organ of discord I mean a whole 
 organful cannot be found anywhere else on the 
 face of the earth in so comparatively small a space. 
 It is a sort of triangular plot of beach crammed with 
 everything that ordinarily annoys the ears and offends 
 the sight. 
 
 Yet you hear nothing and see nothing; it is 
 perfectly comfortable, perfectly jolly and exhilarat- 
 ing, a preferable spot to any other. A sparkle of 
 sunshine on the breakers, a dazzling gleam from 
 the white foam, a warm sweet air, light and bright- 
 ness and champagniness ; altogether lovely. The 
 way in which people lie about on the beach, their 
 legs this way, and their arms that, their hats over 
 their eyes, their utter give-themselves-up expression 
 of attitude is enough in itself to make a reasonable 
 being contented. Nobody cares for anybody ; they 
 drowned Mrs. Grundy long ago. The ancient phi- 
 losopher (who had a mind to eat a fig) held that a 
 nail driven into wood could only support a certain 
 weight. After that weight was exceeded either the 
 wood must break or the nail come out. Yonder is 
 a wooden seat put together with nails a flimsy 
 contrivance, which defies all rules of gravity and 
 13 _ 193
 
 THE OPEN AIR SEE! 
 
 adhesion. One leg leans one way, the other in the 
 opposite direction ; very lame legs indeed. Care- 
 ful folk would warn you not to sit on it lest it 
 should come to pieces. The music, I suppose, 
 charms it, for it holds together in the most mar- 
 vellous manner. Four people are sitting on it, 
 four big ones, middle-aged, careful people; every 
 moment the legs gape wide apart, the structure 
 visibly stretches and yields and sinks in the peb- 
 bles, yet it does not come down. The stoutest of 
 all sits actually over the lame legs, reading his 
 paper quite oblivious of the odd angle his plump 
 person makes, quite unconscious of the threatened 
 crack crash ! It does not happen. A sort of 
 magnetism sticks it together ; it is in the air ; 
 it makes things go right that ought to go wrong. 
 Awfully naughty place ; no sort of idea of right- 
 ness here. Humming and strumming, and singing 
 and smoking, splashing, and sparkling; a buzz of 
 voices and booming of sea ! If they could only be 
 happy like this always ! 
 
 Mamma has a tremendous fight over the bathing- 
 dresses, her own, of course ; the bathing woman 
 cannot find them, and denies that she had them, 
 and by-and-by, after half an hour's exploration, 
 finds them all right, and claims commendation for 
 having put them away so safely. Then there is 
 the battle for a machine. The nurse has been 
 194
 
 THE BATHING SEASON 
 
 keeping guard on the steps, to seize it the instant 
 the occupant comes out. At last they get it, and 
 the wonder is how they pack themselves in it. 
 Boom ! The bathers have gone over, again, I 
 know. The rope stretches as the men at the cap- 
 stan go round, and heavC up the machines one by 
 one before the devouring tide. 
 
 As it is not at all rude, but the proper thing to 
 do, I thought I would venture a little nearer (not 
 too obtrusively near) and see closer at hand how 
 brave womanhood faced the rollers. There was a 
 young girl lying at full length at the edge of the 
 foam. She reclined parallel to the beach, not with 
 her feet towards the sea, but so that it came to her 
 side. She was clad in some material of a gauzy 
 and yet opaque texture, permitting the full outline 
 and the least movement to be seen. The colour I 
 do not exactly know how to name ; they could tell 
 you at the Magasin du Louvre, where men under- 
 stand the hues of garments as well as women. I 
 presume it was one of the many tints that are called 
 at large " creamy." It suited her perfectly. Her 
 complexion was in the faintest degree swarthy, and 
 yet not in the least like what a lady would associ- 
 ate with that word. The difficulty in describing a 
 colour is that different people take different views 
 of the terms employed; ladies have one scale founded 
 a good deal on dress, men another, and painters have 
 195
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 a special (and accurate) gamut which they use in the 
 studio. This was a clear swarthiness a translu- 
 cent swarthiness clear as the most delicate white. 
 There was something in the hue of her neck as freely 
 shown by the loose bathing-dress, of her bare arms 
 and feet, somewhat recalling to mind the kind of 
 beauty attributed to the Queen of Egypt. But it 
 was more delicate. Her form was almost fully de- 
 veloped, more so than usual at her age. Again and 
 again the foam rushed up deep enough to cover her 
 limbs, but not sufficiently so to hide her chest, as 
 she was partly raised on one arm. Washed thus 
 with the purest whiteness of the sparkling foam, 
 her beauty gathered increase from the touch of the 
 sea. She swayed slightly as the water reached her, 
 she was luxuriously rocked to and fro. The waves 
 toyed with her; they came and retired, happy in 
 her presence; the breeze and the sunshine were 
 there. 
 
 Standing somewhat back, the machines hid the 
 waves from me till they reached the shore, so that 
 I did not observe the heavy roller till it came and 
 broke. A ton of water fell on her, crush ! The edge 
 of the wave curled and dropped over her, the arch 
 bowed itself above her, the keystone of the wave 
 fell in. She was under the surge while it rushed up 
 and while it rushed back ; it carried her up to the 
 steps of the machine and back again to her origi- 
 196
 
 THE BATHING SEASON 
 
 nal position. When it subsided she simply shook 
 her head, raised herself on one arm, and adjusted 
 herself parallel to the beach as before. 
 
 Let any one try this, let any one lie for a few 
 minutes just where the surge bursts, and he will 
 understand what it means. Men go out to the 
 length of their ropes past and outside the line 
 of the breakers, or they swim still farther out 
 and ride at ease where the wave, however large, 
 merely lifts them pleasantly as it rolls under. But 
 the smashing force of the wave is where it curls 
 and breaks, and it is there that the ladies wait 
 for it. It is these breakers in a gale that tear 
 to pieces and destroy the best-built ships once 
 they touch the shore, scattering their timbers as 
 the wind scatters leaves. The courage and the en- 
 durance women must possess to face a groundswell 
 like this ! 
 
 All the year they live in luxury and ease, and 
 are shielded from everything that could hurt. A 
 bruise a lady to receive a bruise ; it is not to be 
 thought of! If a ruffian struck a lady in Hyde 
 Park the world would rise from its armchair in 
 a fury of indignation. These waves and pebbles 
 bruise them as they list. They do not even flinch. 
 There must, then, be a natural power of endurance 
 in them. 
 
 It is unnecessary, and yet I was proud to see 
 197
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 it. An English lady could do it ; but could any 
 other ? unless, indeed, an American of English 
 descent. Still, it is a barbarous thing, for bathing 
 could be easily rendered pleasant. The cruel roller 
 receded, the soft breeze blew, the sunshine sparkled, 
 the gleaming foam rushed up and gently rocked her. 
 The Infanta Cleopatra lifted her arm gleaming wet 
 with spray, and extended it indolently; the sun had 
 only given her a more seductive loveliness. How 
 much more enjoyable the sea and breeze and sun- 
 shine when one is gazing at something so beauti- 
 ful. That arm, rounded and soft 
 
 " Excuse me, sir, but your immortal soul " a 
 hand was placed on my elbow. I turned, and saw 
 a beaming face; a young lady, elegantly dressed, 
 placed a fly-sheet of good intentions in my fingers. 
 The fair jogger beamed yet more sweetly as I 
 took it, and went on among the crowd. When 
 I looked back the Infanta Cleopatra had ascended 
 into her machine. I had lost the last few mo- 
 ments of loveliness. 
 
 -198-
 
 UNDER THE ACORNS 
 
 X^ S ^|OMING along a woodland lane, a 
 if ** small round and glittering object in 
 
 the brushwood caught my attention. 
 
 The ground was but just hidden in 
 that part of the wood with a thin growth of 
 brambles, low, and more like creepers than any- 
 thing else. These scarcely hid the surface, which 
 was brown with the remnants of oak-leaves ; there 
 seemed so little cover, indeed, that a mouse might 
 have been seen. But at that spot some great spurge- 
 plants hung this way and that, leaning aside, as if 
 the stems were too weak to uphold the heads of 
 dark-green leaves. Thin grasses, perfectly white, 
 bleached by sun and dew, stood in a bunch by 
 the spurge ; their seeds had fallen, the last dregs 
 of sap had dried within them, there was nothing 
 left but the bare stalks. A creeper of bramble 
 fenced round one side of the spurge and white 
 grass bunch, and brown leaves were visible on 
 the surface of the ground through the interstices 
 of the spray. It was in the midst of this little 
 thicket that a small, dark, and glittering object
 
 S>E3=S3i=3K THE OPEN AIR sE 
 
 caught my attention. I knew it was the eye of 
 some creature at once, but, supposing it nothing 
 more than a young rabbit, was passing on, think- 
 ing of other matters, when it occurred to me, be- 
 fore I could finish the step I had taken, so quick 
 is thought, that the eye was not large enough to 
 be that of a rabbit. I stopped ; the black glitter- 
 ing eye had gone the creature had lowered its 
 neck, but immediately noticing that I was look- 
 ing in that direction, it cautiously raised itself a 
 little, and I saw at once that the eye was the eye 
 of a bird. This I knew first by its size, and next 
 by its position in relation to the head, which was 
 invisible for had it been a rabbit or hare, its ears 
 would have projected. The moment after, the eye 
 itself confirmed this the nictitating membrane 
 was rapidly drawn over it, and as rapidly removed. 
 This membrane is the distinguishing mark of a 
 bird's eye. But what bird ? Although I was 
 within two yards, I could not even see its head, 
 nothing but the glittering eyeball, on which the 
 light of the sun glinted. The sunbeams came 
 over my shoulder straight into the bird's face. 
 
 Without moving which I did not wish to do, 
 as it would disturb the bird I could not see its 
 plumage ; the bramble spray in front, the spurge 
 behind, and the bleached grasses at the side, per- 
 fectly concealed it. Only two birds I considered 
 
 200
 
 UNDER THE ACORNS 
 
 would be likely to squat and remain quiescent like 
 this partridge or pheasant; but I could not con- 
 trive to view the least portion of the neck. A 
 moment afterwards the eye came up again, and 
 the bird slightly moved its head, when I saw its 
 beak, and knew it was a pheasant immediately. 
 I then stepped forward almost on the bird 
 and a young pheasant rose, and flew between the 
 tree-trunks to a deep dry watercourse, where it 
 disappeared under some withering yellow ferns. 
 
 Of course I could easily have solved the prob- 
 lem long before, merely by startling the bird ; but 
 what would have been the pleasure of that ? Any 
 plough-lad could have forced the bird to rise, and 
 would have recognised it as a pheasant; to me, 
 the pleasure consisted in discovering it under every 
 difficulty. That was woodcraft ; to kick the bird 
 up would have been simply nothing at all. Now 
 I found why I could not see the pheasant's neck 
 or body ; it was not really concealed, but shaded 
 out by the mingled hues of white grasses, the brown 
 leaves of the surface, and the general grey -brown 
 tints. Now it was gone, there was a vacant space 
 its plumage had filled up that vacant space with 
 hues so similar that, at no farther distance than 
 two yards, I did not recognise it by colour. Had 
 the bird fully carried out its instinct of conceal- 
 ment, and kept its head down as well as its body,
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 I should have passed it. Nor should I have seen 
 its head if it had looked the other way ; the eye 
 betrayed its presence. The dark glittering eye, 
 which the sunlight touched, caught my attention 
 instantly. There is nothing like an eye in inani- 
 mate nature ; no flower, no speck on a bough, no 
 gleaming stone wet with dew, nothing, indeed, to 
 which it can be compared. The eye betrayed it ; 
 I could not overlook an eye. Neither nature nor 
 inherited experience had taught the pheasant to hide 
 its eye ; the bird not only wished to conceal itself, 
 but to watch my motions, and, looking up from its 
 cover, was immediately observed. 
 
 At a turn of the lane there was a great heap of 
 oak " chumps," crooked logs, sawn in lengths, and 
 piled together. They were so crooked, it was 
 difficult to find a seat, till I hit on one larger than 
 the rest. The pile of " chunks " rose half-way up 
 the stem of an oak tree, and formed a wall of wood 
 at my back ; the oak boughs reached over and 
 made a pleasant shade. The sun was warm enough 
 to render resting in the open air delicious, the 
 wind cool enough to prevent the heat becoming 
 too great ; the pile of timber kept off the draught, 
 so that I could stay and listen to the gentle " hush, 
 rush " of the breeze in the oak above me ; " hush " 
 as it came slowly, " rush " as it came fast, and a 
 low undertone as it nearly ceased. So thick were
 
 UNDER THE ACORNS 
 
 the haws on a bush of thorn opposite, that they 
 tinted the hedge a red colour among the yellowing 
 hawthorn-leaves. To this red hue the blackberries 
 that were not ripe, the thick dry red sorrel stalks, 
 a bright canker on a brier almost as bright as a 
 rose, added their colours. Already the foliage of 
 the bushes had been thinned, and it was possible to 
 see through the upper parts of the boughs. The 
 sunlight, therefore, not only touched their outer 
 surfaces, but passed through and lit up the branches 
 within, and the wild-fruit upon them. Though 
 the sky was clear and blue between the clouds, 
 that is, without mist or haze, the sunbeams were 
 coloured the faintest yellow, as they always are on 
 a ripe autumn day. This yellow shone back from 
 grass and leaves, from bough and tree-trunk, and 
 seemed to stain the ground. It is very pleasant to 
 the eyes, a soft, delicate light, that gives another 
 beauty to the atmosphere. Some roan cows were 
 wandering down the lane, feeding on the herbage 
 at the side ; their colour, too, was lit up by the 
 peculiar light, which gave a singular softness to 
 the large shadows of the trees upon the sward. 
 In a meadow by the wood the oaks cast broad 
 shadows on the short velvety sward, not so sharp 
 and definite as those of summer, but tender, and, 
 as it were, drawn with a loving hand. They were 
 large shadows, though it was mid-day a sign 
 203
 
 =-=30Esr=3g THE OPEN AIR 
 
 that the sun was no longer at his greatest height, 
 but declining. In July they would scarcely have 
 extended beyond the rim of the boughs ; the rays 
 would have dropped perpendicularly, now they 
 slanted. Pleasant as it was, there was regret in 
 the thought that the summer was going fast. 
 Another sign the grass by the gateway, an acre 
 of it, was brightly yellow with hawkweeds, and 
 under these were the last faded brown heads of 
 meadow clover; the brown, the bright yellow 
 disks, the green grass, the tinted sunlight falling 
 upon it, caused a wavering colour that fleeted 
 before the glance. 
 
 All things brown, and yellow, and red, are 
 brought out by the autumn sun ; the brown fur- 
 rows freshly turned where the stubble was yester- 
 day, the brown bark of trees, the brown fallen 
 leaves, the brown stalks of plants ; the red haws, 
 the red unripe blackberries, red bryony berries, 
 reddish-yellow fungi ; yellow hawkweed, yellow 
 ragwort, yellow hazel-leaves, elms, spots in lime or 
 beech ; not a speck of yellow, red, or brown the 
 yellow sunlight does not find out. And these 
 make autumn, with the caw of rooks, the peculiar 
 autumn caw of laziness and full feeding, the sky 
 blue as March between the great masses of dry 
 cloud floating over, the mist in the distant valleys, 
 the tinkle of traces "as the plough turns, and the 
 204
 
 UNDER THE ACORNS 
 
 silence of the woodland birds. The lark calls as 
 he rises from the earth, the swallows still wheeling 
 call as they go over, but the woodland birds are 
 mostly still, and the restless sparrows gone forth in 
 a cloud to the stubble. Dry clouds, because they 
 evidently contain no moisture that will fall as rain 
 here ; thick mists, condensed haze only, floating 
 on before the wind. The oaks were not yet yellow, 
 their leaves were half green, half brown ; Time 
 had begun to invade them, but had not yet indented 
 his full mark. 
 
 Of the year there are two most pleasurable 
 seasons : the spring, when the oak leaves come 
 russet-brown on the great oaks ; the autumn, when 
 the oak leaves begin to turn. At the one, I enjoy 
 the summer that is coming ; at the other, the 
 summer that is going. At either, there is a fresh- 
 ness in the atmosphere, a colour everywhere, a 
 depth of blue in the sky, a welcome in the woods. 
 The redwings had not yet come; the acorns were 
 full, but still green ; the greedy rooks longed to 
 see them riper. They were very numerous, the 
 oaks covered with them, a crop for the greedy 
 rooks, the greedier pigeons, the pheasants, and the 
 jays. 
 
 One thing I missed the corn. So quickly 
 was the harvest gathered, that those who delight in 
 the colour of the wheat had no time to enjoy it. 
 205
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 If any painter had been looking forward to August 
 to enable him to paint the corn, he must have been 
 disappointed. There was no time ; the sun came, 
 saw, and conquered, and the sheaves were swept 
 from the field. Before yet the reapers had entered 
 one field of ripe wheat, I did indeed for a brief 
 evening obtain a glimpse of the richness and still 
 beauty of an English harvest. The sun was down, 
 and in the west a pearly grey light spread widely, 
 with a little scarlet drawn along its lower border. 
 Heavy shadows hung in the foliage of the elms j 
 the clover had closed, and the quiet moths had 
 taken the place of the humming bees. Southwards, 
 the full moon, a red-yellow disk, shone over the 
 wheat, which appeared the finest pale amber. A 
 quiver of colour an undulation seemed to stay 
 in the air, left from the heated day ; the sunset 
 hues and those of the red-tinted moon fell as it 
 were into the remnant of day, and filled the wheat ; 
 they were poured into it, so that it grew in their 
 colours. Still heavier the shadows deepened in the 
 elms ; all was silence, save for the sound of the 
 reapers on the other side of the hedge, slash 
 rustle, slash rustle, and the drowsy night came 
 down as softly as an eyelid. 
 
 While I sat on the log under the oak, every now 
 and then wasps came to the crooked pieces of sawn 
 timber, which had been barked. They did not 
 206
 
 UNDER THE ACORNS 
 
 appear to be biting it they can easily snip off 
 fragments of the hardest oak, they merely alighted 
 and examined it, and went on again. Looking at 
 them, I did not notice the lane till something moved, 
 and two young pheasants ran by along the middle 
 of the track and into the cover at the side. The 
 grass at the edge which they pushed through closed 
 behind them, and feeble as it was grass only it 
 shut off the interior of the cover as firmly as iron 
 bars. The pheasant is a strong lock upon the woods ; 
 like one of Chubb's patent locks, he closes the woods 
 as firmly as an iron safe can be shut. Wherever the 
 pheasant is artificially reared, and a great " head " 
 kept up for battue-shooting, there the woods are 
 sealed. No matter if the wanderer approach with 
 the most harmless of intentions, it is exactly the 
 same as if he were a species of burglar. The 
 botanist, the painter, the student of nature, all are 
 met with the high-barred gate and the threat of law. 
 Of course, the pheasant lock can be opened by the 
 silver key; still, there is the fact, that since pheasants 
 have been bred on so large a scale, half the beauti- 
 ful woodlands of England have been fastened up. 
 Where there is no artificial rearing there is much 
 more freedom ; those who love the forest can roam 
 at their pleasure, for it is not the fear of damage that 
 locks the gate, but the pheasant. In every sense, 
 the so-called sport of battue-shooting is injurious
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 injurious to the sportsman, to the poorer class, to the 
 community. Every true sportsman should discourage 
 it, and indeed does. I was talking with a thorough 
 sportsman recently^, who told me, to my delight, that 
 he never reared birds by hand j yet he had a fair 
 supply, and could always give a good day's sport, 
 judged as any reasonable man would judge sport. 
 Nothing must enter the domains of the hand-reared 
 pheasant ; even the nightingale is not safe. A 
 naturalist has recorded that in a district he visited, 
 the nightingales were always shot by the keepers 
 and their eggs smashed, because the singing of these 
 birds at night disturbed the repose of the pheasants ! 
 They also always stepped on the eggs of the fern- 
 owl, which are laid on the ground, and shot the bird 
 if they saw it, for the same reason, as it makes a 
 jarring sound at dusk. The fern-owl, or goatsucker, 
 is one of the most harmless of birds -a sort of 
 evening swallow living on moths, chafers, and 
 similar night-flying insects. I 
 
 Continuing my walk, still under the oaks and 
 green acorns, I wondered why I did not meet any 
 one. There was a man cutting fern in the wood 
 a labourer and another cutting up thistles in a 
 field ; but with the exception of men actually em- 
 ployed and paid, I did not meet a single person, 
 though the lane I was following is close to several 
 well-to-do places. I call that a well-to-do place
 
 UNDER THE ACORNS 
 
 where there are hundreds of large villas inhabited 
 by wealthy people. It is true that the great majority 
 of persons have to attend to business, even if they 
 enjoy a good income ; still, making every allowance 
 for such a necessity, it is singular how few, how very 
 few, seem to appreciate the quiet beauty of this lovely 
 country. Somehow they do not seem to see it to 
 look over it ; there is no excitement in it, for one 
 thing. They can see a great deal in Paris, but 
 nothing in an English meadow. I have often won- 
 dered at the rarity of meeting any one in the fields, 
 and yet curious anomaly if you point out any- 
 thing, or describe it, the interest exhibited is marked. 
 Every one takes an interest, but no one goes to see 
 for himself. For instance, since the natural history 
 collection was removed from the British Museum to 
 a separate building at South Kensington, it is stated 
 that the visitors to the Museum have fallen from an 
 average of twenty-five hundred a day to one thousand; 
 the inference is that out of every twenty-five, fifteen 
 came to see the natural history cases. Indeed, it is 
 difficult to find a person who does not take an interest 
 in some department of natural history, and yet I 
 scarcely ever meet any one in the fields. You may 
 meet many in the autumn, far away in places famous 
 for scenery, but almost none in the meadows at 
 home. 
 
 I stayed by a large pond to look at the shadows of 
 14 209
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 the trees on the green surface of duckweed. The 
 soft green of the smooth weed received the shadows 
 as if specially prepared to show them to advantage. 
 The more the tree was divided the more interlaced 
 its branches and less laden with foliage, the more it 
 "came out " on the green surface ; each slender twig 
 was reproduced, and sometimes even the leaves. 
 From an oak, and from a lime, leaves had fallen, 
 and remained on the green weed ; the flags by the 
 shore were turning brown ; a tint of yellow was 
 creeping up the rushes, and the great trunk of a fir 
 shone reddish brown in the sunlight. There was 
 colour even about the still pool, where the weeds 
 grew so thickly that the moorhens could scarcely 
 swim through them.
 
 DOWNS 
 
 A GOOD road is recognised as the ground- 
 ff\ \ work of civilisation. So long as there 
 if- X \ is a firm and artificial track under his 
 *sL > \ feet the traveller may be said to be in 
 contact with city and town, no matter how far they 
 may be distant. A yard or two outside the rail- 
 way in America the primeval forest or prairie often 
 remains untouched, and much in the same way, 
 though in a less striking degree at first sight, some 
 of our own highways winding through Down dis- 
 tricts are bounded by undisturbed soil. Such a 
 road wears for itself a hollow, and the bank at the 
 top is fringed with long rough grass hanging over 
 the crumbling chalk. Broad discs of greater knap- 
 weed with stalks like wire, and yellow toad-flax 
 with spotted lip grow among it. Grasping this 
 tough grass as a handle to climb up by, the ex- 
 plorer finds a rising slope of sward, and having 
 walked over the first ridge, shutting off the road 
 behind him, is at once out of civilisation. There 
 is no noise. Wherever there are men there is a 
 hum, even in the harvest-field; and in the road
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 below, though lonely, there is sometimes the sharp 
 clatter of hoofs or the grating of wheels on flints. 
 But here the long, long slopes, the endless ridges, 
 the gaps between, hazy and indistinct, are abso- 
 lutely without noise. In the sunny autumn day 
 the peace of the sky overhead is reflected in the 
 silent earth. Looking out over the steep hills, the 
 first impression is of an immense void like the sea ; 
 but there are sounds in detail, the twitter of passing 
 swallows, the restless buzz of bees at the thyme, 
 the rush of the air beaten by a ringdove's wings. 
 These only increase the sense of silent peace, for 
 in themselves they soothe ; and how minute the 
 bee beside this hill, and the dove to the breadth 
 of the sky ! A white speck of thistledown comes 
 upon a current too light to swing a harebell or be 
 felt by the cheek. The furze bushes are lined 
 with thistledown, blown there by a breeze now 
 still ; it is glossy in the sunbeams, and the yellow 
 hawkweeds cluster beneath. The sweet, clear air, 
 though motionless at this height, cools the rays ; 
 but the sun seems to pause and neither to rise 
 higher nor decline. It is the space open to the eye 
 which apparently arrests his movement. There is 
 no noise, and there are no men. 
 
 Glance along the slope, up the ridge, across to 
 the next, endeavour to penetrate the hazy gap, but 
 no one is visible. In reality it is not quite so va-
 
 DOWNS 
 
 cant ; there may, perhaps, be four or five men be- 
 tween this spot and the gap, which would be a pass 
 if the Downs were high enough. One is not far 
 distant ; he is digging flints over the ridge, and, 
 perhaps, at this moment rubbing the earth from a 
 corroded Roman coin which he has found in the 
 pit. Another is thatching, for there are three de- 
 tached wheat-ricks round a spur of the Down a 
 mile away, where the plain is arable, and there, 
 too, a plough is at work. A shepherd is asleep 
 on his back behind the furze a mile in the other 
 direction. The fifth is a lad trudging with a 
 message ; he is in the nut-copse, over the next 
 hill, very happy. By walking a mile the explorer 
 may, perhaps, sight one of these, if they have not 
 moved by then and disappeared in another hollow. 
 And when you have walked the mile knowing 
 the distance by the time occupied in traversing it 
 if you look back you will sigh at the hopeless- 
 ness of getting over the hills. The mile is such a 
 little way, only just along one slope and down into 
 the narrow valley strewn with flints and small boul- 
 ders. If that is a mile, it must be another up to 
 the white chalk quarry yonder, another to the 
 copse on the ridge ; and how far is the hazy ho- 
 rizon where the ridges crowd on and hide each 
 other ? Like rowing at sea, you row and row 
 and row, and seem where you started waves in
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 front and waves behind ; so you may walk and 
 walk and walk, and still there is the intrenchment 
 on the summit, at the foot of which, well in sight, 
 you were resting sojne hours ago. 
 
 Rest again by the furze, and some goldfinches 
 come calling shrilly and feasting undisturbed upon 
 the seeds of thistles and other plants. The bird- 
 catcher does not venture so far ; he would if there 
 was a rail near ; but he is a lazy fellow, fortu- 
 nately, and likes not the weight of his own nets. 
 When the stubbles are ploughed there will be 
 troops of finches and linnets up here, leaving the 
 hedgerows of the valley almost deserted. Shortly 
 the fieldfares will come, but not generally till the 
 redwings have appeared below in the valleys ; 
 while the fieldfares go upon the hills, the green 
 plovers, as autumn comes on, gather in flocks and 
 go down to the plains. Hawks regularly beat along 
 the furze, darting on a finch now and then, and 
 owls pass by at night. Nightjars, too, are down- 
 land birds, staying in woods or fern by day, and 
 swooping on the moths which flutter about the 
 furze in the evening. Crows are too common, 
 and work on late into the shadows. Sometimes, 
 in getting over the low hedges which divide the 
 uncultivated sward from the ploughed lands, you 
 almost step on a crow, and it is difficult to guess 
 what he can have been about so earnestly, for
 
 DOWNS 
 
 search reveals nothing no dead lamb, hare, or 
 carrion, or anything else is visible. Rooks, of 
 course, are seen, and larks, and once or twice in 
 a morning a magpie, seldom seen in the culti- 
 vated and preserved valley. There are more par- 
 tridges than rigid game preservers would deem 
 possible where the overlooking, if done at all, is 
 done so carelessly. Partridges will never cease 
 out of the land while there are untouched downs. 
 Of all southern inland game, they afford the finest 
 sport; for sport in its genuine sense cannot be had 
 without labour, and those who would get partridges 
 on the hills must work for them. Shot down, 
 coursed, poached, killed before maturity in the 
 corn, still hares are fairly plentiful, and couch in 
 the furze and coarse grasses. Rabbits have much 
 decreased; still there are some. But the larger 
 fir copses, when they are enclosed, are the resort 
 of all kinds of birds of prey yet left in the south, 
 and, perhaps, more rare visitors are found there 
 than anywhere else. Isolated on the open hills, 
 such a copse to birds is like an island in the sea. 
 Only a very few pheasants frequent it, and little 
 effort is made to exterminate the wilder creatures, 
 while they are continually replenished by fresh ar- 
 rivals. Even ocean birds driven inland by stress 
 of weather seem to prefer the downs to rest on, 
 and feel safer there. 
 
 215
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 The sward is the original sward, untouched, 
 unploughed, centuries old. It is that which was 
 formed when the woods that covered the hills were 
 cleared, whether bjr British tribes whose markings 
 are still to be found, by Roman smiths working the 
 ironstone (slag is sometimes discovered), by Saxon 
 settlers, or however it came about in the process of 
 the years. Probably the trees would grow again were 
 it not for sheep and horses, but these preserve the 
 sward. The plough has nibbled at it and gnawed 
 away great slices, but it extends mile after mile ; 
 these are mere notches on its breadth. It is as wild 
 as wild can be without deer or savage beasts. The 
 bees like it, and the finches come. It is silent and 
 peaceful like the sky above. By night the stars 
 shine, not only overhead and in a narrow circle 
 round the zenith, but down to the horizon; the walls 
 of the sky are built up of them as well as the roof. 
 The sliding meteors go silently over the gleaming 
 surface ; silently the planets rise ; silently the earth 
 moves to the unfolding east. Sometimes a lunar 
 rainbow appears ; a strange scene at midnight, 
 arching over almost from the zenith down into the 
 dark hollow of the valley. At the first glance it 
 seems white, but presently faint prismatic colours 
 are discerned. 
 
 Already as the summer changes into autumn there 
 are orange specks on the beeches in the copses, and 
 _ai6
 
 DOWNS 
 
 the firs will presently be leafless. Then those who 
 live in the farmsteads placed at long intervals begin 
 to prepare for the possibilities of the winter. There 
 must be a good store of fuel and provisions, for it 
 will be difficult to go down to the villages. The 
 ladies had best add as many new volumes as they 
 can to the bookshelf, for they may be practically 
 imprisoned for weeks together. Wind and rain are 
 very different here from what they are where the 
 bulwark of the houses shelters one side of the street, 
 or the thick hedge protects half the road. The fury 
 of the storm is unchecked, and nothing can keep out 
 the raindrops which come with the velocity of shot. 
 If snow falls, as it does frequently, it does not need 
 much to obscure the path ; at all times the path is 
 merely a track, and the ruts worn down to the white 
 chalk and the white snow confuse the eyes. Flecks 
 of snow catch against the bunches of grass, against 
 the furze-bushes, and boulders; if there is a ploughed 
 field, against every clod, and the result is bewildering. 
 There is nothing to guide the' steps, nothing to give 
 the general direction, and once off the track, unless 
 well accustomed to the district, the traveller may 
 wander in vain. After a few inches have fallen the 
 roads are usually blocked, for all the flakes on miles 
 of hills are swept along and deposited into hollows 
 where the highways run. To be dug out now and 
 then in the winter is a contingency the mail-driver 
 217
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 reckons as part of his daily life, and the waggons 
 going to and fro frequently pass between high walls 
 of frozen snow. In these wild places, which can 
 scarcely be said to be populated at all, a snow-storm, 
 however, does not block the King's highways and 
 paralyse traffic as London permits itself to be 
 paralysed under similar circumstances. Men are 
 set to work and cut a way through in a very short 
 time, and no one makes the least difficulty about it. 
 But with the tracks that lead to isolated farmsteads it 
 is different; there is not enough traffic to require the 
 removal of the obstruction, and the drifts occasion- 
 ally accumulate to twenty feet deep. The ladies are 
 imprisoned, and must be thankful if they have got 
 down a box of new novels. 
 
 The dread snow-tempest of 1880-81 swept over 
 these places with tremendous fury, and the most 
 experienced shepherds, whose whole lives had been 
 spent going to and fro on the downs, frequently lost 
 their way. There is a story of a waggoner and his 
 lad going slowly along the road after the thaw, and 
 noticing an odd-looking scarecrow in a field. They 
 went to it, and found it was a man, dead, and still 
 standing as he had stiffened in the snow, the clothes 
 hanging on his withered body, and the eyes gone 
 from the sockets, picked out by the crows. It is 
 only one of many similar accounts, and it is thought 
 between twenty and thirty unfortunate persons
 
 DOWNS 2C= 
 
 perished. Such miserable events are of rare 
 occurrence, but show how open, wild, and succour- 
 less the country still remains. In ordinary winters 
 it is only strangers who need be cautious, and 
 strangers seldom appear. Even in summer time, 
 however, a stranger, if he stays till dusk, may 
 easily wander for hours. Once off the highway, all 
 the ridges and slopes seem alike, and there is no 
 end to them. 
 
 219
 
 FOREST 
 
 beechnuts are already falling in the 
 forest, and the swine are beginning to 
 search for them while yet the harvest 
 lingers. The nuts are formed by mid- 
 summer, and now, the husk opening, the brown 
 angular kernel drops out. Many of the husks fall, 
 too ; others remain on the branches till next spring. 
 Under the beeches the ground is strewn with the 
 mast as hard almost to walk on as pebbles. Rude 
 and uncouth as swine are in themselves, somehow 
 they look different under trees. The brown leaves 
 amid which they rout, and the brown-tinted fern 
 behind lend something of their colour and smooth 
 away their ungainliness. Snorting as they work 
 with very eagerness of appetite, they are almost wild, 
 approaching in a measure to their ancestors, the 
 savage boars. Under the trees the imagination 
 plays unchecked, and calls up the past as if yew 
 bow and broad arrow were still in the hunter's 
 hands. So little is changed since then. The deer 
 are here still. Sit down on the root of this oak 
 (thinly covered with moss), and on that very spot
 
 FOREST 
 
 it is quite possible a knight fresh home from the 
 Crusades may have rested and feasted his eyes on the 
 lovely green glades of his own unsurpassed England. 
 The oak was there then, young and strong ; it is 
 here now, ancient, but sturdy. Rarely do you see 
 an oak fall of itself. It decays to the last stump ; 
 it does not fall. The sounds are the same the 
 tap as a ripe acorn drops, the rustle of a leaf 
 which comes down slowly, the quick rushes of 
 mice playing in the fern. A movement at one 
 side attracts the glance, and there is a squirrel 
 darting about. There is another at the very top 
 of the beech yonder out on the boughs, nibbling 
 the nuts. A brown spot a long distance down 
 the glade suddenly moves, and thereby shows itself 
 to be a rabbit. The bellowing sound that comes 
 now and then is from the stags, which are pre- 
 paring to fight. The swine snort, and the mast 
 and leaves rustle as they thrust them aside. So 
 little is changed : these are the same sounds and 
 the same movements, just as in the olden time. 
 
 The soft autumn sunshine, shorn of summer 
 glare, lights up with colour the fern, the fronds of 
 which are yellow and brown, the leaves, the grey 
 grass, and hawthorn sprays already turned. It 
 seems as if the early morning's mists have the 
 power of tinting leaf and fern, for so soon as they 
 commence the green hues begin to disappear.
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 There are swathes of fern yonder, cut down like 
 grass or corn, the harvest of the forest. It will be 
 used for litter and for thatching sheds. The yellow 
 stalks the stubble will turn brown and wither 
 through the wintet, till the strong spring shoot 
 comes up and the anemones flower. Though the 
 sunbeams reach the ground here, half the green 
 glade is in shadow, and for one step that you walk 
 in sunlight ten are in shade. Thus, partly con- 
 cealed in full day, the forest always contains a 
 mystery. The idea that there may be something 
 in the dim arches held up by the round columns of 
 the beeches lures the footsteps onwards. Some- 
 thing must have been lately in the circle under the 
 oak where the fern and bushes remain at a distance 
 and wall in a lawn of green. There is nothing on 
 the grass but the upheld leaves that have dropped, 
 no mark of any creature, but this is not decisive ; 
 if there are no physical signs, there is a feeling 
 that the shadow is not vacant. In the thickets, 
 perhaps the shadowy thickets with front of thorn 
 it has taken refuge and eluded us. Still onward 
 the shadows lead us in vain but pleasant chase. 
 
 These endless trees are a city to the tree-building 
 birds. The round knot-holes in the beeches, the 
 holes in the elms and oaks ; they find them all out. 
 From these issue the immense flocks of starlings 
 which, when they alight on an isolated elm in
 
 FOREST 
 
 winter, make it suddenly black. From these, too, 
 come forth the tits, not so welcome to the farmer, 
 as he considers they reduce his fruit crop ; and in 
 these the gaudy woodpeckers breed. With starlings, 
 wood-pigeons, and rooks the forest is crowded like 
 a city in spring, but now in autumn it is compara- 
 tively deserted. The birds are away in the fields, 
 some at the grain, others watching the plough, 
 and following it so soon as a furrow is opened. 
 But the stoats are busy they have not left, nor 
 the weasels; and so eager are they that, though 
 they hide in the fern at first, in a minute or two 
 they come out again, and so get shot. 
 
 Like the fields, which can only support a certain 
 proportion of cattle, the forest, wide as it seems, can 
 only maintain a certain number of deer. Carrying 
 the same thought further, it will be obvious that 
 the forest, or England in a natural state, could only 
 support a limited human population. Is this why 
 the inhabitants of countries like France, where they 
 cultivate every rood and try to really keep a man to 
 a rood, do not increase in number? Certainly there 
 is a limit in nature which can only be overcome by 
 artificial aid. After wandering for some time in a 
 forest like this, the impression arises that the fauna 
 is not now large enough to be in thorough keeping 
 with the trees their age and size and number. 
 The breadth of the arboreal landscape requires a
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 longer list of living creatures, and creatures 
 greater bulk. The stoat and weasel are lost 
 bramble and fern, the squirrels in the branche 
 the fox is concealed, and the badger; the rabb 
 too, is small. There are only the deer, and the 
 is a wide gap between them and the hares. Ev 
 the few cattle which are permitted to graze a 
 better than nothing; though not wild, yet standi. 
 in fern to their shoulders and browsing on t 
 lower branches, they are, at all events, animals f 
 the time in nearly a natural state. By watchii 
 them it is apparent how well the original wild cati 
 agreed with the original scenery of the islan 
 One almost regrets the marten and polecat, th 
 both small creatures, and wishes that the fox wou 
 come forth more by day. These acres of brackc 
 and impenetrable thickets need more inhabitant; 
 how well they are fitted for the wild boar ! Sue 
 thoughts are, of course, only thoughts, and we mu 
 be thankful that we have as many wild creatun 
 left as we have. 
 
 Looking at the soil as we walk, where it 
 exposed by the roots of a fallen tree, or whet 
 there is an old gravel pit, the question occui 
 whether forests, managed as they are in old cour 
 tries, ever really increase the fertility of the earth; 
 That decaying vegetation produces a fine moul 
 cannot be disputed ; but it seems here that there i 
 1*4
 
 FOREST 
 
 ;o more decaying vegetation than is required for 
 
 he support of the trees themselves. The leaves 
 
 -'^at fall the million million leaves blown to 
 
 nd fro, at last disappear, absorbed into the ground. 
 
 .0 with quantities of the lesser twigs and branches ; 
 
 <ut these together do not supply more material to 
 
 rihe soil than is annually abstracted by the extensive 
 
 ijoots of trees, of bushes, and by the fern. If 
 
 ^imber is felled, it is removed, and the bark and 
 
 choughs with it; the stump, too, is grubbed and 
 
 olit for firewood. If a tree dies, it is presently 
 
 .wn off and cut up for some secondary use or 
 
 ther. The great branches which occasionally fall 
 
 re some one's perquisite. When the thickets are 
 
 Chinned out, the fagots are carted away, and much 
 
 j! f the fern is also removed. How, then, can there 
 
 ; j e any accumulation of fertilising material ? Rather 
 
 l ; he reverse; it is, if anything, taken away, and the 
 
 5) oil must be less rich now than it was in bygone 
 
 Centuries. Left to itself the process would be the 
 
 ; everse, every tree as it fell slowly enriching the 
 
 jipot where it mouldered, and all the bulk of the 
 
 !mber converted into fertile earth. It was in this 
 
 j/ay that the American forests laid the foundation 
 
 jj f the inexhaustible wheat-lands there. But the 
 
 nodern management of a forest tends in the oppo- 
 
 jite direction too much is removed; for if it is 
 
 j^ished to improve a soil by the growth of timber, 
 
 15 225
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 something must be left in it besides the mere roots. 
 The leaves, even, are not all left ; they have < 
 value for gardening purposes : though, of course, 
 the few cartloads. % collected make no appreciable 
 difference. 
 
 There is always something going on in the 
 forest; and more men are employed than would be 
 supposed. In the winter the selected elms are 
 thrown and the ash poles cut ; in the spring the 
 oak timber comes down and is barked ; in the 
 autumn the fern is cut. Splitting up wood goes on 
 nearly all the year round, so that you may always 
 hear the axe. No charcoal-burning is practised, 
 but the mere maintenance of the fences, as, for 
 instance, round the pheasant enclosures, gives much 
 to do. Deer need attention in winter, like cattle ; 
 the game has its watchers ; and ferreting lasts for 
 months. So that the forest is not altogether use- 
 less from the point of view of work. But in so 
 many hundred acres of trees these labourers 
 are lost to sight, and do not in the least detract 
 from its wild appearance. Indeed, the occa- 
 sional ring of the axe or the smoke rising from 
 the woodman's fire accentuates the fact that it is a 
 forest. The oaks keep a circle round their base 
 and stand at a majestic distance from each other, 
 so that the wind and the sunshine enter, and their 
 precincts are sweet and pleasant. The elms gather
 
 FOREST 
 
 together, rubbing their branches in the gale till the 
 bark is worn off and the boughs die ; the shadow 
 is deep under them, and moist, favourable to rank 
 grass and coarse mushrooms. Beneath the ashes, 
 after the first frost, the air is full of the bitterness 
 of their blackened leaves, which have all come 
 down at once. By the beeches there is little 
 underwood, and the hollows are filled ankle-deep 
 with their leaves. From the pines comes a fragrant 
 odour, and thus the character of each group dom- 
 inates the surrounding ground. The shade is too 
 much for many flowers, which prefer the nooks of 
 hedgerows. If there is no scope for the use of 
 " express " rifles, this southern forest really is a 
 forest and not an open hillside. It is a forest of 
 trees, and there are no woodlands so beautiful and 
 enjoyable as these, where it is possible to be lost 
 a while without fear of serious consequences ; 
 where you can walk without stepping up to the waist 
 in a decayed tree-trunk, or floundering in a bog ; 
 where neither venomous snake nor torturing mos- 
 quito causes constant apprehensions and constant 
 irritation. To the eye there is nothing but beauty ; 
 to the imagination pleasant pageants of old time ; 
 to the ear the soothing cadence of the leaves as the 
 gentle breeze goes over. The beeches rear their 
 Gothic architecture ; the oaks are planted firm like 
 castles, unassailable. Quick squirrels climb and 
 227
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 dart hither and thither, deer cross the distant glade, 
 and, occasionally, a hawk passes like thought. 
 
 The something that may be in the shadow or 
 the thicket, the vain, pleasant chase that beckons 
 us on, still leads the footsteps from tree to tree, till 
 by-and-by a lark sings, and, going to look for it, 
 we find the stubble outside the forest stubble 
 still bright with the blue and white flowers of grey 
 speedwell. One of the earliest to bloom in the 
 spring, it continues till the plough comes again in 
 autumn. Now looking back from the open stubble 
 on the high wall of trees, the touch of autumn here 
 and there is the more visible oaks dotted with 
 brown, horse-chestnuts yellow, maples orange, and 
 the bushes beneath red with haws.
 
 BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 I. THE MAKING OF BEAUTY 
 
 YTT takes a hundred and fifty years to make 
 I a beauty a hundred and fifty years out- 
 I of-doors. Open air, hard manual labour or 
 s- v. continuous exercise, good food, good cloth- 
 ing, some degree of comfort, all of these, but most 
 especially open air, must play their part for five 
 generations before a beautiful woman can appear. 
 These conditions can only be found in the country, 
 and consequently all beautiful women come from 
 the country. Though the accident of birth may 
 cause their register to be signed in town, they 
 are always of country extraction. 
 
 Let us glance back a hundred and fifty years, 
 say to 1735, and suppose a yeoman to have a son 
 about that time. That son would be bred upon 
 the hardest fare, but, though hard, it would be 
 plentiful and of honest sort. The bread would 
 be home-baked, the beef salted at home, the ale 
 home-brewed. He would work all day in the 
 fields with the labourers, but he would have three
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 great advantages over them in good and plenti- 
 ful food, in good clothing, and in home comforts. 
 He would ride, and join all the athletic sports of 
 the time. Mere manual labour stiffens the limbs, 
 gymnastic exercises render them supple. Thus he 
 would obtain immense strength from simple hard 
 work, and agility from exercise. Here, then, is 
 a sound constitution, a powerful frame, well knit, 
 hardened an almost perfect physical existence. 
 
 He would marry, if fortunate, at thirty or thirty- 
 five, naturally choosing the most charming of his 
 acquaintances. She would be equally healthy and 
 proportionally as strong, for the ladies of those days 
 were accustomed to work from childhood. By cus- 
 tom soon after marriage she would work harder 
 than before, notwithstanding her husband's fair 
 store of guineas in the iron-bound box. The 
 house, the dairy, the cheese-loft, would keep her 
 arms in training. Even since I recollect, the work 
 done by ladies in country houses was something 
 astonishing, ladies by right of well-to-do parents, 
 by right of education and manners. Really, it 
 seems that there is no work a woman cannot 
 do with the best results for herself, always pro- 
 vided that it does not throw a strain upon the 
 loins. Healthy children sprung from such par- 
 ents, while continuing the general type, usually 
 tend towards a refinement of the features. Under 
 a 3 o
 
 IN THE 
 
 such natural and healthy conditions, if the mother 
 have a good shape, the daughter is finer; if the 
 father be of good height, the son is taller. These 
 children in their turn go through the same open- 
 air training. In the course of years, the family 
 guineas increasing, home comforts increase, and 
 manners are polished. Another generation sees 
 the cast of countenance smoothed of its original 
 ruggedness, while preserving its good proportion. 
 The hard chin becomes rounded and not too 
 prominent, the cheek-bones sink, the ears are 
 smaller, a softness spreads itself over the whole 
 face. That which was only honest now grows 
 tender. Again another generation, and it is a set- 
 tled axiom that the family are handsome. The 
 country-side as it gossips agrees that the family 
 are marked out as good-looking. Like seeks like, 
 as we know ; the handsome intermarry with the 
 handsome. Still, the beauty has not arrived yet, 
 nor is it possible to tell whether she will appear 
 from the female or male branches. But in the 
 fifth generation appear she does, with the origi- 
 nal features so moulded and softened by time, so 
 worked and refined and sweetened, so delicate and 
 yet so rich in blood, that she seems like a new 
 creation that has suddenly started into being. No 
 one has watched and recorded the slow process 
 which has thus finally resulted. No one could do
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 so, because it has spread over a century and a half. 
 If any one will consider, they will agree that the 
 sentiment at the sight of a perfect beauty is as 
 much amazement as admiration. It is so astound- 
 ing, so outside ordinary experience, that it wears 
 the aspect of magic. 
 
 A stationary home preserves the family intact, 
 so that the influences already described have time 
 to produce their effect. There is nothing uncom- 
 mon in a yeoman's family continuing a hundred 
 and fifty years in the same homestead. Instances 
 are known of such occupation extending for over 
 two hundred years ; cases of three hundred years 
 may be found : now and then one is known to 
 exceed that, and there is said to be one that has 
 not moved for six hundred. Granting the stock 
 in its origin to have been fairly well proportioned, 
 and to have been subject for such a lapse of time 
 to favourable conditions, the rise of beauty becomes 
 intelligible. 
 
 Cities labour under every disadvantage. First, 
 families have no stationary home, but constantly 
 move, so that it is rare to find one occupying a 
 house fifty years, and will probably become much 
 rarer in the future. Secondly, the absence of 
 fresh air, and that volatile essence, as it were, 
 of woods, and fields, and hills, which can be 
 felt but not fixed. Thirdly, the sedentary em-
 
 BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY^ 
 
 ployment. Let a family be never so robust, 
 these must ultimately affect the constitution. If 
 beauty appears it is too often of the unhealthy 
 order ; there is no physique, no vigour, no rich- 
 ness of blood. Beauty of the highest order is 
 inseparable from health ; it is the outcome of 
 health centuries of health and a really beauti- 
 ful woman is, in proportion, stronger than a man. 
 It is astonishing with what persistence a type of 
 beauty once established in the country will struggle 
 to perpetuate itself against all the drawbacks of 
 town life after the family has removed thither. 
 
 When such results are produced under favour- 
 able conditions at the yeoman's homestead, no 
 difficulty arises in explaining why loveliness so 
 frequently appears in the houses of landed pro- 
 prietors. Entailed estates fix the family in one 
 spot, and tend, by intermarriage, to deepen any 
 original physical excellence. Constant out-of-door 
 exercise, riding, hunting, shooting, takes the place 
 of manual labour. All the refinements that money 
 can purchase, travel, education, are here at work. 
 That the culture of the mind can alter the expres- 
 sion of the individual is certain ; if continued for 
 many generations, possibly it may leave its mark 
 upon the actual bodily frame. Selection exerts a 
 most powerful influence in these cases. The rich 
 and titled have so wide a range to choose from. 
 *33
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 Consider these things working through centuries, 
 perhaps in a more or less direct manner, since 
 the Norman Conquest. The fame of some such 
 families for handsome features and well-propor- 
 tioned frames is widely spread, so much so that 
 a descendant not handsome is hardly regarded by 
 the outside world as legitimate. But even with 
 all these advantages beauty in the fullest sense 
 does not appear regularly. Few indeed are those 
 families that can boast of more than one. It is 
 the best of all boasts ; it is almost as if the Immor- 
 tals had especially favoured their house. Beauty 
 has no period ; it comes at intervals, unexpected ; 
 it cannot be fixed. No wonder the earth is at its 
 feet. 
 
 The fisherman's daughter ere now has reached 
 very high in the scale of beauty. Hardihood is the 
 fisherman's talent by which he wins his living from 
 the sea. Tribal in his ways, his settlements are 
 almost exclusive, and his descent pure. The wind 
 washed by the sea enriches his blood, and of labour 
 he has enough. Here are the same constant factors; 
 the stationary home keeping the family intact, the 
 out-door life, the air, the sea, the sun. Refinement 
 is absent, but these alone are so powerful that now 
 and then beauty appears. The lovely Irish girls, 
 again: their forefathers have dwelt on the mountain- 
 side since the days of Fingal, and all the hardships 
 234
 
 IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 of their lot cannot destroy the natural tendency to 
 shape and enchanting feature. Without those con- 
 stant factors beauty cannot be, but yet they will 
 not alone produce it. There must be something 
 in the blood which these influences gradually ripen. 
 If it is not there centuries are in vain ; but if it 
 is there then it needs these conditions. Erratic, 
 meteor-like beauty ! for how many thousand years 
 has man been your slave ! Let me repeat, the 
 sentiment at the sight of a perfect beauty is as 
 much amazement as admiration. It so draws the 
 heart out of itself as to seem like magic. 
 
 She walks, and the very earth smiles beneath her 
 feet. Something comes with her that is more than 
 mortal; witness the yearning welcome that stretches 
 towards her from all. As the sunshine lights up 
 the aspect of things, so her presence sweetens the 
 very flowers like dew. But the yearning welcome 
 is, I think, the most remarkable of the evidence 
 that may be accumulated about it. So deep, so 
 earnest, so forgetful of the rest, the passion of 
 beauty is almost sad in its intense abstraction. It 
 is a passion, this yearning. She walks in the glory 
 of young life ; she is really centuries old. 
 
 A hundred and fifty years at the least more 
 probably twice that have passed away, while from 
 all enchanted things of earth and air this precious- 
 ness has been drawn. From the south wind that
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 breathed a century and a half ago over the green 
 wheat. From the perfume of the growing grasses 
 waving over honey-laden clover and laughing veron- 
 ica, hiding the greerjfinches, baffling the bee. From 
 rose-loved hedges, woodbine, and cornflower azure- 
 blue, where yellowing wheat-stalks crowd up under 
 the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklet's 
 sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight ; all the 
 wild woods hold of beauty ; all the broad hill's 
 thyme and freedom : thrice a hundred years repeated. 
 A hundred years of cowslips, bluebells, violets ; 
 purple spring and golden autumn; sunshine, shower, 
 and dewy mornings ; the night immortal ; all the 
 rhythm of Time unrolling. A chronicle unwritten 
 and past all power of writing : who shall preserve 
 a record of the petals that fell from the roses a 
 century ago? The swallows to the housetop three 
 hundred times think a moment of that. Thence 
 she sprang, and the world yearns towards her beauty 
 as to flowers that are past. The loveliness of seven- 
 teen is centuries old. Is this why passion is almost 
 sad? 
 
 II. THE FORCE OF FORM 
 
 HER shoulders were broad, but not too broad 
 just enough to accentuate the waist, and to give a 
 pleasant sense of ease and power. She was strong, 
 -236-
 
 BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 upright, self-reliant, finished in herself. Her bust 
 was full, but not too prominent more after nature 
 than the dressmaker. There was something, though, 
 of the corset-maker in her waist, it appeared natu- 
 rally fine, and had been assisted to be finer. But 
 it was in the hips that the woman was perfect : 
 fulness without coarseness ; large but not big : in a 
 word, nobly proportioned. Now imagine a black 
 dress adhering to this form. From the shoulders 
 to the ankles it fitted " like a glove." There was 
 not a wrinkle, a fold, a crease, smooth as if cast in 
 a mould, and yet so managed that she moved with- 
 out effort. Every undulation of her figure as she 
 stepped lightly forward flowed to the surface. The 
 slight sway of the hip as the foot was lifted, the 
 upward and inward movement of the limb as the 
 knee was raised, the straightening as the instep felt 
 her weight, each change as the limb described the 
 curves of walking was repeated in her dress. At 
 every change of position she was as gracefully draped 
 as before. All was revealed, yet all concealed. As 
 she passed there was the sense of a presence the 
 presence of perfect form. She was lifted as she 
 moved above the ground by the curves of beauty 
 as rapid revolution in a curve suspends the down- 
 dragging of gravity. A force went by the force 
 of animated perfect form. 
 
 Merely as an animal, how grand and beautiful is 
 137
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 a perfect woman ! Simply as a living, breathing 
 creature, can anything imaginable come near her ? 
 
 There is such strength in shape such force in 
 form. Without muscular development shape con- 
 veys the impression of the greatest of all strength 
 that is, of completeness in itself. The ancient 
 philosophy regarded a globe as the most perfect of 
 all bodies, because it was the same that is, it was 
 perfect and complete in itself from whatever 
 point it was contemplated. Such is woman's 
 form when nature's intent is fulfilled in beauty, 
 and that beauty gives the idea of self-contained 
 power. 
 
 A full-grown woman is, too, physically stronger 
 than a man. Her physique excels man's. Look 
 at her torso, at the size, the fulness, the rounded 
 firmness, the depth of the chest. There is a noble- 
 ness about it. Shoulders, arms, limbs, all reach a 
 breadth of make seldom seen in man. There is 
 more than merely sufficient there is a luxuriance 
 indicating a surpassing vigour. And this occurs 
 without effort. She needs no long manual labour, 
 no exhaustive gymnastic exercise, nor any special 
 care in food or training. It is difficult not to envy 
 the superb physique and beautiful carriage of some 
 women. They are so strong without effort. 
 
 -238-
 
 IN THE COUNTRY2EE 
 
 III. AN ARM 
 
 A LARGE white arm, bare, in the sunshine, to the 
 shoulder, carelessly leant against a low red wall, 
 lingers in my memory. There was a house roofed 
 with old grey stone slates in the background, and 
 peaches trained up by the window. The low gar- 
 den wall of red brick ancient red brick, not the 
 pale, dusty blocks of these days was streaked with 
 dry mosses hiding the mortar. Clear and brilliant, 
 the gaudy sun of morning shone down upon her as 
 she stood in the gateway, resting her arm on the 
 red wall, and pressing on the mosses which the 
 heat had dried. Her face I do not remember, only 
 the arm. She had come out from dairy work, which 
 needs bare arms, and stood facing the bold sun. It 
 was very large some might have called it im- 
 mense and yet natural and justly proportioned 
 to the woman, her work, and her physique. So 
 immense an arm was like a revelation of the vast 
 physical proportions which our race is capable of 
 attaining under favourable conditions. Perfectly 
 white white as the milk in which it was often 
 plunged smooth and pleasant in the texture of 
 the skin, it was entirely removed from coarseness. 
 The might of its size was chiefly by the shoulder; 
 the wrist was not large, nor the hand. Colossal, 
 239
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 white, sunlit, bare among the trees and the meads 
 around it was a living embodiment of the limbs 
 we attribute to the first dwellers on earth. 
 
 IV. LIPS 
 
 THE mouth is the centre of woman's beauty. 
 To the lips the glance is attracted the moment 
 she approaches, and their shape remains in the 
 memory longest. Curve, colour, and substance 
 are the three essentials of the lips, but these are 
 nothing without mobility, the soul of the mouth. 
 If neither sculpture, nor the palette with its varied 
 resources, can convey the spell of perfect lips, how 
 can it be done in black letters of ink only ? Noth- 
 ing is so difficult, nothing so beautiful. There are 
 lips which have an elongated curve (of the upper 
 one), ending with a slight curl, like a ringlet at the 
 end of a tress, like those tiny wavelets on a level 
 sand which float in before the tide, or like a frond 
 of fern unrolling. In this curl there lurks a smile, 
 so that she can scarcely open her mouth without a 
 laugh, or the look of one. These upper lips are 
 drawn with parallel lines, the verge is defined by 
 two lines near together, enclosing the narrowest 
 space possible, which is ever so faintly less col- 
 oured than the substance of the lip. This makes 
 the mouth appear larger than it really is ; the bow, 
 240
 
 H3KBEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 too, is more flattened than in the pure Greek lip. 
 It is beautiful, but not perfect, tempting, mischie- 
 vous, not retiring, and belongs to a woman who is 
 never long alone. Xo describe it first is natural, 
 because this mouth is itself the face, and the rest 
 of the features are grouped to it. If you think of 
 her you think of her mouth only the face appears 
 as memory acts, but the mouth is distinct, the re- 
 mainder uncertain. She laughs and the curl runs 
 upwards, so that you must laugh too, you cannot 
 help it. Had the curl gone downwards, as with 
 habitually melancholy people, you might have with- 
 stood her smile. The room is never dull where she 
 is, for there is a distinct character in it a woman 
 and not a mere living creature, and it is notice- 
 able that if there are five or six or more present, 
 somehow the conversation centres round her. 
 
 There was a lady I knew who had lips like these. 
 Of the kind they were perfect. Though she was 
 barely fourteen she was the woman of that circle by 
 the magnetism of her mouth. When we all met 
 together in the evening all that went on in some 
 way or other centred about her. By consent the 
 choice of what game should be played was left to 
 her to decide. She was asked if it was not time 
 for some one to sing, and the very mistress of the 
 household referred to her whether we should have 
 another round or go in to supper. Of course, she 
 
 16 241
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 always decided as she supposed the hostess wished. 
 At supper, if there was a delicacy on the table it 
 was invariably offered to her. The eagerness of 
 the elderly gentlemen, who presumed on their grey 
 locks and conventional harmlessness to press their 
 attentions upon her, showed who was the most at- 
 tractive person in the room. Younger men feel a 
 certain reserve, and do not reveal their inclinations 
 before a crowd, but the harmless old gentleman 
 makes no secret of his admiration. She managed 
 them all, old and young, with unconscious tact, and 
 never left the ranks of the other ladies as a crude 
 flirt would have done. This tact and way of mod- 
 estly holding back when so many would have pushed 
 her too much to the front retained for her the good 
 word of her own sex. If a dance was proposed it 
 was left to her to say yes or no, and if it was not 
 too late the answer was usually in the affirmative. 
 So in the morning, should we make an excursion 
 to some view or pleasant wood, all eyes rested upon 
 her, and if she thought it fine enough away we 
 went. 
 
 Her features were rather fine, but not especially 
 so ; her complexion a little dusky, eyes grey, and 
 dark hair ; her figure moderately tall, slender but 
 shapely. She was always dressed well ; a certain 
 taste marked her in everything. Upon introduc- 
 tion no one would have thought anything of her; 
 242
 
 BEAUTY IN THE C O UN TR Y2g>E^K 
 
 they would have said, " insignificant plain ; " in 
 half an hour, " different to most girls ; " in an hour, 
 " extremely pleasant ; " in a day, " a singularly at- 
 tractive girl ; " and so on, till her empire was es- 
 tablished. It was not the features it was the 
 mouth, the curling lips, the vivacity and life that 
 sparkled in them. There is wine, deep-coloured, 
 strong, but smooth at the surface. There is cham- 
 pagne with its richness continually rushing to the 
 rim. Her lips flowed with champagne. It re- 
 quires a clever man indeed to judge of men; now 
 how could so young and inexperienced a creature 
 distinguish the best from so many suitors ?
 
 OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY 
 
 cawing of the rooks in February 
 shows that the time is coming when 
 their nests will be re-occupied. They 
 ^ resort to the trees, and perch above the 
 
 old nests to indicate their rights ; for in the rookery 
 possession is the law, and not nine-tenths of it only. 
 In the slow dull cold of winter even these noisy 
 birds are quiet, and as the vast flocks pass over, 
 night and morning, to and from the woods in which 
 they roost, there is scarcely a sound. Through 
 the mist their black wings advance in silence, the 
 jackdaws with them are chilled into unwonted 
 quiet, and unless you chance to look up the crowd 
 may go over unnoticed. But so soon as the waters 
 begin to make a sound in February, running in the 
 ditches and splashing over stones, the rooks com- 
 mence the speeches and conversations which will 
 continue till late into the following autumn. 
 
 The general idea is that they pair in February, 
 
 but there are some reasons for thinking that the 
 
 rooks, in fact, choose their mates at the end of the 
 
 preceding summer. They are then in large flocks, 
 
 244
 
 5^ OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY 
 
 and if only casually glanced at appear mixed to- 
 gether without any order or arrangement. They 
 move on the ground and fly in the air so close, one 
 beside the other, that at the first glance or so you 
 cannot distinguish them apart. Yet if you should 
 be lingering along the by-ways of the fields as 
 the acorns fall, and the leaves come rustling down 
 in the warm sunny autumn afternoons, and keep 
 an observant eye upon the rooks in the trees, or on 
 the fresh-turned furrows, they will be seen to act 
 in couples. On the ground couples alight near 
 each other, on the trees they perch near each other, 
 and in the air fly side by side. Like soldiers each 
 has his comrade. Wedged in the ranks every man 
 looks like his fellow, and there seems no tie between 
 them but a common discipline. Intimate acquaint- 
 ance with barrack or camp life would show that 
 every one had his friend. There is also the mess, 
 or companionship of half a dozen, a dozen, or 
 more, and something like this exists part of the 
 year in the armies of the rooks. After the nest 
 time is over they flock together, and each family 
 of three or four flies in concert. Later on they 
 apparently choose their own particular friends, that 
 is, the young birds do so. All through the winter 
 after, say, October, these pairs keep together, 
 though lost in the general mass to the passing 
 spectator. If you alarm them while feeding on 
 245
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 the ground in winter, supposing you have not got 
 a gun, they merely rise up to the nearest tree, and 
 it may then be observed that they do this in pairs. 
 One perches on 4 branch and a second comes to 
 him. When February arrives, and they resort to 
 the nests to look after or seize on the property 
 there, they are in fact already paired, though the 
 almanacs put down St. Valentine's day as the date 
 of courtship. 
 
 There is very often a warm interval in February, 
 sometimes a few days earlier and sometimes later, 
 but as a rule it happens that a week or so of mild 
 sunny weather occurs about this time. Released 
 from the grip of the frost, the streams trickle forth 
 from the fields and pour into the ditches, so that 
 while walking along the footpath there is a mur- 
 mur all around coming from the rush of water. 
 The murmur of the poets is indeed louder in Feb- 
 ruary than in the more pleasant days of summer, 
 for then the growth of aquatic grasses checks the 
 flow and stills it, whilst in February, every stone, 
 or flint, or lump of chalk divides the current and 
 causes a vibration. With this murmur of water, 
 and mild time, the rooks caw incessantly, and the 
 birds at large essay to utter their welcome of the 
 sun. The wet furrows reflect the rays so that 
 the dark earth gleams, and in the slight mist that 
 stays farther away the light pauses and fills the 
 -246-
 
 OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY 
 
 vapour with radiance. Through this luminous 
 mist the larks race after each other twittering, and 
 as they turn aside, swerving in their swift flight, 
 their white breasts appear for a moment. As 
 while standing by a pool the fishes come into 
 sight, emerging as they swim round from the 
 shadow of the deeper water, so the larks dart over 
 the low hedge, and through the mist, and pass 
 before you, and are gone again. All at once one 
 checks his pursuit, forgets the immediate object, 
 and rises, singing as he soars. The notes fall from 
 the air over the dark wet earth, over the dank grass, 
 and broken withered fern of the hedge, and listen- 
 ing to them it seems for a moment spring. There 
 is sunshine in the song : the lark and the light are 
 one. He gives us a few minutes of summer in 
 February days. In May he rises before as yet the 
 dawn is come, and the sunrise flows down to us 
 under through his notes. On his breast, high 
 above the earth, the first rays fall as the rim of the 
 sun edges up at the eastward hill. The lark and 
 the light are as one, and wherever he glides over 
 the wet furrows the glint of the sun goes with him. 
 Anon alighting he runs between the lines of the 
 green corn. In hot summer, when the open hill- 
 side is burned with bright light, the larks are then 
 singing and soaring. Stepping up the hill labori- 
 ously, suddenly a lark starts into the light and 
 
 __2 47 _
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 pours forth a rain of unwearied notes overhead. 
 With bright light, and sunshine, and sunrise, and 
 blue skies the bird is so associated in the mind, 
 that even to see him in the frosty days of win- 
 ter, at least assures us that summer will certainly 
 return. 
 
 Ought not winter, in allegorical designs, the 
 rather to be represented with such things that 
 might suggest hope than such as convey a cold and 
 grim despair ? The withered leaf, the snowflake, 
 the hedging bill that cuts and destroys, why these ? 
 Why not rather the dear larks for one ? They fly 
 in flocks, and amid the white expanse of snow (in 
 the south) their pleasant twitter or call is heard as 
 they sweep along seeking some grassy spot cleared 
 by the wind. The lark, the bird of the light, is 
 there in the bitter short days. Put the lark then 
 for winter, a sign of hope, a certainty of summer. 
 Put, too, the sheathed bud, for if you search the 
 hedge you will find the buds there, on tree and 
 bush, carefully wrapped around with the case which 
 protects them as a cloak. Put, too, the sharp 
 needles of the green corn ; let the wind clear it of 
 snow a little way, and show that under cold clod 
 and colder snow the green thing pushes up, know- 
 ing that summer must come. Nothing despairs 
 but man. Set the sharp curve of the white new 
 moon in the sky : she is white in true frost, and
 
 OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY 2E^K 
 
 yellow a little if it is devising change. Set the 
 new moon as something that symbols an increase. 
 Set the shepherd's crook in a corner as a token 
 that the flocks are already enlarged in number. 
 The shepherd is the symbolic man of the hardest 
 winter time. His work is never more important 
 than then. Those that only roam the fields when 
 they are pleasant in May, see the lambs at play in 
 the meadow, and naturally think of lambs and May 
 flowers. But the lamb was born in the adversity 
 of snow. Or you might set the morning star, for 
 it burns and burns and glitters in the winter dawn, 
 and throws forth beams like those of metal con- 
 sumed in oxygen. There is nought that I know 
 by comparison with which I might indicate the 
 glory of the morning star, while yet the dark night 
 hides in the hollows. The lamb is born in the 
 fold. The morning star glitters in the sky. The 
 bud is alive in its sheath ; the green corn under the 
 snow ; the lark twitters as he passes. Now these 
 to me are the allegory of winter. 
 
 These mild hours in February check the hold 
 which winter has been gaining, and, as it were, 
 tear his claws out of the earth, their prey. If it 
 has not been so bitter previously, when this Gulf 
 stream or current of warmer air enters the expanse 
 it may bring forth a butterfly and tenderly woo the 
 first violet into flower. But this depends on its 
 -249
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 having been only moderately cold before, and also 
 upon the stratum, whether it is backward clay, or 
 forward gravel and sand. Spring dates are quite 
 different according to the locality, and when violets 
 may be found in* one district, in another there is 
 hardly a woodbine-leaf out. The border line may 
 be traced, and is occasionally so narrow, one may 
 cross over it almost at a step. It would sometimes 
 seem as if even the nut-tree bushes bore larger 
 and finer nuts on the warmer soil, and that they 
 ripened quicker. Any curious in the first of things, 
 whether it be a leaf, or flower, or a bird, should 
 bear this in mind, and not be discouraged because 
 he hears some one else has already discovered or 
 heard something. 
 
 A little note taken now at this bare time of the 
 kind of earth may lead to an understanding of the 
 district. It is plain where the plough has turned 
 it, where the rabbits have burrowed and thrown it 
 out, where a tree has been felled by the gales, by 
 the brook where the bank is worn away, or by the 
 sediment at the shallow places. Before the grass 
 and weeds, and corn and flowers have hidden it, 
 the character of the soil is evident at these natural 
 sections without the aid of a spade. Going slowly 
 along the footpath indeed you cannot go fast in 
 moist February it is a good time to select the 
 places and map them out where herbs and flowers
 
 OF DOORS IN 
 
 will most likely come first. All the autumn lies 
 prone on the ground. Dead dark leaves, some 
 washed to their woody frames, short grey stalks, 
 some few decayed hulls of hedge fruit, and among 
 these the mars or stocks of the plants that do not 
 die away, but lie as it were on the surface waiting. 
 Here the strong teazle will presently stand high ; 
 here the ground-ivy will dot the mound with bluish- 
 purple. But it will be necessary to walk slowly 
 to find the ground-ivy flowers under the cover of 
 the briers. These bushes will be a likely place for 
 a blackbird's nest ; this thick close hawthorn for a 
 bullfinch ; these bramble thickets with remnants 
 of old nettle stalks will be frequented by the white- 
 throat after a while. The hedge is now but a 
 lattice-work which will before long be hung with 
 green. Now it can be seen through, and now is 
 the time to arrange for future discovery. In May 
 everything will be hidden, and unless the most 
 promising places are selected beforehand, it will 
 not be easy to search them out. The broad ditch 
 will be arched over, the plants rising on the mound 
 will meet the green boughs drooping, and all the 
 vacancy will be filled. But having observed the 
 spot in winter, you can almost make certain of 
 success in spring. 
 
 It is this previous knowledge which invests those 
 who are always on the spot, those who work much 
 251
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 in the fields or have the care of woods, with their 
 apparent prescience. They lead the newcomer to 
 a hedge, or the corner of a copse, or a bend of the 
 brook, announcing beforehand that they feel as- 
 sured something will be found there ; and so it is. 
 This, too, is one reason why a fixed observer 
 usually sees more than one who rambles a great 
 deal and covers ten times the space. The fixed 
 observer who hardly goes a mile from home is like 
 the man who sits still by the edge of a crowd, and 
 by-and-by his lost companion returns to him. To 
 walk about in search of persons in a crowd is well 
 known to be the worst way of recovering them. 
 Sit still and they will often come by. In a far 
 more certain manner this is the case with birds 
 and animals. They all come back. During a 
 twelvemonth probably every creature would pass 
 over a given locality : every creature that is not 
 confined to certain places. The whole army of the 
 woods and hedges marches across a single farm 
 in twelve months. A single tree especially an 
 old tree is visited by four-fifths of the birds that 
 ever perch in the course of that period. Every 
 year, too, brings something fresh, and adds new 
 visitors to the list. Even the wild sea birds are 
 found inland, and some that scarce seem able to fly 
 at all are cast far ashore by the gales. It is diffi- 
 cult to believe that one would not see more by
 
 OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY SE^a* 
 
 extending the journey, but, in fact, experience 
 proves that the longer a single locality is studied 
 the more is found in it. But you should know the 
 places in winter as well as in tempting summer, 
 when song and shade and colour attract every one 
 to the field. You should face the mire and slippery 
 path. Nature yields nothing to the sybarite. The 
 meadow glows with buttercups in spring, the hedges 
 are green, the woods lovely ; but these are not to 
 be enjoyed in their full significance unless you 
 have traversed the same places when bare, and 
 have watched the slow fulfilment of the flowers. 
 
 The moist leaves that remain upon the mounds 
 do not rustle, and the thrush moves among them 
 unheard. The sunshine may bring out a rabbit, 
 feeding along the slope of the mound, following 
 the paths or runs. He picks his way, he does not 
 like wet. Though out at night in the dewy grass 
 of summer, in the rain-soaked grass of winter, and 
 living all his life in the earth, often damp nearly to 
 his burrows, no time, and no succession of genera- 
 tions can make him like wet. He endures it, but 
 he picks his way round the dead fern and the 
 decayed leaves. He sits in the bunches of long 
 grass, but he does not like the drops of rain or dew 
 on it to touch him. Water lays his fur close, and 
 mats it, instead of running off and leaving him 
 sleek. As he hops a little way at a time on the 
 253
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 mound he chooses his route almost as we pick ours 
 in the mud and pools of February. By the shore 
 of the ditch there still stand a few dry, dead dock 
 stems, with some dry reddish-brown seed adhering. 
 Some dry brown'"nettle stalks remain ; some gray 
 and broken thistles ; some teazles leaning on the 
 bushes. The power of winter has reached its 
 utmost now, and can go no farther. These bines 
 which still hang in the bushes are those of the 
 greater bindweed, and will be used in a month or 
 so by many birds as conveniently curved to fit 
 about their nests. The stem of wild clematis, 
 grey and bowed, could scarcely look more dead. 
 Fibres are peeling from it, they come off at the 
 touch of the fingers. The few brown feathers 
 that perhaps still adhere where the flowers once 
 were are stained and discoloured by the beating of 
 the rain. It is not dead : it will flourish again ere 
 long. It is the sturdiest of creepers, facing the 
 ferocious winds of the hills, the tremendous rains 
 that blow up from the sea, and bitter frost, if only 
 it can get its roots into soil that suits it. In some 
 places it takes the place of the hedge proper and 
 becomes itself the hedge. Many of the trunks of 
 the elms are swathed in minute green vegetation 
 which has flourished in the winter, as the clematis 
 will in the summer. Of all, the brambles bear 
 the wild works of winter best. Given only a little
 
 OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY 
 
 shelter, in the corner of the hedges or under trees 
 and copses they retain green leaves till the buds 
 burst again. The frosts tint them in autumn with 
 crimson, but not all turn colour or fall. The 
 brambles are the bowers of the birds ; in these 
 still leafy bowers they do the courting of the spring, 
 aud under the brambles the earliest arum, and 
 cleaver, or avens, push up. Round about them 
 the first white nettle flowers, not long now ; latest 
 too, in the autumn. The white nettle sometimes 
 blooms so soon (always according to locality), and 
 again so late, that there seems but a brief interval 
 between, as if it flowered nearly all the year round. 
 So the berries on the holly if let alone often stay 
 till summer is in, and new berries begin to appear 
 shortly afterwards. The ivy, too, bears its berries 
 far into the summer. Perhaps if the country be 
 taken at large there is never a time when there is 
 not a flower of some kind out, in this or that warm 
 southern nook. The sun never sets, nor do the 
 flowers ever die. There is life always, even in the 
 dry fir-cone that looks so brown and sapless. 
 
 The path crosses the uplands where the lapwings 
 stand on the parallel ridges of the ploughed field 
 like a drilled company ; if they rise they wheel as 
 one, and in the twilight move across the fields in 
 bands, invisible as they sweep near the ground, but 
 seen against the sky in rising over the trees and
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 the hedges. There is a plantation of fir and ash 
 on the slope, and a narrow waggon-way enters it, 
 and seems to lose itself in the wood. Always 
 approach this spot quietly, for whatever is in the 
 wood is sure at so*me time or other to come to the 
 open space of the track. Wood-pigeons, pheasants, 
 squirrels, magpies, hares, everything feathered or 
 furred, down to the mole, is sure to seek the open 
 way. Butterflies flutter through the copse by it in 
 summer, just as you or I might use the passage 
 between the trees. Towards the evening the 
 partridges may run through to join their friends 
 before roost-time on the ground. Or you may 
 see a covey there now and then, creeping slowly 
 with humped backs, and at a distance not unlike 
 hedgehogs in their motions. The spot therefore 
 should be approached with care; if it is only a 
 thrush out it is a pleasure to see him at his ease 
 and, as he deems, unobserved. If a bird or animal 
 thinks itself noticed it seldom does much, some 
 will cease singing immediately they are looked at. 
 The day is perceptibly longer already. As the sun 
 goes down, the western sky often takes a lovely 
 green tint in this month, and one stays to look at 
 it, forgetting the dark and miry way homewards. 
 I think the moments when we forget the mire of 
 the world are the most precious. After a while the 
 green corn rises higher out of the rude earth.
 
 OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY*^ 
 
 Pure colour almost always gives the idea of fire, 
 or rather it is perhaps as if a light shone through 
 as well as colour itself. The fresh green blade of 
 corn is like this, so pellucid, so clear and pure in 
 its green as to seem to shine with colour. It is 
 not brilliant, not a surface gleam or an enamel, 
 it is stained through. Beside the moist clods 
 the slender flags arise filled with the sweetness of 
 the earth. Out of the darkness under that 
 darkness which knows no day save when the 
 ploughshare opens its chinks they have come to 
 the light. To the light they have brought a colour 
 which will attract the sunbeams from now till 
 harvest. They fall more pleasantly on the corn, 
 toned, as if they mingled with it. Seldom do we 
 realise that the world is practically no thicker to 
 us than the print of our footsteps on the path. 
 Upon that surface we walk and act our comedy of 
 life, and what is beneath is nothing to us. But it 
 is out from that under-world, from the dead and 
 the unknown, from the cold moist ground, that 
 these green blades have sprung. Yonder a steam- 
 plough pants up the hill, groaning with its own 
 strength, yet all that strength and might of wheels, 
 and piston, and chains, cannot drag from the earth 
 one single blade like these. Force cannot make 
 it ; it must grow an easy word to speak or write, 
 in fact full of potency. It is this mystery of 
 
 17 257
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 growth and life, of beauty, and sweetness, and 
 colour, starting forth from the clods that gives the 
 corn its power over me. Somehow I identify my- 
 self with it; I live again as I see it. Year by 
 year it is the same, and when I see it I feel that I 
 have once more entered on a new life. And I 
 think the spring, with its green corn, its violets, 
 and hawthorn leaves, and increasing song, grows 
 yearly dearer and more dear to this our ancient 
 earth. So many centuries have flown ! Now it is 
 the manner with all natural things to gather as it 
 were by smallest particles. The merest grain of 
 sand drifts unseen into a crevice, and by-and-by 
 another; after a while there is a heap ; a century 
 and it is a mound, and then every one observes 
 and comments on it. Time itself has gone on 
 like this ; the years have accumulated, first in 
 drifts, then in heaps, and now a vast mound, to 
 which the mountains are knolls, rises up and 
 overshadows us. Time lies heavy on the world. 
 The old, old earth is glad to turn from the cark 
 and care of drifted centuries to the first sweet 
 blades of green. 
 
 There is sunshine to-day after rain, and every 
 lark is singing. Across the vale a broad cloud- 
 shadow descends the hillside, is lost in the hollow, 
 and presently, without warning, slips over the edge, 
 coming swiftly along the green tips. The sunshine 
 _a S 8-
 
 OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY 
 
 follows the warmer for its momentary absence. 
 Far, far down in a grassy coomb stands a solitary 
 cornrick, conical roofed, casting a lonely shadow 
 marked because so solitary, and beyond it on 
 the rising slope is a brown copse. The leafless 
 branches take a brown tint in the sunlight ; on the 
 summit above there is furze ; then more hill lines 
 drawn against the sky. In the tops of the dark 
 pines at the corner of the copse, could the glance 
 sustain itself to see them, there are finches warm- 
 ing themselves in the sunbeams. The thick nee- 
 dles shelter them from the current of air, and the 
 sky is bluer above the pines. Their hearts are full 
 already of the happy days to come, when the moss 
 yonder by the beech, and the lichen on the fir 
 trunk, and the loose fibres caught in the fork of 
 an unbending bough, shall furnish forth a sufficient 
 mansion for their young. Another broad cloud- 
 shadow, and another warm embrace of sunlight. 
 All the serried ranks of the green corn bow at the 
 word of command as the wind rushes over them. 
 
 There is largeness and freedom here. Broad as 
 the down and free as the wind, the thought can 
 roam high over the narrow roofs in the vale. 
 Nature has affixed no bounds to thought. All 
 the palings, and walls, and crooked fences deep 
 down yonder are artificial. The fetters and tra- 
 ditions, the routine, the dull roundabout which 
 259
 
 ISE THE OPEN AIR 
 
 deadens the spirit like the cold moist earth, are the 
 merest nothings. Here it is easy with the physical 
 eye to look over the highest roof. The moment 
 the eye of the mind is filled with the beauty of 
 things natural an equal freedom and width of view 
 come to it. Step aside from the trodden footpath 
 of personal experience, throwing away the petty 
 cynicism born of petty hopes disappointed. Step 
 out upon the broad down beside the green corn, 
 and let its freshness become part of life. 
 
 The wind passes, and it bends let the wind, 
 too, pass over the spirit. From the cloud-shadow 
 it emerges to the sunshine let the heart come out 
 from the shadow of roofs to the open glow of the 
 sky. High above, the songs of the larks fall as 
 rain receive it with open hands. Pure is the 
 colour of the green flags, the slender-pointed blades 
 let the thought be pure as the light that shines 
 through that colour. Broad are the downs and 
 open the aspect gather the breadth and largeness 
 of view. Never can that view be wide enough and 
 large enough, there will always be room to aim 
 higher. As the air of the hills enriches the blood, 
 so let the presence of these beautiful things enrich 
 the inner sense. One memory of the green corn, 
 fresh beneath the sun and wind, will lift up the 
 heart from the clods.
 
 HAUNTS OF THE LAPWING 
 
 I. WINTER 
 
 lOMING like a white wall the rain 
 reaches me, and in an instant every- 
 thing is gone from sight that is more 
 than ten yards distant. The narrow 
 upland road is beaten to a darker hue, and two 
 runnels of water rush along at the sides, where, 
 when the chalk-laden streamlets dry, blue splinters 
 of flint will be exposed in the channels. For a 
 moment the air seems driven away by the sudden 
 pressure, and I catch my breath and stand still with 
 one shoulder forward to receive the blow. Hiss, 
 the land shudders under the cold onslaught ; hiss, 
 and on the blast goes, and the sound with it, for 
 the very fury of the rain, after the first second, 
 drowns its own noise. There is not a single 
 creature visible, the low and stunted hedgerows, 
 bare of leaf, could conceal nothing; the rain passes 
 straight through to the ground. Crooked and 
 gnarled, the bushes are locked together as if in no 
 other way could they hold themselves against the 
 a6i
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 gales. Such little grass as there is on the mounds 
 is thin and short, and could not hide a mouse. 
 There is no finch, sparrow, thrush, blackbird. As 
 the wave of rain, passes over and leaves a hollow 
 between the waters, that which has gone and that 
 to come, the ploughed lands on either side are seen 
 to be equally bare. In furrows full of water, a hare 
 would not sit, nor partridge run ; the larks, the 
 patient larks which endure almost everything, even 
 they have gone. Furrow on furrow with flints dotted 
 on their slopes, and chalk lumps, that is all. The 
 cold earth gives no sweet petal of flower, nor can 
 any bud of thought or bloom of imagination start 
 forth in the mind. But step by step, forcing a way 
 through the rain and over the ridge, I find a small 
 and stunted copse down in the next hollow. It is 
 rather a wide hedge than a copse, and stands by the 
 road in the corner of a field. The boughs are bare; 
 still they break the storm, and it is a relief to wait 
 a while there and rest. After a minute or so the eye 
 gets accustomed to the branches and finds a line of 
 sight through the narrow end of the copse. Within 
 twenty yards just outside the copse there are a 
 number of lapwings, dispersed about the furrows. 
 One runs a few feet forward and picks something 
 from the ground; another runs in the same manner 
 to one side; a third rushes in still a third direction. 
 Their crests, their green-tinted wings, and white
 
 OF THE LAPWING 
 
 breasts are not disarranged by the torrent. Some- 
 thing in the style of the birds recalls the wagtail, 
 though they are so much larger. Beyond these 
 are half a dozen more, and in a straggling line 
 others extend out into the field. They have found 
 some slight shelter here from the sweeping of the 
 rain and wind, and are not obliged to face it as in 
 the open. Minutely searching every clod, they 
 gather their food in imperceptible items from the 
 surface. 
 
 Sodden leaves lie in the furrows along the side 
 of the copse; broken and decaying burdocks still 
 uphold their jagged stems, but will be soaked away 
 by degrees ; dank grasses droop outwards ; the red 
 seed of a dock is all that remains of the berries and 
 fruit, the seeds and grain of autumn. Like the 
 hedge, the copse is vacant. Nothing moves within, 
 watch as carefully as I may. The boughs are 
 blackened by wet and would touch cold. From 
 the grasses to the branches there is nothing any one 
 would like to handle, and I stand apart even from 
 the bush that keeps away the rain. The green 
 plovers are the only things of life that save the 
 earth from utter loneliness. Heavily as the rain 
 may fall, cold as the saturated wind may blow, the 
 plovers remind us of the beauty of shape, coloifr, 
 and animation. They seem too slender to withstand 
 the blast they should have gone with the swallows 
 -263-
 
 g^gaE^g THE OPEN AIR 
 
 too delicate for these rude hours; yet they alone 
 face them. 
 
 Once more the wave of rain has passed, and 
 yonder the hills > appear ; these are but uplands. 
 The nearest and highest has a green rampart, visible 
 for a moment against the dark sky, and then again 
 wrapped in a toga of misty cloud. So the chilled 
 Roman drew his toga around him in ancient days 
 as from that spot he looked wistfully southwards 
 and thought of Italy. \Vee-ah-wee! Some chance 
 movement has been noticed by the nearest bird, 
 and away they go at once as if with the same wings, 
 sweeping overhead, then to the right, then to the 
 left, and then back again, till at last lost in the 
 coming shower. After they have thus vibrated to 
 and fro long enough, like a pendulum coming to 
 rest, they will alight in the open field on the ridge 
 behind. There in drilled ranks, well closed together, 
 all facing the same way, they will stand for hours. 
 Let us go also and let the shower conceal them. 
 Another time my path leads over the hills. 
 
 It is afternoon, which in winter is evening. The 
 sward of the down is dry under foot, but hard, and 
 does not lift the instep with the springy feel of 
 summer. The sky is gone, it is not clouded, it is 
 swathed in gloom. Upwards the still air thickens, 
 and there is no arch or vault of heaven. Formless 
 and vague, it seems some vast shadow descending. 
 -z6 4 -
 
 HAUNTS OF THE L A P WIN G XE^tX 
 
 The sun has disappeared, and the light there still 
 is, is left in the atmosphere enclosed by the gloomy 
 mist as pools are left by a receding tide. Through 
 the sand the water slips, and through the mist the 
 light glides away. Nearer comes the formless 
 shadow, and the visible earth grows smaller. The 
 path has faded, and there are no means on the open 
 downs of knowing whether the direction pursued is 
 right or wrong, till a boulder (which is a landmark) 
 is perceived. Thence the way is down the slope, 
 the last and limit of the hills there. It is a rough 
 descent, the paths worn by sheep may at any 
 moment cause a stumble. At the foot is a waggon- 
 track beside a low hedge, enclosing the first arable 
 field. The hedge is a guide, but the ruts are deep, 
 and it still needs slow and careful walking. Wee- 
 ah-wee ! Up from the dusky surface of the arable 
 field springs a plover, and the notes are immediately 
 repeated by another. They can just be seen as 
 darker bodies against the shadow as they fly over- 
 head. Wee-ah-wee ! The sound grows fainter as 
 they fetch a longer circle in the gloom. 
 
 There is another winter resort of plovers in the 
 valley where a barren waste was ploughed some 
 years ago. A few furze bushes still stand in the 
 hedges about it, and the corners are full of rushes. 
 Not all the grubbing of furze and bushes, the deep 
 ploughing and draining, has succeeded in rendering 
 -265-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 the place fertile like the adjacent fields. The char- 
 acter of a marsh adheres to it still. So long as 
 there is a crop, the lapwings keep away, but as 
 soon as the plough^ turn up the ground in autumn 
 they return. The place lies low, and level with 
 the waters in the ponds and streamlets. A mist 
 hangs about it in the evening, and even when there 
 is none, there is a distinct difference in the at- 
 mosphere while passing it. From their hereditary 
 home the lapwings cannot be entirely driven away. 
 Out of the mist comes their plaintive cry; they are 
 hidden, and their exact locality is not to be discovr 
 ered. Where winter rules most ruthlessly, where 
 darkness is deepest in daylight, there the slender 
 plovers stay undaunted. 
 
 II. SPRING 
 
 A SOFT sound of water moving among thousands 
 of grass-blades to the hearing it is as the sweet- 
 ness of spring air to the scent. It is so faint and 
 so diffused that the exact spot whence it issues can- 
 not be discerned, yet it is distinct, and my footsteps 
 are slower as I listen. Yonder, in the corners of 
 the mead, the atmosphere is full of some ethereal 
 vapour. The sunshine stays in the air there, as if 
 the green hedges held the wind from brushing it 
 away. Low and plaintive come the notes of a lap- 
 wing ; the same notes, but tender with love. 
 166
 
 3SHAUNTS OF THE LAPWING^ 
 
 On this side, by the hedge, the ground is a little 
 higher and dry, hung over with the lengthy boughs 
 of an oak, which give some shade. I always feel 
 a sense of regret when I see a seedling oak in the 
 grass. The two green leaves the little stem so 
 upright and confident, and, though but a few inches 
 high, already so completely a tree are in them- 
 selves beautiful. Power, endurance, grandeur are 
 there ; you can grasp all with your hand, and take 
 a ship between the finger and thumb. Time, that 
 sweeps away everything, is for a while repelled ; the 
 oak will grow when the time we know is forgotten, 
 and when felled will be the mainstay and safety of 
 a generation in a future century. That the plant 
 should start among the grass, to be severed by the 
 scythe or crushed by cattle, is very pitiful ; I cannot 
 help wishing that it could be transplanted and pro- 
 tected. Of the countless acorns that drop in au- 
 tumn not one in a million is permitted to become a 
 tree a vast waste of strength and beauty. From 
 the bushes by the stile on the left hand, which I 
 have just passed, follows the long whistle of a night- 
 ingale. His nest is near ; he sings night and day. 
 Had I waited on the stile, in a few minutes, be- 
 coming used to my presence, he would have made 
 the hawthorn vibrate, so powerful is his voice when 
 heard close at hand. There is not another nightin- 
 gale along this path for at least a mile, though it 
 -267-
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 crosses meadows and runs by hedges to all appear- 
 ance equally suitable; but nightingales will not pass 
 their limits; they seem to have a marked-out range 
 as strictly defined as the lines of a geological map. 
 They will not go over to the next hedge hardly 
 into the field on one side of a favourite spot, nor a 
 yard farther along the mound. Opposite the oak 
 is a low fence of serrated green. Just projecting 
 above the edge of a brook, fast-growing flags have 
 thrust up their bayonet-tips. Beneath their stalks 
 are so thick in the shallow places that a pike can 
 scarcely push a way between them. Over the 
 brook stand some high maple trees ; to their thick 
 foliage wood-pigeons come. The entrance to a 
 coomb, the widening mouth of a valley, is beyond, 
 with copses on the slopes. 
 
 Again the plover's notes ; this time in the field 
 immediately behind ; repeated, too, in the field on 
 the right hand. One comes over, and as he flies 
 he jerks a wing upwards and partly turns on his 
 side in the air, rolling like a vessel in a swell. He 
 seems to beat the air sideways, as if against a wall, 
 not downwards. This habit makes his course ap- 
 pear so uncertain ; he may go there, or yonder, or 
 in a third direction, more undecided than a startled 
 snipe. Is there a little vanity in that wanton flight ? 
 Is there a little consciousness of the spring-fresh- 
 ened colours of his plumage, and pride in the dainty 
 a68
 
 ^3g HAUNTS OF THE 
 
 touch of his wings on the sweet wind ? His love 
 is watching his wayward course. He prolongs it. 
 He has but a few yards to fly to reach the well- 
 known feeding-ground by the brook where the grass 
 is short ; perhaps it has been eaten off by sheep. 
 It is a straight and easy line as a starling would fly. 
 The plover thinks nothing of a straight line ; he 
 winds first with the course of the hedge, then rises 
 aslant, uttering his cry, wheels, and returns ; now 
 this way, direct at me, as if his object was to dis- 
 play his snowy breast ; suddenly rising aslant again, 
 he wheels once more, and goes right away from his 
 object over above the field whence he came. An- 
 other moment and he returns; and so to and fro, 
 and round and round, till with a sidelong, unex- 
 pected sweep he alights by the brook. He stands 
 a minute, then utters his cry, and runs a yard or 
 so forward. In a little while a second plover ar- 
 rives from the field behind. He too dances a maze 
 in the air before he settles. Soon a third joins 
 them. They are visible at that spot because the 
 grass is short, elsewhere they would be hidden. If 
 one of these rises and flies to and fro, almost in- 
 stantly another follows, and then it is, indeed, a 
 dance before they alight. The wheeling, maze- 
 tracing, devious windings continue till the eye 
 wearies and rests with pleasure on a passing butter- 
 fly. These birds have nests in the meadows adjoin- 
 269
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 ing ; they meet here as a common feeding-ground. 
 Presently they will disperse, each returning to his 
 mate at the nest. Half an hour afterwards they 
 will meet once mor^e, either here or on the wing. 
 
 In this manner they spend their time from dawn 
 through the flower-growing day till dusk. When 
 the sun arises over the hill into the sky already blue, 
 the plovers have been up a long while. All the 
 busy morning they go to and fro the busy morn- 
 ing, when the wood-pigeons cannot rest in the 
 copses on the coomb-side, but continually fly in 
 and out ; when the blackbirds whistle in the oaks, 
 when the bluebells gleam with purplish lustre. At 
 noontide, in the dry heat, it is pleasant to listen 
 to the sound of water moving among the thousand 
 thousand grass-blades of the mead. The flower- 
 growing day lengthens out beyond the sunset, and 
 till the hedges are dim the lapwings do not cease. 
 
 Leaving now the shade of the oak, I follow the 
 path into the meadow on the right, stepping by 
 the way over a streamlet, which diffuses its rapid 
 current broadcast over the sward till it collects again 
 and pours into the brook. This next meadow is 
 somewhat more raised, and not watered j the grass 
 is high and full of buttercups. Before I have gone 
 twenty yards a lapwing rises out in the field, rushes 
 towards me through the air, and circles round my 
 head, making as if to dash at me, and uttering 
 170
 
 HAUNTS OF THE 
 
 shrill cries. Immediately another comes from the 
 mead behind the oak ; then a third from over the 
 hedge, and all those that have been feeding by 
 the brook, till I am encircled with them. They 
 wheel round, dive, rise aslant, cry, and wheel 
 again, always close over me, till I have walked 
 some distance, when, one by one, they fall oft, 
 and, still uttering threats, retire. There is a nest 
 in this meadow, and, although it is, no doubt, a 
 long way from the path, my presence even in the 
 field, large as it is, is resented. The couple who 
 imagine their possessions threatened are quickly 
 joined by their friends, and there is no rest till I 
 have left their treasures far behind.
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 was something dark on the 
 grass under an elm in the field by 
 the barn. It rose and fell ; and we 
 saw that it was a wing a single 
 black wing, striking the ground instead of the 
 air; indeed, it seemed to come out of the earth 
 itself, the body of the bird being hidden by the 
 grass. This black wing flapped and flapped, but 
 could not lift itself a single wing of course 
 could not fly. A rook had dropped out of the 
 elm and was lying helpless at the foot of the 
 tree it is a favourite tree with rooks ; they 
 build in it, and at that moment there were twenty 
 or more perched aloft, cawing and conversing com- 
 fortably, without the least thought of their dying 
 comrade. Not one of all the number descended 
 to see what was the matter, nor even fluttered half- 
 way down. This elm is their clubhouse, where 
 they meet every afternoon as the sun gets low 
 to discuss the scandals of the dav, before retir- 
 ing to roost in the avenues and tree-groups of 
 272
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 the park adjacent. While we looked, a peacock 
 came round the corner of the barn ; he had caught 
 sight of the flapping wing, and approached with long 
 deliberate steps and outstretched neck. " Ee-aw ! 
 Ee-aw! What's this? What's this?" he in- 
 quired in bird-language. " Ee-aw ! Ee-aw ! My 
 friends, see here ! " Gravely, and step by step, he 
 came nearer and nearer, slowly, and not without 
 some fear, till curiosity had brought him within 
 a yard. In a moment or two a peahen followed 
 and also stretched out her neck the two long 
 necks pointing at the black flapping wing. A 
 second peacock and peahen approached, and the 
 four great birds stretched out their necks towards 
 the dying rook a " crowner's quest" upon the 
 unfortunate creature. 
 
 If any one had been at hand to sketch it, the 
 scene would have been very grotesque, and not 
 without a ludicrous sadness. There was the tall 
 elm tinted with yellow, the black rooks high above 
 flying in and out, yellow leaves twirling down, the 
 blue peacocks with their crests, the red barn be- 
 hind, the golden sun afar shining low through the 
 trees of the park, the brown autumn sward, a grey 
 horse, orange maple bushes. There was the quiet 
 tone of the coming evening the early evening 
 of October such an evening as the rook had 
 seen many a time from the tops of the trees. A 
 
 18 273
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 man dies, and the crowd goes on passing under the 
 window along the street without a thought. The 
 rook died, and his friends, who had that day been 
 with him in the oaks feasting on acorns, who had 
 been with him in the fresh-turned furrows, born 
 perhaps in the same nest, utterly forgot him be- 
 fore he was dead. With a great common caw 
 a common shout they suddenly left the tree in 
 a bevy and flew towards the park. The peacocks 
 having brought in their verdict, departed, and the 
 dead bird was left alone. 
 
 In falling out of the elm, the rook had alighted 
 partly on his side and partly on his back, so that 
 he could only flutter one wing, the other being 
 held down by his own weight. He had probably 
 died from picking up poisoned grain somewhere, or 
 from a parasite. The weather had been open, and 
 he could not have been starved. At a distance, 
 the rook's plumage appears black ; but close at 
 hand it will be found a fine blue-black, glossy, and 
 handsome. 
 
 These peacocks are the best " rain-makers " in 
 the place ; whenever they cry much, it is sure to 
 rain; and if they persist day after day, the rain is 
 equally continuous. From the wall by the barn, 
 or the elm-branch above, their cry resounds like 
 the wail of a gigantic cat, and is audible half a 
 mile or more. In the summer, I found one of 
 274
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 them, a peacock in the full brilliance of his colours, 
 on a rail in the hedge under a spreading maple 
 bush. His rich-hued neck, the bright light and 
 shadow, the tall green meadow grass, brought 
 together the finest colours. It is curious that a 
 bird so distinctly foreign, plumed for the Asiatic 
 sun, should fit so well with English meads. His 
 splendid neck immediately pleases, pleases the first 
 time it is seen, and on the fiftieth occasion. I see 
 these every day, and always stop to look at them ; 
 the colour excites the sense of beauty in the eye, and 
 the shape satisfies the idea of form. The undu- 
 lating curve of the neck is at once approved by 
 the intuitive judgment of the mind, and it is a 
 pleasure to the mind to reiterate that judgment 
 frequently. It needs no teaching to see its beauty 
 the feeling comes of itself. 
 
 How different with the turkey-cock which struts 
 round the same barn ! A fine big bird he is, no 
 doubt ; but there is no intrinsic beauty about him ; 
 on the contrary, there is something fantastic in his 
 style and plumage. He has a way of drooping his 
 wings as if they were armour-plates to shield him 
 from a shot. The ornaments upon his head and 
 beak are in the most awkward position. He was 
 put together in a dream, of uneven and odd pieces 
 that live and move, but do not fit. Ponderously 
 gawky, he steps as if the world was his, like a
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 " motley " crowned in sport. He is good eating, 
 but he is not beautiful. After the eye has been 
 accustomed to him for some time after you have 
 fed him every day, and come to take an interest in 
 him after you have seen a hundred turkey-cocks, 
 then he may become passable, or, if you have the 
 fancier's taste, exquisite. Education is requisite 
 first; you do not fall in love at first sight. The 
 same applies to fancy-pigeons, and indeed many 
 pet animals, as pugs, which come in time to be 
 animated with a soul in some people's eyes. Com- 
 pare a pug with a greyhound straining at the leash. 
 Instantly he is slipped, he is gone as a wave let 
 loose. His flexible back bends and undulates, 
 arches and unarches, rises and falls as a wave rises 
 and rolls on. His pliant ribs open; his whole 
 frame " gives " and stretches, and closing again in 
 a curve, springs forward. Movement is as easy to 
 him as to the wave, which melting, is re-moulded, 
 and sways onward. The curve of the greyhound 
 is not only, the line of beauty, but a line which 
 suggests motion ; and it is the idea of motion, I 
 think, which so strongly appeals to the mind. 
 
 We are often scornfully treated as a nation by 
 people who write about art, because they say we 
 have no taste ; we cannot make art jugs for the 
 mantelpiece, crockery for the bracket, screens for 
 the fire; we cannot even decorate the wall of a 
 -276-
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 room as it should be done. If these are the stand- 
 ards by which a sense of art is to be tried, their 
 scorn is to a certain degree just. But suppose we 
 try another standard. Let us put aside the alto- 
 gether false opinion that art consists alone in some- 
 thing actually made, or painted, or decorated, in 
 carvings, colourings, touches of brush or chisel. 
 Let us look at our lives. I mean to say that there 
 is no nation so thoroughly and earnestly artistic as 
 the English in their lives, their joys, their thoughts, 
 their hopes. Who loves nature like an English- 
 man ? Do Italians care for their pale skies ? I 
 never heard so. We go all over the world in 
 search of beauty to the keen north, to the cape 
 whence the midnight sun is visible, to the extreme 
 south, to the interior of Africa, gazing at the vast 
 expanse of Tanganyika or the marvellous falls of 
 the Zambesi. We admire the temples and tombs 
 and palaces of India j we speak of the Alhambra 
 of Spain almost in whispers, so deep is our rever- 
 ent admiration ; we visit the Parthenon. There 
 is not a picture or a statue in Europe we have not 
 sought. We climb the mountains for their views 
 and the sense of grandeur they inspire ; we roam 
 over the wide ocean to the coral islands of the far 
 Pacific ; we go deep into the woods of the West ; 
 and we stand dreamily under the Pyramids of the 
 East. What part is there of the English year 
 277
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 which has not been sung by the poets ? all of 
 whom are full of its loveliness ; and our greatest 
 of all, Shakspeare, carries, as it were, armfuls of 
 violets, and scatters roses and golden wheat across 
 his pages, which *are simply fields written with 
 human life. 
 
 This is art indeed art in the mind and soul, 
 infinitely deeper, surely, than the construction of 
 crockery, jugs for the mantelpiece, dados, or even 
 of paintings. The lover of nature has the highest 
 art in his soul. So, I think, the bluff English 
 farmer who takes such pride and delight in his dogs 
 and horses, is a much greater man of art than any 
 Frenchman preparing with cynical dexterity of 
 hand some coloured presentment of flashy beauty 
 for the salon. The English girl who loves her 
 horse and English girls do love their horses most 
 intensely is infinitely more artistic in that fact 
 than the cleverest painter on enamel. They who 
 love nature are the real artists ; the " artists " are 
 copyists. St. John the naturalist, when exploring 
 the recesses of the Highlands, relates how he 
 frequently came in contact with men living in the 
 rude Highland way forty years since, no educa- 
 tion then whom at first you would suppose to 
 be morose, unobservant, almost stupid. But when 
 they found out that their visitor would stay for 
 hours gazing in admiration at their glens and moun-
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 tains, their demeanour changed. Then the truth 
 appeared ; they were fonder than he was himself of 
 the beauties of their hills and lakes ; they could see 
 the art there, though perhaps they had never seen a 
 picture in their lives, certainly not any blue-and- 
 white crockery. The Frenchman flings his ringers 
 dexterously over the canvas, but he has never had 
 that in his heart which the rude Highlander had. 
 
 The path across the arable field was covered with 
 a design of birds' feet. The reversed broad arrow 
 of the fore-claws, and the straight line of the hinder 
 claw, trailed all over it in curving lines. In the dry 
 dust, their feet were marked as clearly as a seal on 
 wax their trails wound this way and that, and 
 crossed as their quick eyes had led them to turn to 
 find something. For fifty or sixty yards the path 
 was worked with an inextricable design ; it was a 
 pity to step on it and blot out the traces of those 
 little feet. Their hearts so happy, their eyes so 
 observant, the earth so bountiful to them with its 
 supply of food, and the late warmth of the autumn 
 sun lighting up their life. They know and feel the 
 different loveliness of the seasons as much as we 
 do. Every one must have noticed their joyous- 
 ness in spring ; they are quiet, but so very, very 
 busy in the height of summer; as autumn comes 
 on they obviously delight in the occasional hours 
 of warmth. The marks of their little feet are almost
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 sacred a joyous life has been there do not 
 obliterate it. It is so delightful to know that some- 
 thing is happy. 
 
 The hawthorn hedge that goes down the slope 
 is more coloured than the hedges in the sheltered 
 plain. Yonder, a low bush on the brow is a deep 
 crimson; the hedge as it descends varies from brown 
 to yellow, dotted with red haws, and by the gateway 
 has another spot of crimson. The lime trees turn 
 yellow from top to bottom, all the leaves together ; 
 the elms by one or two branches at a time. A lime 
 tree thus entirely coloured stands side by side with 
 an elm, their boughs intermingling; the elm is green 
 except a line at the outer extremity of its branches. 
 A red light as of fire plays in the beeches, so deep 
 is their orange tint in which the sunlight is caught. 
 An oak is dotted with buff, while yet the main body 
 of the foliage is untouched. With these tints and 
 sunlight, nature gives us so much more than the tree 
 gives. A tree is nothing but a tree in itself: but 
 with light and shadow, green leaves moving, a bird 
 singing, another moving to and fro in autumn 
 with colour the boughs are filled with imagination. 
 There then seems so much more than the mere tree; 
 the timber of the trunk, the mere sticks of the 
 branches, the wooden framework is animated with 
 a life. High above, a lark sings, not for so long as 
 in spring the October song is shorter but still
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 he sings. If you love colour, plant maple ; maple 
 bushes colour a whole hedge. Upon the bank of 
 a pond, the brown oak-leaves which have fallen are 
 reflected in the still deep water. 
 
 It is from the hedges that taste must be learned. 
 A garden abuts on these fields, and being on slightly 
 rising ground, the maple bushes, the brown and 
 yellow and crimson hawthorn, the limes and elms, 
 are all visible from it; yet it is surrounded by stiff, 
 straight iron railings, unconcealed even by the 
 grasses, which are carefully cut down with the docks 
 and nettles, that do their best, three or four times 
 in the summer, to hide the blank iron. Within 
 these iron railings stands a row of arbor vitcs, upright, 
 and stiff likewise, and among them a few other ever- 
 greens ; and that is all the shelter the lawn and 
 flower-beds have from the east wind, blowing for 
 miles over open country, or from the glowing sun 
 of August. This garden belongs to a gentleman 
 who would certainly spare no moderate expense to 
 improve it, and yet there it remains, the blankest, 
 barest, most miserable-looking square of ground the 
 eye can find; the only piece of ground from which 
 the eye turns away ; for even the potato-field close 
 by, the common potato-field, had its colour in bright 
 poppies, and there were partridges in it, and at the 
 edges, fine growths of mallow and its mauve flowers. 
 Wild parsley, still green in the shelter of the hazel 
 281
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 stoles, is there now on the bank, a thousand times 
 sweeter to the eye than bare iron and cold ever- 
 greens. Along that hedge, the white bryony wound 
 itself in the most beautiful manner, completely 
 covering the upper part of the thick brambles, a 
 robe thrown over the bushes ; its deep cut leaves, 
 its countless tendrils, its flowers, and presently the 
 berries, giving pleasure every time one passed it. 
 Indeed, you could not pass without stopping to look 
 at it, and wondering if any one ever so skilful, even 
 those sure-handed Florentines Mr. Ruskin thinks 
 so much of, could ever draw that intertangled mass 
 of lines. Nor could you easily draw the leaves and 
 head of the great parsley commonest of hedge- 
 plants the deep indented leaves, and the shadow 
 by which to express them. There was work enough 
 in that short piece of hedge by the potato-field for 
 a good pencil every day the whole summer. And 
 when done, you would not have been satisfied with 
 it, but only have learned how complex and how 
 thoughtful and far reaching Nature is in the simplest 
 of things. But with a straight-edge or ruler, any one 
 could draw the iron railings in half an hour, and a 
 surveyor's pupil could make them look as well as 
 Millais himself. Stupidity to stupidity, genius to 
 genius ; any hard fist can manage iron railings ; a 
 hedge is a task for the greatest. 
 
 Those, therefore, who really wish their gardens 
 282
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 or grounds, or any place, beautiful, must get that 
 greatest of geniuses, Nature, to help them, and give 
 their artist freedom to paint to fancy, for it is 
 Nature's imagination which delights us as I tried 
 to explain about the tree, the imagination, and not 
 the fact of the timber and sticks. For those white 
 bryony leaves and slender spirals and exquisitely 
 defined flowers are full of imagination, products of a 
 sunny dream, and tinted so tastefully that although 
 they are green, and all about them is green too, yet 
 the plant is quite distinct, and in no degree confused 
 or lost in the mass of leaves under and by it. It 
 stands out, and yet without violent contrast. All 
 these beauties of form and colour surround the 
 place, and try, as it were, to march in and take 
 possession, but are shut out by straight iron railings. 
 Wonderful it is that education should make folk 
 tasteless ! Such, certainly, seems to be the case in 
 a great measure, and not in our own country only, 
 for those who know Italy tell us that the fine old 
 gardens there, dating back to the days of the Medici, 
 are being despoiled of ilex and made formal and 
 straight. Is all the world to be Versaillised ? 
 
 Scarcely two hundred yards from these cold iron 
 railings, which even nettles and docks would hide 
 if they could, and thistles strive to conceal, but are 
 not permitted, there is an old cottage by the road- 
 side. The roof is of old tile, once red, now dull
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 from weather ; the walls some tone of yellow ; the 
 folk are poor. Against it there grows a vigorous 
 plant of jessamine, a still finer rose, a vine covers 
 the lean-to at one end, and tea-plant the corner of 
 the wall j beside these, there is a yellow-flowering 
 plant, the name of which I forget at the moment, 
 also trained to the walls ; and ivy. Altogether, 
 six plants grow up the walls of the cottage ; and 
 over the wicket-gate there is a rude arch a 
 framework of tall sticks from which droop thick 
 bunches of hops. It is a very commonplace sort 
 of cottage ; nothing artistically picturesque about it, 
 no effect of gable or timber-work ; it stands by the 
 roadside in the most commonplace way, and yet it 
 pleases. They have called in Nature, that great 
 genius, and let the artist have his own way. In 
 Italy, the art-country, they cut down the ilex trees, 
 and get the surveyor's pupil with straight-edge and 
 ruler to put it right and square for them. Our 
 over-educated and well-to-do people set iron rail- 
 ings round about their blank pleasure-grounds, 
 which the potato-field laughs at in bright poppies ; 
 and actually one who has some fine park-grounds 
 has lifted up on high a mast and weather-vane ! a 
 thing useful on the sea-board at coastguard stations 
 for signalling, but oh ! how repellent and straight 
 and stupid among clumps of graceful elms ! 
 
 -284-
 
 %^& OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 II 
 
 THE dismal pits in a disused brickfield, unsightly 
 square holes in a waste, are full in the shallow 
 places of an aquatic grass, Reed Canary Grass, I 
 think, which at this time of mists stretches forth 
 sharp-pointed tongues over the stagnant water. 
 These sharp-pointed leaf-tongues are all on one side 
 of the stalks, so that the most advanced project 
 across the surface, as if the water were the canvas, 
 and the leaves drawn on it. For water seems 
 always to rise away from you to slope slightly 
 upwards ; even a pool has that appearance, and 
 therefore anything standing in it is drawn on it as 
 you might sketch on this paper. You see the 
 water beyond and above the top of fhe plant, and 
 the smooth surface gives the leaf and stalk a sharp, 
 clear definition. But the mass of the tall grass 
 crowds together, every leaf painted yellow by the 
 autumn, a thick cover at the pit-side. This tall 
 grass always awakes my fancy, its shape partly, 
 partly its thickness, perhaps ; and yet these feelings 
 are not to be analysed. I like to look at it ; I like 
 to stand or move among it on the bank of a brook, 
 to feel it touch and rustle against me. A sense of 
 wildness comes with its touch, and I feel a little as 
 I might feel if there was a vast forest round about 
 As a few strokes from a loving hand will soothe a
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 weary forehead, so the gentle pressure of the wild 
 grass soothes and strokes away the nervous tension 
 born of civilised life. 
 
 I could write.^ a whole history of it ; the time 
 when the leaves were fresh and green, and the 
 sedge-birds frequented it ; the time when the moor- 
 hen's young crept after their mother through its 
 recesses ; from the singing of the cuckoo by the 
 river, till now brown and yellow leaves strew the 
 water. They strew, too, the dry brown grass of 
 the land, thick tuffets, and lie even among the 
 rushes, blown hither from the distant trees. The 
 wind works its full will over the exposed waste, 
 and drives through the reed-grass, scattering the 
 stalks aside, and scarce giving them time to spring 
 together again, when the following blast a second 
 time divides them. 
 
 A cruder piece of ground, ruder and more dismal 
 in its unsightly holes, could not be found ; and yet, 
 because of the reed-grass, it is made as it were full 
 of thought. I wonder the painters, of whom there 
 are so many nowadays, armies of amateurs, do not 
 sometimes take these scraps of earth and render 
 into them the idea which fills a clod with beauty. 
 In one such dismal pit not here I remember 
 there grew a great quantity of bulrushes. Another 
 was surrounded with such masses of swamp-foliage 
 that it reminded those who saw it of the creeks in 
 286
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 semi-tropical countries. But somehow they do not 
 seem to see these things, but go on the old mill- 
 round of scenery, exhausted many a year since. 
 They do not see them, perhaps, because most 
 of those who have educated themselves in the 
 technique of painting are city-bred, and can never 
 have the feeling of the country, however fond they 
 may be of it. 
 
 In those fields of which I was writing the other 
 day, I found an artist at work at his easel ; and a 
 pleasant nook he had chosen. His brush did its 
 work with a steady and sure stroke that indicated 
 command of his materials. He could delineate 
 whatever he selected with technical skill at all 
 events. He had pitched his easel where two hedges 
 formed an angle, and one of them was full of oak- 
 trees. The hedge was singularly full of " bits " 
 bryony, tangles of grasses, berries, boughs half- 
 tinted and boughs green, hung as it were with 
 pictures like the wall of a room. Standing as 
 near as I could without disturbing him, I found 
 that the subject of his canvas was none of these. 
 It was that old stale and dull device of a rustic 
 bridge spanning a shallow stream crossing a lane. 
 Some figure stood on the bridge the old, old 
 trick. He was filling up the hedge of the lane with 
 trees from the hedge, and they were cleverly exe- 
 cuted. But why drag them into this fusty scheme, 
 287
 
 i THE OPEN AIR 
 
 which has appeared in every child's sketch-book 
 for fifty years ? Why not have simply painted the 
 beautiful hedge at hand, purely and simply, a hedge 
 hung with pictures for any one to copy ? The 
 field in which he had pitched his easel is full of 
 fine trees and good " effects. " But no; we must 
 have the ancient and effete old story. This is not 
 all the artist's fault, because he must in many cases 
 paint what he can sell ; and if his public will only 
 buy effete old stories, he cannot help it. Still, I 
 think if a painter did paint that hedge in its fulness 
 of beauty, just simply as it stands in the mellow 
 autumn light, it would win approval of the best 
 people, and that ultimately a succession of such 
 work would pay. 
 
 The clover was dying down, and the plough 
 would soon be among it the earth was visible in 
 patches. Out in one of these bare patches there 
 was a young mouse, so chilled by the past night 
 that his dull senses did not appear conscious of my 
 presence. He had crept out on the bare earth evi- 
 dently to feel the warmth of the sun, almost the 
 last hour he would enjoy. He looked about for 
 food, but found none ; his short span of life was 
 drawing to a close ; even when at last he saw me, 
 he could only run a few inches under cover of a 
 dead clover-plant. Thousands upon thousands of 
 mice perish like this as the winter draws on, born 
 288
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 too late in the year to grow strong enough or clever 
 enough to prepare a store. Other kinds of mice 
 perish like leaves at the first blast of cold air. 
 Though but a mouse, to me it was very wretched 
 to see the chilled creature, so benumbed as to have 
 almost lost its sense of danger. There is some- 
 thing so ghastly in birth that immediately leads to 
 death ; a sentient creature born only to wither. 
 The earth offered it no help, nor the declining 
 sun ; all things organised seem to depend so much 
 on circumstances. Nothing but pity can be felt 
 for thousands upon thousands of such organisms. 
 But thus, too, many a miserable human being has 
 perished in the great Metropolis, dying, chilled and 
 benumbed, of starvation, and finding the hearts of 
 fellow-creatures as bare and cold as the earth of 
 the clover-field. 
 
 In these fields outside London the flowers are 
 peculiarly rich in colour. The common mallow, 
 whose flower is usually a light mauve, has here a 
 deep, almost purple bloom ; the bird's-foot lotus is 
 a deep orange. The figwort, which is generally 
 two or three feet high, stands in one ditch fully 
 eight feet, and the stem is more than half an inch 
 square. A fertile soil has doubtless something to 
 do with this colour and vigour. The red admiral 
 butterflies, too, seemed in the summer more bril- 
 liant than usual. One very fine one, whose broad 
 19 289
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 wings stretched out like fans, looked simply splen- 
 did floating round and round the willows which 
 marked the margin of a dry pool. His blue mark- 
 ings were really b\ue blue velvet his red, and 
 the white stroke shone as if sunbeams were in 
 his wings. I wish there were more of these butter- 
 flies ; in summer, dry summer, when the flowers 
 seem gone and the grass is not so dear to us, and 
 the leaves are dull with heat, a little colour is so 
 pleasant. To me, colour is a sort of food ; every 
 spot of colour is a drop of wine to the spirit. I 
 used to take my folding-stool on those long, heated 
 days, which made the summer of 1884 so con- 
 spicuous among summers, down to the shadow of 
 a row of elms by a common cabbage-field. Their 
 shadow was nearly as hot as the open sunshine ; 
 the dry leaves did not absorb the heat that entered 
 them, and the dry hedge and dry earth poured heat 
 up as the sun poured it down. Dry, dead leaves 
 dead with heat, as with frost strewed the 
 grass, dry, too, and withered at my feet. 
 
 But among the cabbages, which were very small, 
 there grew thousands of poppies, fifty times more 
 poppies than cabbage, so that the pale green of the 
 cabbage-leaves was hidden by the scarlet petals fall- 
 ing wide open to the dry air. There was a broad 
 band of scarlet colour all along the side of the field, 
 and it was this which brought me to the shade of 
 290
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 those particular elms. The use of the cabbages was 
 in this way : they fetched for me all the white but- 
 terflies of the neighbourhood, and they fluttered, 
 hundreds and hundreds of white butterflies, a con- 
 stant stream and flow of them over the broad band 
 of scarlet. Humble-bees came too; bur-bur-bur; 
 and the buzz, and the flutter of the white wings 
 over those fixed red butterflies the poppies, the 
 flutter and sound and colour pleased me in the dry 
 heat of the day. Sometimes I set my camp-stool 
 by a humble-bee's nest. I like to see and hear 
 them go in and out, so happy, busy, and wild ; the 
 humble-bee is a favourite. That summer their nests 
 were very plentiful ; but although the heat might 
 have seemed so favourable to them, the flies were 
 not at all numerous, I mean out-of-doors. Wasps, 
 on the contrary, flourished to an extraordinary de- 
 gree. One willow tree particularly took their fancy; 
 there was a swarm in the tree for weeks, attracted 
 by some secretion ; the boughs and leaves were 
 yellow with wasps. But it seemed curious that 
 flies should not be more numerous than usual ; 
 they are dying now fast enough, except a few of 
 the large ones, that still find some sugar in the 
 flowers of the ivy. The finest show of ivy flower 
 is among some yew trees ; the dark ivy has filled 
 the dark yew tree, and brought out its pale yellow- 
 green flowers in the sombre boughs. Last night, a 
 291
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 great fly, the last in the house, bussed into my can- 
 dle. I detest flies, but I was sorry for his scorched 
 wings ; the fly itself hateful, its wings so beautifully 
 made. I have sometimes picked a feather from the 
 dirt of the road and placed it on the grass. It is 
 contrary to one's feelings to see so beautiful a thing 
 lying in the mud. Towards my window now, as 
 I write, there comes suddenly a shower of yellow 
 leaves, wrested out by main force from the high 
 elms ; the blue sky behind them, they droop slowly, 
 borne onward, twirling, fluttering towards me a 
 cloud of autumn butterflies. 
 
 A spring rises on the summit of a green brow 
 that overlooks the meadows for miles. The spot 
 is not really very high, still it is the highest ground 
 in that direction for a long distance, and it seems 
 singular to find water on the top of the hill, a thing 
 common enough, but still sufficiently opposed to 
 general impressions to appear remarkable. In this 
 shallow water, says a faint story far off, faint, 
 and uncertain, like the murmur of a distant cas- 
 cade two ladies and some soldiers lost their lives. 
 The brow is defended by thick bramble-bushes, 
 which bore a fine crop of blackberries that au- 
 tumn, to the delight of the boys ; and these bushes 
 partly conceal the sharpness of the short descent. 
 But once your attention is drawn to it, you see that 
 it has all the appearance of having been artificially 
 292
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON 
 
 sloped, like a rampart, or rather a glacis. The 
 grass is green and the sward soft, being moistened 
 by the spring, except in one spot, where the grass 
 is burnt up under the heat of the summer sun, 
 indicating the existence of foundations beneath. 
 
 There is a beautiful view from this spot ; but 
 leaving that now, and wandering on among the 
 fields, presently you may find a meadow of pe- 
 culiar shape, extremely long and narrow, half a 
 mile long, perhaps ; and this the folk will tell 
 you was the King's Drive, or ride. Stories there 
 are, too, of subterranean passages there are al- 
 ways such stories in the neighbourhood of ancient 
 buildings I remember one, said to be three miles 
 long ; it led to an abbey. The lane leads on, bor- 
 dered with high hawthorn hedges, and occasionally 
 a stout hawthorn tree, hardy and twisted by the 
 strong hands of the passing years ; thick now with 
 red haws, and the haunt of the redwings, whose 
 " chuck-chuck " is heard every minute ; but the 
 birds themselves always perch on the outer side 
 of the hedge. They are not far ahead, but they 
 always keep on the safe side, flying on twenty 
 yards or so, but never coming to my side. 
 
 The little pond, which in summer was green with 
 weed, is now yellow with the fallen hawthorn- 
 leaves ; the pond is choked with them. The lane 
 has been slowly descending ; and now, on looking
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 through a gateway, an ancient building stands up 
 on the hill, sharply defined against the sky. It is 
 the banqueting hall of a palace of old times, in 
 which kings and .princes once sat at their meat 
 after the chase. This is the centre of those dim 
 stories which float like haze over the meadows 
 around. Many a wild red stag has deen carried 
 thither after the hunt, and many a wild boar slain 
 in the glades of the forest. 
 
 The acorns are dropping now as they dropped 
 five centuries since, in the days when the wild 
 boars fed so greedily upon them; the oaks are 
 broadly touched with brown ; the bramble thickets 
 in which the boars hid, green, but strewn with 
 the leaves that have fallen from the lofty trees. 
 Though meadow, arable, and hop-fields hold now 
 the place of the forest, a goodly remnant remains, 
 for every hedge is full of oak and elm and ash ; 
 maple too, and the lesser bushes. At a little dis- 
 tance, so thick are the trees, the whole country 
 appears a wood, and it is easy to see what a forest 
 it must have been Centuries ago. 
 
 The Prince leaving the grim walls of the 
 Tower of London by the Water-gate, and drop- 
 ping but a short way down with the tide, could 
 mount his horse on the opposite bank, and reach 
 his palace here, in the midst of the thickest woods 
 and wildest country, in half an hour. Thence 
 294
 
 OUTSIDE LONDON ^asf 
 
 every morning setting forth upon the chase, he 
 could pass the day in joyous labours, and the 
 evening in feasting, still within call almost 
 within sound of horn of the Tower, if any 
 weighty matter demanded his presence. 
 
 In our time, the great city has widened out, 
 and comes at this day down to within three 
 miles of the hunting-palace. There still inter- 
 venes a narrow space between the last house of 
 London and the ancient Forest Hall, a space 
 of cornfield and meadow ; the last house, for al- 
 though not nominally London, there is no break 
 of continuity in the bricks and mortar thence to 
 London Bridge. London is within a stone's- 
 throw, as it were, and yet, to this day the forest 
 lingers, and it is country. The very atmosphere 
 is different. That smoky thickness characteristic 
 of the suburbs ceases as you ascend the gradual 
 rise, and leave the outpost of bricks and mortar 
 behind. The air becomes clear and strong, till on 
 the brow by the spring on a windy day it is al- 
 most like sea-air. It comes over the trees, over 
 the hills, and is sweet with the touch of grass and 
 leaf. There is no gas, no sulphurous acid in that. 
 As the Edwards and Henries breathed it centuries 
 since, so it can be inhaled now. The sun that 
 shone on the red deer is as bright now as then ; 
 the berries are thick on the bushes ; there is colour 
 295
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 in the leaf. The forest is gone ; but the spirit of 
 nature stays, and can be found by those who search 
 for it. Dearly as 1 love the open air, I cannot re- 
 gret the mediaeval .days. I do not wish them back 
 again ; I would sooner fight in the foremost ranks 
 of Time. Nor do we need them, for the spirit of 
 nature stays, and will always be here, no matter to 
 how high a pinnacle of thought the human mind 
 may attain ; still the sweet air, and the hills, and 
 the sea, and the sun, will always be with us.
 
 ON THE LONDON ROAD 
 
 road comes straight from London, 
 which is but a very short distance off, 
 within a walk, yet the village it passes 
 is thoroughly a village, and not sub- 
 urban, not in the least like Sydenham, or Croydon, 
 or Balham, or Norwood, as perfect a village in 
 every sense as if it stood fifty miles in the country. 
 There is one long street, just as would be found in 
 the far west, with fields at each end. But through 
 this long street, and on and out into the open, is 
 continually pouring the human living undergrowth 
 of that vast forest of life, London. The nonde- 
 script inhabitants of the thousand and one name- 
 less streets of the unknown east are great travellers, 
 and come forth into the country by this main 
 desert route. For what end ? Why this tramping 
 and ceaseless movement ? what do they buy, what 
 do they sell, how do they live ? They pass through 
 the village street and out into the country in an 
 endless stream on the shutter on wheels. This is 
 the true London vehicle, the characteristic con- 
 veyance, as characteristic as the Russian droshky, 
 _2 97
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 the gondola at Venice, or the caique at Stamboul. 
 It is the camel of the London desert routes ; routes 
 which run right through civilisation, but of which 
 daily paper civilisation is ignorant. People who can 
 pay for a daily paper are so far above it ; a daily paper 
 is the mark of the man who is in civilisation. 
 
 Take an old-fashioned shutter and balance it on 
 the axle of a pair of low wheels, and you have the 
 London camel in principle. To complete it add 
 shafts in front, and at the rear run a low freeboard, 
 as a sailor would say, along the edge, that the cargo 
 may not be shaken off. All the skill of the fashion- 
 able brougham-builders in Long Acre could not 
 contrive a vehicle which would meet the require- 
 ments of the case so well as this. On the desert 
 routes of Palestine a donkey becomes romantic ; 
 in a costermonger's barrow he is only an ass ; the 
 donkey himself does n't see the distinction. He 
 draws a good deal of human nature about in these 
 barrows, and perhaps finds it very much the same 
 in Surrey and Syria. For if any one thinks the 
 familiar barrow is merely a truck for the conveyance 
 of cabbages and carrots, and for the exposure of the 
 same to the choice of housewives in Bermondsey, 
 he is mistaken. Far beyond that, it is the symbol, 
 the solid expression, of life itself to the owner, his 
 family, and circle of connections, more so than 
 even the ship to the sailor, as the sailor, no matter 
 -298-
 
 CE: ON THE LONDON ROAD 
 
 how he may love his ship, longs for port, and the 
 joys of the shore, but the barrow folk are always 
 at sea on land. Such care has to be taken of the 
 miserable pony or the shamefaced jackass ; he has 
 to be groomed, and fed, and looked to in his shed, 
 and this occupies three or four of the family at least, 
 lads and strapping young girls, night and morning. 
 Besides which, the circle of connections look in to 
 see how he is going on, and to hear the story of 
 the day's adventures, and what is proposed for 
 to-morrow. Perhaps one is invited to join the next 
 excursion, and thinks as much of it as others might 
 do of an invitation for a cruise in the Mediterranean. 
 Any one who watches the succession of barrows 
 driving along through the village out into the fields 
 of Kent can easily see how they bear upon their 
 wheels the fortunes of whole families and of their 
 hangers-on. Sometimes there is a load of pathos, 
 of which the race of the ass has carried a good deal 
 in all ages. More often it is a heavy lump of dull, 
 evil, and exceedingly stupid cunning. The wild 
 evil of the Spanish contrabandistas seems atoned by 
 that wildness; but this dull wickedness has no flush 
 of colour, no poppy on its dirt heaps. 
 
 Over one barrow the sailors had fixed up a tent 
 canvas stretched from corner poles, two fellows sat 
 almost on the shafts outside ; they were well. Under 
 the canvas there lay a young fellow white and
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 emaciated, whose face was drawn down with severe 
 suffering of some kind, and his dark eyes, enlarged 
 and accentuated, looked as if touched with bella- 
 donna. The family council at home in the close 
 and fetid court had resolved themselves into a med- 
 ical board and ordered him to the sunny Riviera. 
 The ship having been fitted up for the invalid, 
 away they sailed for the south, out from the ends 
 of the earth of London into the ocean of green 
 fields and trees, thence past many an island village, 
 and so to the shores where the Kentish hops were 
 yellowing fast for the pickers. There, in the vin- 
 tage days, doubtless he found solace, and possibly 
 recovery. To catch a glimpse of that dark and 
 cavernous eye under the shade of the travelling tent 
 reminded me of the eyes of the wounded in the 
 ambulance-waggons that came pouring into Brussels 
 after Sedan. In the dusk of the lovely September 
 evenings it was a beautiful September, the lime- 
 leaves were just tinted with orange the waggons 
 came in a long string, the wounded and maimed 
 lying in them, packed carefully, and rolled round, 
 as it were, with wadding to save them from the jolts 
 of the ruts and stones. It is fifteen years ago, and 
 yet I can still distinctly see the eyes of one soldier 
 looking at me from his berth in the waggon. The 
 glow of intense pain the glow of long-continued 
 agony lit them up as coals that smouldering are
 
 ON THE LONDON ROAD 
 
 suddenly fanned. Pain brightens the eyes as much 
 as joy, there is a fire in the brain behind it ; it is 
 the flame in the mind you see, and not the eyeball. 
 A thought that might easily be rendered romantic, 
 but consider how these poor fellows appeared after- 
 wards. Bevies of them hopped about Brussels in 
 their red-and-blue uniforms, some on crutches, some 
 with two sticks, some with sleeves pinned to their 
 breasts, looking exactly like a- company of dolls a 
 cruel child had mutilated, snapping a foot off here, 
 tearing out a leg here, and battering the face of a 
 third. Little men most of them the bowl of a 
 German pipe inverted would have covered them 
 all, within which, like bees in a hive, they might 
 hum "Te Deum Bismarckum Laudamus." But 
 the romantic flame in the eye is not always so 
 beautiful to feel as to read about. 
 
 Another shutter on wheels went by one day with 
 one little pony in the shafts, and a second harnessed 
 in some way at the side, so as to assist in pulling, 
 but without bearing any share of the load. On this 
 shutter eight men and boys balanced themselves ; 
 enough for the Olympian height of a four-in-hand. 
 Eight fellows perched round the edge like ship- 
 wrecked mariners, clinging to one plank. They 
 were so balanced as to weigh chiefly on the axle, yet 
 in front of such a mountain of men, such avast bundle 
 of ragged clothes, the ponies appeared like rats. 
 301
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 On a Sunday morning two fellows came along on 
 their shutter: they overtook a girl who was walking 
 on the pavement, and one of them, more sallow and 
 cheeky than his companion, began to talk to her. 
 "That's a nice nosegay, now give us a rose. 
 Come and ride there 's plenty of room. Won't 
 speak ? Now, you '11 tell us if this is the road to 
 London Bridge." She nodded. She was dressed in 
 full satin for Sunday; her class think much of satin. 
 She was leading two children, one in each hand, 
 clean and well dressed. She walked more lightly 
 than a servant does, and evidently lived at home ; 
 she did not go to service. Tossing her head, she 
 looked the other way, for you see the fellow on the 
 shutter was dirty, not " dressed " at all, though it 
 was Sunday, poor folks' ball-day ; a dirty, rough 
 fellow, with a short clay pipe in his mouth, a chalky- 
 white face apparently from low dissipation a 
 disreputable rascal, a monstrously impudent "chap," 
 a true London mongrel. He "cheeked" her; she 
 tossed her head, and looked the other way. But 
 by-and-by she could not help a sly glance at him, 
 not an angry glance a look as much as to say, 
 " You 're a man, anyway, and you 've the good taste 
 to admire me, and the courage to speak to me ; 
 you 're dirty, but you're a man. If you were well 
 dressed, or if it was n't Sunday, or if it was dark, 
 or nobody about, I would n't mind ; I 'd let you 
 30:1
 
 ON THE LONDON ROAD 
 
 'cheek' me, though I have got satin on." The 
 fellow "cheeked" her again, told her she had a 
 pretty face, " cheeked " her right and left. She 
 looked away, but half smiled ; she had to keep up 
 her dignity, she did not feel it. She would have 
 liked to have joined company with him. His leer 
 grew leerier the low, cunning leer, so peculiar to 
 the London mongrel, that seems to say, " I am so 
 intensely knowing; I am so very much all there;" 
 and yet the leerer always remains in a dirty dress, 
 always smokes the coarsest tobacco in the nastiest 
 of pipes, and rides on a barrow to the end of his 
 life. For his leery cunning is so intensely stupid 
 that, in fact, he is as " green " as grass : his leer 
 and his foul mouth keep him in the gutter to his 
 very last day. How much more successful plain, 
 simple straightforwardness would be ! The pony 
 went on a little, but they drew rein and waited for 
 the girl again ; and again he " cheeked " her. Still, 
 she looked away, but she did not make any attempt 
 to escape by the side-path, nor show resentment. 
 No; her face began to glow, and once or twice she 
 answered him, but still she would not quite join 
 company. If only it had not been Sunday if it 
 had been a lonely road, and not so near the village, 
 if she had not had the two tell-tale children with her 
 she would have been very good friends with the 
 dirty, chalky, ill-favoured, and ill-savoured wretch. 
 ' 303
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 At the parting of the roads each went different ways, 
 but she could not help looking back. 
 
 He was a thorough specimen of the leery London 
 mongrel. That hideous leer is so repulsive one 
 cannot endure it but it is so common ; you see 
 it on the faces of four-fifths of the ceaseless stream 
 that runs out from the ends of the earth of London 
 into the green sea of the country. It disfigures the 
 faces of the carters who go with the waggons and 
 other vehicles not nomads, but men in steady 
 employ; it defaces absolutely defaces the work- 
 men who go forth with vans, with timber, with 
 carpenters' work, and the policeman standing at the 
 corners, in London itself particularly. The London 
 leer hangs on their faces. The Mosaic account of 
 the Creation is discredited in these days, the last 
 revelation took place at Beckenham ; the Becken- 
 ham revelation is superior to Mount Sinai, yet the 
 consideration of that leer might suggest the idea of 
 a fall of man even to an Amcebist. The horrible- 
 ness of it is in this way, it hints it does more 
 than hint, it conveys the leerer's decided opinion 
 that you, whether you may be man or woman, must 
 necessarily be as coarse as himself. Especially he 
 wants to impress that view upon every woman who 
 chances to cross his glance. The fist of Hercules 
 is needed to dash it out of his face. 
 
 34
 
 RED ROOFS OF LONDON 
 
 and tile roofs have a curious way 
 of tumbling to pieces in an irregular 
 and eye-pleasing manner. The roof- 
 tree bends, bows a little under the 
 weight, curves in, and yet preserves a sharpness 
 at each end. The Chinese exaggerate this curve 
 of set purpose. Our English curve is softer, being 
 the product of time, which always works in true 
 taste. The mystery of tile-laying is not known to 
 every one ; for to all appearance tiles seem to be 
 put on over a thin bed of hay or hay-like stuff. 
 Lately they have begun to use some sort of tar- 
 paulin or a coarse material of that kind ; but the 
 old tiles, I fancy, were comfortably placed on a 
 shake-down of hay. When one slips off, little 
 bits of hay stick up ; and to these the sparrows 
 come, removing it bit by bit to line their nests. 
 If they can find a gap they get in, and a fresh 
 couple is started in life. By-and-by a chimney is 
 overthrown during a twist of the wind, and half a 
 dozen tiles are shattered. Time passes ; and at 
 last the tiler arrives to mend the mischief. His
 
 THE OPEN AIR SE^ES^^ 
 
 labour leaves a light red patch on the dark dull 
 red of the breadth about it. After another while 
 the leaks along the ridge need plastering : mortar 
 is laid on to stay tjie inroad of wet, adding a dull 
 white and forming a rough, uncertain undulation 
 along the general drooping curve. Yellow edg- 
 ings of straw project under the eaves the work 
 of the sparrows. A cluster of blue-tinted pigeons 
 gathers about the chimney-side ; the smoke that 
 comes out of the stack droops and floats side- 
 ways, downwards, as if the chimney enjoyed the 
 smother as a man enjoys his pipe. Shattered here 
 and cracked yonder, some missing, some overlap- 
 ping in curves, the tiles have an aspect of irregular 
 existence. They are not fixed, like slates, as it 
 were for ever : they have a newness, and then a 
 middle-age, and a time of decay like human 
 beings. 
 
 One roof is not much ; but it is often a study. 
 Put a thousand roofs, say rather thousands of red- 
 tiled roofs, and overlook them not at a great al- 
 titude, but at a pleasant easy angle and then you 
 have the groundwork of the first view of London 
 over Bermondsey from the railway. I say ground- 
 work, because the roofs seem the level and surface 
 of the earth, while the glimpses of streets are 
 glimpses of catacombs. A city as something 
 to look at depends very much on its roofs. If 
 -306-
 
 RED ROOFS OF LONDON 
 
 a city have no character in its roofs it stirs neither 
 heart nor thought. These red-tiled roofs of Ber- 
 mondsey, stretching away mile upon mile, and 
 brought up at the extremity with thin masts ris- 
 ing above the mist these red-tiled roofs have a 
 distinctiveness, a character ; they are something to 
 think about. Nowhere else is there an entrance to 
 a city like this. The roads by which you approach 
 them give you distant aspects minarets, perhaps, 
 in the East, domes in Italy ; but, coming nearer, 
 the highway somehow plunges into houses, con- 
 founding you with facades, and the real place is 
 hidden. Here from the railway you see at once 
 the vastness of London. Roof-tree behind roof- 
 tree, ridge behind ridge, is drawn along in suc- 
 cession, line behind line till they become as close 
 together as the test-lines used for microscopes. 
 Under this surface of roofs what a profundity 
 of life there is ! Just as the great horses in the 
 waggons of London streets convey the idea of 
 strength, so the endlessness of the view conveys 
 the idea of a mass of life. Life converges ' from 
 every quarter. The iron way has many ruts : the 
 rails are its ruts ; and by each of these a ceaseless 
 stream of men and women pours over the tiled roofs 
 into London. They come from the populous sub- 
 urbs, from far-away towns and quiet villages, and 
 from over sea. 
 
 37
 
 : THE OPEN AIR 
 
 Glance down as you pass into the excavations, 
 the streets, beneath the red surface : you catch a 
 glimpse of men and women hastening to and fro, 
 of vehicles, of hors % es struggling with mighty loads, 
 of groups at the corners, and fragments, as it were, 
 of crowds. Busy life everywhere : no stillness, no 
 quiet, no repose. Life crowded and crushed to- 
 gether; life that has hardly room to live. If the 
 train slackens, look in at the open windows of the 
 houses level with the line they are always open 
 for air, smoke-laden as it is and see women and 
 children with scarce room to move, the bed and 
 the dining-table in the same apartment. For they 
 dine and sleep and work and play all at the same 
 time. A man works at night and sleeps by day : 
 he lies yonder as calmly as if in a quiet country 
 cottage. The children have no place to play in 
 but the living-room or the street. It is not squalor 
 it is crowded life. The people are pushed to- 
 gether by the necessities of existence. These peo- 
 ple have no dislike to it at all : it is right enough 
 to them, and so long as business is brisk they are 
 happy. The man who lies sleeping so calmly 
 seems to me to indicate the immensity of the life 
 around more than all the rest. He is oblivious of 
 it ail ; it does not make him nervous or wakeful ; 
 he is so used to it, and bred to it, that it seems to 
 him nothing. When he is awake he does not see 
 308
 
 RED ROOFS OF LONDON 
 
 it ; now he sleeps he does not hear it. It is only 
 in great woods that you cannot see the trees. He 
 is like a leaf in a forest he is not conscious of it. 
 Long hours of work have given him slumber ; and 
 as he sleeps he seems to express by contrast the 
 immensity and endlessness of the life around him. 
 Sometimes a floating haze, now thicker here, 
 and now lit up yonder by the sunshine, brings 
 out objects more distinctly than a clear atmos- 
 phere. Away there tall thin masts stand out, 
 rising straight up above the red roofs. There is 
 a faint colour on them ; the yards are dark be- 
 ing inclined, they do not reflect the light at an 
 angle to reach us. Half-furled canvas droops in 
 folds, now swelling a little as the wind blows, now 
 heavily sinking. One white sail is set and gleams 
 alone among the dusky folds ; for the canvas at 
 large is dark with coal-dust, with smoke, with the 
 grime that settles everywhere where men labour 
 with bare arms and chests. Still and quiet as 
 trees the masts rise into the hazy air ; who would 
 think, merely to look at them, of the endless labour 
 they mean ? The labour to load, and the labour to 
 unload ; the labour at sea, and the long hours of 
 ploughing the waves by night ; the labour at the 
 warehouses ; the labour in the fields, the mines, 
 the mountains ; the labour in the factories. Ever 
 and again the sunshine gleams now on this group 
 39
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 of masts, now on that ; for they stand in groups as 
 trees often grow, a thicket here and a thicket yon- 
 der. Labour to obtain the material, labour to bring 
 it hither, labour to force it into shape work with- 
 out end. Masts are always dreamy to look at : they 
 speak a romance of the sea ; of unknown lands ; 
 of distant forests aglow with tropical colours and 
 abounding with strange forms of life. In the 
 hearts of most of us there is always a desire for 
 something beyond experience. Hardly any of us 
 but have thought, Some day I will go on a long 
 voyage ; but the years go by, and still we have not 
 sailed. 
 
 310
 
 A WET NIGHT IN LONDON 
 
 PAQUE from rain drawn in slant 
 streaks by wind and speed across 
 the pane, the window of the railway 
 carriage lets nothing be seen but 
 stray flashes of red lights the signals rapidly 
 passed. Wrapped in thick overcoat, collar turned 
 up to his ears, warm gloves on his hands, and 
 a rug across his knees, the traveller may well 
 wonder how those red signals and the points are 
 worked out in the storms of wintry London. 
 Rain blown in gusts through the misty atmosphere, 
 gas- and smoke-laden, deepens the darkness ; the 
 howl of the blast humming in the telegraph wires, 
 hurtling round the chimney-pots on a level with 
 the line, rushing up from the archways ; steam from 
 the engines, roar, and whistle, shrieking brakes, 
 and grinding wheels how is the traffic worked 
 at night in safety over the inextricable windings of 
 the iron roads into the city ? 
 
 At London Bridge the door is opened by some 
 one who gets out, and the cold air comes in ; there 
 is a rush of people in damp coats, with dripping 
 311
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 umbrellas, and time enough to notice the archae- 
 ologically interesting wooden beams which support 
 the roof of the South-Eastern station. Antique 
 beams they are, good old Norman oak, such as you 
 may sometimes find in very old country churches 
 that have not been restored, such as yet exist in 
 Westminster Hall, temp. Rufus or Stephen, or so. 
 Genuine old woodwork, worth your while to go 
 and see. Take a sketch-book and make much of 
 the ties and angles and bolts ; ask Whistler or 
 Macbeth, or some one to etch them, get the Royal 
 Antiquarian Society to pay a visit and issue a 
 pamphlet ; gaze at them reverently and earnestly, 
 for they are not easily to be matched in London. 
 Iron girders and spacious roofs are the modern 
 fashion ; here we have the Middle Ages well 
 preserved slam! the door is banged-to, onwards, 
 over the invisible river, more red signals and 
 rain, and finally the terminus. Five hundred well- 
 dressed and civilised savages, wet, cross, weary, all 
 anxious to get in eager for home and dinner ; 
 five hundred stiffened and cramped folk equally 
 eager to get out mix on a narrow platform, with 
 a train running off one side, and a detached engine 
 gliding gently after it. Push, wriggle, wind in and 
 out, bumps from portmanteaus, and so at last out 
 into the street. 
 
 Now, how are you going to get into an omnibus? 
 312
 
 SE^-T^K A WET NIGHT IN 
 
 The street is " up, " the traffic confined to half a 
 narrow thoroughfare, the little space available at 
 the side crowded with newsvenders whose contents 
 bills are spotted and blotted with wet, crowded, too, 
 with young girls, bonnetless, with aprons over their 
 heads, whose object is simply to do nothing just 
 to stand in the rain and chaff; the newsvenders 
 yell their news in your ears, then, rinding you 
 don't purchase, they "Yah!" at you; an aged 
 crone begs you to buy " lights " ; a miserable 
 young crone, with pinched face, offers artificial 
 flowers oh, Naples ! Rush comes the rain, and 
 the gas-lamps are dimmed ; whoo-oo comes the 
 wind like a smack ; cold drops get in the ears and 
 eyes ; clean wristbands are splotched ; greasy mud 
 splashed over shining boots ; some one knocks 
 the umbrella round, and the blast all but turns 
 it. " Wake up ! " " Now then stop here all 
 night?" "Gone to sleep?" They shout, they 
 curse, they put their hands to their mouths trumpet- 
 wise and bellow at each other, these cabbies, van- 
 men, 'busmen, all angry at the block in the narrow 
 way. The 'bus-driver, with London stout, and 
 plenty of it, polishing his round cheeks like the 
 brasswork of a locomotive, his neck well wound 
 and buttressed with thick comforter and collar, 
 heedeth not, but goes on his round, now fast, now 
 slow, always stolid and rubicund, the rain running 
 313
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 harmlessly from him as if he were oiled. The 
 conductor, perched like the showman's monkey 
 behind, hops and twists, and turns now on one foot 
 and now on the otjier as if the plate were red-hot ; 
 now holds on with one hand, and now dexterously 
 shifts his grasp ; now shouts to the crowd and 
 waves his hands towards the pavement, and again 
 looks round the edge of the 'bus forwards and curses 
 somebody vehemently. "Near side up! Look alive! 
 Full inside" curses, curses, curses; rain, rain, 
 rain, and no one can tell which is most plentiful. 
 
 The cab-horse's head comes nearly inside the 
 'bus, the 'bus-pole threatens to poke the hansom 
 in front; the brougham would be careful, for var- 
 nish' sake, but is wedged and must take its chance; 
 van-wheels catch omnibus hubs ; hurry, scurry, 
 whip, and drive; slip, slide, bump, rattle, jar, jostle, 
 an endless stream clattering on, in, out, and round. 
 On, on "Stanley, on" the first and last 
 words of cabby's life ; on, on, the one law of ex- 
 istence in a London street drive on, stumble or 
 stand, drive on strain sinews, crack, splinter 
 drive on ; what a sight to watch as you wait amid 
 the newsvenders and bonnetless girls for the 'bus 
 that will not come! Is it real? It seems like a 
 dream, those nightmare dreams in which you know 
 that you must run, and do run, and yet cannot lift 
 the legs that are heavy as lead, with the demon be-
 
 E^IT A WET NIGHT IN LONDON^ 
 
 hind pursuing, the demon of Drive-on. Move, or 
 cease to be pass out of Time or be stirring 
 quickly ; if you stand you must suffer even here on 
 the pavement, splashed with greasy mud, shoved 
 by coarse ruffianism, however good your intentions 
 just dare to stand still ! Ideas here for moral- 
 ising, but I can't preach with the roar and the din 
 and the wet in my ears, and the flickering street 
 lamps flaring. That 's the 'bus no; the tarpau- 
 lin hangs down and obscures the inscription ; yes. 
 Hi ! No heed ; how could you be so confiding as 
 to imagine conductor or driver would deign to see 
 a signalling passenger ; the game is to drive on. 
 
 A gentleman makes a desperate rush and grabs 
 the handrail ; his foot slips on the asphalt or wood, 
 which is like oil, he slides, his hat totters ; happily 
 he recovers himself and gets in. In the block the 
 'bus is stayed a moment, and somehow we follow, 
 and are landed "somehow" advisedly. For how 
 do we get into a 'bus ? After the pavement, even 
 this hard seat would be nearly an easy-chair, were 
 it not for the damp smell of soaked overcoats, the 
 ceaseless rumble, and the knockings overhead out- 
 side. The noise is immensely worse than the 
 shaking or the steamy atmosphere, the noise ground 
 into the ears, and wearying the mind to a state 
 of drowsy narcotism you become chloroformed 
 through the sense of hearing, a condition of dreary 
 315
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 resignation and uncomfortable ease. The illumi- 
 nated shops seem to pass like an endless window 
 without division of doors; there are groups of people 
 staring in at them in spite of the rain ; ill-clad, half- 
 starving people for the most part ; the well-dressed 
 hurry onwards ; they have homes. A dull feeling 
 of satisfaction creeps over you that you are at least 
 in shelter; the rumble is a little better than the 
 wind and the rain and the puddles. If the Greek 
 sculptors were to come to life again and cut us out in 
 bas-relief for another Parthenon, they would have to 
 represent us shuffling along, heads down and coat- 
 tails flying, splash-splosh a nation of umbrellas. 
 
 Under a broad archway, gaily lighted, the broad 
 and happy way to a theatre, there is a small crowd 
 waiting, and among them two ladies, with their 
 backs to the photographs and bills, looking out into 
 the street. They stand side by side, evidently quite 
 oblivious and indifferent to the motley folk about 
 them, chatting and laughing, taking the wet and 
 windy wretchedness of the night as a joke. They 
 are both plump and rosy-cheeked, dark eyes gleam- 
 ing and red lips parted ; both decidedly good-looking, 
 much too rosy and full-faced, too well fed and 
 comfortable to take a prize from Burne-Jones, very 
 worldly people in the roast-beef sense. Their faces 
 glow in the bright light merry sea coal-fire faces; 
 they have never turned their backs on the good 
 -316-
 
 WET NIGHT IN LONDON 
 
 things of this life. " Never shut the door on good 
 fortune," as Queen Isabella of Spain says. Wind 
 and rain may howl and splash, but here are two 
 faces they never have touched rags and battered 
 shoes drift along the pavement no wet feet or 
 cold necks here. Best of all, they glow with good 
 spirits, they laugh, they chat ; they are full of 
 enjoyment, clothed thickly with health and happi- 
 ness, as their shoulders good wide shoulders are 
 thicklv wrapped in warmest furs. The 'bus goes 
 on, and they are lost to view ; if you came back 
 in an hour you would find them still there without 
 doubt still jolly, chatting, smiling, waiting perhaps 
 for the stage, but anyhow far removed, like the 
 goddesses on Olympus, from the splash and misery 
 of London. Drive on. 
 
 The head of a great grey horse in a van drawn 
 up by the pavement, the head and neck stand out 
 and conquer the rain and misty dinginess by sheer 
 force of beauty, sheer strength of character. He 
 turns his head his neck forms a fine curve, his 
 face is full of intelligence, in spite of the half-dim 
 light and the driving rain, of the thick atmosphere, 
 and the black hollow of the covered van behind, his 
 head and neck stand out, just as in old portraits the 
 face is still bright, though surrounded with crusted 
 varnish. It would be a glory to any man to paint 
 him. Drive on. 
 
 317
 
 THE OPEN AIR 
 
 How strange the dim, uncertain faces of the 
 crowd, half seen, seem in the hurry and rain; faces 
 held downwards and muffled by the darkness not 
 quite human in th^ir eager and intensely concen- 
 trated haste. No one thinks of or notices another 
 on, on splash, shove, and scramble; an intense 
 selfishness, so selfish as not to be selfish, if that can 
 be understood, so absorbed as to be past observing 
 that any one lives but themselves. Human beings 
 reduced to mere hurrying machines, worked by wind 
 and rain, and stern necessities of life ; driven on ; 
 something very hard and unhappy in the thought of 
 this. They seem reduced to the condition of the 
 wooden cabs the mere vehicles pulled along 
 by the irresistible horse Circumstance. They shut 
 their eyes mentally, wrap themselves in the overcoat 
 of indifference, and drive on, drive on. It is time 
 to get out at last. The 'bus stops on one side of 
 the street, and you have to cross to the other. Look 
 up and down lights are rushing each way, but for 
 the moment none are close. The gas-lamps shine 
 in the puddles of thick greasy water, and by their 
 gleam you can guide yourself round them. Cab 
 coming ! Surely he will give way a little and not 
 force you into that great puddle; no, he neither sees, 
 nor cares. Drive on, drive on. Quick! the shafts! 
 Step in the puddle and save your life ! 
 
 The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.