RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 HIS LIFE AND WORK 
 
RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 HIS LIFE AND WORK 
 

 <iw>.-*w. ti'-rji^ 
 
RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORK 
 
 BY EDWARD THOMAS 
 
 AUTHOR OK 
 'hORvE S0I,ITARI;«,' 'the heart of ENGLAND, ETC. 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 AND A MAP 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY 
 
 1909 
 
Printed in Great Britain 
 
Ts 
 
 TO 
 
 W. H. HUDSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'the NATURALIST IN LA PLATA,' 
 
 ' THE PURPLE LAND,' ' GREEN MANSIONS,' 
 
 'nature IN DOWNLAND,' ETC. 
 
 239876 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This book is an attempt to give a fuller account of the life 
 and writings of Richard Jefferies than has yet been pub- 
 lished. That ' The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies ' by the 
 late Walter Besant was kindly, but unsympathetic and 
 incomplete, cannot be disputed. Mr. Henry S. Salt's 
 ' Richard Jefferies : His Life and His Ideals,' though a 
 much better book, is a critical essay, and leaves the way 
 clear for such a book as I have tried to write. For over 
 twenty years I have known Jefferies' part of Wiltshire, and 
 I hope that I have got most of what the country people 
 had to tell about him and his family. I have had much 
 information and great kindness from Mrs. Richard 
 Jefferies, Miss Phyllis Jefferies, Mr. Charles Jefferies, Mrs. 
 Robert T. Billing {nee Sarah Jefferies), Mr. Robert T. 
 BUling, Mrs. Harrild, Mr. Henry S. Salt, Mr. C. P. 
 Scott, Mr. C. J. Longman, and Mr. George Dartnell, 
 author of a bibliography of Richard Jefferies in the 
 Wiltshire Archceological Society's Magazine, etc. I desire 
 also to thank the publishers of Richard Jefferies' books 
 for their permission to quote extensively from them : 
 Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., publishers of ' The Game- 
 keeper at Home,' ' The Amateur Poacher,' ' Wild Life in 
 a Southern County,' * Round about a Great Estate,' 
 * Greene Feme Farm,' and ' Hodge and his Masters ' ; 
 Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co., publishers of ' Wood 
 Magic,' ' The Story of My Heart,' ' Red Deer,' ' Field and 
 Hedgerow,' and ' Toilers of the Field ' ; Messrs. Mac- 
 millan and Co., publishers of * The Dewy Mom ' ; Messrs. 
 Chatto and Windus, publishers of ' Nature near London,' 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 * The Open Air,' and ' Life of the Fields ' ; and Messrs. 
 Duckworth and Co., pubUshers of ' Bevis,' ' After London,' 
 and ' Amarylhs at the Fair ' ; also the proprietors of 
 Country Life and Miss F. C. Hall for permission to use the 
 photograph of Richard Jefferies as a young man. The 
 following also have given me help : Mr. George Avenell, 
 Mr. Samuel Lane Bondman, Mr. Gordon Bottomley, 
 Mr. James Bradford, Mr. A. Coleman, Mr. T. C. Davison, 
 Mr. F. B. Doveton, Mr. Ernest Rhys, Miss W. M. 
 Fentiman, Mr. A. M. Freeman, the Rev. E. H. 
 Goddard, Mr. William Gough, Mr. P. Anderson Graham, 
 Mrs. Arthur Harvie, Mr. H. Bottomley Knowles, Mr. C. J. 
 Longman, Mr. S. Morris, Mr. A. Theodore Rake, Mrs. 
 Daniel Smith, Mr. H. H. Sturmer, Mr. H. Woolford, 
 and Mr. W. Wright. 
 
 igo8 EDWARD THOMAS. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES - - I 
 
 II. ANCESTRY - - - - - ' ^3 
 
 III. CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM - - "34 
 
 IV. YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD - - * 5° 
 
 V. EARLY MANHOOD {continued) - - - 8o 
 
 VI. FIRST NOVELS - - - - * 92 
 
 VII. FIRST COUNTRY ESSAYS - - - - 107 
 
 VIII. IN LONDON AND THE SUBURBS - - - I I I 
 
 IX. FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS - - - 123 
 
 X. 'NATURE NEAR LONDON' - - - - 150 
 
 XI. 'WOOD magic' and 'bevis' - - - 156 
 
 XII. ILLNESS - - - - - - 170 
 
 XIII. 'THE STORY OF MY HEART'- - - "177 
 
 XIV. 'THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS' AND 'THE OPEN AIR ' - 209 
 XV. 'THE DEWY MORN ' ----- 224 
 
 XVL 'after LONDON' - - . . . 254 
 
 XVII. 'AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR* - - - - 263 
 
 XVIII. ' FIELD AND HEDGEROW ' AND OTHER ESSAYS - 29O 
 
 XIX. RECAPITULATION - - - - "317 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . 329 
 
 INDEX ...... 336 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TO FACE PAGE 
 
 RICHARD JEFFERIES (STEREOSCOPIC PHOTOGRAPH PHOTO- 
 GRAVURE) - - - . . Frontispiece 
 
 FOREST AND DOWN (DRAWN BY JAMES GUTHRIE) - - 12 
 
 RICHARD JEFFERIES AS A BOY - - - ' 3^ 
 
 OLD SWINDON CHURCH - - - - - 62 
 
 RICHARD JEFFERIES AS A YOUNG MAN - - "78 
 
 JAMES LUCKETT JEFFERIES - - - - 86 
 
 CO ATE FARM - - - - - '134 
 
 ELIZABETH JEFFERIES ..... 144 
 
 THE 'VENUS ACCROUPIE ' - - - - . 187 
 
 ELIZABETH JEFFERIES - - - - - 2IO 
 
 JAMES LUCKETT JEFFERIES .... 240 
 
 FANNY JEFFERIES - - - • - - 270 
 
 LETTER OF RICHARD JEFFERIES (FACSIMILE) • - 306 
 
 Xl 
 
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 
 RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Richard Jefferies was born at Coate Farm, in the North 
 Wiltshire hamlet of Coate and the parish of Chisledon, on 
 November 6, 1848. There he dwelt for the greater part 
 of the first thirty years of his life ; there and thereabouts, 
 and in the neighbouring county of Gloucestershire, dwelt 
 his ancestors for several, perhaps many, generations. This 
 country and its people was the subject of half his work, 
 and the background, the source, or the inspiration, of all 
 but all the rest. He, in his turn, was the genius, the 
 human expression, of this country, emerging from it, not to 
 be detached from it any more than the curves of some 
 statues from their maternal stone. He walked about the 
 hills and fields of it day and night, in pursuit of sport, of 
 health, of society, of solitude, of joy, of the dearest objects 
 of his soul ; and though he left it never to return, yet 
 three times before he died he lived in, or in sight of, country 
 not unlike it — at Brighton, at Crowborough, and at 
 Goring. 
 
 It is a beautiful, a quiet, an unrenowned, and a most 
 visibly ancient land. The core and essence of it are the 
 Downs, which lie south and east and west of Coate. 
 Northward is Swindon, where Jefferies lived two years, 
 
 I 
 
2 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 and Wootton Bassett, Purton, Malmesbury, Cirencester, 
 and Fairford — all of which he knew, with their surrounding 
 fields ; but to reach them was to leave the Downs for the 
 rich, sluggish, dairy country of elms, that is seldom 
 roused to the energy of hiUs. Fair as that part of Wilt- 
 shire is, it has left few marks upon his books ; and even in 
 his youthful chapters on the Swindon neighbourhood, 
 where he might have thought it his business to set his 
 affection aside, he seldom betrays much knowledge of the 
 northward land, of whose people Aubrey wrote that they 
 ' speak drawling,' are ' dull and heavy of spirits,' ' feed 
 chiefly on milk meats, which hurts their inventions,' are 
 ' melancholy, contemplative, malicious, by consequence 
 whereof come more lawsuits — at least double those in 
 the southern parts,' and are ' more apt to be fanatic' 
 Roughly speaking, the Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal, in its 
 course from near Wantage, past Ufftngton, Stratton St. 
 Margaret, Swindon, Wootton Bassett, and Dauntsey, was 
 Jefferies' northern boundary. That boundary at least 
 in winter he loved, for the frosts turned it into an incom- 
 parable track for his skates, and it is as a skater only that 
 he is respectfully remembered in those parts. The canal 
 has now relapsed into barbarism ; its stiffened and weedy 
 waters are stirred only by the moorhen, who walks more 
 than she swims across them. 
 
 For Jefferies at Coate, the summer sun rose over White- 
 horse Hill, eight miles off in Berkshire, with the ancient 
 entrenchment above and the westward-ramping white 
 horse below ; and to reach the hill meant a long, lonely 
 walk on the Ridgeway through the high corn-land and past 
 Wayland Smith's cave, or along the more frequented 
 parallel road below, through Wanborough, Little Hinton, 
 Bishopston, Ashbury, and Compton Beauchamp. At 
 Bishopston stood the old mansion — used as a Grammar 
 School — which he has celebrated in ' Wild Life in a 
 Southern County,' in ' An Extinct Race,' and in his early 
 chapter on the London and Faringdon road. At Hinton 
 and Bishopston there are fine farmhouses with lime- 
 
THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 3 
 
 trees ; at Ashbury, also, one among trees and oats, built 
 of stone, with many square windows and handsome 
 chimneys; and one where the by-road goes to Longcott and 
 Shrivenham. North of this road is the flat land, which has 
 so many elms bordering so many small fields that from a 
 distance it seems one wood. South, and close at hand, are 
 the Downs — the solitary, arable slopes, the solid beech 
 clumps, the coursing and racing turf of Ashdown and 
 Lambourn. Always high up, the Ridgeway goes north- 
 eastward over the corn, with few traces of living men except 
 the Oxford Steam-Ploughing Company's engines, har- 
 boured, perchance, amidst heaps of coal and the chalk-land 
 flowers — hop-trefoil, saw-wort, scabious, purple gentian, 
 and poppy. Wayland Smith's cave lies on the left going 
 north-east, about thirty water-worn and mossy sarsens, 
 some roughly hewTi, three upright, with a superincumbent 
 fourth, hidden among beeches and starved elders. Beyond, 
 the old road is to be seen going rough and white up White- 
 horse Hill, nicked by the entrenchment, and with it even 
 the weary feet must go if it is summer and the hour a 
 spacious and windless twilight. It leads to yet another 
 camp, Letcombe Castle, two or three miles south of 
 Wantage, farther than which a walker from Coate who 
 had to return the same day would not be likely to travel. 
 
 Going south-east instead of north-east from Coate, a 
 similar limit is reached at Lambourn. From Wan- 
 borough, through Totterdown, to Baydon, the road is the 
 Ermine Street on its way from Cirencester, through 
 Cricklade, to Sheen, and crosses the Ridgeway at Totter- 
 down. For the ear at least Baydon is Badon Mount. 
 This is pure down-land : the breasted hiUs curving as if 
 under the influence of a great melody ; the beeches lining 
 the Roman road, and sheltering a gipsy camp among 
 harebells, sweet basil, and trefoil, which the grasshopper 
 also loves. Lambourn itself is a fair, small town, with a 
 cross, of which the shaft is as graceful and light as the 
 beeches in the churchyard. It is the hub of many little 
 roads that lead out among the curving expanses of pasture 
 
 I — 2 
 
4 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 and corn-land ; the tumuli, in one place seven together, 
 give a solemn tone to so much sweetness and space. 
 Between Baydon and Aldbourne, and about Sugar Hill, 
 the country is more park-like. There is a green and 
 hedgeless turf, with knots and trains of beeches and thorns, 
 and many little undulations and barbaric, winding tracks, 
 startled and sundered by the straight Roman road. 
 Thence the eyes enjoy Martinsell Hill, gentle and large, 
 above standing and reaped corn and the trees of Ald- 
 bourne. The road from Baydon to Aldbourne is notable 
 for its passage through one of the finest hollows in the 
 Downs. The unbroken undulations are long, and the 
 mind floats with them and sleeps in the melody which they 
 make : there is grass, mangolds, wheat in leaning shocks, 
 solid beech clusters, and, far away, on the edge of the 
 bowl, Liddington clump ; nor is there a house visible 
 among the trackways, the haystacks, the sheep, and the 
 corn, this side of the embowered Aldbourne church tower. 
 More south and less east from Coate, the Swindon and 
 Hungerford road goes through Liddington to Aldbourne, 
 again over the Downs, with four barrows on one hand, 
 making different harmonies together as the vision shifts, 
 and on the other the rectangular imprints of a British 
 village at Upper Upham. Untrodden but indelible old 
 roads, worn by hoofs and the naked feet and the traiHng 
 staves of long-dead generations, cross and join one another 
 over the short grass of the chalk slopes. Aldbourne is 
 white-washed, thatched, and tiled, with many turnings, 
 and the traveller feels always as if he is in someone's 
 yard, because the houses, with their flowers and open doors, 
 look so frankly on the road ; as at Ogbourne St. George, 
 close by, old millstones are used as paving for paths. The 
 bells of the neighbourhood were once cast here. The 
 village was famous from Aubrey's to Jefferies' day for 
 rabbits ; and between here and Ogbourne St. George are 
 Chase Woods and Aldbourne Chase, where, in Jefferies' 
 youth, they found a cannon-ball that had lain there since 
 the brush between Rupert and Essex, before the first 
 
THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 5 
 
 battle of Newbury. From Aldbourne is a good walk 
 over the Downs to Marlborough by Stock Lane, on a steep- 
 banked track, with eyebright flowers underfoot and among 
 wayfaring trees, in sight of the oak and fir and hazel 
 of Aldbourne Chase in long, gentle hollows. Hereby 
 three deep tracks mount southward to Marlborough, and 
 presently cross the remains of a Roman road that goes 
 straight, though grassy, from Ogboume to Mildenhall. 
 Thatched Mildenhall was a Roman station, as the turf 
 proclaims, and called Cunetio. At one time the children 
 there used often to pay their school- fees in Roman coin. 
 Now the slow sheep go past the barley-fields to Marl- 
 borough Fair, and the tired shepherd leans on his crooked 
 ash and says once to his dusty flock, 'Coom along — coop !' 
 Traveller's joy and white bryony climb about the thorns. 
 
 At Common Head, a mile south-east of Coate, the 
 Roman road, leaving Ermine Street at Wanborough 
 Nythe, crosses the Hungerford road on its way south to 
 Mildenhall, through Savernake Forest (as often called 
 Marlborough Forest by those living on the Marlborough 
 side of it), to Winchester. It crosses the Ridgeway near 
 Chisledon, under the hill that is crowned by the camp, 
 or * castle,' and the beech-clump of Liddington. Between 
 it and the tiny colonies of Woodsend and Snap are more 
 prints of British settlements on the turf, with tumuli and 
 earthworks that make the earth look old, like the top bar 
 of a stile, carved by saunterers, bored by wasps, grooved 
 and scratched and polished again, or like a schoolboy's 
 desk that has blunted a hundred ingenious knives. Recent 
 theory suggests that the dark Iberic people found a refuge 
 in Wiltshire from the Celts, who, invaded in their turn, 
 held out long in the same land against the Saxons. 
 Jefferies himself finds Celtic traces in the place-names and 
 surnames of the neighbourhood. From near Woodsend, 
 a little way off the Roman road, and within Aldbourne 
 Chase, there is a spread of Downs, Inkpen supreme on the 
 south-east, Martinsell woody and dark on the south, the 
 Devizes hUls south-west. Thence there is a pleasant 
 
6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 furzy descent into Ogboume St. George. Ogboume, 
 thatched and irregular, with a bridge over the summer-dry 
 bed of the winterboume, is in an ash-tree country ; and 
 most beautiful in late sunlight, against a calm, rich sky, 
 are the green breasts of the westward hilJs, or in a still, 
 cold summer night under a full moon amidst little, hard 
 white clouds like rice. Winding with the River Og, the 
 road forsakes the Roman way and enters Marlborough 
 town, with its dormered and gabled High Street, long, 
 wide, and discreet, and, though genial, obviously an entity 
 which the visitor can know little of. It has been a royal 
 residence ; it stood a siege in the Civil War ; its prehistoric 
 existence seems announced by the sarsen stone that stands 
 at one end of the High Street. It is the ' Overboro ' and 
 ' Fleeceborough ' of Jefferies. The Kennet runs through, 
 to be joined at Mildenhall by the Og. The Downs and 
 Savernake Forest dominate the town. It is but a place 
 at the edge of the forest. Though its nearest (northern) 
 edge is not much less than ten miles from Coate, the 
 forest was well within Jefferies' reach ; he often walked 
 there and back, spending the whole summer day out of 
 doors, liking the place for its beauty, its solitude, and its 
 many uncertain memories. It was the subject of some 
 of his earliest description ; it reappears in several books. 
 Once, it seems that in a severe winter the stags broke out 
 of the forest and roamed north, and one was shot in his 
 own immediate country. From Mildenhall, south-east- 
 wards along the Roman road or the course of it, to 
 Crofton is six miles, and it is almost all forest, so that 
 its mere size — if it needed such an auxiliary — makes 
 Savernake respectable. Its trees are finely grown and 
 grouped, large and numerous enough to make it venerable ; 
 heroic, too, and able to sustain without injury the tremen- 
 dous trifling column to the glory of a Marquis of Ailesbury, 
 of Lord Bute, and of God. I say heroic, because the 
 muscular, smooth beeches, moulded like the flanks and 
 limbs of immortal beauty, and the oaks that perform great 
 feats in holding out long, snaky, horizontal branches. 
 
THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 7 
 
 overgrown with moss and tufted polypody, and the dense, 
 very old thorns, shapely, or twisted in rigid agonies, 
 seem worthy of an heroic life — of the life of Mr. Doughty's 
 British princes, Caradoc, Beichiad, Togodumnos ; of 
 women like Embla and Herfryd and Boudicca ; of bards 
 like Carvilios. They and their chariots alone should 
 press the mossy, golden turf ; they alone would not be 
 unworthy of the great depths below the forest roof that 
 seem to be submerged in time. In one part of the forest 
 the moss at the base of every oak actually suggests a tide 
 that has risen so high, and left this green sign, but left 
 no life behind except the hosts of wood-pigeons and the 
 crow, the magpie, the jay, and the green woodpecker, that 
 are always crying about these desolate palaces of I know 
 not what lovely powers. It is beautiful yet, and at even- 
 ing, like the sea in a twitching calm of thin, disappearing 
 dark lines, offers us the inexplicable sorrows and unsus- 
 pected consolations of music, building for us a new earth, 
 a new heaven, and a new hell. 
 
 Still another way to Marlborough — and a better, because 
 it can only be travelled on foot — is to climb Ladder Hill 
 along the western edge of Burderop Woods, and to go 
 straight for Barbury Castle and its attendant beech- 
 clump, due south upon the summit of Hackpen Hill. 
 East is the curve of Liddington Hill, the smooth, bare, 
 uninhabited turf ; north-east the bosom of Wanborough 
 Hills ; a little east of Barbury, on Smeathe's Ridge, 
 trees that arrange themselves like a huge ruined castle ; 
 and more east a long, thin line of trees that seem Titanic 
 wayfarers trooping dejectedly ; and at the feet of these 
 related hills is aU one level land of corn and roots, and 
 tinkling sheep, and ricks. The road traverses this plain, 
 and begins to rise beyond Mudgell, crossing the Ridge- 
 way close to the disused Burderop race-course. Tumuli 
 and earthworks lie on the rising ground, on this hand 
 and that, so commonly that the youthful Jefferies found 
 it ' alive with the dead.' On Barbury Hill we are among 
 harebell, rock-rose, scabious, and trefoil blossoms. The 
 
8 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 * Castle ' lies on the right, a double-mounded camp, 
 where it is thought that Cedric and Ceawlin routed the 
 Britons in the sixth centun* ; and beside it the nineteen 
 harassed beeches, one dead, in a clump that is to be seen 
 for many miles, from Uffington and from the hills above 
 Oxford. The duU, soft sheep-bells interweave their tink- 
 lings among the tumuli and in the shade of the big 
 mounds of beech that look so dark and massy from the 
 lands below. It was over these hills that Margaret, in 
 ' Greene Feme Farm,' wandered with Geoffrey, and at 
 night found rest only in the Devil's Den, near F\-field, or 
 the kistvaen, on Manton Down, near Rockley. Marl- 
 borough is reached by entering the Wootton Bassett and 
 Marlborough road, which passes Marlborough Common. 
 
 Best of all the Do\\ti ways is the Ridgeway, joining it 
 where it crosses the Hungerford road or near Chisledon. 
 Jefferies knew it well ; this above all others would take 
 him past ' hill after hill and plain after plain ' in silence and 
 solitude. It passes under Liddington Hill, %\*ith little 
 risings and fallings through the open corn-land, but, 
 climbing almost to Barbury Castle, it keeps a great height 
 along the top of Hackpen Hill, paving itself with hare- 
 bell, silverweed, eyebright and bartsia ; now east, now 
 west, now south, it commands vast soaring and diving 
 grounds for the delighted eyes, among solitary slopes of 
 green and white hills, of turf and cloud. Moles, journeying 
 often in the grassy ruts, turn up a fine dark soil from above 
 the chalk. Tumuli, earthworks, and ancient settlements, 
 and flocks, of ' grey wethers ' or sarsen stones, mark the 
 side of the road until it dips to East Kennett, across the 
 Bath Road, and on to Alton Priors over Wansdyke. which 
 it intersects at Furze Hill. Wansdyke. that stupendous 
 highway and barrier, running from near Heddington Wick 
 over Morgan's Hill, by Shepherd's Shore, over Tann Hill 
 to Savemake Forest, makes a rough southern boundary 
 to the country of Jefferies, except that it excludes part of 
 the forest. If the Ridgeway is left on Avebury Down, 
 another grassy track leads into Avebury ; and most pleas- 
 
THE COUNTRY OF RICIL\RD JEFFERIE^ 
 
 ant is the descent aju - -^ ^ : - - - - 
 with sheep's-bit or to- 
 
 Avebury, through : r ; ::.- I>owik w*. - _ 
 
 his early arch?^ '- ; :y. What tr 
 
 at Avebuiy T .aiws, hat th 
 
 i= - - : . : -V— if it 7 
 
 QiViIic. 
 
 sarsen 
 that rr 
 
 Mrr. 
 
 ^'X~'^' — 
 
 wav : : 
 
 Benets, and ^:_::T^Tr 1t_i " '-".- -: i ' 
 
 peace, h-ir 7 ^r r. iisly v : rr - r f 
 
 scrolls x'r.r r - —^ ._ -^ __ . _ . 
 
 comrr.:--- i.r :; :^ - '\- 
 
 gip>sy tombs, " : —: r " 
 
 to suggest a c^--_:Zr I : : Lr. _r 
 
 imwounded men. J^-. - ~ r. 1- - 
 
 Aubrey's praise c: -:- 1- _rr. :: ' _> 
 
 shire,' and tried i. r„ . il_: - " 7: ' i r 
 
 was fought near by in S23. E 
 
 goes south-westward betwrfr. 7 : ^ 
 
 bedstraw, and yarrow r : _r m. V.~„^:cV;: 
 
 there is a slope, it is tTT" 77 d nsed or not. 
 
 The telegraph-posts g-: entnre 
 
 in their p^-->*- - 
 
 A crawiir: 
 B7 - 
 
 road and : ." 
 
 sainfoin ; : .7 
 
 the midst vi _^.-.r^ _:_ 
 
 wind Wows thr r: , rain. Here. . , 
 
10 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 the Down roads, grows the meadow crane's-bill, which 
 Jefferies loved — a flowerwhose purple has wedded passion's 
 opulence and thought's tranquillity. Broad Hinton, the 
 next village on this road, fills a considerable space in 
 Jefferies* earliest descriptions; he mentions the small white 
 horse on the do\Miside near, the church, the mansion 
 which its owner burned to save from the Parliament in 
 the Civil War, and the legendary treasure in a well close by. 
 The church was described again in an early anonymous 
 paper in the Graphic. (At 'The Bull' here a labourer 
 says that a farmer at Braden still bakes lardy cakes once 
 a fortnight, and loaves of which four would cover the 
 inn table.) Broad Hinton Church is off the main road, 
 but is on a track which runs from Bincknoll Camp south- 
 ward until the white road takes its place just before 
 Avebury Temple. For a large part of its way it runs 
 alongside of a winterbourne that rises in Uffcott Down 
 and feeds the Kennet. This track should be followed 
 from Broad Hinton churchyard, whereby it enters the 
 fields near beeches and a moated farm, and then straight 
 over pink and white yarrow flowers, through the wheat 
 to Winterbourne Bassett church tower, that stands 
 among elms and beeches, thatched long barns and stacks 
 and the marks of rased buildings ; a stone circle lies within 
 a mile. Just beyond the church a farmhouse has a pea- 
 cock as a weathercock. Berwick Bassett Church, on the 
 same path, is but a mile beyond, small and low, with 
 mellow tiles and a little spire upon its tower — the whole 
 dwarfed by great barns and ash-trees. Winterbourne 
 Monkton, where the track joins the road, is nearly all 
 thatched, and the walls are made largely of rude pieces of 
 sarsen. Avebury Down and the ' grey wethers ' rise 
 close on the east, domed Windmill Hill and its tumuli on 
 the west. Wansdyke is not far south, reached past 
 Silbury Hill and Beckhampton, and a rookery that is 
 perched a mile from any house in a wood of elm, ash, oak, 
 and fir. 
 A good and a long way back to Coate is to go north- 
 
THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES ii 
 
 west from Winterbourne Monkton to the tiny church of 
 St. Peter's, Highway, near Hilmarton, it and its weedy 
 and not populous churchyard half lost among thatched 
 white cottages. From there to Swindon is a footpath 
 through Clevancy, Clyffe Pypard, Broad Town, under 
 BincknoU ' Castle,' through Elcombe, following, it may 
 well be, in places, the old pilgrim's way that led past Holy 
 Cross at Swindon, past Elcombe, Bushton, Clyffe Pypard, 
 and Studley, on its way to the shrine and well of St. 
 Anne's-in-the-Wood at Bridlington, in Somerset. All the 
 way this path looks up at a secondary terrace of the 
 Downs, and sees the steep slopes which are cloven deep 
 by ancient ways, or sometimes clothed in beech, and at 
 BincknoU heaped into a promontory carved by a camp, 
 where the life that flourishes now is chiefly that of the 
 chalk-land flowers — marjoram, sweet basil, field-gentian, 
 rock-rose, and thistle — and the wayfaring tree, the hazel 
 and the blackthorn. At Clyffe there is a church, a manor- 
 house, a pond, and a chestnut-tree ; a hanging beech- 
 wood above, ash-trees below. At Broad Town and Binck- 
 noU the way is through barley. The beeches and the good 
 houses follow, of Bassett Down, Saltrop, and Elcombe. 
 Grey Saltrop House, among ash and beech on the slope, 
 has parted with many that rest in Wroughton Church ; 
 its smoke goes up in front of a storied cedar sweetly of 
 a still evening. At Elcombe one of the most lovable 
 of the roads from the hills to the elm-country descends, — 
 a broad strip of grass on either side, and, upon the grass, 
 not too many flowery cottages, with Elcombe Hall at 
 the top and at the bottom a cold, large farmhouse, and its 
 yews and mounting-steps by the gate. Wroughton Church 
 is on the wooded hill above ; beyond, also on the hill, is 
 Old Swindon, and below it New Swindon — noisy, new, 
 cheap, and Liberal, full of every accent, and on market- 
 days rural with cattle and country carts. Swindon is the 
 ' Kingsbury ' and the ' Latten ' of Jefferies. He described 
 the Great Western Railway works there for the North 
 Wilts Herald as a youth, for Fraser's as a man, both times 
 
12 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 as a journalist. From the London side, Swindon is a 
 woody hill, with a spire and the pepper-pot of a Corn 
 Exchange. It commands a fine country from this hill. 
 North-west is Highworth Hill, which should be seen when 
 the red dawn is elm-barred, for it is precipitous, and of a 
 rich blue and romantic texture unlike land, water, or 
 cloud. Due south is Barbury, and its beeches and a 
 meaning line of trees south-east of it. North-east are the 
 trees of Lydiard Tregoze and Purton, beyond the smoke 
 of New Swindon. South-east, from the footpath to Coate, 
 are Liddington Hill and the breasted Downs above 
 Wanborough. This path enters the fields by the lime- 
 shaded road — with old, mossy, slated, dependent houses, 
 high walls, and elms — that leads to The Lawn, the home 
 of the Goddards, lords of the manor, a heavy, rectangular, 
 mellow, but unimaginative house that has elm, wych-elm, 
 poplar, and oak about it, and swerving reaches of grass 
 and a dark, reedy water below. The Old Swindon church 
 of Holy Rood adjoins the house ; Richard Jefferies was 
 christened there early in 1849. Only the chancel remains, 
 the rest having been dismantled when it was superseded 
 by a large Gilbert Scott church better suited to the town. 
 The chancel is crowded with odds and ends of the dis- 
 mantling ; a faded hatchment and the startling inscrip- 
 tion, In Ccelo Quies ; memorials of Goddards, Homes, 
 Neates, Viletts, B rinds, an Aubrey. Under elms and 
 nettles are announced certain dead Goddards, Coventrys, 
 Noads, Tinsons, Hardings, Homes, Broadways, Lawrences. 
 The pillars of the old nave stand, but enveloped in ivy ; 
 there is a path of tombs betwixt them. The only sound is 
 the cracking shell of a snail which a thrush hammers on 
 a gravestone. Aubrey has described the place as it was ; 
 the youthful Jefferies moralized among its ruins in a 
 chapter on ' Ancient Swindon.' Below the churchyard 
 wall is a grassy depression, now a fowl-run, once the Old 
 Swindon mill-pond ; close by was the mill worked by 
 James Luckctt Jefferies, Richard's great-uncle. 
 
 The country which Jefferies knew intimately is of rather 
 
THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 13 
 
 narrower limits than that crossed by these roads and 
 paths. It is particularly the village of Coate, his father's 
 farm of thirty or forty acres, and the neighbouring farms 
 of Day House and Snodshill ; the Reservoir and the brook 
 that runs out of it to the north, past Wanborough Nythe ; 
 Burderop Woods ; the villages of Wanborough, Liddington, 
 Badbury, Chisledon, Wroughton, Broad Hinton, Ogbourne 
 and Aldbourne, with the Downs and scattered farms be- 
 tween. This country is composed largely of the Downs, 
 running north-east and south-west from Uffington 
 ' Castle ' to Hackpen Hill. At the feet of these hills are 
 Wanborough Plain, Chisledon Plain, and similar corn-land, 
 more or less level and open, but in places cleft by almost 
 perpendicular coombes, as at Liddington and Chisledon ; 
 a wedge of this land makes a pass through the Downs, of 
 triangular shape, Liddington, Barbury, and Ogbourne 
 at the angles, Dray cot Foliatt in the midst. On this 
 plain and at the edge of it, dominating much lower lands, 
 are the churches of Wanborough, Chisledon, Wroughton, 
 and Broad Hinton, and the house at Burderop. The 
 plain breaks down to the lower lands abruptly in many 
 places, as below Broad Hinton and Wroughton and 
 Burderop, and on these steeps are most of the woods — 
 Bincknoll, Ouidhampton, Saltrop, and Burderop Woods. 
 At the feet of the woods the land is a fertile clay, producing 
 some of the finest grass and cattle — ' of good note in 
 Smithfield,' says Aubrey. Coate Farm, at the feet of 
 Burderop Woods, is on this clay, and the land is all 
 meadow. 
 
 The Downs in this immediate country of Jefferies are 
 among the highest, most spacious, and most divinely 
 carved in rolling ridge and hollowed flank ; and their 
 summits commune with the finest summits in the more 
 southerly Downs — Inkpen, Martinsell, Tann Hill. Lid- 
 dington Hill and its ' castle,' a camp of a single but very 
 deep fosse, was a chief haven to Jefferies. As he took 
 deep breaths of the air about its harebell, eyebright, clover, 
 bedstraw, scabious, and fine grass, his brain was furrowed 
 
14 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 and sown with the thoughts that ripened in ' The Story of 
 My Heart.' Hither, too, came Felise, the beautiful lover 
 in ' The Dewy Mom,' when she began to love. At the 
 top and in the camp are the same flowers, and some 
 windy thorns and furze ; and near by the ' folly ' of 
 twenty-one lean beeches — in growth like firs — and the 
 stump of another, which make a landmark over half the 
 county. Below, to the south, the charlock-yellow or 
 bean-grey or corn-coloured squares of the arable extend 
 to the woods and the far-off dark green elmy country of 
 Cricklade ; a flock of sheep seems to be blown along, or 
 to flow as upon a stream. East, south, and west flint- 
 diggers' cartways, old roads, and hares' paths lead over 
 the Downs. In the rarely-seen hamlets of the dusty 
 corn-land or the moist vale are the houses of the men 
 Jefferies knew — farmers and labourers, slow of speech, 
 more used to deeds whether at work or play. Back- 
 swording died late hereabouts ; and you may still see an 
 old man's shins all ridgy from the kicks earned in matches 
 at straightforward kicking with heavy boots against 
 unarmed shins ; they drank devoutly, and so helped to 
 sharpen Richard Jefferies' nerves and to wear his body out 
 before he was forty ; but they did more for him than that, 
 these men of a different blood from the townsman's, 
 though they have not given up their secrets to those who 
 believe they have none. After their bread and cheese at 
 ' The Bull ' or ' The Plough,' they will sit at their second or 
 third pint without a word and without the activity to light 
 a pipe for half an hour ; yet one of the same race will say 
 of Jefferies that he lay on his back and dreamed when he 
 should have been helping his family — which is, after all, 
 but one dreamer's uncharitablencss to another in a world 
 of dreams. 
 
 Jefferies often thought of the sea upon these hills. 
 The eye sometimes expects it. There is something oceanic 
 in their magnitude, their ease, their solitude — above all, in 
 their liquid forms, that combine apparent mobility with 
 placidity, and in the vast playground which they provide 
 
THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 15 
 
 for the shadows of the clouds. They are never abrupt, 
 but, flowing on and on, make a type of infinity. A troop, 
 a clump, or a sprinl-ding of trees, a little wood, a house, 
 squares of wheat or newly-ploughed land, a long white 
 road, cannot detract from them — not even when the air 
 is so clear that all sounds and sights and smells are bright 
 and have a barb that plants them deep, and the hard 
 black rooks slide in crystal air under the blue. In 
 winter snow, to walk upon them is to walk on the clouds ; 
 their forms are those of the snow-drifts filed by the wind. 
 When they do not curve, they make that almost straight 
 horizontal line which, seen five or six miles off against a 
 pale evening sky through clear or misty air, is so signifi- 
 cant and so untranslatable. Taken separately, the Downs 
 have lines as fair as those of animals ; the light wavers on 
 their smooth and; as it were, muscular sides as it does 
 on the rippling haunches of a horse. Yet they have a 
 hugeness of undivided surface for which there is no com- 
 parison to be found on the earth, and but seldom in the 
 sky. They bring into the mind the thought that beauty — 
 whether of a poet's lines, or of a melody, or of a cloud, or 
 of shining water — is the natural and inseparable com- 
 panion to passionate, bold, true - hearted acts and 
 thoughts and emotions ; and with that thought the 
 question as to what great thought is expressed in these 
 sculptured leagues of grassy chalk. Here, it sometimes 
 appears, especially when the land has taken an alms of 
 twilight, the creative forces must have reposed after 
 mighty labours, and have had dreams which their deeds 
 have not equalled elsewhere. And it is little wonder that 
 we, who can create nothing except of snow or sand, should 
 be happy upon them, as if we hoped for a little while that 
 their waves might lead us to whatever fancy has painted 
 as desirable, lovely, and good. Yet it needs but to 
 scratch the soil to recall that they also are but transient, 
 the result of a myriad deaths, of changes and motives that 
 regard them no more than they regard us and our little acts 
 and great desires : that all flows away as water or wind. 
 
i6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 One of the noblest views of the Downs and the northern 
 country towards the Cotswolds and Malvern Hills is to 
 be had from the roof of the Elizabethan manor-house at 
 Upper Upham ; the legend is that Wales, too, can be seen. 
 This handsome, remote house, high on the hills, reputed 
 to be on the site of a hunting-lodge of John of Gaunt, 
 was described at length by Jefferies as a young man and 
 archaeologist. He knew the tenant. It is empty now ; 
 several of its windows are blocked up and fruit-trees grow 
 over them ; within, the antique fireplaces and dais are 
 degraded by stale wall-paper ; yet the lawn is mown and 
 kept level before the lofty porch. Jefferies knew the 
 neighbouring fields well, and Snap and Woodsend and the 
 British settlements, and Lower Upham, the farm to be 
 passed between Chisledon and Upper Upham ; he re- 
 marked, in one of his early papers, on the ' strange avenue 
 of sycamores ' at Lower Upham, where also is a line of the 
 same trees trooping beautifully without purpose across 
 a field, planted there, I suppose, for their state, by some 
 curious lover of trees. Upper Upham is even more 
 pleasantly to be reached by forsaking all roads (save where 
 many sheep-tracks go side by side, and the eyebright 
 flowers in the narrow strips between) and crossing the 
 Downs from Liddington ' Castle,' then through Shipley 
 Bottom, where stands a barn and stacks under ash and 
 sycamore and elder, in the midst of corn, and walled on 
 every side by Down and sky. There the painted lady 
 butterfly comes to the scabious flower and the bee to the 
 sweet basil in perfect solitude. 
 
 It must have been on these hills that Jefferies and 
 Dickon ranged with their greyhounds for hares. Some- 
 times their silence retreats for a little while before the 
 crying of foxhounds. ' Yander they goo, up to Barbriam 
 Caastle !' says the ploughman, checking his homeward 
 jingling team. But the March afternoon is at an end, and 
 it is too late to follow farther over the hill. The wind 
 has fallen, and the blackbird sings at ease ; the far-away 
 missel-thrush is almost as mild and sweet. A hare has 
 
THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 17 
 
 stolen out, and in the still moist air before frost the violet 
 scent is expanding. Then, suddenly, the huntsman's horn 
 crackles upon the hill, splintering and tearing the solitude ; 
 a full, rich note follows, and goes to the heart of silence 
 and into our hearts, too. Again and again a shrewd, 
 victorious note that seems the very essence of the red 
 jackets that sprinlde the saddening slopes of Barbury Hill. 
 It is almost night — a most almighty quiet night, folding all 
 those hills as sheep into a pen ; yet the horn threatens it, 
 invades it, overthrows it, shooting to and fro in its sombre 
 texture threads of crimson and gold. And the heart leaps 
 up and is glad at this insult to the night, at the stinging 
 music, at the large scene, and the horses and horsemen 
 gigantic against the sky. To that horn blown at the edge 
 of night and the edge of the world come all the hunters of 
 the earth, as if out of the ground or the sea of time that 
 washes the base of the Down ; and they are more than 
 those dark hunters on the ridge, and stand among them, 
 weaving strangeness and solemnity about them. The 
 heart is a hunter still, and it has found a long-desired 
 quarry, and is bringing it home with melody over the early 
 world, as grim and illimitable as the level cloud-land in 
 the west. But the ploughman and his team go on ; the 
 horn has died away, and the hounds pass silently, like 
 dreams when night is over and day not begun. 
 
 Not far from the foot of Barbury Hill, and almost on 
 the Ridgeway, is the parish of Draycot Foliatt, lying 
 pleasant among oats and ash-trees. It is merely a farm- 
 house or two, and their fields, their birds, their hares, and 
 moles, and stoats, and mice. Jefferies mentions it once 
 by name, in an early newspaper article without name, in 
 ' Wild Life in a Southern County ' as a parish where the 
 dismantled church has disappeared, and the churchyard 
 is an orchard, sacred from the plough. Some of Jefferies' 
 ancestors came from this isolated upland parish ; there 
 were many of his name at Draycot Foliatt in the eighteenth 
 century. Long ago, an old man at Marlborough Fair said 
 he knew a parish where there was ' ne'er a wife, ne'er a 
 
 2 
 
i8 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 child, ne'er a cow, ne'er a pig ' ; he explained that it was 
 Draycot, where three farmers — Jefferies, Neale, and 
 Puckeridge — lived as bachelors on arable farms worked 
 by unmarried labourers, and kept no pigs. Part of this 
 tale is in ' Round about a Great Estate.' A fair land is 
 this on a stUl, rainy and misty winter day, with its wide, 
 unoccupied fields and dreaming trees — no men, no sound, 
 and the Downs as imaginary as the sea-noise in a shell. 
 
 On the other side of the Ridgeway from Draycot is 
 Chisledon, where many a Jefferies is buried, and Richard 
 was married. Its church and churchyard are drawTi in 
 the opening of ' Greene Feme Farm.' East of Chisledon 
 is Badbury, the ' Okeboume ' of ' Round about a Great 
 Estate,' built about a steep coombe at the edge of the hills. 
 The pound can still be seen, and the nobly-balanced elm 
 at the head of the coombe ; but the windmill is gone. 
 Behind its little manor-house are the green lines of a 
 vanished building, with walnut-trees and a domed horse- 
 chestnut near. Its inns are fuU of monitory verses in this 
 kind : 
 
 ' My liquor is good, my measure is just ; 
 Then pray excuse, I cannot trust. 
 Pray be seated and call away 
 For what you will, and I'll obey. 
 
 ' There's one thing more I do desire : 
 That you'll not stand before the fire, 
 Nor on the table attempt to sit 
 Unless a quart you pay for it. . . .' 
 
 It has good, white farmhouses, and their grassy, thatched 
 sheds and stacks under elm and ash are right on the road. 
 The coombe has thatched cottages hidden behind fruit- 
 trees. Badbury Wick, the Okebourne Wick of ' Round 
 about a Great Estate,' is farther north on a by-road to 
 Coate. Going north-west from Badbury, the road passes 
 Medbourne and comes to Liddington. By the manor- 
 house with muUioned windows, in a coombe below the 
 road, used to be a mill, and this and the miller (I think 
 John Brind) were the models for Warren House and Andrew 
 
THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 19 
 
 Fisher in ' Greene Feme Farm.' The old man and some 
 pretty visitors from Wales made a stir that is still remem- 
 bered. He may have been the miller Tibbald of ' Round 
 about a Great Estate,' that name being a common local 
 form of Theobald. The gabled house has a new-looking 
 garden, tennis-court, and swans on the pond ; but under 
 the sheep-terraced hill behind, the dovecot and mossy, 
 thatched farm-buildings are as they were. 
 
 Going west and north from Chisledon, instead of to 
 Badbury, the road finds the hamlet of Hodson, the woods 
 and great house of Burderop, and below them Coate 
 Reservoir. These compose the chief scene of ' The 
 Amateur Poacher ' and ' The Gamekeeper at Home.' 
 The keeper lived in the cottage with the thrice-scalloped 
 thatch in Hodson Bottom, sweet chestnut behind it, and 
 birch and spruce at each side ; date, 1741. The other 
 houses in the Bottom are all thatched but one ; they have 
 a little window in the middle of the thatch slope, like the 
 dark eye of a hedgehog among his spines, and they stand 
 irregularly among fruit, bean rows, and box- edging. 
 * Spring guns set here !' is the landowner's jocose invita- 
 tion to the wayfarer. But Jefferies knew the woods 
 through and through. Here were the fir-trees and prim- 
 roses that his mind would not separate. Here was the 
 fray with the poachers when the squire (J. J. Calley, I 
 think) was knocked on the head ; of which, and many 
 more things, Jefferies heard much from Mrs. Rawlings, 
 widow of an old Burderop keeper. Here, on Ladder Hill, 
 the wind is full of the scent of yellow bed-straw, and the 
 meadow crane's-bill grows by the dogwood and hazel, 
 beneath the oaks. Here were the rooks and wood-pigeons 
 of ' Wood Magic' Burderop Park — its beech and oak 
 and ash and fir ; its clouds (like a small, earthly dawn) of 
 purple loosestrife ; its avenues of limes and wych-elms ; 
 its grassy spaces, strewn with sarsens, stately and undis- 
 turbed ; its large, dull, sufficient-looking, homely house — 
 suggested the Okeboume Chace of ' Round about a Great 
 Estate.' 
 
 2 — 2 
 
20 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 The Reservoir below is the ' mere ' that appeared first 
 in 'The Gamekeeper,' and again in 'The Amateur Poacher,' 
 ' Wild Life,' ' Round about a Great Estate,' ' Bevis,' and 
 ' After London.' It is a large, deep, weedy pond, shaped 
 like a fish, its large tail at the north-east end, and was 
 constructed in a marshy hollow in 1822 to feed the Wilt- 
 shire and Berkshire Canal. It was reputed to have a 
 whirlpool. There were, in Jefferies' day, two or three 
 boats on it, including a punt or house-boat for bathing. 
 On the north-west side Broome plantation comes to the 
 edge, and reeds and partly submerged willows keep the 
 shallows free from waves. At the south-west comer its 
 head is cut off by the road from Broome to Hodson ; but 
 this head is now almost choked by weeds. The south-west 
 side has its now peninsulated island and many wiUows ; 
 then a gulf — the ' fir-tree gulf ' of ' Bevis ' — shadowed by 
 tall willows. Along the eastern side a footpath runs over 
 two broad, sloping meadows — ' The Plain ' and ' Green 
 Fern ' — belonging to Day House Farm ; and in these elm 
 and oak and ash, and an old crab-tree, stand about in a 
 happy disarray. Only a dead-leaf boat could travel far 
 on the brook that enters the Reservoir at the ' Gulf '; for 
 its bed is of the narrowest, and is among willow-herb and 
 calthropped sedge, and under the overhanging brier and 
 thorn which the delicate white bryony climbs over. 
 The stream that flows out is the ' Mississippi,' that bounds 
 Coate Farm and moistens its willow-roots. The wild- 
 voiced sandpiper, duck, and coot, and moorhen haunt the 
 Reservoir regularly ; sand-martin and swallow fly over it ; 
 sometimes the heron overhangs it and clanks, seeming to 
 bring storm in his hollowed wings. There are the largest 
 of pike and tench in the water. From the surface can be 
 seen the ' Plain,' the chimneys of Day House, and then 
 nothing beyond but the clump and castle of Liddington, 
 large and gaunt. Alongside the road by Day House Farm 
 is part of a half-buried circle of sarsen stones, which 
 Jefferies was first to notice. 
 
 The hamlet of Coate is a wavering double row of farm- 
 
THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 21 
 
 houses and cottages, less than two miles from Swindon 
 on the Hungerford road. The first house on the right 
 hand, where a slight hill dips to the little bridge — a white 
 cottage with an over-tall chimney — was once John Brown's. 
 His father. Job Brown's, was the next house on the left. 
 Beyond the bridge, on the right, is 'The Sun,' once a 
 thatched inn whose sign was a 'veritable orifiamme'; there, 
 once a year, men used to assemble to eat blackbird-pie and 
 drink. Close by, on opposite sides of the road, were the 
 millwright's and Ikey the blacksmith's shops. The mill- 
 wright was George Bramble ; his wife kept ' The Sun,' and 
 they brewed their own ale. Next to this inn is little Coate 
 Farm house, guarded from the road by a high wall — 
 over which Amaryllis watched the country-side going to 
 the fair — and a row of pollard-limes. Stripped of its 
 thatch, its ha-ha gone, its orchard neglected, it is the ghost 
 of the fragrant home described so often in ' Wild Life,' 
 in ' Amaryllis,' and in many essays, by the man whose 
 birth here is recorded on a tablet at the gate. A wooden 
 ' squeeze-belly ' stile opposite admits to a footpath over 
 fields that were once part of Coate Farm. Just past the 
 thatched outbuildings of the farm a by-road, bordered by 
 elms and good ash-trees, leads to Day House Farm, its 
 elms and pollard willows, and half a hundred moles nailed 
 to a pigsty wall. Jefferies' wife was born and bred at 
 Day House. Beyond this turning, on both sides of the 
 road, are the cottages of Coate, close to the road, some of 
 only one floor — the very lowliest of defences against wind 
 and world in these parts — and one ruinous, with long, 
 narrow gardens suggesting that they were once part of 
 the grassy edging to the road. John Smith's shanty was 
 on the right ; ' The Spotted Cow ' is almost opposite. Be- 
 yond that are several cottages and a horsechestnut-tree ; 
 and on the other side of the road, still deep in grass, as 
 when Jefferies mused over it, is the milestone saying 
 '79 miles to London.' The last house, if it is strictly in 
 Coate, is at the corner of a branch-road to Wanborough, 
 and has a thatch with well-stitched edges — occupied, in 
 
22 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 fact, by ' S. Theobald, practical thatcher,' and dating 
 from the seventeenth century. At that comer there used 
 to be a ' catch-gate,' to catch those who entered the turn- 
 pike there, and so missed the gate at Liddington. The 
 farmhouses of Snodshill lie off the road on the other 
 side from Coate Farm ; there lived relations and friends 
 of Jefferies, and he knew all their fields as the birds know 
 them. 
 
 Such, then, is the surface of this land, such the genial 
 reticence of its fat leazes, its double hedges like copses, 
 its broad cornfields, its oaks and elms and beeches, its 
 unloquacious men, its immense maternal Downs. Jef- 
 feries came to express part of this silence of uncounted 
 generations. He was, as it were, a rib taken out of its 
 side in that long sleep last disturbed by the cannon at 
 Aldbourne Chase. So rich did he find it that in ' Sport and 
 Science ' he wrote : ' There have been few things I have 
 read of or studied, which in some manner or other I have 
 not seen illustrated in this county while out in the fields.' 
 Like Thoreau, he calls his own land ' an epitome of the 
 natural world, and ... if anyone has come really into 
 contact with its productions, and is familiar with them, 
 and what they mean and represent, then he has a know- 
 ledge of all that exists on earth.' 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 ANCESTRY 
 
 Jefferies is, and has long been, a common Wiltshire 
 name, spelt also Jeffries, Jeffreys, Jefferis, Jefferie, Jef- 
 fereye, Jeffery, Jefferyes, Jeffreyes, Jeafries, Jefferes. 
 They were farmers, coopers, and the like at Wootton 
 Bassett, Clevancy, Chippenham, Marlborough, in the 
 seventeenth century. In the parishes of Chisledon and 
 Draycot Foliatt they rank with the Webbs, Garlicks, 
 Crippses, Lookers, Nashes, Woolfords, Chowleses, Pontings, 
 and Jeroms for abundance and persistency. Sprinkled 
 over the corn-land and meadow between Draycot and 
 Swindon there were several families of the name, yeomen 
 and labourers, who intermarried with Reeveses, Harveys, 
 Garlicks, Jeroms, Birds, Brookses, Chowleses, Nashes, 
 and Bucklands, of the neighbouring parishes, and had 
 many children, who became farmers, labourers, paupers, 
 wanderers to other parts, vagrom men and ancestors 
 of we know not what scholar, merchant, beauty, slum- 
 dweUer. The records of them are to be found in the 
 parish register of Chisledon and of Holyrood, Old Swindon, 
 though at Chisledon there is a gap between 1669 and 1712. 
 Fine quintessential history, brief as the local speech, these 
 records make. An old, strange man is found dead in a 
 field in February, ' probably,' it is added, ' due to the 
 severity of the weather and his advanced age.' A base- 
 bom child is found dead and deserted by its ' unnatural 
 mother ' under a hayrick. The poor are described, thus 
 briefly, as ' ancient woman ' or ' young girl.' One who 
 
 23 
 
24 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 died on December 29, 1695, was ' Elizabeth, daughter of 
 James Blake, a seaman (a poor vagrant) '; another is Mary, 
 * daughter of Owen Macldarten, an Irishman '; another, 
 ' daughter of William and Sophia Buckland, travelling 
 gypsies.' Curious are the changes in names and customs. 
 Thus, Nyporios fades through Nipperys and Niperys to 
 the Nipress of to-day. Thus, too, up to the middle of the 
 eighteenth century, they gave the name of the father of 
 an illegitimate child ; then the mother's name, and the 
 epithet ' base-born '; finally, in the nineteenth century, 
 civilization reaches another milestone, and the child's 
 name is given, and the mother described simply as ' un- 
 married.' 
 
 Richard Jefferies made several references to ancestors 
 in his books. The Wheat in ' Saint Guido '* tells the 
 child that his ' papa's papa's papa, ever so much farther 
 back than that, had all the fields round here,' and that in 
 time every one was lost, and that yet again field after field 
 was bought. In ' The Amateur Poacher ' he speaks of a 
 walnut thrown * on the place ' — i.e., at Coate — by his 
 great-grandfather. Iden in ' Amaryllis at the Fair ' 
 speaks of a great-uncle, a ' capital man of business, 
 who built the mill and bought the old place at Luckett's, 
 which belonged to us before Queen Elizabeth's days,' and 
 ' very nearly made up the fortunes Nicholas and the rest 
 of them got rid of.' It has also been said, and often 
 repeated, that Jefferies came of a long line of yeomen 
 ancestors ; and one adds that their bones are in Chisledon 
 churchyard. It seems, however, quite certain that 
 Richard's great-grandfather was one Richard Jefferies, 
 born at Draycot Foliatt in 1738! or 1734. If he was born 
 in 1734, he was the seventh child of V.'illiam and Hannah 
 Jeffries {sic) of Draycot. J He may, on the other hand, 
 have been a younger son of John and Sarah {ncc Harvey) 
 Jeffries, also of Draycot, who were married in 172S. This 
 
 * The Open Air. 
 
 t 'Forbears of Richard Jefferies,' Country Life, March 14, 1908. 
 
 X Chisledon Register. 
 
ANCESTRY 25 
 
 Richard, in 1772, married Fanny Lucketl at Lechlade, in 
 Gloucestershire. This pair lived for some time at Rod- 
 bourne Cheney, near Swindon ; and there, in or about 
 1780, was born their eldest son, James Luckett, and, in 
 1784, John, the grandfather of our Richard Jefferies. 
 Fanny Jefferies died in 1805,* and a descendant writes of 
 her that she ' must have been a woman not only of parts, 
 but of means and refinement, her many journeys to Bath 
 being noted at a time when only the wealthy and high- 
 bom frequented that " city of waters." 'f Her husband, 
 Richard, who survived until 1822, purchased Coate Farm 
 in 1800, together with a mill and bakery at Swindon. It 
 is on record that J he was a stiff man, who twice stood out 
 against the sum demanded by the Vicar of Chisledon, as 
 tithe ; his son John did the same after that in 1832 and 
 
 1833. 
 
 The Jefferies' of Draycot must have been substantial 
 men, who made money when the price of corn was high 
 in the early nineteenth century — men like ' Uncle Jona- 
 than ' in ' Round about a Great Estate.' Some of their 
 tombs at Chisledon are weighty and important. 
 
 Of the two sons of Richard — James Luckett and John — 
 not much is known. John is the grandfather Iden of 
 ' Amaryllis,' and the ' little old man with silver buckles 
 on his shoes ' of ' My Old Village.' As a young man, he 
 went to London, and was with a Mr. Taylor, printer and 
 publisher of Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. § It was in 
 London that he married Fanny Ridger, and there he lived 
 until he came to Swindon in 1816 to look after the Swindon 
 business. In London four children were born to him. Of 
 these, James Luckett, the eldest boy, but not the first- 
 bom, was the father of Richard Jefferies, the author. 
 John Jefferies is said not to have liked the bakery. He 
 was a lover of books and curious in bindings — a ' prodigy 
 of leaming,' someone calls him — and London attracted 
 
 * 'Forbears of Richard Jefferies,' Country Life, March 14, 1908. 
 t Ibid. X Ibid. % Ibid. 
 
26 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 him ; but he never returned to it, and never entered a 
 rail way- train, against which he had a strong prejudice. 
 Life was made none the easier for him by the presence of 
 his elder brother, James Luckett, and of a maiden aunt 
 in the same house with himself and his children, who 
 reached the number of eight. About the house his old 
 father had hidden much money, out of a dislike for banks. 
 He was a good, even if an unwilling, baker, and he is still 
 remembered as the maker of excellent lardy cakes at 
 three-halfpence each : sugar and lard were not stinted ; 
 the caraway of his rivals was left out ; and the cakes col- 
 lected the subtlest goodness from all the joints of meat, 
 the loaves, cakes, and tarts, which were baked in the same 
 oven. From the lardy cakes he could retire to his books. 
 Among his other activities was the investment of some of 
 his father's money in the building of two houses at Swin- 
 don. And he was a lover of the country, fond of driving 
 through the corn-land, and ' at an age of much over 
 seventy would climb up two flights of stairs ... to sit 
 at an upper window and gaze his fill at the swelling undu- 
 lations . . . which extended for miles across a fertile 
 green valley to an answering chalk ridge.' He is said to 
 have had the warm temper of the famOy, but also much 
 generosity and kindliness 'under the crust of reserve.'* 
 ' When he disliked he did it thoroughly ; but he was a 
 conscientious upholder of Church and State.' His wife, 
 ' a bright, handsome, amiable woman,' died in 1858 ; he 
 himself in 1868. 
 
 John Jefferies' elder brother, James Luckett, never 
 married. His oddities were put down to something like 
 madness. He had a great distaste for braces, and pre- 
 ferred an old clock-chain wound about his waist ; when his 
 brother's wife stitched the braces to his breeches, he 
 allowed them to hang unused, and still wore the chain, 
 which clanked terribly on the footpaths at night. He 
 would often walk thus from Swindon to Coate with a 
 
 * ' Forbears of Richard Jefferies,' Country Lifc^ March 14, 1908. 
 
ANCESTRY 27 
 
 kettlefiil of crumbs over his shoulders for his nephew and 
 namesake's fowls. It is said that he once pulled up a 
 number of fruit-trees which the nephew, Richard's father, 
 had not planted rightly, and that it was this interference 
 which drove the young man to America in 1837. He was 
 the ' ghoul of the old mill ' described in ' Reminiscences, 
 Notes, and Relics of ye Old Wiltshire Towne,' by William 
 Morris of the Swindon Advertiser. 
 
 ' He was rather above the middle height, and rather 
 stout and heavy built. He used to wear just about the 
 same articles of dress as other people, but he wore them 
 different from most people. For instance, he wore heavy 
 hobnailed boots, which were never laced up, and the 
 tongues of which were always lopping about on the 
 fronts ; he wore thick worsted stockings, but they were 
 always down about his ankles ; he wore breeches without 
 braces, open at the knees, and which were saved from 
 dropping down by a regular and persistent " hitching up." 
 His coat and waistcoat were never buttoned up, while his 
 shirt was always unfastened and open, leaving in full view 
 his hair-covered breast, which appeared to be a continua- 
 tion of his grizzly beard, which was surmounted by such a 
 shagg}' head of hair as was but seldom to be seen. His 
 favourite position and occupation was, after he had got his 
 mill going, to rest his elbows on the bottom half of the mill- 
 door, at the point where he could command a view of 
 the lane, and of any children who might venture to enter 
 it from the road end. With his elbow resting on his 
 clenched fist, he would be content to wait for hours, like 
 a cat watching for a mouse, in the hope of meeting with 
 some children, on whom he might scowl, and frighten out 
 of their lives.' 
 
 It was to make up for his shortcomings that his younger 
 brother was called to Swindon in 1816. He died in 
 
 1854- 
 
 Of the eight children of John Jefferies (the last of whom, 
 Fanny, I believe, died in 1901, aged eighty-eight), two are 
 interesting here — James Luckett, the father of Richard, 
 
28 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 and John Luckett, who died in 1856, at the age of thirty- 
 one. John Luckett is now remembered chiefly for a 
 widely circulated print of Old Swindon Church which he 
 drew, with his uncle's mill-pond thereby, and in it he has 
 put three horses cooling their feet ; for in those days the 
 postillions alighting at 'The Goddard Arms' took their 
 horses to this pond. He was * a youth of rare promise — 
 developed into an artist of no mean powers ; architecture, 
 music, and singing held great charms for him, and he 
 excelled in all. Many are the choice little pencil sketches, 
 fine-line drawings, and water-colours treasured by the 
 family, together with his guitar, and many volumes 
 of music copied with a skUful pen.'* It is said that 
 Richard took after him. His sisters were * exceptionally 
 educated women for the time '; rumour, insisting on 
 the eccentricity of the family, says that one of them 
 spent a year in bed in the misery arising from a love- 
 affair. 
 
 James Luckett Jefferies, the father of Richard, was bom 
 in London in 1816. He was a dark-haired, intensely 
 bright-blue-eyed man of about five feet ten inches in 
 height, with fine hands and feet. He is said to have 
 worked his passage out to America in 1837, ^^^ there, in 
 Canada, and up the Hudson River, he stayed a year or 
 two, and moved about a good deal, working, I have heard, 
 as a farm-labourer. In 1844 he married Elizabeth Gyde, 
 daughter of Charles Gyde of Islington, who was a book- 
 binder at 7^, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street, and had been 
 a ' colleague of his father's at Taylor's.'f Another Miss 
 Gyde married Thomas Harrild, a letterpress and litho- 
 graphic printer in Shoe Lane, Fleet Street ; this aunt was 
 Richard's kindest friend. Frederick Gyde, her brother, was 
 an engraver on wood of some note, and a delicate artist 
 with the pencil ; he is the Alere Flamma of ' Amaryllis at 
 the Fair.' The Gydes came from Pains wick, near Stroud, in 
 
 * 'Forbears of Richard Jefferies,' Country Life^ lAaxch 14, 1908. 
 t Ibid. 
 
ANCESTRY 29 
 
 Gloucestershire, and they had farmed land in that place, 
 famous for its wholesome air ; and of them I have heard it 
 said that one generation lived in the country and the next 
 in London, as the Jefferies' did. Charles Gyde ' of 
 Islington ' was buried at Pitchcombe Church, near Stroud. 
 Elizabeth Gyde was short, with hazel eyes, bro-s\Ti hair, 
 and a lasting fine complexion — ' a town-bred woman with 
 a beautiful face and a pleasure-loving soul, kind and gener- 
 ous to a fault, but unsuited to a country life.'* Her first 
 child was Ellen, who died young, by an accident; the second, 
 John Richard Jefferies, who so signed himself as a boy, but 
 was afterwards Richard Jefferies to the world. He was 
 bom on November 6, 1848, and was christened early in 
 the next year by Mr. Bailey, Vicar of Holy Rood, Swindon. 
 He had very fair, some call it sandy, uncurling hair ; a 
 biggish, ' small Wellington ' nose ; loose, sensitive, ' some- 
 what large ' mouth, ' with slight pendulous lower lip ' ; 
 * wonderfully clear complexion ' ; ' widely-opened, promi- 
 nent blue eyes ' ; good teeth, that were good until his 
 death ; and small, firm hands. He grew to be about six 
 feet in height, slender, with a slight stoop early deve- 
 loped. He had two younger brothers — Henry James 
 and Charles — and a sister Sarah, all of whom are living 
 now. 
 
 James Luckett Jefferies can be pretty well known by 
 studying his portrait as Iden in ' Amaryllis.' Local 
 memory corroborates that portrait. He was an original 
 man, an eccentric, too, a man of character and instincts, 
 sensitive, full of various activities, a great walker even 
 when past seventy, and notably clever with his hands. 
 He was very fond of trees, as they grew and when thrown, 
 and could pick out a good tjhing for himself when there 
 had been a fall of timber at feurderop. Richard Jefferies 
 speaks of his great-grandfather as a connoisseur in timber, 
 ' which is, indeed, a sort of instinct in all his descendants.' 
 There was oak, elm, and ash, and a withy-bed on Coate 
 
 * ' Forbears of Richard JefiFeries,' Country Life, March 14, 1908. 
 
30 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Farm, walnuts overhanging the farmyard itself, and much 
 fruit in the garden. And James Jefferies liked to plant. 
 He always had good apples of his own growing at Coate ; 
 and it was he who planted the copper-beech behind the 
 house, and the French cherry in front. ' It was he who 
 brought a water-finder with his witch-hazel to the farm, 
 and who made the long tunnel through the fields to bring 
 the water into the house. (By-the-by, this water is gone 
 from the old home now, and the cottagers used to say, 
 ' Ould Mr. Jefferies, he stopped it, afore he went away !') 
 It was he who rooted up all the rough old cider apples, 
 and stocked the orchard with the sweet, delightful codlins 
 and russets it now possesses ; he planted the pear-trees 
 on the walls, the Siberian crab and the yew-tree on the 
 lawn, and the luscious and then little-known egg-plums ; 
 the box-hedges, in Richard's youth just at their prime, 
 taller than a man and a dense cover for birds. He scat- 
 tered the musk-seed, so that each year the delicate, scented 
 little plant would crop up between the paving-stones 
 under the " parlour " window. His garden produce was 
 always of the best ; no one else ever grew such red carrots, 
 yellow parsnips, juicy cucumbers ! He planted horse- 
 chestnuts and filberts. (I remember how he cut down 
 the whole hedge in a rage one day, because the men from 
 the New Town, as it was called, had rifled the nuts in the 
 early morning.)'* 
 
 They say, too, that he planted the mulberry and the 
 weeping ash at Coate ; and he used to trim the pollard- 
 limes behind the front wall, so that they made a solid 
 bastion of leaves against the world. When he had no 
 trees of his own, in his old age at Bath, he became a gar- 
 dener, and he got to know all the trees in the gardens. 
 Of birds, too, he knew much, as a sportsman and some- 
 thing more ; it seems to have been he who shot the last 
 bittern at Coate. Sometimes he fished. He kept bees 
 under the southern wall of the house. He built the 
 
 Forbears of Richard Jefferies,' Country Life^ March 14, 190S. 
 
ANCESTRY 31 
 
 piggery and stable himself, and the high wall— Amaryllis's 
 wall — which screens the garden from the road, and the 
 blue summer-house that used to stand at the bottom of 
 his garden, paved with radiating lines of kidney-stones 
 which he brought himself from Medbourne. He made a 
 ha-ha between the garden and the field ; he put a seat 
 round a sycamore that stood by the summer-house. He 
 was a maker of good gates, and the one which Iden and 
 the carpenter made in ' Amaryllis ' was hung opposite 
 the little church at Coate. 
 
 He was a funny-tempered man, full of unexpected likes 
 and dislikes. It is remembered that he hated the smell 
 of the gin that was drunk at Burderop over the timber, 
 and he disliked tobacco-smoke. One year he would give 
 up the garden to fruit-bushes ; again it would be gorgeous 
 with uncommon flowers ; and then the flowers gave way 
 to a fountain and gold and silver fish. He could be play- 
 fully mischievous, too, and like to hear the splash of 
 coping-stones from the little Coate Road bridge as he 
 pushed them over into the brook at night. Except in 
 winter, he wore no stockings, and he took little care of 
 his clothes. His most noted public act was the yearly 
 bonfire in the field opposite the farmhouse on November 5. 
 He seems to have excited curiosity, awe, and amusement 
 more often than affection, but there is a story told that 
 reveals his genial side. In the tall copper under the steep 
 thatch of the older part of the house he used to brew some 
 very good, strong ale — ' Goliath ale ' — and he would let 
 his milker, then Abner Webb, take as much as he liked of 
 this. James Jefferies would thus come into the milking- 
 shed sometimes, and find Abner happy but incapable on 
 the floor. He would milk the cows himself, and pass it 
 over, until he at last had to tell Abner one Friday that 
 he would pay him wages no more. 
 
 ' Well,' said Abner, ' if thee dosn't knaw a good 
 servant, I knows a good maister ; and if thee won't 
 pay I, I'll sarve ee for nowt.' And he remained on the 
 farm. 
 
32 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 James Jefferies always voted blue, but was a Radical in 
 many of his ideas. He was a Churchman : for some time 
 the Coate services were held at the back of his house ; and 
 it was as much out of his hatred of the Methodists as of love 
 for the Church that he offered to give the land and to 
 cart the stones for the chapel at Coate. 
 
 Less is said of Elizabeth, his wife. She, too, was 
 generous, but irritable and queer, and there are hints that 
 a country life on a small, encumbered farm was not what 
 she desired. But she made admirable butter, as some 
 still remember, and a small cheese — about eight to the 
 hundredweight. 
 
 She and her husband and John Brown — and after him, 
 Abner Webb — with extra hands at haymaking, managed 
 the little farm. In the year of Richard's birth gold was 
 discovered in California, and soon after in Australia. 
 Agriculture prospered. Meat, cheese, and butter were 
 at a high price ; rates were low ; more money was spent on 
 drainage and artificial manures ; great improvements were 
 made in agricultural machinery ; and Jefferies, writing to 
 Mrs. Harrild at the age of seven, shows how much he was 
 impressed by a threshing-machine which he had seen for 
 the first time at a large farm in the neighbourhood, and he 
 drew a picture of the machine. But Coate Farm was 
 only about forty acres in extent, and though the land was 
 very good and was given to James Jefferies on his mar- 
 riage, freehold, it never brought him much money, even 
 in the best days. 
 
 The nearest market was at Swindon — at first a ' gin- 
 and-water market,' where farmers, with samples of com 
 in their pockets, sat about over a glass and a pipe, and 
 another glass and another pipe, till a dealer appeared. 
 This was followed by a couple of rows of movable posts 
 and rails in the Square every Monday (opposite the 
 bakery), with sacks of wheat leaning against them. In 
 1853 a market-house was built ; in 1866 the present Com 
 Exchange was opened. There was a horse-fair all the 
 way up Short Edge or Devizes Road, and a montlily cattle- 
 
ANCESTRY 33 
 
 market in High Street, branching into Wood Street and 
 Cricldade Street. There were several fairs, for the sale 
 of in-calf heifers in the spring and of fat cattle in 
 winter. At Lady Day and Michaelmas there was a hiring 
 fair : carters had a piece of whipcord in their hats, cowmen 
 and foggers a lock of cowhair, dairymaids a bunch of 
 ribbons pinned at their breasts ; when hired, they attached 
 long streamers. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 
 
 CoATE Farm is a plain, oblong, slated, brick house of two 
 stories, including the attics, attached on the east side to 
 the small, steep-roofed, and still thatched remnant of an 
 older house. In front, one sitting-room downstairs has a 
 bay-window and window-seat. A large pear-tree covers 
 the western end of the house, and still touches, as in 
 Jefferies' day, the attic window that looks to Swindon. 
 The bedrooms, one of them in the old part under the 
 thatch, are reached by irregular passages and steps, and 
 the staircase is narrow and dark. At the top are two 
 long low attics, one of them the cheese-room where Jef- 
 feries read and Amaryllis painted, when its window was 
 latticed, but not glazed. Beside the bedroom, there is 
 a cellar, and a kitchen with open fireplace and brewing 
 copper, all under the thatch ; and outside that the dairy, 
 at right angles to the house. Thatched outbuildings are 
 close by, under elms, to the east. The front garden, 
 screened by wall and pollard-limes, has several trees — 
 clipped yew, French cherry, plum, apple, and pear ; and 
 some ill-grown plums lean against the wall, whence 
 Amaryllis could easily look down on to the sunken road. 
 In the back garden, also, are fruit-trees, together with 
 mulberry, copper beech, and weeping ash. 
 
 Powdered by motor-cars, and deprived of most of its 
 thatch, it is a dull, unnoticeable house, the greater part of 
 it obviously belonging to about the year 1820, when 
 John Jefferies built all but what is still thatched. The 
 
 34 
 
CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 35 
 
 ha-ha where the beehives stood and the ants nested is 
 gone, the summer-house is gone. But the martins still 
 nest under the eaves ; there is still some lavender in the 
 garden ; and in the early June mornings — and in Jefferies' 
 ^ books — it is easy to see how sweet and fit a home it must 
 have been made by James Jefferies in the middle of last 
 century. 
 
 In the farmyard stood the common pump of the village, 
 which made the place the hub of the universe, James 
 Jefferies himself being fond of talk, and, as an old hay- 
 maker says, ' didn't bustle about like some of 'em.' 
 
 The land attached to the farmhouse was very little — 
 about forty acres, all of it grass, feeding about eight cows 
 and not employing more than one labourer except at 
 the haymaking. Most of the land lay close round the 
 house : two fields opposite, called locally Little and 
 Great ' Axe ' or ' Auks,' but by Jefferies ' Hawkes ' ; 
 and three immediately behind, bounded on the south 
 by the Reservoir — the Home Field, nearest the road to 
 Day House, the'Brook Field, between that and the stream, 
 and a little corner piece beyond called Little Home Field. 
 This little piece was a warm, rich corner where there was 
 always a partridge or two, and Richard loved its oaks. 
 But right away from the house, beyond the Reservoir, 
 and on the very edge of Burderop — and now gathered into 
 that estate — was another small field known as ' The 
 Hodson Ground.' It had goodly double hedges, and, 
 being so near the preserves, partook of some of their 
 advantages, and served as an invaluable outwork for 
 Jefferies when he began to loaf about with a gun. The 
 trains between Swindon and Marlborough did not, in those 
 days, burst in among the pheasants of Burderop, and the 
 quiet of the field was complete. 
 
 This house and the fields were a good place for one to 
 live in who was to become part of that country-side. That, 
 and liberty for six days in the week, and James Luckett 
 Jefferies for his father, was in Richard's favour. Then, 
 too, there was his great-uncle's mill and its vast wheel by 
 
 3—2 
 
36 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 old Swindon Church. And among men there were John 
 Brown, the milker ; Thomas Smith, who worked at Day 
 House and cobbled at home ; and the millwright and 
 blacksmith by ' The Sun ' ; old Day, the bailiff at the 
 Reservoir ; old Mrs. Rawlings, the widow of a Burderop 
 keeper ; and later, the gamekeeper himself, named Hay- 
 lock. And he had but to follow the brook a little way out 
 of his father's land to come to the bridge at Wanborough 
 Nythe, an old Roman station, where he must early have 
 felt the contrasts and the harmonies of sunlight on running 
 water with the vestiges of long-vanished men. 
 
 ' Bevis,' ' Wood Magic,' ' The Gamekeeper at Home,' 
 and ' The Amateur Poacher,' reveal pretty certainly what 
 use Jefferies made of these surroundings as a child. Of 
 the childish sayings in the forty-ninth chapter of ' Bevis ' 
 it is rash to attribute any to Jefferies himself, since when 
 he wrote the book he had a boy of his own. Some, I like 
 to think, are certainly his, such as :* 
 
 ' " Ah !" said he thoughtfully. " He [the Deity] got a 
 high ladder and climbed up over the hedges to make the 
 thunder. . . ." 
 
 ' At Brighton he was taken over the Pavilion. . . , By- 
 and-by, in the top stories, rather musty from old carpets 
 and hangings : " Hum !" said he ; " seems stuffy. I can 
 smell that gentleman's dinner " {i.e., George IV. 's). 
 
 ' Visiting a trim suburban viUa. ... " Don't think 
 much of your garden," said Bevis ; " no buttercups. . . ." 
 
 ' The crucifixion hurt his feelings very much. ... "If 
 God had been there. He would not have let them do it." ' 
 
 ' Wood Magic ' gives us some unquestionably true things 
 about those early years — the wanderings in the Home 
 Field after butterflies, the talks with thrush and weasel 
 and hare, the spaniel his companion ; the love of the sky 
 as he lay in the grass and looked up, ' as he always did 
 when he wanted someone to speak to,' and said, ' Sky, I 
 love you like I love my mother.' How early I do not know, 
 but it is likely that very early he fell, on occasion, into a 
 
 * Bevis. 
 
 1 
 
CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 37 
 
 dream state with something like the vague, universal con- 
 sciousness described in ' Bevis ' ; he* ' felt with his soul out 
 to the far-distant sun just as easily as he could feel with 
 his hand to the bunch of grass beside him ; he felt with his 
 soul down through into the earth just as easily as he could 
 touch the sward with his fingers. Something seemed to 
 come to him out of the sunshine and the grass.' He was 
 physically sensitive, and not without a conscious indulg- 
 ence of this sensitiveness, if we may judge from the 
 passage in ' Bevis ' where his hero lies down and shuts 
 his eyes to think, and Mark gently tickles his forehead 
 and neck and hair and cheeks with a grass flower. ' Tell 
 me a story/ says Mark in one place ; ' I'll tickle you, and 
 you tell me a story ;' and Bevis closes his eyes and begins 
 a tale. Thought and sensation were closely allied in 
 Jefferies at a much later time. 
 
 But he must also have been a true, ferocious country 
 child, robbing birds'-nests freely — a thing he was eager to 
 pardon to the end — and willing to shoot the thrush, trap 
 the weasel, and smash the toad. Where men and children 
 are at close grips with Nature, and have to wrest a living 
 from the soil or the sea, there is apt to hide, like an im- 
 prisoned toad, at the very roots of their philosophy, if it 
 does not flap like a crow in the topmost branches, a feeling 
 that all the life that is not with them — as horse'and sheep 
 and cow and sheep-dog are — is against them, rivalling 
 them in pursuit of food and warmth, robbing the drills 
 and taking a share of the waving corn and the glittering 
 harvest of the sea. Sometimes the toad, sometimes the 
 crow, this primeval gnome or puck, persisted in Jefferies' 
 mind for many years, if it evei forsook it. He arose out of 
 the earth, and he had its cruelty. He beat, or would have 
 beaten, the offending beast, much as Mark and Bevis 
 ' thrashed, thwacked, banged, thumped, poked, prodded, 
 kicked, belaboured, bumped and hit ' the donkey, ' work- 
 ing themselves into a frenzy of rage.'f It was ' the same 
 Bevis who put an aspen-leaf carefully under the fly to 
 
 * Wood Magic. ■\ Bevis. 
 
38 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 save it from drowning. The sky was blue and the even- 
 ing beautiful, but no one came to help the donkey.'* 
 With the village boys he caught the roach and miller's- 
 thumb, and robbed the moorhen's nest in the little brooks. 
 Consistent after a strange fashion with this hostility to 
 wild things was his instinct against petting them. He 
 kept silk-worms, having a mulberry-tree at hand ; but 
 ' all the grasses of the meadow, 'f he says, ' were my pets, 
 I loved them all ; and perhaps that was why I never had 
 a " pet," never cultivated a flower, never kept a caged 
 bird, or any creature. Why keep pets when every wild, 
 free hawk that passed overhead in the air was mine ? I 
 joyed in his swift, careless flight, in the throw of his 
 pinions, in his rush over the elms and miles of woodland ; 
 it was happiness to see his unchecked life. What more 
 beautiful than the sweep and curve of his going through 
 the azure sky ? These were my pets, and all the grass.' 
 Before he had any conscious thought it was a delight to 
 find the flowers and take them home, snapping off also 
 large green sprays and massy tree-bloom. Consistent, too, 
 is the way in which he saw, so as to remember for ever, 
 the yellow-hammer on the ash bough singing in the sun : J 
 ' This one yellow-hammer still sits on the ash-branch in 
 Stewart's Mash over the sward, singing in the sun, his 
 feathers wet with colour, the same sun-song, and will sing 
 to me so long as the heart shall beat.' 
 
 Callous and sensitive, he was not only dreamy, but 
 fiery too, and the impatient irritability of Bevis comes 
 straight from life. Food, too, was sweet between his 
 teeth, or those ' cogs ' — ' indentations like a cogged 
 wheel ' round the loaf — stuck over with pats of fresh 
 butter would not have lingered so in memory, and. with 
 them, the apples up in the attic, of which he stole the 
 largest with great deliberation. Once, perhaps, the farm- 
 waggon must have taken him a long way by the south- 
 ward road over the Downs ; and he must have been told 
 
 * Bevis. -j- ' Hours of Spring,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 
 X * Wild Flowers,' Opcti Air. 
 
From a photograph. 
 
 RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 as a boy. 
 
 p. 38. 
 
CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 39 
 
 that over there lay Southampton and the sea, for not once 
 or twice only is it mentioned that the Marlborough road 
 ' led towards the ships,' sixty miles off. And on one of 
 these early days, I think, he saw a skeleton disinterred by 
 the brook, the ' Roman brook ' by Wanborough Nythe. 
 He describes such a disinterment made accidentally by 
 a horse, and the skeleton haunts him in ' The Gamekeeper,' 
 in ' Meadow Thoughts,' in ' The Story of My Heart,' and 
 elsewhere. One sorrowful impression of this kind can 
 furnish an acid by means of which even joyous things bite 
 deeper into the brain. 
 
 I do not know how early he went to the sea, but he 
 visited the Lewes Downs as a child, and was taken to the 
 shore, probably at Eastbourne, Worthing, and Brighton, 
 by his aunt and uncle, the Harrilds. When he was a 
 little child he went to London, and stayed for months at 
 a time with the Harrilds at Shanklin Villa, Sydenham. 
 There he went to a small private school, and was a ' good ' 
 and docile, but not a brilliant, child. He was fond of 
 drawing what he saw with much laboured precision. 
 Taken to lengthy religious meetings at Exeter Hall, he 
 kept himself happy in the crowd with his pencil and 
 paper. He sat quietly for hours with any picture-books, 
 such as Punch. 
 
 Very soon he was a fisherman in the brook, and then 
 in the Reservoir. In 1856, before he was eight, he wrote 
 that he had been ' out shooting with papa. We shot 
 several Rabbits. I have rowed the Boat from one end 
 of the water to the other with ^lama and two others. I 
 have caught some fishes, but they are dead.'* Before 
 he was nine, he was ' climbing trees, shooting, fishing, 
 swinging, blowing my trumpet all over the place, and up 
 to all sorts of tricks. 'f Three months later he wrote : J 
 
 ' I have been on the Reservoir many times, and out 
 with Papa shooting rabbits to Hodson, and have shot one 
 myself. ... I should like to come and see you again soon. 
 
 * To Mrs. Harrild. f To the same, July 2, 1857. 
 
 To the same, October ig, 1857. 
 
40 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Papa says I cannot run about here much longer when it is 
 wet and dirty. I must go away to school.' 
 
 When at home his schooling was irregular at first. 
 Staying at Sydenham for months at a time, it was im- 
 possible that his dreaming father should see that he went 
 to school as soon as he returned. But James Jefferies 
 used to read and explain Shakespeare and the Bible to the 
 children, and taught them what he knew of natural 
 history. Coate Reservoir, and the fields and farmyard, 
 trained and fed the child's eyes and ears in the course 
 of collecting the forty kinds of eggs which hung in the 
 summer-house. He inherited his father's handiness with 
 tools, and he may well have made a gun, as Bevis did, 
 with the blacksmith's lielp. That he fitted up one of the 
 craft on the Reservoir with sails is certain ; for I have met 
 ' Molly the milkmaid,' who stitched them after he had 
 cut them to the right shape. ' Everybody does everything 
 for you,' said Mark to Bevis ; and it seems as if the boy 
 had a sharp will that went straight to its end. ' Molly * 
 did many things for him, and remembers driving a two- 
 pronged fork through an eel that she might skin it alive 
 at his request, for he had never seen that rite before. 
 His father taught him to swim, and the method, if it was 
 that described in ' Bevis,' could hardly have been bettered. 
 
 What he could not get without money he usually had 
 to do without, and as a big boy he had to beg a good deal 
 for threepence. But at first that mattered little, as his 
 tastes were those of an ordinary boy, playing at marbles 
 when he was past eleven, begging fireworks from his aunt 
 when he was thirteen. 
 
 In May, i860, he was at school, and ' in the Rule of 
 Three now, which I like very mucli.' This letter is 
 characteristic enough to quote :* 
 
 ' I suppose you have heard the cuckoo before this. 
 Last night three came .up into a tree under which I was 
 standing. I have robbed 31 birds' eggs already, chiefly 
 thrushes. ... I have made a sundial, and I can tell the 
 
 ♦ To Mrs. Harrild, May 7, i860. 
 
CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 41 
 
 time by it. . . . How are you off for potatoes now ? 
 How is J ip now and the mare and the little canary getting 
 on ? . . . I must conclude has it is very near 8 o'clock, 
 and must be off to school.' 
 
 It would take a rambling boy at least an hour to cross 
 the fields from Coate Farm to a Swindon School. A little 
 later he was going to ' the Miss Cowles/ apparently to 
 school, for two hours a day on five days of the week. His 
 handwritmg varied very much at this period, showing 
 self-consciousness. If in 1861 he was being taught by 
 * the Miss Cowles,' he was certainly for some time under Mr. 
 Fentiman, a Plymouth Brother, who kept a school in Short 
 Edge, or Devizes Road, and taught English, mathematics, 
 French, and Latin. There were about thirty boys, sons of 
 farmers, architects, bank-managers, tradesmen. Jefferies 
 was noticeable there chiefly for being quiet, dreamy, and 
 reserved ; one says, ' not particularly amiable, somewhat 
 supercilious, not caring much, if at all, for outdoor games '* 
 — i.e., for such rigid games as cricket. Mr. Fentiman 
 had himself been a boy, and had set up wigwams and raged 
 on the warpath, and he lent Fenimore Cooper's ' Leather- 
 stocking ' tales to Jefferies, and thus helped him to the 
 notion of camping out and playing at Indians on the 
 shores of the Reservoir and on the Hodson Ground. 
 
 He spent many hours in this field at Hodson with his 
 gun, and so became friendly with Haylock, the Burderop 
 keeper, who lived in Hodson Bottom. This man had a 
 reputation on account of the ferocity and licence of his 
 language when he caught trespassers. He would give 
 them plenty of ' tongue-pie,' says an old victim, but 
 would never prosecute. He wore a tall beaver hat, and 
 gave warning as he entered a copse by coughing loud, 
 very loud. He had a notorious hatred of parsons, 
 whether they came shooting with his master or not. 
 Jefferies helped him in keeping down, the vermin, and 
 earned some privileges in return. The Hodson field was 
 a good place for a wire, and the Burderop Woods made 
 * ' Forbears of Richard Jefferies.' 
 
42 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 a perfect back-garden for the boy, as they were preserved 
 against nearly everybody else. They included dense, 
 silent wood, more open undergrowth, deep hedges, moist 
 sedge, and were rich in many kinds of birds except birds of 
 prey, although these visited the place persistently. Among 
 the withies of the little Reservoir there were snipe to be 
 had ; and in the winter great crested grebes and divers 
 came with many other water-birds to the main Reservoir. 
 
 Other instructors the boy had in a greyhound and in 
 Juno, the pointer, who used to take fish out of the farm- 
 yard trough without hurting them. Job Brown and 
 others set him thinking about snares for fish, feather, and 
 fur. 
 
 If he was becoming a keen and hardened shooter, 
 sharing the sportsman's tenuous emotion of loving the 
 hare that he has killed, he was a good deal more also. 
 Watching in hedges, or up in trees, or in the punt, he 
 trained his fine, restless eyes to their craft : 
 
 ' [Sitting in a tree] like so many slender webs, his lines 
 of sight thus drawn through mere chinks of foliage radi- 
 ated from a central spot, and at the end of each he seemed 
 as if he could feel if anything moved as much as he could 
 see it. Each of these webs strained at his weary mind, 
 and even in the shade the strong glare of the summer 
 noon pressed heavily on his eyelids.' 
 
 In fact, he fell asleep. He learned to know the roads 
 by which the birds travelled, so that he said (in ' Wild 
 Life in a Southern County ') he thought he could draw 
 a map of the fields, and show the routes and resorts of 
 birds and beasts ; and it was probably he that discovered 
 the ice-blink on Coate Reservoir — the invisible mist above 
 the ice which yet concealed a lantern laid upon it, unless 
 the watcher lifted his head well above the surface. Several 
 of his contemporaries recall his skill and energy in skating. 
 He and his younger, but robuster and more daring brother, 
 Harry, had a reputation for their skating which points to 
 a youth well spent upon Reservoir and Canal. 
 
 Life at home was often of a delicious quiet, and before 
 
CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 43 
 
 he learned about Time there must have been many 
 moments like that which lingered to inspire such pas- 
 sages as that in ' Round about a Great Estate,' where 
 the damask rose opens its petals, the strawberries are ripe, 
 and ' young Aaron ' turns the blue-painted barrel-churn, 
 while the finches call in the plum-trees. Not yet had his 
 father's and mother's moods the enduring excuse that the 
 farm was going surely to the bad ; not yet had James 
 Jefferies, his father dead, and all hope of more help de- 
 parted, begun to let things that were wrong go yet more 
 wrong, to mortgage the farm, and to dream, until he had 
 to leave and become a gardener in Bath. His mother 
 was often gay, and his father genial and at ease in his 
 garden, and in these big, early, silent spaces of life the 
 boy's soul could turn about and grow. It was, perhaps, 
 at the age of fifteen — ' so long since that I have forgotten 
 the date,' as he wrote in 1883 — that he used to go every 
 morning, where, hidden by elm-trees, he could see the sun 
 rise, or watch the early eastern sky : 
 
 ' Involuntarily I drew a long breath, then I breathed 
 slowly. My thought, or inner consciousness, went up 
 through the illumined sky, and I was lost in a moment of 
 exaltation. This only lasted a very short time, perhaps 
 only part of a second, and while it lasted there was no 
 formulated wish. I was absorbed ; I drank the beauty of 
 the morning ; I was exalted.' 
 
 At or near the same time came those richer growths of 
 the dream state and extended, if not ' cosmic,' conscious- 
 ness' mentioned in ' Bevis,' where, too, he speaks of the 
 exact position of the rising sun, ' between the young oak 
 and the third group of elms ' : — 
 
 ' The sward on the path on which Bevis used to lie and 
 gaze up in the summer evening was real and tangible ; 
 the earth under was real ; and so, too, the elms, the oak, 
 the ash-trees, were real and tangible — things to be 
 touched, and known to be. Now, like these, the mind, 
 stepping from the one to the other, knew and almost felt 
 the stars to be real, and not mere specks of light, but 
 
44 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 things that were there by day over the ehns as well as by 
 night, and not apparitions of the evening departing at the 
 twittering of the swallows. They were real, and the 
 touch of his mind felt to them. 
 
 ' He could not, as he reclined on the garden path by the 
 strawberries, physically reach to and feel the oak ; but he 
 could feel the oak in his mind, and so from the oak, step- 
 ping beyond it, he felt the stars. They were always there 
 by day as well as by night. . . . 
 
 ' The heavens were as much a part of life as tlie elms, 
 the oak, the house, the garden and orchard, the meadow 
 and the brook. They were no more separated than the 
 furniture of the parlour, than the old oak chair where he 
 sat, and saw the new moon shine over the mulberry-tree. 
 They were neither above nor beneath, they were in the 
 same place with him ; just as when you walk in the wood 
 the trees are all about you, on a plane with you, so he 
 felt the constellations and the sun on a plane with him, 
 and that he was moving among them as the earth rolled 
 on, like them, with them, in the stream of space. 
 
 ' The day did not shut off the stars, the night did not 
 shut off the sun ; they were always there. Not that he 
 always thought of them, but they were never dismissed. 
 When he listened to the greenfinches sweetly calling in the 
 hawthorn, or when he read his books, poring over the 
 "Odyssey," with the sunshine on the wall, they were always 
 there ; there was no severance. Bevis lived not only out 
 to the finches and the swallows, to the far-away hills, but 
 he lived out and felt out to the sk3^ 
 
 ' It was living, not thinking. He lived it, never think- 
 ing, as the finches live their sunny life in the happy 
 days of June. There was magic in everything, blades 
 of grass and stars, the sun and the stones upon the 
 ground.' 
 
 There is another passage in ' Bevis ' where he ' became 
 silent and fell into one of his dream states — when, as Mark 
 said, he was like a tree '; he was ' lost — something seemed 
 to take him out of himself '; and another where he sat 
 
CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 45 
 
 on the top of a hill and was ' lost in his dreamy mood/ 
 and ' he did not think, he felt.' 
 
 He had become a great reader, too. I have seen his 
 copy of ' Percy's Reliques,' with ' J. R. Jefferies, 1863,' 
 on the fiy-leaf. The ballad of King Estmere is often on 
 Bevis's lips. At Coate Farm there were many old books, 
 and many more at the grandfather's house in Swindon, 
 bound in eighteenth-century leather and early nineteenth- 
 century boards. The children had the run of these, and 
 that is perhaps why so few of them survive. There was 
 certainly a Culpeper, loved — before Linnaeus and Gerarde 
 — for his poisons and fantastic properties — Orchis Mas- 
 cula, for example, credited with the power to call up the 
 passion of love.'* There would be books like that ' small 
 quarto, a.d. 1650, a kind of calendar of astrology, medi- 
 cine, and agriculture, telling the farmer when the conjunc- 
 tion of the planets was favourable for purchasing stock or 
 sowing seed.'t Favourites also were the ' Odyssey,' in, I 
 believe, James Morrice's translation, as well as Pope's; 'Don 
 Quixote,' Shakespeare's poems, Filmore's ' Faust.' These 
 are mentioned again and again, especially the ' Odyssey ' 
 and ' Faust.' There was an ancient encyclopaedia, with a 
 page ' of chemical signs and those used by the alchemists, 
 some of which he had copied off for magic '; and one giving 
 all the alphabets — ' Coptic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Syriac, and 
 so on '; and ' the Arabic took his fancy as the most mys- 
 terious — the sweeping curves, the quivering lines, the blots 
 where the reed pen thickened, there was no knowing 
 what such writing might not mean. 'J The encyclopaedia 
 often lay open at ' Magic,' and his mind — Bevis's mind — 
 worked from some of the imtruths and half-truths to the 
 truth :— § 
 
 '" . . . I wish we could get a magic writing. Then we 
 could do anything, and we could know all the secrets." 
 
 ' " What secrets ?" 
 
 ' " Why, all these things have secrets." 
 
 ♦ Toilers o^ the Field. \ Ibid. % Greene Feme Farm. 
 
 § Bevis. 
 
46 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 '"AU?" 
 
 ' " AU," said Bevis, looking round, and pointing with an 
 arrow in his hand. " All the trees, and all the stones, 
 and all the flowers " ' 
 
 ' The magic of the past,' he wrote, ' always had a 
 charm for me. I had learned to know the lines ... so 
 that the " gips " could tell me nothing new.'* Then there 
 was ' Kcenigsmark the Robber.' ' Pilgrim's Progress ' 
 was given to him by his Uncle and Aunt Harrild in 1858. 
 Not much later came the many translations from the 
 poets and others which Felise read — ' the beautiful 
 memoirs of Socrates, some parts of Plato, most of the 
 histories, and the higher and purer poets.' He mentions 
 also Sophocles, Diogenes Laertius' ' Lives of the Philo- 
 sophers,' Athenaeus and Aristotle. As early as 1867 he 
 quoted Rabelais, David Lindsay, and several chroniclers. 
 From a book or from his father, and from his nights out of 
 doors, he learned to know the stars as he did the hamlet 
 houses and elms. 
 
 The first attraction of books for him was that of the 
 unusual, the adventurous, the antique. ' Ulysses,' he 
 says, ' was ever my pattern and model. 'f He gloated 
 over the poisons of Culpeper. He arranged fights on ' The 
 Plain,' and had ' The Pathfinder ' in his mind. His 
 father told him, too, of his adventure twenty years ago. 
 Upon the Downs he felt the call of the sea. He had, too, 
 adventurous friends, boys not at all dreamy, but full of 
 noise and energy. One of these lived over the way at 
 SnodshiU Farm — his cousin, James Cox. And one day 
 they were missed together. Jimmy was the elder, and 
 had started work in the Great Western Railway Works 
 at Swindon, and could save a little money ; so they crossed 
 the Channel into France, with Moscow dimly desirable 
 and accessible over the hills and rivers and plains. But 
 the French he learned at Swindon did not take Jefferies 
 far, and they returned in a short time to England. Next 
 
 * Amateur Poacher. ■)■ 2 bid. 
 
CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 47 
 
 they tried Liverpool, and spent all their money in tickets 
 to America which did not cover their food. They had to 
 return. Jimmy was soon off again, and never returned 
 to the old life, nor, perhaps, did Jefferies, in quite the old 
 way. The one has been in Australia these thirty years ; 
 Jefferies had set his foot on a road that was to lead to 
 at least as distant a land. 
 
 This adventure — in or about 1864 — may have been 
 inspired by increasing difficulties at home. The place 
 was ' falling to decay, while at the same time it seemed to 
 be flowing with milk and honey.'* ' There are no wolves,' 
 he wrote, ' like those debt sends against a house. 'f The 
 food was good and plenteous, but there was no ready 
 money. The farm was not prospering. The cattle plague 
 came in 1865, after the three great corn harvests of 1863, 
 1864, and 1865. Though farmers' clubs were becoming 
 more and more active and numerous, and the progress in 
 agricultural machinery went rapidly on, Coate Farm and 
 the farmer, whose head wore a mark on the panel against 
 which it leaned to think, were none the better. Richard 
 had by this time left school for good, and though 
 he was reading, rambling, and thinking, he was earning 
 no money, except a few shillings for himself, made by 
 selling hares which he snared or shot. The long, idle lad 
 was beginning to be noticed for his idleness, his walks to 
 Marlborough Forest, his everlasting loafing with a gun. 
 Mr. Galley, at Burderop Park, used to say : ' That young 
 Jefferies is not the sort of fellow you want hanging about 
 in your covers.' His father felt that he had let his son 
 slip out of his knowledge, and used to point with disgust 
 to ' our Dick poking about in them hedges.' Nor would 
 he do any farm-work worth speaking of. In a later letter 
 he said that he had helped on the farm, and could lend a 
 hand at almost anything ; but the only work he cared to 
 do was that of chopping wood or splitting it with betel 
 and wedges to make posts and rails. The flint hauliers 
 on the Downs used to see him going about as if he were 
 
 * After London. \ Amaryllis at the Fair. 
 
48 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ' looking for summat,' or as if he * weren't doing any 
 work.' He was, says another, admiring his capacity for 
 doing apparently nothing, ' cut out for a gentleman if 
 only there had been money.' He was in a ferment of un- 
 divined and growing powers which isolated him, of ambi- 
 tions, of needs, which presents of books from his aunt 
 could not satisfy. His father was not a man of books, 
 though far from illiterate. For a time the boy would get 
 into the habit of overlooking the wisdom of the unlearned. 
 Probably he had begun to write as early as 1864, ^^^ ^ 
 letter of that year shows the beginning of self-conscious- 
 ness about style.* 
 
 But however bitter the days of poverty, loneliness, 
 misunderstanding, and constraint, the time when he was 
 sixteen and seventeen had probably as great sweetness 
 as bitterness, since the two go together in their extremes 
 at least as much at that as at any other age. They say 
 that, though he often carried his gun, he was less and less 
 fond of shooting after he was fifteen or so. Yet he would 
 still bring home a snipe on a frosty day, or a jay's wing 
 in the spring from Burderop. He hung about on stiles by 
 Maxell and Great Maxell fields, on the footpath to Bad- 
 bury Lane, or by the brooks, or on the Reservoir, or on 
 the Downs, and dreamed and thought. With his linger 
 on the trigger, he ' hesitated, dropped the barrel, and 
 watched the beautiful bird,' and ' that watching so often 
 stayed the shot that at last it grew to be a habit. . . . 
 Time after time I have flushed partridges without firing, 
 and have let the hare bound over the furrow free.'f And 
 yet I should not be surprised if he shared little John's 
 delight in ' wristing ' the rabbit's neck, ' as the neck gave 
 with a sudden looseness, and in a moment what had been 
 a living, straining creature became limp. 'J He tells us 
 that he shot many kingfishers and herons ; he shot the 
 redwing as it sang, to make quite sure of it. I dare say 
 the eagle which he once saw going over was lucky in being 
 at a great height. 
 
 • To Mrs. llarrild, October 27, 1864. f Amateur Poacher. 
 
 I Ibid. 
 
CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 49 
 
 All this — the hunting, the reading, the brooding — was 
 filling his brain, clearing and subtilizing his eye. The 
 clearness of the physical is allied to the penetration of 
 the spiritual vision. For both are nourished to their 
 perfect flowering by the habit of concentration. To see 
 a thing as clearly as he saw the sun-painted yellow- 
 hammer in Stewart's Mash is part of the office of the 
 imagination. Imagination is no more than the making 
 of graven images, whether of things on the earth or in 
 the mind. To make them, clear concentrated sight and 
 patient mind are the most necessary things after love ; and 
 these two are the children of love. With the majority, 
 love, accompanying and giving birth to imagination, 
 reaches its intensity only once, and that briefly, in a life- 
 time ; and if they are ever again to know imagination, 
 it is through fear, as when a tall flame shoots up before 
 the eyes, or through sudden pain or anger giving their 
 faces an honest energy of expression, and their lips, per- 
 haps, a power of telling speech. Yet more rare is the 
 power of repeating these images by music or language or 
 carved stone. It is those who can do so who alone are, 
 as a rule, aware that human life, nature, and art are every 
 moment continuing and augmenting the Creation — making 
 to-day the first day, and this field Eden, annihilating time 
 — so that each moment all things are fresh and the sun 
 has not drunken the blessed dew from off their bloom. 
 The seeing eye of child or lover, the poet's verse, the 
 musician's melody, add thus continually to the rich- 
 ness of the universe. Jefferies early possessed such an 
 eye, such an imagination, though not for many years 
 could he reveal some of its images by means of words. 
 In fact, he was very soon to bear witness to the pitiful 
 truth that the imagination does not supply the words 
 that shall be its expression ; he was to fiU much paper with 
 words that revealed almost nothing of his inner and little 
 more of his outer life. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD— REPORTING— SHORT 
 STORIES— PAMPHLETS— ARCH/EOLOGY 
 
 Early in March, 1866, soon after he was seventeen, 
 Jefferies wrote to Mrs. Harrild to say that he had just 
 begun to work on the North Wilts Herald, a new Con- 
 servative paper, published at Swindon. He had sent 
 her a copy of the paper, by which, he says, she 
 might guess that his connection with it had already 
 commenced. He imagines that he will like his place, 
 and up to the present moment he does more — he enjoys it ; 
 his duties are ' multifarious — reporting, correcting manu- 
 script and proofs, with a spice of reviewing and an un- 
 limited amount of condensation.' This work gave him a 
 little money, sent him out of doors in many directions, 
 and compelled him to use his pen in the expression of his 
 own or other people's knowledge and ideas. But that he 
 had already had some practice is certain ; for, poor as are 
 his stories published in the North Wilts of this period, 
 they are not beginnings, nor even are the verses, like those 
 ' To a Fashionable Bonnet,' ending : 
 
 ' Ah, girls are girls, and will be girls 
 In spite of matrons gray ; 
 Then why restrain the flowing curls 
 When all for freedom pray ?' 
 
 The stories have much facility and exuberance of traslii- 
 ness, of which this from ' Henrique Beaumont '* is no 
 unjust example : 
 
 ' A young man knelt at the feet of a maiden, whom he 
 * Norlh Wilts Herald. 
 50 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 51 
 
 endeavoured to prevent rising from an ottoman by de- 
 taining her hand in his. " Rowland Austin," muttered 
 Henrique, setting his teeth. 
 
 ' " Unhand me, sir," said the maiden, while a rosy flush 
 mantled her fair forehead, a glance of rising indignation 
 shot from her deep blue eyes, and her lips quivered.' 
 
 Here occurs his first sketch of a Wiltshire miller, but 
 not a promising one. 'Who will Win?' has a cynical 
 psychological description of one who has seen a beauty 
 pass in a carriage, and has loved her at first sight. He 
 did not follow her, firstly, because the carriage went too 
 fast ; secondly, on account of the heat ; thirdly, because 
 it might return to whence it started ; fourthly, because he 
 wished to know the name of the inmate, which was not 
 pasted up on the door. In this tale there is fighting and 
 shipwreck ; the hero is suspended over a precipice in the 
 folds of a boa ; the end is marriage. ' Masked '* is about 
 a doctor who puts poison in the intestines of a patient of 
 his rival (' graceful, easy, "interesting," as the ladies would 
 put it '), and an actress of unquestionable virtue, in 
 whom ' contact with the boards had not depreciated her 
 nature.' Such stories are probably the unconsciously 
 insincere utterance of a truly romantic nature. ' A 
 Strange Story 'f is nearer to the mature Jefferies. It 
 refers to ' yonder camp-crowned hill,' and begins with 
 some conversation between two men (Roderick and Gerald 
 Fitzhugh) as to why the White Horse, the fosse and 
 ramparts of the ancient camp, and the time-worn barrow, 
 * should have power to render naught the abyss of a 
 thousand years, and call up " deeds half hidden in the mist 
 of years," while yet the ear is conscious of the cooing of 
 doves, the eye of the passing rook and the hare in the fern.' 
 There is an apparition of two persons in a churchyard — 
 one being then some way off in the seer's house, the other 
 far away. The seer dies soon, after expressing a belief 
 that they would meet again ; there is, too, a vague pro- 
 phecy fulfilled. ' T. T. T.' J is in yet another vein, 
 ♦ North Wilts Herald. f Ibid. % Ibid. 
 
 4—2 
 
52 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 concerning a squire's wife who advocates ' tea and toast as 
 a cure for all evils,' and so loses all her servants except 
 one, who can get at the brandy. It is jaunty and mock- 
 heroic, probably with local allusions. ' Traits of the 
 Olden Time,'* belonging to the same year, is sensible and 
 genuine, though sententious. It touches on rural sim- 
 plicity, ignorance, brutal hospitality, medicines, Anglo- 
 Saxon forms of speech. ' The conversation of the lower 
 class of agriculturists,' he says, ' sounds like a dialogue of 
 the Heptarchy.' But though he tells us that ' the milker 
 sings at his pail even when his breath is frozen upon his 
 chin,' he mentions but one song, and that ' The Leathern 
 Bottel.' All through the instances are too few and the 
 generalizations too facile. Had this article been singled 
 out and praised by someone of credit, the writer might 
 have developed more directly towards descriptions of the 
 country and country life. But insincerity is not dis- 
 ingenuousness, and that facile, expressionless fiction, 
 useless as it is to us, was, in part, an indulgence to his 
 not yet understood yearnings which they might otherwise 
 have lacked. It was good for him to consider the lan- 
 guage of emotion, even if he failed to utter his own ; just 
 as, later on, it was good for him to indulge in ' The Scarlet 
 Shawl,' because it satisfied and kept alive for the time 
 being the spiritual something in his nature as competent 
 articles on agriculture could not do. Even so may it be 
 when one who has fallen in love polishes his boots to a 
 particular brightness, though they never meet his mis- 
 tress's eye. It is quite possible that, had there been 
 no ' Henrique Beaumont ' and ' Who will Win ?' there 
 would have been no ' Dewy Morn,' no ' Amaryllis,' no 
 ' Story of My Heart.' Right through the early period 
 of Jefferies' life these two elements, the observing and 
 informing, and the emotional and spiritual, remained 
 side by side, usually distinct, but slowly gathering good- 
 ness from each other, until at last the boundary vanished 
 in perfectly aesthetic expression. His handwriting as a 
 
 ♦ North Wilts Herald, 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 53 
 
 youth is a slight indication of his uncertainty and con- 
 fusion ; for a time it was back-handed, and again it was 
 a compromise between writing and printing. 
 
 There were more of these tales than are exposed in 
 ' Early Fiction,' and Jefferies had hopes that his Uncle 
 Harrild would pass them on to the editor of London 
 Society, a journal that helped to relieve the rusticity of 
 Coate. But he was not only writing tales, reporting, and 
 correcting proofs. For some time past he had been 
 reading modern science, as chance brought Darwin or 
 Lyell along ; but it was without any guidance from critics 
 or friends, and we know that he came upon White's 
 ' Selborne,' e.g., only towards the end of his life. He was 
 reading history, too, and had turned archaeologist and 
 numismatist, looking out for signs of early occupation on 
 the face of the earth, for coins, epitaphs, armorial bearings, 
 pedigrees, legends, architecture in the churches, manor- 
 houses, and farms. His own neighbourhood, as he wrote 
 in July, 1867, was a mine for an antiquary. He threw 
 over his school belief that ancient Britain was a waste. 
 The Roman and British coins, arrow-heads, tumuli, camps, 
 cannon-balls, made the country seem ' alive with the 
 dead,' and he was ' inclined to think that this part of 
 North Wilts, at least, was as thickly inhabited of yore as 
 it is now, the difference being only in the spot inhabited 
 having been exchanged for another more adapted to the 
 wants of the times.' He read especially the historians 
 and chroniclers of his own part of the country, and picked 
 up all kinds of knowledge that he could either store up 
 or set forth at once in the North Wilts Herald. Before 
 the middle of 1867 he had finished a series of twenty 
 chapters for that paper on tjhe history of Malmesbury. 
 There he quoted from Asser, Geoffrey of Monmouth, 
 David Lindsay, ' Hudibras,' Byron, Goethe, Ossian, and 
 Longfellow's ' King Witlaf's Drinking Horn.' But he 
 gave his medley of quotations and paraphrases little 
 vitality by passages of an insecure and imitated stateliness 
 — as, for example : ' Certain names stand out in the mind 
 
54 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 — with an objective reality, like sculpture. Who hears of 
 Homer, without remembering the Trojan war ; of Plato, 
 without in imagination listening to the soft sighing of the 
 zephyrs through the groves of Academus ; of Romulus 
 . . .' or by the reflection that ' Ink alone confers immor- 
 tality.' It can only be hoped that really vital knowledge 
 gained by handling this legend and history counter- 
 balanced the vexation of spirit. 
 
 Before the end of 1866 he had begun the series of his- 
 torical and descriptive articles on Swindon and the 
 neighbourhood which now form the volume entitled 
 ' Jefferies' Land.' There he made use of his well-loved 
 ' Ballad of King Estmere ' and Drayton's ' Dowsabell ' 
 (also from the ' Reliques '), together with the ' Iliad,' 
 Herodotus, Horace, Pliny, Rowe's ' Lucan,' Nennius, 
 ' Domesday Book,' Richard of Cirencester, Aubrey, Clar- 
 endon, Young, Pope's ' Essay on Man,' Ossian, and the 
 ' Philosophical Magazine.' The chapters were better than 
 his paper needed, and they are a fairly clear and pictur- 
 esque arrangement of history, genealogy, legend, and his 
 own observation ; yet he is not above quoting Richard of 
 Cirencester as an authority on 3600 B.C. He visited places 
 as far apart as Avebury, Huish, Aldbourne, Ufhngton, 
 Ashdown, Highworth, Braden Wood, Cricklade, Fairford, 
 Malmesbury, and Wootton Bassett. In the church at 
 Lydiard Tregoze he wrote : 
 
 ' The effect of these numerous monuments to departed 
 greatness is very solemn, and is increased by the dim light 
 from the stained-glass windows. Here sleep the warrior 
 and the statesman, men celebrated in their day, their 
 names in all men's mouths, now only known by the epi- 
 taph and escutcheon. Who remembers the great baron 
 Tregoz ? Who thinks of him when he hears of Lydiard 
 Tregoze ? Ewyas is still less remembered. The St. John 
 commemorated by Pope runs the best chance of immor- 
 tality. Those who fought with double-handed swords, 
 with battle-axe and lance, have long been forgotten ; it 
 is only the Muse who confers immortality. Ink is more 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 55 
 
 durable than iron. Yonder hang the heavy helmets of a 
 forgotten generation. Who remembers the wearers ? 
 None but the genealogist, and he only after much cogita- 
 tion.'* 
 
 It is well to have written thus, provided that no trace 
 of having done so remains. For the rest, he informs, 
 moralizes several times, is jocular, but hardly rises above 
 the competence expected in such journalism. The 
 writing is nearly always adequate, but there is nothing yet 
 that is Jefferies' own, and he finds fault with Aubrey for 
 troubling about just the local peculiarities which he him- 
 self was afterwards to chronicle. The matter was not 
 digested, and it showed little more than the docility of 
 mind of the young journalist. Some of the material he 
 used later ; most evaporated. 
 
 ' When about eighteen,' he says in ' Nature and Books, 'f 
 he began to read translations from the literature of 
 Greece and Rome : first came Diogenes Laertius' ' Lives 
 of the Philosophers,' next Plato, then Athenaeus ; and he 
 adds that between seventy and eighty of the ' hundred 
 best books ' had been his companions almost from boy- 
 hood, * those lacking to complete the number being chiefly 
 ecclesiastical or Continental.' He could forget all else 
 that he had read, ' but it is difficult to forget these ' 
 [Greeks] ' even when I will.' Mrs. Harrild sent him books. 
 William Morris, editor and proprietor of the Swindon 
 Advertiser, himself a hardy spirit, widely and genially 
 versed in local lore, and a racy writer, used to lend him 
 books, among them ' Les Miserables.' 
 
 Except books, art had little to offer him at Swindon 
 or Coate. He heard some music, and his letters twice 
 refer to his enjoyment of the organ at the Crystal Palace ; 
 in his books he mentions riiusic definitely, but seldom — ■ 
 ' Madame Angot ' once, and the singing of such ballads 
 as ' The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington ' more than once. 
 It is remembered that he criticized some village music 
 
 * Jeffcfics' Land, edited by Grace Toplis. 
 ■j" Field and Hedgerow, 
 
56 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 harshly as a reporter, and fell foul of the parish clerk 
 over it. 
 
 Now and then he took a short holiday. He mentions 
 running about on the Lewes Downs ; but usuall}' he stayed 
 at Sydenham with his uncle and aunt, the Harrilds, and 
 in September, 1866, he writes as if he had meant to walk 
 all the way home to Coate. He walked from Temple Bar 
 to Windsor, by way of Piccadilly (' which you may remark 
 to uncle is precious long pica '), Kensington, Hounslow, 
 and Colnbrook, but, the weather being gloomy and he 
 tired on reaching Windsor, he took a train that was soon 
 to start, and gave up the walk. There was not always a 
 train waiting for him when he was tired ; ' The Story of 
 My Heart ' shows that his eager heart and brain often 
 winged him to walk until he was exhausted, and it is not 
 unhkely that he lost as well as gained in after-years by his 
 long journeys ' on his nerves.' 
 
 He was full of interest in ideas, and evidently of con- 
 fidence, too. In December, 1866, he refers in a letter 
 to some ' unfortunate discussions ' with his uncle, which 
 must have given ' a very disagreeable impression of him 
 as obstinate and opinionative.' He began to argue on 
 theological questions with his father also. He dressed a 
 little uncommonly, and mentions ' what the Sydenham 
 people chose to consider his outlandish hat.' He recon- 
 sidered the religious ' superstitions and traditions acquired 
 compulsorily in childhood,' and apparently passed tlirough 
 a stage of aggressive negation. There is no certain evi- 
 dence on his religious education. The Sunday services for 
 Coate were held actually at Coate Farm for a time, and in 
 an early letter he speaks of a Tuesday pra}'er-meeting 
 there, but with a spectator's interest. James Jefferies 
 was an irregular church-goer. It is not apparent that the 
 religious atmosj)here was particularly strong, or that 
 Richard was particularly affected by it. If he had been, 
 it is most unlikely that religion would not have powerfully 
 affected the mystic experiences of his youth, through 
 which, if ever, he would be passionately exposed to its 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 57 
 
 influence. There are many kinds of Christian, and it 
 may be noticed that a man who shows some beauty of 
 character is in danger of being ranked as of one kind, or 
 put into a special class of his own, or charitably labelled 
 anima naturaliter Christiana. Which Jefferies belonged to 
 I shall not venture to say, but hardly to ' the religion of 
 all sensible men,' if it is fair to draw conclusions from the 
 most intimate writings of his intellectual prime. 
 
 1866 was, according to his own statement, the year 
 when he began to resort to the hills with a more or less 
 conscious purpose of getting rid of his usual surroundings. 
 He is so often careful of dates, even when they are of little 
 importance, and was so curious an observer of his own 
 spiritual progress, that I see no reason to question the 
 date. His heart, he says, grew dusty, * parched for want of 
 the rain of deep feeling,' and at such times he walked up 
 Liddington Hill ' to breathe a new air and to have a fresher 
 •aspiration. . . . 
 
 ' Moving up the sw^eet, short turf, at every step my heart 
 seemed to obtain a wider horizon of feeling ; with every 
 inhalation of rich, pure air a deeper desire. The very 
 light of the sun was whiter and more brilliant here. By 
 the time I had reached the summit I had entirely forgotten 
 the petty circumstances and the annoyances of existence. 
 I felt myself, myself. There was an intrenchment on 
 the summit, and going down into the fosse, I walked round 
 it slowly to recover breath. On the south-western side 
 there was a spot where the outer bank had partially 
 slipped, leaving a gap. There the view was over a broad 
 plain, beautiful with wheat, and inclosed by a perfect 
 amphitheatre of green hills. Through these hills there 
 was one narrow groove, or pass, southwards, where the 
 white clouds seemed to close in the horizon. Woods hid 
 the scattered hamlets and farmhouses, so that I was quite 
 alone . 
 
 * I was utterly alone with the sun and the earth. Lying 
 down on the grass, I spoke in my soul to the earth, the 
 sun, the air, and the distant sea far beyond sight. I 
 
58 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 thought of the earth's firmness — I felt it bear me up ; 
 through the grassy couch there came an influence as if 
 I could feel the great earth speaking to me. I thought 
 of the wandering air — its pureness, which is its beauty ; 
 the air touched me and gave me something of itself. I 
 spoke to the sea ; though so far, in my mind I saw it, 
 green at the rim of the earth and blue in deeper ocean ; 
 I desired to have its strength, its mystery and glory. Then 
 I addressed the sun, desiring the soul equivalent of his 
 light and brilliance, his endurance and unwearied race. 
 I turned to the blue heaven over, gazing into its depth, 
 inhaling its exquisite colour and sweetness. The rich 
 blue of the unattainable flower of the sky drew my soul 
 towards it, and there it rested ; for pure colour is rest of 
 heart. By all these I prayed ; I felt an emotion of the 
 soul beyond all definition ; pra3''er is a puny thing to it, 
 and the word is a rude sign to the feeling, but I know no 
 other, . , . 
 
 ' Touching the crumble of earth, the blade of grass, the 
 thyme flower, breathing the earth-encircling air, thinking 
 of the sea and the sky, holding out my hand for the sun- 
 beams to touch it, prone on the sward in token of deep 
 reverence, thus I prayed that I might touch to the 
 unutterable existence infinitely higher than deity. 
 
 ' With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all 
 the intense communion I held with the earth, the sun and 
 sky, the stars hidden by the light, with the ocean — 
 in no manner can the thrilling depths of these feelings be 
 written — with these I prayed, as if they were the keys 
 of an instrument, of an organ, with which I swelled forth 
 the notes of my soul, redoubling my o\nti voice by their 
 power. The great sun burning with light ; the strong 
 earth, dear earth ; the warm sky ; the pure air ; the 
 thought of ocean ; the inexpressible beauty of all filled 
 me with a rapture, an ecstasy, an inflatus. With this 
 inflatus, too, I prayed. Next to myself I came and recalled 
 myself, my bodily existence. I held out my hand, the 
 sunlight gleamed on the skin and the iridescent nails ; I 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 59 
 
 recalled the mystery and beauty of the flesh. I thought 
 of the mind with which I could see the ocean sixty miles 
 distant, and gather to myself its glory. I thought of my 
 inner existence, that consciousness which is called the 
 soul. These — that is, myself — I threw into the balance 
 to weigh the prayer the heavier. My strength of body, 
 mind, and soul I flung into it ; I put forth my strength ; I 
 wrestled and laboured, and toiled in might of prayer. 
 The pra3^er, this soul-emotion was in itself — not for an 
 object — it was a passion. I hid my face in the grass, I 
 was wholly prostrated, I lost myself in the wrestle, I was 
 rapt and carried away.'* 
 
 ' I did not then,' he adds, ' define, or analyze, or under- 
 stand this.' Sometimes he climbed the hill ' deliberately, 
 deeming it good to do so ' ; at others, the craving carried 
 him up there of itself. The exaltation made no outward 
 show, but he reached home greatly exhausted. Later on 
 he speaks of being ' absorbed into the being or existence 
 of the universe ' ; and if we allow for the effect of after- 
 thoughts in this description, the experience was probably 
 a development of the childish dream state of Bevis into 
 a spiritual adventure. It was as far removed from the 
 religion of his habit as from the sciences of his study ; 
 yet it was in the nature of a religious ecstasy, of a passion- 
 ate demand for and a partial realization of a state of one- 
 ness with the soul of the world ; and though there is no 
 mention of the paraphernalia of religion, such acts as 
 the drinking of the spring water were sacramental. 
 ' Drinking the lucid water,' he writes in ' The Story of 
 My Heart,' ' clear as light itself in solution, I absorbed 
 the beauty and purity of it. I drank the thought of the 
 element ; I desired soul -nature pure and limpid.' 
 
 ' To this cell,' he writes in another place, f of the same 
 spring perhaps, ' I used to come once now and then on a 
 summer's day, tempted, perhaps, like the finches, by the 
 cool, sweet water, but drawn also by a feeling that could 
 not be analyzed. Stooping, I lifted the water in the 
 
 * The Story of My Heart. j- The Life of the Fields. 
 
6o THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 hollow of my hand — carefully, lest the sand should be 
 disturbed — and the sunlight gleamed on it as it slipped 
 through my fingers. Alone in the green-roofed cave, 
 alone with the sunlight and the pure water, there was a 
 sense of something more than these. The water was 
 more to me than water, and the sun than sun. The 
 gleaming rays on the water in my palm held me for a 
 moment, the touch of the water gave me something from 
 itself. A moment, and the gleam was gone, the water 
 flowing away, but I had had them. Beside the physical 
 water and phvsical light, I had received from them their 
 beauty ; they had communicated to me this silent mystery. 
 The pure and beautiful water, the pure, clear, and beauti- 
 ful light, each had given me something of their truth. 
 
 ' So many times I came to it, toiling up the long and 
 shadowless hill in the burning sunshine, often carrying 
 a vessel to take some of it home with me. There was a 
 brook, indeed ; but this was diiiferent, it was the spring ; 
 it was taken home as a beautiful flower might be brought. 
 It is not the physical water ; it is the sense or feeling that 
 it conveys. Nor is it the physical sunshine ; it is the sense 
 of inexpressible beauty which it brings with it. Of such I 
 still drink, and hope to do so still deeper.' 
 
 Sacramental, too, was the looking out at the hills and 
 stars over the hills before he slept. But not yet were 
 these things entirely removed from the dreaminess of 
 childhood. He speaks of ' dreaming his prayer,' of 
 wandering over the hills all day in search of, I think, 
 he knew not what. Had he known what he sought, had 
 he even realized that he was in search of something, it 
 could hardly have failed to impress his writings long before 
 ' The Story of My Heart.' He was far more conscious of 
 the poverty and bitterness, the loneliness and necessity of 
 concealment from hostile or indifferent eyes, the injuries 
 to his vanity, such as he attributed to Felix in ' After 
 London.' 
 
 In September, 1867, he was very ill. He wrote to his 
 aunt to say that while, a few days ago, he could walk 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 6i 
 
 thirty miles, now he can scarcely take thirty steps ; his 
 eyes are too weak to wTite much ; he is terribly ennuye, 
 and asks for a book. The illness has swept away some 
 cobwebs from his brain ; he is going to be ' not a swell, 
 but stylish,' believing that people look more at the coat 
 than the man, knowing that ' this is the case with hats.' 
 He is losing his place on the North Wilts Herald because it 
 is now the busiest time of the year. A few days later he 
 is improving, but still weak and thin. ' I did too much 
 yesterday in the way of study — my head when I got to bed 
 seemed to swell big enough to fill the room.' A fortnight 
 later still he is suffering from over-exertion, but has been 
 better. At the end of the month he is ' still weak and 
 miserably thin ' ; the editor will give him a fortnight 
 if he cares to return as a reporter at twenty-four shillings 
 a week and live in S\\dndon. Most of that fortnight he 
 spent at Sydenham, and whilst there composed or copied 
 a sermon on Luke xii. 52, rhetorically showing that Christ 
 will not allow compromise of any kind. Back at Coate, 
 he writes that ' the red leaves of the maple and the yellow 
 leaves of the limes make a beautiful contrast with the oaks 
 and elms, as yet little affected by the frosts.' He is busily 
 reporting — at three meetings in one day, he mentions. 
 
 In an undated letter from Coate, not long after this 
 illness, he writes to say that he has been ill of an eruptive 
 fever, and can only walk up and down in the sun behind 
 a good thick hedge. He does not want to go to Devon, 
 because he will be alone. ]\Iay he stay at Shanklin Villa, 
 ' among the dear old scenes, in the dear old house, near 
 the dear old Crystal Palace, which is well sheltered ' ? He 
 had his way. In this letter he just mentions an essay 
 on ' Instinct ' which he is writing. A little afterwards, 
 in 1868 (Mr. Harrild having died), he writes to say that 
 he is happier with his aunt than at home, because she 
 enters into his prospects and is always kind ; he will work 
 hard to please her, or ' this fatal indolence ' will ruin him. 
 On Good Friday, 1868, he is still working at his essay on 
 ' Instinct,' and improving his handwriting. All that I 
 
62 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 could learn from one who was with him on the North 
 Wilts Herald was that the staff once signed a roundrobin 
 against his handwriting. At Coate, he says, ' a blind 
 man married his cousin — I suppose you will say that 
 none but a blind man would do that, by way of hint. 
 He has set up in the tea, snuff, tobacco, and fish line, as 
 a rival to old Job Brown, who has enjoyed a monopoly at 
 Coate for the last forty years.' 
 
 In April, 1868, Richard's grandfather, John Jefferies, 
 died ; instead of leaving Coate Farm purely and simply 
 to James Jefferies, Richard's father, he added a cumber- 
 some provision, and it was not long before the son 
 began to borrow on it. The bakery passed into other 
 hands. Thus the home life was no easier ; Richard was 
 discontented and not well. He would, he writes in June, 
 1868, like a Civil Service clerkship. Reporting is too 
 exciting and uncertain, for he is not strong, and has been 
 fainting in church. Later in the same month (it is a 
 Sunday, and he remarks, ' I can always write more easily 
 on a Sunday — I don't know why, except that other 
 people generally try to write on any other day than that, 
 and that I must be different from them, must be a poppy 
 in the cornfield ') he says that he would think himself 
 lucky to get an engagement on the Daily News. But he 
 has ' been very queer for some time — so much inclined to 
 faint ; but there is no need for a doctor : Time's the great 
 physician and Nature the best nurse,' and last spring 
 he took nothing for a cold and cough ; he will have nothing 
 to do with physic. He knows that his mother has been 
 discussing him with Mrs. Harrild, and wishes she would 
 let him alone. ' I don't believe she knows half the time 
 what she's about ; she walks into a room, stares round, 
 and then asks herself what she came there for.' She has 
 been seeing Mr. Piper, editor of the North Wilts, and 
 ' making a mess of it.' But he thinks she is learning that 
 ' it is best to leave her self-willed son alone.' 
 
 In July he is expecting a box of books and an electric 
 machine from Mrs. Harrild, which would help him in his 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 63 
 
 ' scientifical studies.' He mentions how he used to be 
 afraid of thunder and hghtning, but had the cowardice 
 frightened out of him when lightning struck his aunt's 
 house one day while he was there alone. He has been 
 writing a story, with ' character rather than sensational 
 incident ; my characters are many of them drawn from 
 life . . . scenery described from places that I have seen.' 
 The virtuous are rewarded and the wicked punished, 
 exactly as in the Bible, he says. He is more cheerful 
 now, though he has no regular newspaper work. 
 
 On August 28, 1868, his handwriting is slow, precise, and 
 in pencil : 
 
 ' Thank God I am getting better now, and can sit up 
 in bed ; but I am so miserably weak, and my legs are as 
 thin as a grasshopper's. . . . But when I come to think it 
 over calmly, I can almost thank God that I have been ill, 
 for it has made me pause and think, and I can now see 
 what a wrong and even wicked course I have been secretly 
 pursuing for a long time, and I hope I shall take warning. 
 God has been very merciful to me this time. I never 
 found my Bible a consolation before, but I have during 
 the last two or three days, for its promises are full of mercy, 
 and I have found it true, for I have prayed earnestly and 
 God has answered me. . . . 
 
 ' Above all, I am in the country, and can see the green 
 grass out of window, and it is quiet. , . . 
 
 ' I have such a longing to see the sea.' 
 
 He must have a change, and has saved enough to pay 
 for it. 
 
 His aunt at Sydenham was one of his dearest friends ; 
 she was a religious woman, and would be sure to offer the 
 sick youth religious consolation. These utterances on the 
 edge of the grave — the letter has several repetitions and 
 slips — are insignificant, therefore, unless they can be 
 shown to have any bearing upon Jefferies' life in the days 
 of strength which followed. Had they taken a more 
 individual form that might suggest that this tremulous 
 repentance issued from the holiest chambers of his heart, 
 
64 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 it would be different ; but they are conventional, and as 
 little related to the real man as ' Masked ' and the ' History 
 of Malmesbury.' He was an irregular church-goer, except 
 when later he used to go to Chisledon with the Misses 
 Baden after his engagement to one of them. A man 
 who remembers him well at church recalls that he used 
 to enter by the ' Devil's door ' — the door now, I think, 
 blocked up, through which the exorcised Devil fled once 
 upon a time from the baptized. As he recovered, his 
 - letters gradually lost the religious phrasing. He read the 
 Greek Testament, and his thoughts seem to have travelled 
 perversely not to Judaea, but to Greece. ' Everything 
 beautiful is Greek,' he writes ; ' the greatest poet was a 
 Greek — Homer. The most beautiful statues — those at 
 Rome in the Vatican — were sculptured by Greeks. The 
 Greek cast of countenance is the most beautiful ; when 
 perfect, it is almost divine.' He wrote four letters to his 
 aunt in September. In the first he can walk about his 
 room with a stick ; his Bible is a great consolation, but he 
 wants more faith. He wishes to get away from Coate for a 
 while. ' It seems tainted ' by his illness, just as nearly 
 twenty years later he remembered the violet bank of ' My 
 Old Village ' to have been tainted by disease. Three days 
 later he has been out of doors : ' I know not how to thank 
 God sufficiently for thus raising me up.' He wants to 
 write a pious memoir of his Uncle Harrild. He is writing a 
 tragedy, ' Caesar Borgia ; or. The King of Crime,' and hopes 
 to see it at Drury Lane. Some day he will strike the 
 right string, and get into public notice ; he is persuaded 
 he will ultimately succeed. He has bought a history of 
 the Popes, interesting now to him, ' when Romanism and 
 ritualism seem once again lifting their heads.' Later he is 
 amusing himself with books and writing, and walks about 
 his room, enjoying his meals, especially tea ; all his old 
 tastes return, including his fondness for sweet things. 
 All the villagers have inquired after him, and sent him 
 honey and other gifts ; he will see more of the people now 
 — ' too much study is selfish, almost sinful, perhaps quite.' 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 65 
 
 This was but a transient softness towards the neighbours 
 who had ridiculed and reviled him for his indolence, his 
 unusual figure and careless dress, and his poor scrap of 
 a march to Moscow. They were nothing to him : ' there 
 was not a single one friendly to me.' Near the end of the 
 month he has twice walked to Swindon and back, and is 
 strong enough to travel. His evenings are wearisome : 
 his father and Henry go out, ' mother runs about the 
 house,' and he gets tired of reading. He wants to see 
 England : ' I think next spring, all being well, to start for 
 a long journey, most probably into Cornwall, or else to 
 the north of Scotland, but I would sooner see wild Cornwall 
 and hear the wild Cornish legends of King Arthur.' His 
 employers (the Wilts and Gloster Standard) wanted him 
 back, and commissioned him to write a history of Ciren- 
 cester. In October he took a short holiday at Sydenham 
 or Eastbourne, and by the middle of November was as 
 busy as ever, once working twenty-two hours out of the 
 twenty-four at election work, and writing in cold weather 
 with a rug round his knees until five in the morning. He 
 is starting for Malmesbury at half-past six in the morning 
 on foot ; he goes to Cricklade for Nomination Day, when 
 fighting is expected. 
 
 On his one clear day in this busy season he was out all 
 day with his gun. But it was not sport alone ; it was 
 something more even than his deepest love of Nature 
 in earlier days that now enriched his experience out of 
 doors. Before his illness he had been devoted to one of 
 his cousins at Snodshill ; not much later he began his 
 courtship of Miss Jessie Baden, of Day House Farm, who 
 became his wife. Seeing the roses in a much later summer, 
 he recalled those of his youth : 
 
 ' Straight go the white petals to the heart ; straight the 
 mind's glance goes back to how many other pageants 
 of summer in old times ! . . . To the dreamy summer haze 
 love gave a deep enchantment, the colours were fairer, 
 the blue more lovely in the lucid sky. Each leaf finer, 
 and the gross earth enamelled beneath the feet. A sweet 
 
 5 
 
66 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 breath on the air, a soft warm hand in the touch of the 
 sunshine, a glance in the gleam of the rippled waters, a 
 whisper in the dance of the shadows. The ethereal haze 
 lifted the heavy oaks, and they were buoyant on the 
 mead, the rugged bark was chastened and no longer 
 rough, each slender flower beneath them again refined. 
 There was a presence everywhere, though unseen, on the 
 open hills, and not shut out under the dark pines. Dear 
 were the June roses then, because for another gathered. 
 Yet even dearer now, with so many years, as it were, upon 
 the petals ; all the days that have been before, all the 
 heart-throbs, all our hopes lie in this opened bud. Let 
 not the eyes grow dim, look not back but fonvard ; the 
 soul must uphold itself like the sun. Let us labour to make 
 the heart grow larger as we become older, as the spreading 
 oak gives more shelter. That we could but take to the 
 soul some of the greatness and the beauty of the 
 summer !'* 
 
 That is what he was doing. Love rounded his nature 
 into a romantic fulness to be expressed much later in 
 words, where Nature and human passion are as indissolubly 
 intertwined as they have been before or since, and more 
 exuberantly joyous in their union. Love reinforced his 
 ambitions, his passionate eye, his dreams, his mystic 
 moments of oneness with earth and stars and sea. Before, 
 he had seen with rich clear eyes the largeness and multi- 
 plicity of Nature ; now it was true of him as of Felise in 
 ' The Dewy Morn ' : 
 
 ' She saw the clear definition of the trees, their colour, 
 and the fineness of the extended branches — she was aware 
 of the delicate leaves ; she saw the hues of the wheat, 
 shading from pale yellow to ruddy gold ; her senses were 
 alive to the minutest difference of tint or sound ; to the 
 rustle of the squirrel touching the dry leaf, the rush of the 
 falling water, the hum of the insect wing ; keen to the 
 difference of motion, the gliding of the dots of sunlight 
 on the sward, the broad flutter of the peacock-butterfly, 
 
 * The Life of the Fields. 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 67 
 
 the quick vibration of the wasp-fly's vane. Her exalted 
 passion strung her naturally fine and sensitive nature ; 
 she seemed to feel the sun's majestic onward sweep in the 
 deep azure — her love made earth divine.' 
 
 In * World's End ' he wrote : ' How delicious it is to 
 see everything through the medium and in the company 
 of a noble girl just ripening into womanhood !' ' The 
 Story of My Heart,' ' The Dewy Morn,' and all his later 
 books are full of proofs of his exquisite physical sensitive- 
 ness ; but the physical was always akin to the spiritual 
 as the flower to the perfume. His tastes were delicate. 
 He smoked little ; and he was a small drinker, taking not 
 even a glass of porter for his dinner unless his reporting 
 had been heavy. His sense of touch seems to have a 
 soul of its own. To touch the lichened bark of a tree 
 was to repeat his prayer for deeper soul-life. Felise takes 
 a leaf, feels it, and drops it again ; she, too, touched the 
 oak-bark, and ' full of life was her touch ' ; she felt the 
 water — ' she liked to touch all things ' ; she enjoyed the 
 touch of her soft shoulder against her softer cheek. The 
 spirit exalted this sensuousness ; the senses preserved the 
 sweetness of the spirit. In another nature senses so opu- 
 lent, especially if aided by an imperfect love, might have 
 wrought their own destruction. But in Jefferies the 
 senses perform always and only the functions of the soul, 
 and the purity of his passion equals its fearlessness in 
 whatever swoons and energies time may bring. Courage 
 and spirit he had also, and when he was a tall, delicate 
 man, already bearded round the throat, though he shaved 
 his lip, he fought a long fight with a soldier and held his 
 o\ATi ; but as they were shaking hands at the end, his 
 enemy struck a treacherous blow that sent him home 
 with a broken nose. 
 
 In September, 1870, he was at Hastings, on his way to 
 Dover and Ostend. He was taking a longish holiday, 
 and had already been staying at Sydenham and at 
 Worthing, where the large and beautiful eyes of a 
 Josephine had begun to haunt him. He was staying at 
 
 5—2 
 
68 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Hastings partly because the Prince Imperial was there : 
 he sent the Prince some verses on his exile, and believed 
 himself to have brought about the dismissal of some 
 traitorous equerries who called the Empress ' the Spanish 
 cow.' These ' adventures ' excited Jefferies, and he was 
 unwell, but he entered into conversation with everyone 
 approachable — with coastguards who told him something 
 of smuggling, with boatmen, with a retired Indian officer, 
 with a ' gentleman who had been in the diplomatic 
 service,' and with a pamphleteer. Also, he tells his aunt : 
 ' I have had adventures with the ladies which I do not 
 care to write . . . vide lock of hair.' Towards the end 
 of the month he was happy at Brussels, and writes from 
 the Hotel de I'Europe on September 22 a letter which 
 reveals the same delight in holiday humanity as he after- 
 wards took at Brighton and expressed with a blithe and 
 sparkling sensuousness : 
 
 ' Brussels delights me. It is beautifully clean, and 
 people say exactly like Paris in miniature. They call it 
 un petit Paris. The ladies are not to be approached by 
 our horrid dowdies in London. From the poorest to the 
 richest all dress admirably. There is a fashion, but no 
 one confines herself to it — each dresses in that style exactly 
 which pleases her best. The ladies are dark-complexioned, 
 with dark sparkling eyes and very black hair ; in fact, I 
 never knew what black hair was before. Nearly all are 
 pleasing, great numbers pretty, and some exceedingly 
 handsome ; une grande belle dined with us yesterday, a 
 refugee from Paris. Her husband is shut up in Metz, and 
 has not been heard of for six weeks. I never saw a more 
 classic countenance. Almost all fashionable Paris is here. 
 But the ladies. The favourite colour of the dresses is 
 chocolate, or one of its shades, — this suits their com- 
 plexions. Crinolines are abolished, but they have a kind 
 of Grecian bend looped up behind. The flounces are the 
 chief ornament ; they are very rich. The sleeves are 
 often very wide at the wrists. The boots are delicious 
 little things — high heels, very coquettish; stockings 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 69 
 
 white, collars Shakespeare style, very small bonnets, 
 chiefly little hats ; chignons are invisible, thank Heaven ! 
 The hair is done very nicely ; no pads. It is often done 
 in two bundles ! — one on each side of the parting, with one 
 piece drawn back between them from the forehead to the 
 nape of the neck. Often the neck is open, which I like. 
 This would suit Lizzie Cowley. This is walking dress. 
 Evening dress is generally closed up to the neck, and 
 resembles a waistcoat. With a Shakespeare coUar and the 
 hair done close to the head, these dark ladies look almost 
 like very handsome men. I have several times at the 
 opera, where one cannot see the petticoat, had to look 
 twice to make sure, and then only told by the absence of 
 whiskers, and the expression of trusting, relying upon 
 others, which always dwells upon a woman's face. Fans 
 are used by every lady who thinks anything of herself, 
 and very skilfully too. It is impossible not to fall in love 
 with these girls. They are so animated, so fuU of life — 
 to watch them converse is a study — so different from our 
 cold, milk-and-water, yes and no young ladies. I am 
 dreadfully annoyed that I do not speak and read fluently, 
 for manners are very easy here, and I could often join 
 parties. I admire them greatly — they are so graceful. 
 The children are almost as interesting. I used to hate 
 children. I don't know why, but I am growing very fond 
 of them. They are dressed most charmingly, with such 
 taste, and then, to see little things of 4 and 5 gesturing 
 away while they talk is very amusing. Everyone is 
 sociable here, and all Brussels has a great reunion once 
 a day in the park or on the Boulevards. In the park you 
 take a chair for 5 cents, and converse or watch the com- 
 pany promenade, while the children romp, play kiss-in- 
 the-ring, and laugh, whfle the wind blows the yellow 
 leaves of autumn rustling along, and the fountain plays, 
 and the sun shines warm. Such an atmosphere of happi- 
 ness I never saw, as full as is this city. Everyone seems 
 happy — horses fat, dogs fat, workmen fat. I have been 
 here a week nearly, and have not seen one beggar, and not 
 
70 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 one drunken man or woman, though I have been literally 
 all over the city at all hours. Yesterday in the park, a 
 little one at play rolled her ball under my feet — so she 
 came up and looked at me, and lisped, " Pardonnez, 
 monsieur," and picked it up. Then came three more 
 with a skipping-rope, crying, "Un, deux, trois, and 
 over!'" 
 
 At Brussels, too, he saw the wounded coming back from 
 Sedan ; and fifteen years later at Eltham he could still 
 see the glow of intense pain in the eyes of one of the 
 soldiers who were brought in during ' the dusk of the 
 lovely September evenings — it was a beautiful Septem- 
 ber ; the lime-leaves were just tinted with orange.' 
 
 His family at Coate must have resented this holiday- 
 making ; he had no regular work, and they probably 
 thought him frivolous ; and on returning to Sydenham 
 at the end of September he wrote this letter to John 
 Woolford, a farmer at Snodshill, near Coate Farm : 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' I once told you that if ever I found myself in a 
 difficulty I should come to you for help, and you were 
 kind enough to say you would give it if it lay in your 
 power. The truth is, I know no other to whom I can turn, 
 for you are the only man I am acquainted with who has 
 a generous sentiment. I have plenty of friends and rela- 
 tives who have plenty of money, and who, so long as they 
 believe me to be in a good position, will be ready enough 
 to do anything for me, but let them once understand 
 that I have got into a difficulty, they will shrug up their 
 shoulders — as the old song says : " they will give unto 
 those who don't want it," My pride, I think a proper 
 pride, prevents me from asking these people. I could 
 remain here with my kind aunt as long as I liked, but the 
 truth would come out, and although she would not alter, 
 yet the rest would look down upon me with contempt, and 
 my presence would expose her to unpleasant remarks 
 which I could not bear. I cannot return home for some- 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 71 
 
 thing of the same kind of reason — in one word, I have 
 no other resource but you, and if you do not or cannot 
 help I must turn navvy or starve. The fact is, I have 
 had to learn the same bitter lesson that you have learnt, 
 only upon a smaller scale — namely, that good nature is 
 another name for foolery. I gave away so much that I 
 left myself insufficient to live upon while my plans were 
 growing up to bear fruit, and the consequence was I have 
 had to abandon them at the very moment when a little 
 more time would have given me success and made me 
 independent. 
 
 ' All is not lost, but while the grass grows the steed 
 starves. What I have to ask is — will you aUow me to 
 live a little time with you, until I can work myself up 
 again ? May I come to your house and remain with you 
 until I shall be able to get a position again ? I do not 
 ask you to give this to me, but to lend it, for I have little 
 doubt but that in time I shall be able to repay you every 
 farthing of the cost, which I will do to the very utter- 
 most. I am to all intents and purposes penniless. The 
 only securities I can give you for repayment are these : 
 
 1 have a small silver watch which cost £4, a small Albert 
 gold chain which cost £3, and a massive gold chain which 
 cost 8 guineas, a diamond scarf-pin which cost 10 
 guineas, a double-barrelled gun which cost £y (I have 
 the warranty), and a gig which I don't know the value 
 of. Besides these, I have about 200 books, aU standard 
 and expensive works. They cost me full ;£6o, and are 
 in good condition. These are all my effects : besides, I 
 am young and strong, and I should not object to bear a 
 hand upon the farm when required ; in fact, I should like 
 to. I know something about it, having often done so for 
 amusement at home. In actual coin I have only £1 left, 
 and one or two franc-pieces. I forget, I have a small collec- 
 tion of coins in my cabinet at home, among them a gold 
 7s. 6d. piece, which you can have too. There are also 
 
 2 model steam-engines, a locomotive and a stationary. 
 The locomotive cost £;^ or £4. 
 
72 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ' I cannot go home. I would sooner starve. I can 
 only go home when I am independent. 
 
 ' I could sell these little things, but that money would 
 soon go ; besides, it would be very wretched to lose them, 
 for some I value dearly. . . . 
 
 ' What I want is a bed and to live with you. I can 
 write anywhere. . . . 
 
 * If you would send a telegram, I should be obliged. 
 
 ' I own I much hope you will grant my request, not 
 only because it is my last resource, but because in many 
 things we have a community of ideas and sentiments, 
 and I should enjoy a few weeks with you. I believe you 
 could assist me very materially in several of my plans 
 with your experience and knowledge of the world. And 
 I think that I could amuse you with an account of a few 
 things I have come across in the last few weeks. . . . 
 
 ' You remember, perhaps, my once asking you to be- 
 come a subscriber to a novel I wished to publish. You 
 agreed, but said that you thought people would much 
 sooner subscribe or buy a copy of my " History of Swin- 
 don," if it was made larger and published as a book. I 
 said nothing, but at once dropped the idea of a novel, 
 and went to work collecting material. I got a whole box 
 full of papers and old deeds, and wrote out a book in 
 manuscript. I had it estimated, and even had 500 cir- 
 culars printed to advertise. This is the only manuscript 
 I have by me, but I feel little doubt I shall soon be able 
 to work my way up again.' 
 
 A few days later he was with Mr. Woolford. He regrets 
 leaving Sydenham, because at Coate he and his family 
 are ' so distant and unsocial.' He is afraid of his father's 
 displeasure ; but his mother has dr()j:)ped in and met liim 
 at Snodshill. So he writes to his aunt. He has only 
 two shillings and threepence, and must pawn his watcli- 
 chain. Squire vSadlcr at Purton has promised him an 
 introduction to the Times, but he cannot go over for want 
 of money. He is thoroughly discontented now. ' I 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 73 
 
 cannot say,' he writes, ' that I admire the country much 
 after London, and the still more elegant Brussels manners. 
 ... I shall never be happy in the country again.' 
 Four days later he has received some money from his aunt, 
 and he now confesses that his unwillingness to return 
 home arose from his inability to pay for his board. But 
 his mother has been over again, and she is getting his 
 room ready — the tender, restless, melancholy mother. 
 He is at work now, corresponding and sketching articles, 
 sending a piece of news to the Pall Mall Gazette. The 
 country is melancholy in lasting fog, with the sounds of 
 rain, of an acorn, of a dead leaf falling ; the oppressive 
 silence sends him from the fields to the fireside. He is 
 going to see a friend — perhaps Mr. Frampton, of Upper 
 Upham — who lives in the honey district on the Downs. 
 Mrs. Harrild has been asking for honey and butter ; he 
 praises a Miss Kibblewhite's butter, but it is not equal to 
 his mother's best, and he says his father has a fine taste 
 in butter, and knows the good. 
 
 In February, 1871, he writes from Coate. He is worse 
 off than ever. He has written all sorts of things. ' Very 
 few were rejected, but none brought any return.' The 
 Marlborough newspaper gave him a little work — a few 
 paragraphs a week — but he did not think it worth his 
 while. Other papers receive his writings, but ' don't pay 
 a farthing.' London papers would employ him, but he 
 cannot go to London for lack of money. He has been 
 offered a correspondentship for the Pall Mall Gazette in 
 Brussels, but that is uncertain. He is threatened for 
 debt. He tries to sell his gun. He is obliged to wear a 
 shirt until it falls to pieces and exposes him to a severe 
 cold. He goes on writing articles, sketching two novels, 
 writing a hundred pages of one. In spite of all, he has 
 the firmest belief in his ultimate good fortune and success. 
 Not the fear of total indigence — for his father threatens 
 to turn him out of doors — can shake his belief. He has 
 had a severe cold, but his health and strength * are 
 wonderful.' In an aside he mentions the skating on 
 
74 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 the Reservoir ; his brother Henry is the best skater 
 of all. 
 
 In July he is busy, and earning money from the North 
 Wilts and the Swindon Advertiser, but chiefly thinking 
 of his book — the book of which Disraeli thought the 
 subject ' of the highest interest.' But home is still un- 
 happy : his mother is ' very unwell . . , nervous and 
 liable to make herself miserable over the merest trifle . . . 
 we live so unsociably in this house.' And he is off to 
 Sydenham again ; his mother, on the other hand, is too 
 poor and too busy with the haymaking to go. At the 
 end of the month he is excited and delighted because 
 Disraeli has recommended him to send his manuscript to 
 a publisher. This ' favourable opinion of the man who 
 stands highest in an age for intellectual power ' over- 
 comes the sneers and taunts of his friends — ' my own 
 father amongst them ' — for idleness and incapacity ; he 
 begs his aunt to write and rejoice with him. In August 
 Messrs. Longmans, Green and Company are giving ' full 
 consideration ' to a novel, and he thinks that hopeful. 
 He is writing a magazine article ; has written a play ; 
 has sent the manuscript of a history of Swindon to a local 
 paper ; and is going to Gloucester to report a trial. ' Now 
 the haymaking is over,' he adds, ' we are going to walk to 
 Marlborough Forest.' 
 
 Messrs. Longman declined the book. It appeared to 
 them that he had ' gone too much into detail on frequent 
 occasions.' But this ' will not, with a considerable portion 
 of the public, in any degree take away from the interest of 
 a work so thoroughly practical, and which displays so 
 much knowledge of human nature, perhaps not in its 
 highest, but in its general aspect.' It is to be wished that 
 some trace remained of a work which forced this publish- 
 ing firm to confess itself ' a firm of primitive, if not even 
 immaculate, elderly gentlemen.' It went in vain to 
 Messrs. Sampson Low ; Messrs. Smith, Elder accepted it, 
 but it was never published. The title of it was ' Fortune.' 
 
 In August he was ' completely prostrated for a day or 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 75 
 
 two,' after a ' strange, heavy feeling in the head ' from 
 overwork. Later, he says it is no use his going to London 
 to look for work, because it is a slack season and he is not 
 well off. He is writing short stories. He is now ' seri- 
 ously engaged to Miss Baden.' It had been a busy, 
 troubled year. Nothing was spared him except satiety 
 and resignation ; nothing was spared him that could in 
 the end tighten a string for the ripe music of his 
 maturity. 
 
 In 1872 he was pretty fuUy employed by the local 
 papers, helping to fill their columns, and storing his 
 memory and note-books with his observations of agricul- 
 tural men and women, farming, the courts. Boards of 
 Guardians, and the landscape and architecture which he 
 passed on his walks to Wootton Bassett, Marlborough, 
 Malmesbury, or Wantage. He offered a novel called 
 ' Only a Girl ' to Messrs. Longman during this year. He 
 was good enough as a writer for his editor to overlook his 
 shortcomings, as when he failed to give any account of a 
 Liberal meeting because it was ' such rot,' or preferred 
 a walk to an agricultural banquet. He kept up his archae- 
 ological curiosity. As early as 1869 he had written to 
 Rev. F. Goddard, of Hilmarton, saying that ' for some 
 years past ' he had been interested in the antiquities of the 
 neighbourhood, and asking for information concerning the 
 lineage and estates of the Goddard family. In 1872 he 
 was writing to H. N. Goddard, of Clyffe Pypard Manor, 
 about pedigrees and portraits of the Goddards ; a pedigree 
 of the Walronds ; a brass at Cl3'ffe. He was reading 
 Hatcher's ' History of Salisbury,' and borrowed ' The 
 Monumental Brasses of England ' and ' Monumental 
 Brasses of Wiltshire ' from H. N. Goddard ; had 
 searched ' Domesday ' for Goddards, and was going to look 
 at ' Inquisitiones Post-mortem ' and ' Rotuli Hundred- 
 orum.' Near the end of the year, he wrote that he had 
 finished a history of Swindon, for which he had been col- 
 lecting material for ' ten or twelve years,' and was thinking 
 of publishing it. Part of it he had woven into a history 
 
76 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 of the Goddards, and, with the help of Mr. Goddard and 
 one or two others, ' A Memoir of the Goddards of North 
 Wilts ' was published (by the author) in 1873. It is a 
 dull and formless book, containing little but facts or 
 fictions from other books. Here and there he shows his 
 own methods, as when he quotes the churchwarden at 
 Aldbourne as remembering a breastplate and pair of 
 gauntlets hanging in what was the Goddards' chapel. 
 He mentions Ossian and Longfellow again, and ' Peveril 
 of the Peak,' and without great labour or success tries to 
 prove that Aldbourne is ' Sweet Auburn, loveliest village 
 of the plain.' H. N. Goddard described Jefferies in 1872 
 as ' a rising young man who is writing a book about the 
 Goddards.' The edition was almost sold out in a few 
 months, and as late as the end of 1875 a new one with 
 exhaustive pedigrees was discussed, but came to nothing. 
 
 Another archaeological product was a paper read before 
 the Wiltshire Archaeological Society on ' Swindon and its 
 Antiquities,' in September, 1873. He gave the inscrip- 
 tions of some Roman coins, and pointed to ' the preva- 
 lence of the pure Welsh or British name of Lydiard in this 
 neighbourhood, both as the name of persons and of places,' 
 as a proof that the Britons long maintained their indepen- 
 dence in Northern Wiltshire. Speaking of the power of an 
 Earl of Pembroke, who set up Swindon Market, to erect 
 a gallows and hang other men on it, he says : ' This irre- 
 sponsible power vested in one man must have led to great 
 abuses. What a contrast to the ballot-box of to-day, 
 when we seem about to err on the other hand by diffusing 
 power too widely !' He ends a lifeless and disjointed lec- 
 ture with another facile piece of Goddardism : 
 
 ' In 1772, when Ambrose Goddard was elected as count}' 
 member, the motto used by his supporters, and worn as 
 a card in the hat, was — " Goddard's the man, and free- 
 dom's his plan." Irrespective of all party politics, I 
 feel that I may confidently say that there are numbers 
 who at the expected election in the spring will repeat 
 that ancient motto, and say — " Goddard's the man." We 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS ^^ 
 
 know that real, that is constitutional, freedom is his 
 plan.' 
 
 It was in 1873 that he published a pamphlet called 
 ' Jack Brass, Emperor of England.' On the title-page 
 is an imaginary newspaper quotation, beginning, ' The 
 suit. Honour v. Brass, terminated on Tuesday.' It is 
 an ironically inflated appeal to one Jack Brass to make 
 himself omnipotent in England by means of gold, which 
 is first in most men's eyes, and of which he has more than 
 anyone : 
 
 * The newspapers must be ordered to preach commu- 
 nistic ideas, because communism is the sure forerunner 
 of despotism in a commercial country which requires order, 
 that can only be guaranteed by the strong hand and single 
 will. To foster the growth of this feeling among the 
 people, strengthen and support those institutions which 
 put the idea partially into practice, such as co-operative 
 stores. Support the farmers' measure giving compensa- 
 tion for unexhausted improvements, as a form of com- 
 munism and calculated to weaken the Conservatives. 
 Establish a system of easy transfer of land, and abolish 
 primogeniture : these measures will destroy the sense of 
 absolute proprietorship, so opposed to communism. All 
 this will put greater power into the hands of the masses, 
 who are ultimately to delegate it to you. . . . Educate ! 
 educate ! educate ! Teach everyone to rely on their own 
 judgment, so as to destroy the faith in authority, and lead 
 to a confidence in their own reason, the surest method of 
 seduction. . . . Let women have the suffrage. . . . No 
 man will be ashamed to commit a vulgar or evil action 
 from respect, esteem, or love for a woman. . . . Abolish 
 the calm influence of the Sunday. . . .' 
 
 It is a jaunty, humorously-intended by-product of his 
 Conservatism, which served its purpose, if it gave him as 
 much satisfaction immediately as disgust later on. 
 
 In 1873 also appeared ' Reporting, Editing, and Author- 
 ship : Practical Hints for Beginners in Literature ' (John 
 Snow, Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row ; and Alfred Bull, 
 
78 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Victoria Street, Swindon). He recommends ' a good 
 personal manner,' and an avoidance of the ' horsey ' or 
 ' fast.' Amplified reports may be coloured by ' descrip- 
 tive or imaginative writing, and perhaps a few lines of 
 poetry, or a quotation.' As to shorthand, had Chatterton 
 learnt to write it, ' how different his fate might have been.' 
 Literature, like other trades, * requires an immense 
 amount of advertising.' It is ' wisest to study the exist- 
 ing taste,' since only a great genius can create a taste. 
 The author should publish at his own expense, and so 
 avoid ' a fruitless and disheartening attempt to dispose 
 of his manuscript.' The only point of any biographical 
 value is that he insists on the reporter studying the 
 topography, antiquities, traditions, and genercd charac- 
 teristics, churches, and scenery of his neighbourhood. 
 The rest of the book is a hasty concession to the common 
 opinion that he was himself an unpractical idler ; and he 
 sets about giving advice which might produce just the 
 smart young feUow that he could not go so far as to 
 become, even to please his family. 
 
 He remained unchanged. His brother remembers that 
 he used to walk for hours up and down by the lime-trees 
 at Coate Farm, with the back of his hand to his chin, 
 thinking ; once he pitched a coin on to his hat as he was 
 thinking thus, and Richard, picking up the coin, and learn- 
 ing its origin, found dozens of the old tokens in a rubblish- 
 heap. He was stiU fond of shooting ; the mere delight in 
 marksmanship was so great that he used to shoot at the 
 Eastcott rifle-butts from time to time. Or he would climb 
 the Downs, and lie on his back with a book up above his 
 eyes ; and there was a chUd who, venturing up to this odd- 
 looking solitary, heard enchanting talk from him of birds 
 and beasts, and found him there again and again, staying 
 with him until the nurse called her away from the ' tramp.' 
 He was then a tall, thin, slightly stooping man, with longish 
 hair, bearded, but with his eager, fresh, unworldly, sensuous 
 lips free of moustache ; bright, noticeable blue eyes ; ill- 
 dressed ; taking long strides, and swinging his arms with a 
 
From a photograph. 
 
 
 RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 as a young man. 
 
 p. 78. 
 
YOUTH AND EARLY WRITINGS 79 
 
 good stick, or carrying his hands in his pockets ; having the 
 reserve, together with confidence and even brusqueness, 
 of a strong individual spirit developing in isolation ; 
 sensitive, but from sheer concentration deaf and blind at 
 times to the respected gentleman who said, ' Good- 
 morning, Jefferies,' and hoped for ' Good-morning, sir,' 
 in return. Had not ' an inner and esoteric meaning ' 
 begun to reach him from the visible universe, with in- 
 definable aspirations, a deeper meaning everywhere ? 
 ' The sun burned with it ; the broad front of morning 
 beamed with it ; a deep feeling entered me while gazing 
 at the sky in the azure noon and in the starlit evening.'* 
 Such pebbles he had lifted from the brook, to combat the 
 world withal. 
 
 * The Story of My Heart. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 EARLY MANHOOD f^«//;«/^^)— LETTERS TO THE 'TLMES 
 —MAGAZINE ARTICLES ON AGRICULTURE AND 
 CURRENT EVENTS 
 
 Jefferies' nearest approach as yet to self-expression in 
 written words was in his three letters to the Times in 
 November, 1872. In February of that year Joseph Arch 
 mounted his pigstool under the chestnut at Wellesbourne, 
 and the Warwickshire agricultural labourers resolved to 
 form a Union. They struck work, asking unsuccessfully 
 for sixteen instead of twelve shillings a week. The men 
 of Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Somerset, 
 Norfolk, Essex, and Northamptonshire stood up for the 
 Union ; and at the Agricultural Labourers' Congress at 
 Leamington there were representatives from Wiltshire. 
 Jefferies took the occasion to write a long letter on the 
 condition of the labourers, which, after being rejected by 
 another paper, was printed in the Times. 
 
 He described the Wiltshireman as an average specimen 
 of his class, in wages as in intelligence. He is strong, but 
 slow, feeding chiefly on bread, cheese, bacon, and cabbage, 
 and pot-liquor — the water in which even potatoes have 
 been boiled. There is no ingenuity in their cookery. 
 They eat immensely at the annual club dinner, and in the 
 hay and harvest-fields drink a great deal of poor beer. 
 They are better clothed than formerly, corduroy and 
 slops, with ' really good clothes ' and chimney-pot on 
 Sundays, superseding smocks. The women, especially 
 the young, must dress in the style of the day. As to 
 
 80 
 
EARLY MANHOOD St 
 
 the cottages, ' there is scarcely room for further improve- 
 ment ' in the new ones ; it is the hovels built by the 
 hands of squatters that are bad in every way. The 
 cottages have sufficient gardens : allotments have been 
 increased. Some towns have common lands ; and though 
 not in the use of labourers, ' they are in the hands of a 
 class to which the labourer often rises.' There has been 
 no extended strike in the county, because the labourers, 
 with ten to thirteen shillings a week, and the reapers, 
 with as much as ten shillings a day, are so well off. If 
 they cannot afford coal in the week, yet they buy a 
 little on Saturday night at two pounds a ton. One culti- 
 vator paid one hundred pounds in cash to one cottage in 
 the course of a year, ' showing the advantage the labourer 
 possesses over the mechanic, since his wife and child can 
 add to his income. Many farmers pay fifty and sixty 
 pounds a year for labourers' beer, and let excellent cottages 
 at one shilling a week. He praises the Duke of Marl- 
 borough for only letting cottages to men who work on the 
 farms where they are situated. It is ' sheer cant ' to 
 say that the labourer has no chance of rising. He knows 
 of two who are now farmers ; and they can rise to be 
 head-carter, or cowman, or bailiff, and do petty dealing 
 in pigs and calves. The women are not handsome ; he 
 knows ' no peasantry so entirely uninviting.' They are 
 moral, and no evil comes of their rough jokes. As dairy- 
 maids they earn good wages, but they are poor workers 
 in the field. Friendly societies, ' patronized by gentry 
 and clergy,' are superseding the fatal mops and fairs, 
 with their drinking and immorality. But neither they 
 nor the men ever make a grateful remark, notwithstand- 
 ing that ' no class of persons in England receive so many 
 attentions and benefits from their superiors.' ' No term 
 is too strong in condemnation for those persons who 
 endeavour to arouse an agitation among a class of people 
 so short-sighted and so ready to turn against their own 
 benefactors and their own interest.' Those who blame 
 the farmers must remember that they work largely on 
 
 6 
 
82 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 borrowed capital, and run great risks. The wonder is 
 that they have done what they have for the labourer, 
 * finding him with better cottages, better wages, better 
 education, and affording him better opportunities of 
 rising in the social scale.' 
 
 It is, he goes on to say in his second letter, the 
 labourers themselves who will not rise — will not pay 
 threepence a week in school-fees. They walk into Swindon 
 from places six miles off to earn not much higher 
 wages in the Great Western Railway factory, and then 
 have to pay for house and garden more heavily than as 
 agricultural labourers, and are liable to instant dismissal ; 
 and ' manufactures and immorality seem to go together.' 
 The farmers have done more than their duty ; they work 
 hard, run heavy risks, and just make a living. Then 
 he points out that millionaires ' pay no poor rate and no 
 local taxation, or nothing in proportion.' 
 
 In the third letter he describes the garden allotments 
 at Liddington, near Coate, founded and carried on by a 
 rector of that parish, thus adding ' one more to the 
 numberless ways in which the noble clergy of the Church 
 of England have been silently labouring for the good of 
 the people committed to their care for years before the 
 agitators bestowed one thought on the agricultural poor.' 
 In a sketch by Jefferies belonging to this period, called 
 ' A True Tale of the Wiltshire Labourer,' a man is de- 
 prived of his allotment for drunkenness ; and, deserted 
 by him, the wife is in consequence not visited by the 
 rector in her distress. The farmer comes for the rent, 
 and offers her sixpence as the price of her prostitution. 
 She dies after the birth of a still-born child, and the 
 husband becomes a confirmed drunkard. This is another 
 side of the matter, which it was not convenient, probably, 
 to reveal in the letters to the Times. 
 
 These letters are conspicuous for lucid, forcible, and 
 simple exposition of his own observation and the ideas 
 of the tenant-farming class. They sprang readily out of 
 a large experience, and deserved their success. They 
 
EARLY MANHOOD 83 
 
 caused discussion in the form of letters and articles in the 
 press. They served the cause of truth by criticizing the 
 labourers' economy, and by pointing out the weakness 
 of the tenant-farmer, who had not even a right to com- 
 pensation for invested capital if ordered to quit. It was 
 well, too, that the tenant-farmer's point of view should 
 be dressed to advantage. And Jefferies expressed a 
 remarkable truth, from which he was to draw other con- 
 clusions, when he said that the labourers have no grati- 
 tude. But at this date there is little more to be said of 
 these letters. They must have served the cause of a 
 party even more than that of truth ; and honest though 
 Jefferies was, he not only did not rise out of the high- 
 walled position of a partisan, but even so proved no 
 extraordinary degree of penetration. It was almost 
 excellent journalism ; but it was not more. So, too, with 
 ' The True Tale.' It was true, and it was worth saying. The 
 form of the tale is good enough, and he has filled out tliat 
 form with nothing, or almost nothing, but true nature, 
 yet expressed with so little concentration that it is, after 
 all, only a sketch. He was to return to the subject 
 again. 
 
 This slight success did not make 1873 a cheerful year. 
 Jefferies was writing another novel, and this was rejected 
 by Messrs. Bentley in May. He could not understand 
 how he failed to make headway after the praises given 
 to his letters to the Times. He was coming to the con- 
 clusion that he must publish at his own expense ; and, in 
 spite of ' eight years of almost continual failure,' is ' more 
 than ever determined to succeed.' 
 
 . Nevertheless, he continued to work at the vein just 
 opened in the letters to the Times. In 1873 ' The Future 
 of Farming ' was published in Fraser's Magazine ; in 1874 
 ' The Size of Farms ' in the New Quarterly, and ' The 
 Farmer at Home,' ' The Labourer's Daily Life,' ' Field- 
 Faring Women,' ' An English Homestead,' and ' John 
 Smith's Shanty ' in Fraser's ; and in the same year ' The 
 Agricultural Life,' a book, was offered to Messrs, Longman. 
 
 6—2 
 
84 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 In 1875 ' Women in the Field ' appeared in the Graphic, 
 ' Village Organization ' in the New Quarterly, ' The Cost 
 of Agricultural Labour ' in the Standard ; in 1876 ' The 
 Power of the Farmers ' in the Fortnightly ; in 1877 
 * Unequal Agriculture ' in Eraser's, ' The Future of 
 County Society ' in the New Quarterly. In 1878 he 
 planned books that were never printed — ' The Prole- 
 tariate, the Power of the Future,' and ' A History of the 
 English Squire ' ; and published ' A Great Agricultural 
 Problem ' in Fraser's. 
 
 Some of these articles are known to the public through 
 ' Toilers of the Field,' a posthumous book in which they 
 were reprinted ; others were republished from the Stan ard 
 in 1880, as ' Hodge and His Masters.' In the main, though 
 some show a promise of different things, they belong to the 
 same order as the letters of 1872, and to the history of 
 agriculture and agricultural criticism rather than to the 
 history of literature. As the knowledge of these matters 
 came to Jefferies largely through his business asaprovincial 
 journalist, so, as it happens, it is seldom or never brought 
 into such contact with his whole character and thought 
 that it reflects the man. Other writers have exceeded 
 him in minuteness and in breadth of view ; Cobbett is 
 better to read. The contemporary service rendered by 
 Jefferies' lucidfty. honesty, and force in detail and 
 generalization can only be fairly estimated by a specialist. 
 But this work hardly falls to be considered here, because 
 it is not creative, its utmost vividness being well within 
 the compass of the journalist as such, and outside that 
 of the artist ; and because its weight of opinion, though 
 respectable, neither made any serious and lasting im- 
 pression on the age, nor deserved to do so, and was such 
 that its power is now practically spent. Some of the 
 ideas set forth may, however, be mentioned here, as 
 helping to give a view of Jefferies' intelligence, pure and 
 simple, while he was a young man, applying itself to 
 contemporary things. 
 
 In the articles published in 1874, and now grouped as 
 
EARLY MANHOOD 85 
 
 ' Toilers of the Field,' he gave some excellent descriptions 
 of the farmer, his conservatism, his pride, and his faith : 
 
 ' I believe in the Sovereign, the Church, and the land : 
 the Sovereign being the father of the people in a temporal 
 sense ; the Church in a spiritual sense ; and the land being 
 the only substantial and enduring means of subsistence. 
 Cotton, coal and iron cannot be eaten, but the land 
 gives us corn and beef ; therefore the land stands first 
 and foremost, and the agriculturist, as the tiller of 
 land, possesses an inalienable right which it is his duty 
 to maintain, and in so doing he is acting for the good of 
 the community. I believe that the son and the daughter 
 should obey their parents, and show regard to their 
 wishes, even when legally independent. Also that the 
 servant should obey his employer. The connection between 
 employer and employed does not cease with the payment 
 of wages. It is the duty of the servant to show con- 
 sideration for the advice of the master ; and the master 
 is not free from responsibility as to the education and 
 the comfort of the man. The master is bound by all 
 laws, human and Divine, to pay a fair amount of wages 
 for a day's work. If he does not do so he robs the work- 
 man as much as if he stole the money from his pocket. 
 The workman is equally bound to do his work properly, 
 and in neglecting to do so he robs his employer. To 
 demand more wages than has been earned is an attempt 
 at robbery. Both master and man should respect 
 authority, and abide by its decisions.'* 
 
 This, or something like it, was the brief but difficult 
 creed in which Jefferies had been, with some laxity, 
 brought up. 
 
 In his account of the labourer, which is in greater 
 detail, there is an odd mixture of sentimental triviality, 
 as in the remark that the labourer's cur ' seems as much 
 attached to his master as more high-bred dogs to their 
 owners,' and of realism and charming picturesqueness. 
 He puts forcibly that stubborn question : What, then 
 * Toilers of the Field. 
 
86 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 is the labourer to do ? What is he to do in the evenings 
 now that village life is dull or dead ? Some of his criticism 
 and suggestion is humane and bold ; he proposes ' some 
 system of village self-government.' His realism varies 
 from plain statement, such as this description of the 
 milker's winter morning : 
 
 ' To put on coarse nailed boots, weighing fully seven 
 pounds, gaiters up to the knee, a short great-coat of 
 some heavy material, and to step out into the driving 
 rain and trudge wearily over field after field of wet grass, 
 with the furrows full of water ; then to sit on a three-legged 
 stool, with mud and manure half-way up to the ankles, 
 and milk cows with one's head leaning against their 
 damp, smoking hides for two hours, with the rain coming 
 steadily, drip, drip, drip. . . .'* 
 to this : 
 
 * He [John Smith] minded when that sharp old Miss 
 
 was always coming round with tracts and blankets, 
 
 like taking some straw to a lot of pigs, and lecturing his 
 " missis " about economy. What a fuss she made, and 
 scolded his wife as if she was a thief for having her fifteenth 
 boy ! His " missis " turned on her at last, and said, 
 " Lor', miss, that's all the pleasure me an' mv old man 
 got." 't 
 
 It is to be noticed that he says now that, whatever the 
 virtues of the class, ' the immorality,' which is short for 
 ' sexual immorality,' cannot be gainsaid. 'John Smith's 
 Shanty ' is an advance upon ' The True Tale.' From 
 beginning to end it is a piece of lively truth, exact in 
 detail, and with a brave human spirit over the description 
 and comment that is far more uncommon. In the best 
 of the book the writing might be called masterly for its 
 precision and flow, if it were not outclassed by the best 
 of his maturity. 
 
 In ' The Size of Farms ' he condemns the small farmer, 
 who is little above the labourer and can do nothing to 
 improve his children's position, cannot afford a steam- 
 
 **= Toilers of the Field, \ Ibid. 
 
From a pliotcj;r.iiil 
 
 JAMES LUCKETT JEKKERIES, 
 the father of Richard leH'ey'ies. 
 
 p. 8s. 
 
EARLY MANHOOD 87 
 
 plough and high cultivation, is slovenly and incapable 
 of progress, and is not sturdy and independent, but living 
 on borrowed capital. There is no cause for alarm in the 
 grouping of small farms. 
 
 In ' Women in the Field ' he deplores the results of the 
 hard work of women, even whilst suckling, and the 
 ' saddest results in a moral sense ' of contact with coarse 
 men. He suggests an organization of ladies to receive 
 girls after leaving school, in order to find them places as 
 servants. 
 
 In ' On Allotment Gardens ' he points to the satisfac- 
 tion of watching things grow. He regards the system of 
 allotment gardens as an unmixed good, and its extension 
 as a safety-valve to ' communistic tendencies.' Why 
 should there not be societies to furnish workmen with 
 gardens as well as houses ? And if there is room for a 
 cemetery in London, why not also a garden ? He 
 deplores the lack of local authority : a village council 
 would mean good water, better drainage, and an adequate 
 area of allotments. 
 
 In ' The Spirit of Modern Agriculture ' he emphasizes 
 the fact that agriculture is not a ' calm, quiet calling ' 
 now, but one for restless, educated, intelligent men, 
 struggling and pushing forward. ' American ideas ' are 
 spreading among the labourers, who have more and more 
 in common with the mechanic and the navvy. Why not 
 take advantage of this restlessness, and have lectures for 
 those men, who will soon have the franchise ? He thinks 
 there is a more liberal spirit and less local prejudice ; 
 tenant can stand up to landlord, and labourer to farmer. 
 
 In ' Village Organization ' he finds that the School 
 Board is favoured only where there is no great landlord 
 and all are in disagreement ; that there is a strong feeling 
 against this placing the parish more under imperial 
 rule, and curtailing ' the freedom that has hitherto 
 existed.' The insisting upon ' a large amount of cubic 
 space ' in schools is intolerable. It is not to be ex- 
 pected that a single person wiU interfere against sewage 
 
88 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 flowing into the water-supply, because ' farmers dislike 
 meddling with other people's business ' ; his ' feelings as 
 a gentleman ' enable him to ride past overcrowded cot- 
 tages, etc., and say nothing. Neither Vestry, nor Board 
 of Guardians, nor Highway Board has in practice any 
 valuable effect. A village esprit de corps should be 
 created. A village council might be able to bring a good 
 water-supply to the parish ; to provide a village bathing- 
 place, a rough gymnasium, annual games, a reading-room, 
 an excursion to London or the sea. ' With every respect 
 for the schoolmaster, let the schoolmaster be kept away 
 from it.' Such a council would look after drainage and the 
 rebuilding of cottages, to be paid for, perhaps, by annual 
 instalments ; provide common lands, a cottage hospital, 
 cookery classes, entertainments ; and settle local disputes. 
 But it must be founded on ' the will of the inhabitants,' 
 not forced upon them. 
 
 In ' The Power of the Farmer ' he expects the Board of 
 Guardians, composed of farmers and landed gentry, to 
 show some tyranny towards the labourers by way of re- 
 prisal. Farmers will win in their contest with the 
 Labourers' Unions because they have money, and their 
 landlords, seeing that ' their interests are identical,' will 
 stand by them. He favours blacklegs, and thinks that 
 the Union's tactics are bad in deporting men, and so re- 
 lieving the farmers of the need to support them at the 
 workhouse. Arbitration he distrusts. He does not dwell 
 on the possibility that there is something deeply wrong, 
 if not in the region of party politics, when the land is 
 left idle and only the men who could till it suffer. 
 
 In ' Unequal Agriculture ' he contrasts the modern 
 farm, with steam-plough, new cowsheds, etc., with the 
 old-fashioned one, moated by liquid manure. The 
 country ought to be ' equally highly cultivated every- 
 where.' 
 
 In ' The Future of County Society,' he points out that 
 while the country clergy have great prestige and immense 
 opportunities, ' a picture of the nineteenth century 
 
EARLY MANHOOD 89 
 
 which omitted the clergy would not be accused of untruth- 
 fulness.' They do not anywhere teach the labourer ' the 
 ennobling and fascinating story of science.' The country 
 gentry go more and more into commerce and manufac- 
 ture ; in London they find many with larger incomes, and 
 in the country the big tenant is almost their equal. Dissent 
 divorced the poor from the Church, and it was the first 
 step to independence. The press influence is growing, 
 expanded by wheelwright, blacksmith, or hedge-car- 
 penter, who ' can think for himself.' He dreads the 
 labourer's power after the county franchise, ' unless in 
 the meantime men of intellect, calm thought, and noble 
 views can somehow obtain a hold upon the people,' and he 
 suggests a ' universal militia . . . without the stern re- 
 straint of conscription.' There is no * general object ' 
 throughout each county — ' no such thing as organiza- 
 tion.' ' The country grows more republican year by year, 
 and yet at the same time more exclusive.' ' The old social 
 links are gone, and no new ones have sprung up.' There 
 is ' a general desire on the part of everybody to be above 
 their business or occupation,' yet ' a marked increase of 
 independence.' 
 
 In ' A Great Agricultural Problem ' he sees the growing 
 importance of foreign imports : we must find out where 
 our cheese, butter, etc., come from, and why they have 
 supplanted home manufactures ; we must not dismiss these 
 matters ' while we rest under the ample shadow of the 
 shorthorn.' He asks whether English farmers of any 
 district have ever combined, as the French have in the 
 cheese-making departments, and obtained a reputation 
 for a particular product in a distant country, while filling 
 their purses at the same time, 
 
 ' Hodge and his Masters ' was a belated continuation of 
 these studies. There is still a touch of the provincial 
 journalist in such passages as where he describes the 
 labourer brutalized by the lowest public-house — who, 
 ' if he awakes to the wretched state of his own family at 
 last, instead of remembering that it is his own act, turns 
 
90 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 round, accuses the farmer of starvation wages, shouts 
 for what is really communism, and perhaps even in his 
 sullen rage descends to crime.' The thought is often still 
 commonplace, reflecting his commonplace environment, 
 as when, in his narrative of the progress of a clever squire, 
 he remarks that ambition, ' if not too extravagant, is a 
 virtue.' He was writing a great deal at this time, and 
 the fact that he was writing these chapters for a Con- 
 servative newspaper may be supposed to have affect&d 
 his general tone. As yet he was hardly free from the ideas 
 of his class, and he did what was expected of him. He 
 put in nothing which he did not believe to be true ; but he 
 did not put in everything which was true. His admira- 
 tion of the country curate is evidently sincere, but is it 
 not possible that he was carried away not entirely by his 
 heart and intelligence when he painted the worn-out 
 enthusiast whose eyes were ' bright and burning still 
 with living faith '? His book is, on the whole, partisan. 
 Dealing with the Cottage Charter, he scored undoubtedly, 
 but at this distance of time the applause that must have 
 greeted him is ghostly and faint ; and when he says, 
 ' Even hunting, which it would have been thought every 
 individual son of the soil would stand up for, is not 
 allowed to continue unchallenged,' we can afford to laugh. 
 Also, it is not true that the fields ' have never yet inspired 
 those who dwell upon them with songs uprising from the 
 soil.' Yet the book tells in the end by its weight of wide 
 and intimate knowledge, and it has some good things in 
 several different kinds — the observation and dry humour 
 in the presentation of the ' low public '; the genial, 
 straightforward picture of the good inn at Fleeceborough, 
 with its excellent simple food, well cooked under perfect 
 conditions, and its strong ale ; the old-fashioned farmer's 
 tea, and the daughters laughing straight from the heart in 
 the joyousness of youth ; Squire Filbard's portrait ; and 
 the descriptions in ' Hodge's Fields ' are almost in his 
 best manner. The ' Conclusion ' has a plain statement 
 of the man-made unhappiness of the aged labourer ; it 
 
EARLY MANHOOD 91 
 
 attempts no solution ; it lays no blame ; yet it does throw 
 the door open to a draught most uncomfortable to receive 
 at the end of a book that would have been, without it, one 
 to keep in good spirits the investors in things as they are. 
 A few other magazine articles may be mentioned here. 
 Writing in Fraser's of May, 1874, on the Railway 
 Accidents Bill, he says that ' no Government can at this 
 day hope to carry such a measure ' as purchase of railways 
 by the State. But while the companies have the privi- 
 lege of purchasing land compulsorily, they must ' sustain 
 an equivalent amount of responsibility.' He suggests 
 Government inspectors of the permanent way ; better 
 fences ; the use of continuous brakes ; diminution of the 
 number of hours of employment ; stricter regulations to 
 insure the safety of the servants themselves. It is a sober, 
 clear, and practical article, showing plenty of knowledge 
 and interest in practical matters. He shows good sense 
 in his article in Fraser's of February, 1875, on the Shipton 
 accident of the past Christmas Eve. He rebukes the 
 comment that ' leans towards adopting a fatalistic creed ' 
 in face of such accidents. It is ' a species of crime ' to 
 say that a percentage of accidents is inevitable. Every- 
 thing, he says, ' points to an entirely preventible origin,' 
 and the remedy is to rouse public opinion to a point 
 irresistible by the railway companies. His ' Story of 
 Swindon ' in Fraser's of May, 1875, is also sensible and 
 well-informed. He thinks the men of the Great Western 
 Railway Factory intelligent, and strongly contrasting with 
 the agricultural poor. He is ' tempted to declare ' this 
 class of educated mechanics the ' protoplasm or living 
 matter out of which modem society is evolved.' 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 FIRST NOVELS 
 
 Parallel with journalistic activity, Jefferies' life went 
 on in ways which his admirable articles in Fraser's 
 and the New Quarterly never once suggest. He had not 
 yet emerged from the womb of the Wiltshire earth ; it 
 was with difficulty that he was being bom ; he lay yet 
 involved in the soil, only half of the man or earth-spirit 
 that he was to become. His subjects lay outside of him, 
 quite apart ; or they had entered into his heart, but not 
 his mind. As he walked in the dewy fields, with the early 
 morning sun behind him, or under the moon, he saw the 
 shining halo on the grass which Benvenuto Cellini records 
 having seen. He was taking those daily pilgrimages in 
 which there came to him ' a deep, strong, and sensuous 
 enjoyment of the beautiful green earth, the beautiful skj' 
 and sun . . . inexpressible delight, as if they embraced 
 and poured out their love for me. . . . After the sen- 
 suous enjoyment always came the thought, the desire : 
 that I might be like this ; that I might have the inner _ 
 
 meaning of the sun, the light, the earth, the trees and I 
 grass, translated into some growth of excellence in myself, 
 both of body and of mind ; greater perfection of physique, . 
 
 greater perfection of mind and soul ; that I miglit be higher 1 
 in myself.' Summer and winter he went to the same 
 oak to escape the loneliness of ordinary life. There were 
 several of these ' thinking places ': on the Hungerford 
 road near Liddington, or on the Marlborough road near 
 Badbury, where the hUls were well in view ; in one of the 
 
 92 
 
FIRST NOVELS 93 
 
 deep coombes cloven in the chalk at Liddington or Bad- 
 bury or Chisledon ; also a wood ' half an hour's walk dis- 
 tant,' perhaps Burderop Wood ; another, ' two miles 
 along the road to a spot where the hills began,' seems 
 most likely to be by the fir-trees on the Marlborough road, 
 at the corner of the ' New ' road, where the pass through 
 the Downs at Ogboume St. George is in sight. 
 
 Little of this is to be found in his first published novel, 
 * The Scarlet Shawl ' (1874). His characters are persons 
 with much leisure for passions. Percival Gifford is in love 
 with Nora, but is enslaved by the dazzling Pauline Vietri, 
 while Nora turns aside to flirt. The name and the 
 naughtiness of Pauline Vietri, like that of Carlotta in 
 ' Restless Human Hearts,' is perhaps a reflection from 
 Jefferies' early reading of ' Poems and Ballads.' Percival, 
 for a time ' a detestably conceited puppy,' reasons cleverly 
 about polygamy, and questions whether he is carrying 
 out the decree of Heaven if he stints his natural ability 
 ' by confining himself to one lady.' But, in spite of this, 
 he can reflect the ardours of Jefferies himself, when, for 
 example, he dreams of ' a book of religion which should 
 supersede ' the Koran and the Bible, and says, with a 
 faint foretaste of ' The Story of My Heart ':* 
 
 ' The unconscious cerebration which had been going on 
 in his mind, excited by the perception of the glories and 
 beauties of Nature — of stars, sea, flowers, art — which per- 
 ception in him was peculiarly acute, when his vanity made 
 him exalt himself and think of doing justice to himself, 
 forced itself forward, and he grasped at it as the readiest 
 and best means of showing his worth. He could no more 
 have written down that stream of unconscious thought 
 than he could have turned sensation itself into material 
 shape ; but he conceived the idea of doing so. . . .' 
 
 And again : 
 
 ' His eyes, fastened on the horizon, drank in the glorious 
 dawn of the light as the glowing sun revealed itself — a 
 visible archangel. The azure sky, the roseate clouds, 
 
 * The Scarlet Shawl. 
 
 / 
 
94 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 the glittering water, filled him with a sense of higher life. 
 If he could only drink of this beauty always, he should be 
 immortal. . . .' 
 
 Some of the writing, too, has an emotional exuberance, 
 even when it falls into fatuity, which may have been an 
 exalting exercise. There is, for example, a rich com- 
 parison of a kind of beautiful woman to one of those rare 
 years when the sky is blue not only in May, but until 
 October ends. When the hero has come to the disgust 
 of a voluptuous life, Jefferies opens a chapter of pause by 
 reflecting that ' the glorious, beautiful, and kingly Tyrian 
 purple had a peculiar odour about it — a faint sickly smell, 
 a dampness, a trace of the salt sea on whose shores the 
 dye was made. . . .' He continues :* 
 
 ' Deep, deep down under the apparent man — covered 
 over, it may be, with the ashes of many years, the scoriae 
 of passion and the lava of ambition, and these, too, spread 
 over with their crust of civilization, cultivated into 
 smiling gardens, and rich cornfields, and happy glorious 
 vineyards — under it aU there is a buried city, a city of 
 the inner heart, lost and forgotten these many days. 
 There, on the walls of the chambers of that city, are pic- 
 tures, fresh as when they were painted by the alchemy of 
 light in the long, long years gone by. Dancing figures, 
 full of youth and joy, with gladness in every limb, with 
 flowing locks, and glances wildly free. There are green 
 trees, and the cool shade, and the proud peacock in his 
 glory of colour pluming himself upon the lawn. There 
 is the summer arbour, overgrown and hidden with ivy, 
 in whose dreamy, dark recess those lips first met, and 
 sent a thrill of love and hope through all the trembling 
 frame. There, too, in those chambers underneath the 
 fallen cornice, are hidden the thirty pieces of silver, the 
 cursed coin for whose possession the city was betrayed, 
 and the heart yielded into the hands of the world. There, 
 also, hidden in still darker corners, mouldering in decay, 
 but visible even yet, are the bones of the skeletons of 
 
 * The Scarlet Sliau'l. 
 
FIRST NOVELS 95 
 
 those who perished in those dark days, done to death by 
 treachery at the gate. Heap up the ashes upon them ; 
 hide them out of sight ! Yet, deep as it lies hidden, 
 heavy and dull and impenetrable as the crust may be, 
 there shall come a time when the light of the sun, seen 
 through a little crevice, shall pour in its brilliance upon 
 them, and shall exhibit these chambers of imagery to the 
 man walking in day-time. He shall awake, and shall walk 
 through those chambers he builded in the olden times ; 
 and the pictures upon the walls shall pierce his soul. 
 
 ' With innumerable hopes and fears, with hunger and 
 thirst, with the pangs of birth and death, innumerable 
 multitudes of the tiniest creatures, living through vast 
 periods of time, slowly built up from the lower ocean's bed 
 those firm and rolling downs of chalk which are now the 
 homes of men. How slowly events happen ! How im- 
 possible it is to note even to ourselves the imperceptible 
 agencies, the countless multitudes of thoughts and im- 
 pulses, " the dreams in the midst of business," which by 
 slow degrees wear away our former selves, and change us 
 without our knowing it ! 
 
 ' He could not have told why, he hid it from himself 
 at first ; but it forced itself by slow degrees upon him, this 
 sickly odour of the Tyrian purple.' 
 
 There is also a noticeable, exuberant and flowing 
 passage of this kind on scarlet. 
 
 The development of the story is conventional and of 
 no interest. How remote the book is from the real 
 Jefferies, if not from the surface of the man in 1874, can 
 be guessed from the unreality of such reflections as 
 this: 
 
 * It is a singular fact in physiology that if a woman is 
 neither very beautiful nor very attractive, nor in any way 
 likely to get married herself, she is pretty sure to dote on 
 her brother. . . .' 
 
 And this : 
 
 * There's an eclat about mischief that virtue sighs for in 
 vain.* 
 
96 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 There is also a ' laid ' for ' lay ' in this most vulnerable 
 book. 
 
 It was doubtless rash of this young provincial journalist 
 to spend his time in violent efforts to understand people 
 whom he had not seen and did not really care about ; 
 but it is clear that, though he failed and wrote some 
 inept things, and was guilty of a flimsy cynicism and 
 assumption of worldliness, he was seeking to satisfy a need 
 for another life than was being lived around him, and that 
 he satisfied part of his hunger for beauty by painting this 
 alien life and indulging in these coloured images. 
 
 ' The Scarlet Shawl ' was published in 1874, and in 
 July of that year, at Chisledon Church, he married Miss 
 Jessie Baden, of Day House Farm. For a few months 
 they lived with his father and mother at Coate Farm. 
 Early in 1875 they moved to Victoria Street, Swindon, 
 where his house is now distinguished by a mural tablet. 
 There his first child was born. He tells us himself that 
 living in Swindon was unpleasant, because his work was 
 wearisome and his daily pilgrimages had to be sus- 
 pended. But there he still thought his old thoughts, 
 which could take flight from a birch-tree visible from his 
 window ' across the glow of sunset.' 
 
 * Restless Human Hearts,' his next published novel, 
 was finished before October 9, 1874 ; for on that day he 
 told Messrs. Tinsley that the manuscript was at their 
 disposal. He has also, he goes on to say, ' a book of 
 adventure on a novel plan ' already finished ; ' it describes 
 the rise to power of an intelligent man in a half-civilized 
 country, and is called " The Rise of Maximus " '; but this 
 was never published, and nothing is known of it. ' Rest- 
 less Human Hearts ' appeared in 1875, and in that year 
 he mentions two other books that were never published — 
 ' In Summer Time ' (a novel), and ' The New Pilgrim's 
 Progress ; or, A Christian's Painful Progress from the 
 Town of Middle Class to the Golden City.' This was 
 also the year of ' Suez-cide ; or. How Miss Britannia 
 Bought a Dirty Puddle and lost her Sugar Plums.' He 
 
FIRST NOVELS 97 
 
 thought ' Restless Human Hearts ' the best thing he had 
 ever written, and was well pleased with what he called its 
 ' odd humour ' and ' original positions.' He begins to 
 reveal himself at once in it. ' The lives of some among 
 us,' he writes, ' do seem in some peculiar way to corre- 
 spond with the singularities of Nature . . . persons 
 whose whole being vibrates to the subtle and invisible 
 touch of Nature, are alive to-day.' Such words help to 
 prove that he was writing exactly when, in ' The Story of 
 My Heart,' he traced his thoughts back through his early 
 manhood to his youth. He speaks clearly for himself, 
 in the presence of a picture at Antwerp Cathedral, when 
 he points to the artist's ' sensual spiritualism : which is a 
 union of the beauty perceived by the chaste and some- 
 what sad mind, and of the beauty which fascinates the 
 eye.' The description applies to Jefferies himself, especi- 
 ally as he shows himself in ' The Dewy Morn.' 
 
 His heroine, Heloise, is daughter of an old man who 
 ' could not be happy unless he heard the finches sing 
 when he woke ' — those greenfinches that sing all through 
 Jefferies' books. He lives near ' The Sun ' at ' Avon- 
 bourne,' by the Downs — ' downs upon whose slopes you 
 might lie and listen to the whistling of the breezes through 
 the bennets till all thought of the world and its conten- 
 tions passes out of the mind.' Heloise, the beautiful girl 
 at one with Nature, is a dim sketch for the Felise of ' The 
 Deviy Morn ' : 
 
 ' Helo'ise's heart was full of aspirings — after she knew 
 not what, but which she deemed were sacred hopes. 
 She sat under the old chestnut-trees, watching the 
 shadows dancing, and let these feelings have their way. 
 She climbed up the steep-sided downs, and choosing a 
 hollow sheltered from the wind, lay down upon the soft 
 th}TTiy turf, while the bees flew overhead and the lark 
 sang high above her, and dreamt day-dreams, not of 
 heaven, but of something — she knew not what ; of a 
 state of existence all and every hour of which should be 
 light and joy and life. It was one of her fancies, thus 
 
 7 
 
98 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 lying on the broad earth, with her car close to the ground, 
 that she could feel the heart of the world throb slowly 
 far underneath.'* 
 
 She found in an English Protestant church * no sun- 
 shine, no colour, no light '; it was all stone — dead. But 
 her father had given her translations from the classics, 
 and * it was perhaps from these that these fancies ' grew. 
 Her father ' wished to found a science of the soul ... a 
 science of the higher instincts, the higher perceptions and 
 aspirations, which we perceive by the abstract soul '; and 
 had taught his daughter ' to listen to the promptings 
 of the soul within her ; to distinguish between the pseudo 
 soul and the true.'f Here, as in ' The Story of M}'^ Heart,' 
 Jefferies, like Maeterlinck, feels it odd that, while we have 
 physical and mental training, we have no psychic training. 
 
 This secluded girl marries Louis, a dazzling visitor from 
 the world of London society, who has ' studied the most 
 loathsome and coarsely outre states of life ' from a desire to 
 see man in his ' nakedness.' He tires of her, and devotes 
 himself to Carlotta, her half-sister, a peer's wife. In a 
 rage, Louis knocks his wife down, and ' a battered warrior ' 
 whom Carlotta admires becomes the admirer of Helo'ise. 
 Louis sometimes beats Carlotta, and some stress is laid 
 upon this voluptuous cruelty. Carlotta replies with 
 scratches and bites. Physical violence is conspicuous in 
 the book. 
 
 Another character and friend of Heloise is Georgiana 
 Knoyle, who walks ' as those antique statues would have 
 walked.' She is a strong, pure character who wishes 
 her lover to inaugurate a new era by marrying for three 
 years, ' not for life.' He agrees ; they enter into partner- 
 ship, making provision for possible heirs. They compose 
 a ' new marriage service, adapted to the thought of 
 modern days, and in accordance with the theory that 
 man and woman are socially equal.' There should be 
 a certain amount of publicity after such unions ; some 
 * duly authorized person ' should perform the ceremony ; 
 
 * Reslless Human Hearts. f Ibid. 
 
FIRST NOVELS 99 
 
 there should be registration by the State. Neville is 
 said to have become tired of Georgiana very soon. He 
 also, like Heloise, is repelled by hewn stone, but ' beneath 
 the shadow, if only of a single tree,' he says, ' gazing 
 dreamily upwards through the boughs or leaves at the 
 azure sky, listening to the breeze — " the sound of a going 
 in the tree-tops " — there is a something that enters into 
 me and carries me away with it in lofty dreams and 
 hopes.' 
 
 The adventures of these people are very unreal, and 
 are ill-chosen for the bringing out of their several remark- 
 able characters. Carlotta's do not end with Louis, but 
 with an Austrian Archduke. Pierce, Heloise's father, 
 becomes * Lord Lestrange ' by the death of a relative. 
 At last Georgiana and Neville, Noel — the ' battered 
 warrior ' — and Heloise, are married at the same time. 
 Neville builds a ' temple of Nature,' where you can sit 
 and look ' do\vn the long aisle of columns out upon the 
 rolling downs,' and beyond them the sea ; where you can 
 hear a song from trees and hills and sun : Benedicite 
 omnia opera.* 
 
 As a rule, Jefferies' treatment of his characters is quite 
 external ; he obviously makes them do this or that, 
 instead of allowing their natures to work. He is trying 
 to imagine the motives of people who always give 
 sovereigns to footmen. ' Liar and traitor, begone !' says 
 one man to another, and the phrase is significant of some 
 of the book. But it is full of intellectual curiosity, and 
 among the expressions of opinion to be found in the fre- 
 quent and often excellent digressions, one or two may be 
 mentioned as signs of the author's developing mind and 
 character. 
 
 He remarks ' how refreshing it is to pick up Froissart, 
 or even Machiavelli's " Florence," ' because they had 
 something to do ; their life was real, and not all proxy 
 and pretence like our own. He symbolizes modern 
 slavery by boots : 
 
 * Restless Human Hearts. 
 
 7—2 
 
loo THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ' Socrates and Plato, Leonidas and Caesar — all the 
 heroes — the gods, too, walked with naked feet or in 
 sandals. They knew nothing of Day and Martin. Their 
 feet were open, free, unrestrained. Look at the feet of 
 the statues — how beautiful ! But the feet in those boots 
 — " cabined, cribbed, confined," distorted, somehow 
 there is something about those boots at which my 
 mind revolts. They are the very symbols of our dirty 
 macadamized times.'* This playfulness is characteristic 
 of the later Jefferies, and occasionally reached a con- 
 siderable ironic charm. 
 
 Landseer's paintings, says one of his characters, ' were 
 anything but well painted. . . . but the idea carried 
 away the mind '; he speaks of the ' magic charm of the 
 marvellous Dore — instinct with Mind, with Idea, with 
 Life.'t 
 
 Sculptors he calls ' prophets of the body, the apostles 
 of matter ; and their prophecies are perhaps even farther 
 off from fulfilment than those of the prophets of the 
 soul, . . . While we pursue the beautiful so long it is 
 impossible for us to commit sin. 'J 
 
 Three chapters — those describing the life and labours 
 of the Abbe in the prison on the French island — in Dumas' 
 ' Monte Cristo ' ought, he says, to be printed ' at the end 
 of the Apocrypha.' 
 
 It should also be noticed as another early instance of 
 Jefferies' interest in telepathy that when Heloise is burnt 
 at an hotel, her brother-in-law hears her scream across 
 the roar of traffic, though he did not know before that she 
 was in London. 
 
 With all its faults, the book marks a great advance in 
 ideas upon ' The Scarlet Shawl.' 
 
 In ' World's End,' a novel published in 1877, there is 
 again abundant evidence of Jefferies' character ; he is 
 evidently coming more and more to regard his own 
 thoughts and adventures as possible material for his books. 
 It opens with a passage in which Jefferies' uncertain 
 
 * Restless Human Hearts. t ^^^'^- t ^^^'^^ 
 
FIRST NOVELS loi 
 
 ironical humour combines with his peculiar sense of the 
 power of Time and Fate. It tells how a black rat founded 
 the city of Stirmingham by gnawing the root of a willow 
 so that it fell and dammed a stream which had once flowed 
 through a barren land. The stream spread and made a 
 marsh ; reeds and willows sprang up, and gipsies came 
 for the withies and the wild-fowl, and made a settlement, 
 from which the city grew. The story concerns the 
 ' great Baskette claim case,' various descendants of the 
 early squatters putting forward their claim to the now 
 valuable land. Only in the second volume is ' World's 
 End ' reached, a lonely place at cross-roads among the 
 Downs, where there was a fine natural race-course (like 
 the Burderop race-course under Barbury Hill) under the 
 castle of Berbury hill. To the local races comes Aymer 
 Malet, a plainly-dressed, very pale young man, like 
 Jefferies, ' whose slight frame gave him an effeminate 
 appearance.' He is a ' born genius,' who remembers 
 one golden year in London, when he had his own way in 
 a library and in the art galleries. His dead father lost 
 all by racing, and he, like Jefferies, wires ground game, and 
 sells it to carriers, and so is able to buy Bohn's trans- 
 lations of the Greek poets, philosophers, and drama- 
 tists, also ' most of the English poets, a few historians, 
 and a large number of scientific works '; for he is devoured 
 by a desire to understand ' the stars that shone so brightly 
 upon those hills.' When he has read a book he sells it 
 at half-price and buys others. ' He saw — he felt Nature. 
 . . . The wind spoke to him in mystic language. . . . 
 His books were thought through,' not merely read. He 
 speculates whether there may be creatures in front of 
 men, as there are animals behind. He longs to escape 
 from his uncle, Martin Brown. ' The sun beckoned him 
 to the distant sea.' Once he had escaped, but was 
 forced back ' amid the jeers of acquaintances,' as Jefferies 
 was. But he reached Florence, and there stood before 
 the Venus de Medici, ' rapt in thought, and then suddenly 
 burst into tears.' There he had met Lady Lechester, 
 
102 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 owner of an estate near his home in Wiltshire. He had 
 walked home from Dover, a hundred and fifty miles, often 
 sleeping under ricks. 
 
 In May, as Aymer is lying amid brake on the Downs, 
 reading ' the tiny edition of Shakespeare's " Songs and 
 Sonnets," published by William Brown thirty years 
 since, and now out of print,' Violet Waldron rides up on 
 a black horse. She lives with her father, who is fond of 
 his trees (' those who plant trees live long,' he quotes), 
 his yew hedge and filbert walk — as Felise Goring lived 
 with her uncle in ' The Dewy Mom.' Aymer snares 
 twenty hares and sells a gold pencil-case, and then, 
 walking to Reading, buys jet bracelets for Violet's wrist. 
 Jefferies praises Violet not for her features, hair and eyes, 
 so much as for ' the life, the vitality, the wonderful 
 freshness which seemed to throw a sudden light over her, 
 as when the sunshine falls upon a bed of flowers.' She 
 plays Mendelssohn to him ; he gives her lessons in draw- 
 ing, which she repays in music and French. Old Waldron 
 gives him a horse, and suggests that he should marry 
 Violet and live in his house. At the altar ' her dress was 
 good — it was nothing to the belles who flourish in Bel- 
 gravia ; but at World's End — goodness, it was Paris 
 itself.' But the marriage is interrupted by the murder 
 of Waldron ; the ring rolls away. ' Of all that the 
 ancients venerated and feared,' remarks Jefferies, ' neces- 
 sity alone remains a factor in modern life.' Violet is 
 penniless now. Aymer tries in vain to write while his 
 hands and body are numbed by cold, as Amaryllis tried 
 to draw, and as Jefferies must have tried to write by 
 the northward lattice in the cheese-room at Coate Farm. 
 He becomes a clerk in a la\vycr's office, and in the courts 
 he sees jobbery and corruption, ' class prejudice operating 
 in the minds of those on the jugdment-seat.' Aymer 
 writes a book, is advised to bring it out at his own 
 expense, and it goes into three editions without his 
 knowing it — which is a point where Aymer's career is 
 unlike Jefferies'. Then among some old newspapers he 
 
FIRST NOVELS 103 
 
 gets into the labyrinth of the Baskette case, and, finally, 
 the Waldrons are shown to have a claim. Aymer and 
 Violet marry, and the borough of Stirmingham allows 
 them £8,000 a year. Into this labyrinth it is unnecessary 
 to go, though it was, in Jefferies' opinion, the principal 
 attraction of his three volumes. 
 
 Lady Lechester's character reveals some of Jefferies' 
 interests at this time. Thus, she suddenly springs up 
 from her luncheon-table, and says she must go to meet 
 her lover, a soldier. She goes on talking as if to some- 
 one with her, and is heard saying : ' Walter, what does 
 that red spot on your forehead mean ? Are you angry ?' 
 A month later she hears of his death from a bullet in 
 the forehead. Afterwards, near where she had her 
 vision of Walter, she used to meet ' something,' beautiful 
 and ' half human, half divine,' a supernatural genius of 
 the place. 
 
 There is a gipsy in the book who wanders about playing 
 ' weird music ' on a whistle. He has large ears, and seems 
 a careless sketch of a kind of Pan. 
 
 One character takes us back to Jefferies' earliest fiction, 
 for he has a 'private cremation stove.' Except Aymer 
 and Violet, her father and Lady Lechester, the characters 
 are out of his reach ; and the length and complexity of the 
 tale are merely obstacles, and not conquerable kingdoms, 
 to his heroic persistency. Yet the best things in the book 
 are the best things he has yet done, or the most promising, 
 since they foretell the outdoor and the autobiographical 
 elements in the work of his maturity. 
 
 In the year after the appearance of ' World's End ' he 
 offered a version of ' The Dewy Morn ' to a publisher, but 
 that book as it was in 1884 belongs to a later period. 
 The last of the early novels is ' Greene Feme Farm,' 
 published as a serial in Time of the year 1879, and in a 
 single volume in 1880. Its characters are May Fisher 
 and Margaret Estcourt ; Valentine Browne and Geoffrey 
 Newton, friends and rival lovers of Margaret ; the Rev. 
 Felix St. Bees, May's lover ; and old Andrew Fisher, a 
 
104 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 miller and miser, May's grandfather. The rivalry of 
 Valentine and Geoffrey is only ended by a fight with guns 
 in a double hedge, an accidental offence setting fire to 
 their smouldering hate. Geoffrey marries Margaret, 
 and Felix May, without any important conflict of char- 
 acters or display of manners, but with enough incident 
 to make so short a book just barely acceptable to a mere 
 reader of novels. 
 
 Geoffrey represents part of Jefferies himself, especially, 
 perhaps, in the unseen watching of his sweetheart in the 
 sunlit woods, ' rapt in the devotion of the artist, till a 
 sense came over him like that feeling which the Greeks 
 embodied in the punishment that fell on those who look 
 unbidden upon the immortals.' Only Jefferies could have 
 made him pause to admire the drop of blood on her white, 
 polished skin before drawing out a thorn from her thumb. 
 When he writes of Geoffrey watching the dawn, he inevit- 
 ably describes his own impression : 
 
 ' . . . Out from the last fringe of mist shone a great 
 white globe, like molten silver, glowing with a lusciousness 
 of light, soft and yet brilliant, so large and bright, and 
 seemingly so near — but just above the ridge yonder — 
 shining with heavenly splendour in the very dayspring. 
 He knew Eosphoros, the Light-Bringcr, the morning star 
 of hope and joy and love, and his heart went out towards 
 the beauty and the glory of it. Under him the broad 
 bosom of the earth seemed to breathe instinct with life, 
 bearing him up, and from the azure ether came the 
 wind, filling his chest with the vigour of the young 
 day. 
 
 ' The azure ether — yes, and more than that ! Who 
 that has seen it can forget the wondrous beauty of the 
 summer morning's sky ? It is blue — it is sapphire — it is 
 like the eyes of a lovely woman. A rich purple shines 
 through it ; no painter ever approached tlie colour of it, 
 no Titian or other, none from the beginning. Not even 
 the golden flesh of Rubens' women, through the veins in 
 whose limbs a sunlight pulses in lieu of blood shining 
 
FIRST NOVELS 105 
 
 behind the tissues, can equal the hues that glow behind 
 the blue. . . .'* 
 
 It must be put to the credit of the form of fiction that 
 Jefferies here and in the other novels has a depth and 
 humanity in his feeling for Nature which are absent from 
 all his early country books like ' The Gamekeeper at 
 Home.' His attempts, however vain, to describe human 
 action and passion led him to search deeps of his own 
 nature that might otherwise have been unsounded ; and, 
 almost without value as a whole, his novels were thus 
 an exercise which he could ill have done without, and of 
 considerable use as autobiography. In ' Greene Feme 
 Farm ' there are several things worth pausing over : the 
 Wiltshire dialogue always, and especially where the 
 mower talks of the old-fashioned scythes ' made of dree 
 sarts of wood '; the picture of Old Andrew Fisher in his 
 beehive chair, sitting there in the sun-heat of his ninetieth 
 summer — the hard old man who kept three old men at 
 work on the threshing-floor, ' not for charity, but because 
 he liked to listen to the knock-knock of the flails,' and 
 threw his blackthorn at the parson who wanted his grand- 
 daughter (' Drew this veller out ! Douse un in th' hog- 
 vault ! Thee nimity-pimity odd-me-dod ! I warn thee'd 
 like my money ! Drot thee and thee wench !') ; Augus- 
 tus, the drunken baiUff' s portrait, with his ' A man's 
 made just like a pig inside '; and the death-scene of 
 Andrew, where the gaunt, wrinkled, weary gleaners, going 
 homeward, curtsey with hateful hearts as they pass near 
 the chair where he sits cold and stiff. Jefferies' sad 
 humour comes out again in the walk through Kingsbury 
 (Swindon) back-streets : 
 
 ' Down in the back-streets they found that Melting-Pot, 
 the pewter tankard, in fuU operation. Men and women 
 were busy keeping it full, while their children, with naked 
 feet, played in the gutter among the refuse of the dust- 
 heap, decayed cabbage, mangy curs, and filth. The 
 ancient alchemists travailed to transmute the baser 
 * Greene Feme Farm. 
 
io6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 metals into gold ; in these days whole townships are at 
 work transmuting gold and silver into pewter. All the 
 iron foundries, patent blasts, and Bessemer processes in 
 the world cannot equal the melting power of the pewter 
 tankard.'* 
 
 Then there are three verses by Jefferies, called ' Noon- 
 tide in the Meadow,' to be quoted only to show how he 
 gives away all that he has for the mere form of verse : 
 
 * Idly silent were the finches — 
 
 Finches fickle, fleeting, blithe ; 
 And the mower, man of inches, 
 Ceased to swing the sturdy scythe. 
 
 ' All the leafy oaks were slumb'rous ; 
 
 Slumb'rous e'en the honey-bee ; 
 And his larger brother, cumbrous, 
 Humming home with golden knee. 
 
 * But the blackbird, king of hedgerows — 
 
 Hedgerows to my memory dear — 
 By the brook, where rush and sedge grows, 
 Sang his liquid love-notes clear.'f 
 
 Altogether, it is an honest book ; true to the writer's 
 experience, wherever it is possible, and often of an 
 assured imaginative fidelity : yet a sad one to read, 
 because Jefferies has not had the luck to hit upon a matter 
 that will give full play to the best, and nothing but the 
 best, that is in him. But, like the other three novels, 
 this one must have temporarily satisfied and permanently 
 fortified that part of his nature which neither the agricul- 
 tural articles nor the books like ' Wild Life in a Southern 
 County ' could touch. 
 
 * Greene Feme Fann. f Ibid. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 FIRST COUNTRY ESSAYS 
 
 Three short essays in the Graphic of 1875 and 1876 have 
 nothing in them to be compared with the best parts of 
 the early novels, but are interesting because they are a 
 beginning even more important than the earlier letters to 
 the Times. They are ' Marlborough Forest,' ' Village 
 Churches,' and ' The Midsummer Hum.' Of a length to 
 meet the needs of a weekly paper, they have already the 
 form and observation and sentiment of the essays which 
 afterwards went to make ' The Gamekeeper at Home,' 
 * Wild Life in a Southern County,' ' Nature near London,' 
 and most of the later books. In them Nature and country 
 things are described from the point of view of one who 
 is not merely a sportsman, or a naturalist, or an agri- 
 culturist, or an archaeologist, though he may play all 
 those parts ; but of a human being, sensuous, observant, 
 reflective, who enjoys ' doing nothing * out of doors. 
 Jefferies had many predecessors. Gilbert White, an un- 
 fertile literary genius and an all-round countryman, in 
 the course of his incomparable letters to Pennant and 
 Barrington, had come, as it always appears, by accident 
 or divine grace, to express with perfect felicity his experi- 
 ence and enjoyment of life in the country. But his 
 book has to carry with it a considerable dead-weight of 
 what is or was only matter of fact. He was in the first 
 place a naturalist ; and it was improbable that, if he had 
 any contemporary influence, it would be felt except by 
 naturalists. Few of his successors approach him in 
 literary importance. Waterton, a gentleman of good 
 family, whose ' Essays on Natural History ' appeared in 
 1838, had the charm of a genuine zeal and affection for 
 
 107 
 
io8 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 wild life. His notes on the rook, for example, are in the 
 spirit of the plainest passages in Jefferies' ' Wild Life.' 
 They state matters of fact of no great significance in a 
 manner showing that he has enjoyed observing them him- 
 self ; yet he can attract few not specially interested in 
 birds. His affection does not involve the whole man, 
 but is in the nature of a hobby, however much time it 
 may have filled. St. John (who knew Wiltshire as a boy, 
 and trapped wheatears on the Downs) is an intelligent, 
 healthy, outdoor man, fond of scenery, and with an eye 
 for such things as a party of Gaels bringing bright fish to 
 the piny shore of a Higliland lake under the moon. His 
 enjoyment was probably great, but it is not a great ele- 
 ment in his book, however much we may import into it 
 from our liking for him. He is a fine man, but he is not 
 an artist, and the reader does half the work of producing 
 his admirable effects. His ' Short Sketches of the Wild 
 Sports and Natural History of the Highlands ' appeared 
 in 1846. In the next year came Edward Jesse's 
 ' Favourite Haunts and Rural Studies.' This author 
 would like to give the cottagers ' a stake in this country 
 worth fighting for.' He likes to see them on Sunday 
 having tea in the garden ; and there is real satisfaction 
 in his picture of the interior of a cottage, the flitch of 
 bacon on the rack, the dried pot-herbs and string of onions, 
 the warming-pan shining in the corner. His ' Month of 
 May — a Rural Walk,' with his mowers and haymakers 
 and birds singing, is one of the earliest pieces of the kind 
 in prose ; but if it sprang from a real delight in the country, 
 no soul or blood has suffused the words, and they are 
 dead. Two years later, in 1849, appeared Knox's 
 ' Ornithological Rambles in Sussex.' He is an ornitholo- 
 gist and sportsman. There is a careless charm, not in- 
 comparable to that of Jefferies' earlier work, about his 
 descriptions of shooting in the Weald, and of the lane from 
 Petworth to Parham, and of the wild open country, the 
 nightingales in the little copses of blackthorn and dwarf 
 oak, the common which provides the best sport a man 
 could desire ' on this side of Tweed.' Buckland, whose 
 
FIRST COUNTRY ESSAYS 109 
 
 * Curiosities of Natural History ' was published in 1857, is 
 simply a curious, chatty naturalist with some stories to 
 tell ; and when he does not appeal to naturalists, as in 
 ' Whitmonday at Harting,' he has not enough humanity 
 to appeal to anyone else. Kingsley, in his ' Prose Idylls ' 
 of 1873, is sportsman, naturalist, historian, clergyman, 
 and country gentleman. They are in dialogue, and they 
 are bluff, hard, and superficial ; but they belong to the 
 same class as Jefferies' essays, from which they differ 
 chiefly in this : that while his lead us to the writer's per- 
 sonality through Nature, Kingsley's lead us to Nature 
 through the writer's personality, and if that is not liked 
 by the reader, his pictures, etc., are unendurable. 
 
 In these early essays of 1875 and 1876 Jefferies sets him- 
 self the unusual and difficult task of reflecting m prose 
 the solitary enjoyment of Nature, without any of the 
 resources of these predecessors in sport or natural history, 
 without the aid even of any passion, as of love, except 
 what Nature herself inspires. In ' Marlborough Forest ' 
 he mentions the Civil War, saying that it did not touch the 
 forest ; but he relies for his effect upon the leaves and 
 fruits, the pathless bracken, the woodpeckers and jays, 
 the pack of stoats, the fighting stags, the beech avenue, 
 and the inhuman quiet. As he says himself, ' The subtle 
 influence of Nature penetrates every limb and every vein, 
 fills the soul with a perfect contentment, an absence of 
 all wish except to lie there half in sunshine, half in shade 
 for ever, in a Nirvana of indifference to all but the ex- 
 quisite delight of simply living.' But he fails as yet to 
 convey that influence, to produce more than a readable 
 article which only the careless townsman or unobservant 
 countryman can much enjoy. In ' Village Churches ' 
 he has the aid of memory, quoting from ' Faust ': 
 
 ' Dim dream-like forms I your shadowy train 
 Around me gathers once again.' 
 
 A phrase like ' a visible silence, which at once isolates 
 the soul, separates it from external present influences, 
 and compels it, in falling back upon itself, to recognize its 
 own depths and powers,' has its value as a glimpse of 
 
no THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Jefferies himself ; and the rooks at the acorns, the steep 
 Downs, and the rustling of the grass over the Chisledon 
 graves, the epitaph and the silence, the ticking of the 
 clock, gave, perhaps, a new kind of pleasure to newspaper 
 readers in 1876, but are memorable only as a beginning. 
 One of the most interesting parts of the essay is that on 
 the days of the handicrafts, when ' men put their souls 
 into their works,' and it was not their object ' to turn 
 out a hundred thousand all alike ' — when the Aldboume 
 bell-founder, for a local fame, ' worked as truly, and in as 
 careful a manner, as if he had known his bell was to be 
 hung in St. Peter's at Rome.' We know all about that 
 now, but in 1875 it was an achievement for the Swindon 
 journalist to announce that ' this was the true spirit of art.' 
 He always kept this love of handicrafts, though he might 
 have made more use of his local knowledge of them, just 
 as he might have done with the folk-songs and dialect 
 of North Wiltshire had he recognized their value. In 
 ' The Midsummer Hum,' which, unlike the other two, is 
 signed ' R. Jefferies,' there is a cheerful sketch of ' Uptill- 
 a-thorn ' of later days. Lucy Lockett and Absalom 
 Brown are lovers ; Mr. Martin, a gentleman, admires the 
 girl in the hayfield, but in the end secretly gives the Vicar 
 twenty pounds for Absolom and Lucy when they are 
 married — Lucy, with ' small nose, slightly retrousse and 
 impertinent,' is ' a laughing, thoughtless, impulsive 
 creature, full of life, and joyous as the sunshine — like the 
 young June with its opening roses.' She is a shadow, only 
 a shadow, of one of Jefferies' beautiful animated women. 
 His village mason sings a version of ' When Joan's ale 
 was new ' : 
 
 ' Zo, he flung his hammer agen the wall, 
 An' prayed as the church an' the steeple might fall, 
 An' thus med be work for masons all 
 When Jones' ale was new.' 
 
 Other slender essays of this kind might probably be 
 found in the newspapers of about 1876, but it was not 
 until the Surbiton days that Jefferies found how easy it 
 was to put down his country lore in this form. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN LONDON AND THE SUBURBS 
 
 A GREAT part of 1876 — his twenty-eighth year — was 
 spent at Sydenham, and about that time his earliest 
 descriptive essays appeared in the Graphic. He must 
 have gone up to find a suitable house near London, yet 
 at the edge of the country, and to make sure of his 
 journalistic connections. This was that bitter time of 
 which he speaks in ' The Story of My Heart,' when it was 
 necessary to be separated from his family. ' There is 
 little indeed,' he wrote, ' in the more immediate suburbs 
 of London to gratify the sense of the beautiful. Yet 
 there was a cedar by which I used to walk up and down 
 and think the same thoughts as under the great oak in 
 the solitude of the sunlit meadows.' Early in 1877 he 
 and his wife and child left Victoria Street, Swindon, for 
 2, Woodside, Surbiton. Woodside is a small block of 
 whitish, stuccoed, flat-fronted houses of two stories, 
 just beyond the last shops and just before Douglas 
 Road, on the right-hand side of the Ewell road as you 
 go to Tolworth by the electric tram. No. 2 is the second 
 house towards Ewell, and has a poor small fir behind the 
 railings of the front garden. It has been overtaken by 
 London for some time, though its front windows have a 
 swelling, leafy view of Hounslow, Richmond Park, and 
 Wimbledon Common on one side, and of Hook, Chessing- 
 ton, Claygate, and their woods, on the other. Tolworth 
 Farm is but a few yards past the tramway terminus ; and 
 the flat, elmy meadows, though they retain the scattered 
 
 III 
 
112 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 houses and ricks of what was once a hamlet, have a 
 dejected and demoralized air of defeat by the city. At 
 Tolworth Court Farm, some way beyond, there is a good 
 row of conical corn-ricks, and a tiled barn with pigeons 
 above, and a reedy pond, where the Ewell road bends 
 just before crossing the HogsmiU River by an elm- 
 shaded bridge. Farther still are long woods on the left, 
 having rooks' nests in their oaks ; and out from the green 
 leaves dashes the lofty chariot of a superb American, 
 sounding a horn that sets his half-dozen carriage-hounds 
 capering, and his horses going ten miles an hour — a 
 magnificent Old English display. There are still two 
 fords through the bright Hogsmill close by — one near 
 Ruxley Farm, one at the ' Bones Gate ' turning ; one is 
 mentioned in ' Footpaths,' an essay in ' Nature near 
 London.' Squares of plough-land, mangolds, grass, 
 stubble, and mustard succeed one another in the autumn. 
 Beyond, south-east, are Banstead Downs ; south-west, 
 the woods of Barwell Court, of Esher Common, Oxshott 
 and Fairmile. Except on a few Saturdays and Sundays 
 this is a deep, quiet country even now. The American's 
 horn shatters the quiet into fragments that reassemble 
 most easily ; but in Jefferies' day it had still more rural 
 elements left. 
 
 In his first spring there he was ' astonished and de- 
 lighted ' by the richness of the bird-life ; he never knew 
 so many nightingales. He saw herons go over, and a 
 teal. Magpies were common, and he records ten together 
 on September 9, 1881, within twelve miles of Charing 
 Cross. There were the same happy greenfinches — his 
 favourite birds — which ' never cease love-making in the 
 elms.' The beautiful white bryony grew over the hedges. 
 ' Birds,' he notes, ' care nothing for appropriate sur- 
 roundings.' He was awakened by the workmen's trains 
 in the March mornings, yet when he saw the orange- 
 tinted light upon the ceiling, ' something in the sense of 
 morning lifted the heart up to the sun.' Almost at his 
 door was a copse of Scotch and spruce fir, hornbeam, 
 
IN LONDON AND THE SUBURBS 113 
 
 birch, and ash — now vanished — where he used to watch 
 dove and pigeon, cuckoo, nightingale, sedge-warbler, 
 and missel-thrush. Once a pair of house-martins buUt 
 under his eaves, and the starlings were welcome, though 
 they dammed the gutter. Among many flowers here 
 was the fairest of those belonging to the Wiltshire down- 
 land — the ' blue meadow geranium,' or crane's-bill. He 
 was the first to point out that the flowers have sought 
 sanctuary on the sides of railway cuttings and embank- 
 ments. 
 
 The cart-horses of the neighbouring farms wore ' the 
 ancient harness, with bells under high hoods, or belfries — 
 bells well attuned, too, and not far inferior to those rung 
 by hand-bell men.' The farmhouses, the stone staddles 
 for the corn-ricks, were old ; so, too, the broad and red- 
 faced labourers, with fringe of reddish whiskers. * Could 
 we look back three hundred years, just such a man would 
 be seen in the midst of the same surroundings, deliber- 
 ately trudging round the straw-ricks of Elizabethan days, 
 calm and complacent, though the Armada be at hand.' 
 The Irish, some of them without a word of English, came 
 harvesting in their long-tailed coats, breeches, and 
 worsted stockings, ' with a quick, easy gait and springy 
 step, quite distinct from the Saxon stump.' There was 
 a village shop among cherry and pear orchards — ' the 
 sweets, and twine, and trifles are such as may be seen in 
 similar meadows a hundred miles distant.' 
 
 It was no wonder, then, that Jefferies kept his love 
 of walking, though Northern Surrey has not the same 
 temptations to long walks as the Downs. He walked 
 regularly for an hour and a half in the morning, and for 
 the same time in the afternoon, and would rise from his 
 work at odd times to stroll round Tolworth. He liked 
 to repeat his walks again and again, as he did in Wiltshire. 
 ' From my home near London I made a pilgrimage almost 
 daily,' he writes, ' to an aspen by a brook '; and this would 
 probably be the Hogsmill near Tolworth Court Farm. 
 By those walks he not only escaped from the ' constant 
 
 8 
 
114 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 routine of house-life, the same work, the same thought in 
 the work, the little circumstances regularly recurring,' 
 which ' will dull the keenest edge of thought,' but could 
 repeat his prayer, his ' inexpressible desire of physical 
 life, of soul life, equal to and beyond the highest imagin- 
 ing of his heart.' In ' Woodlands ' he describes Wood- 
 stock Lane from Long Ditton to Claygate, and Prince's 
 Lane and Prince's Covers ; in ' Footpaths,' Chessington 
 Church ; the Ewell road in ' Flocks of Birds '; Oxshott 
 in ' Heathlands '; Thames Ditton in ' The Modem 
 Thames '; the now altered lane from Woodstock Lane to 
 Ditton Hill in ' Round a London Copse '; an old orchard 
 at the corner of Langley Avenue and Ditton Hill, and the 
 Ditton road at Southborough, in ' The Coming of 
 Summer '; the Hogsmill by Tol worth Court in ' A Brook ' 
 and ' A London Trout.' His ' Nightingale Road ' is 
 perhaps the lane from Old Maiden Church to the Kingston 
 road. His ' Bam ' was perhaps on the road from Hook 
 to Leatherhead, up Telegraph Hill. He visited Kew, and 
 found there the real silence : ' Thus reclining, the storm 
 and stress of life dissolve ; there is no thought, no care, 
 no desire ; somewhat of the Nirvana of the earth be- 
 neath — the earth which for ever produces and receives 
 back again, and yet is for ever at rest — enters into and 
 soothes the heart.' He rowed on the Thames at Tedding- 
 ton and Molesey, and showed himself a good citizen by 
 his protest against the destruction of the fauna and 
 flora of the river and its banks. London, he thought, 
 ' should look upon the inhabitants of the river as pecu- 
 liarly her own. ... I marvel that they permit the least 
 of birds to be shot upon its banks.' But having known 
 the Wiltshire fields and been friendly with the nearest 
 keeper and the farmers, he would have nothing to say 
 to preservation ' by beadle.' 
 
 Nevertheless, ' the inevitable end of every footpath 
 round about London is London.' He describes how he 
 saw the London atmosphere come drifting one July day — 
 * a bluish-yellow mist, the edge of which was dearly 
 
IN LONDON AND THE SUBURBS 115 
 
 defined, and which blotted out distant objects and blurred 
 those nearer at hand.' The influence of London was 
 everywhere. The elms were frequently spoiled by being 
 used as posts for wire-fencing ; sewers carried away the 
 water from some roots, and gas leaking from the pipes 
 could do no good. And he saw foreign shrubs and trees, 
 the emblems of sudden riches, rhododendron and plane 
 especially, taking possession of gardens where he longed 
 to see oaks and filbert-walks. He missed the Downs : 
 * Hills that purify those who walk on them there were 
 not. Still, I thought my old thoughts.' He could not 
 love the suburb gardens, being countryman thoroughbred, 
 for their artful niceness and luxuriance, their highest 
 achievements in choicely urbane combination of smoothest 
 lawn and ordered beds and borders, sumptuous domes- 
 ticities, and those abrupt boundaries which are not found 
 in the country itself. Still less, probably, could he see 
 the charm of the older suburban houses and gardens, 
 yielding nothing to the tide that has surrounded them on 
 every side, until one day their cedars fall and the air is 
 fuU of the mortar and plaster flying from ceiling and wall, 
 and settling on the grass and prostrate ivy. The dignity 
 and sweetness of these houses, entrenched behind ha-has, 
 posts and chains, and good split oak fences, with crocuses 
 thick under their elms — their discreet withdrawn windows 
 magical among the trees which they illumine at night 
 — in the midst of the jerry-built haste and huddle of 
 glittering shops and streets, with a thousand senseless eyes 
 that know not what they mean, might move him by their 
 final pathos, but not much by their beauty ; at least, 
 he has not revealed it. 
 
 But with London itself it was different. London is 
 one of the immense things of the world, like the Alps, 
 the Sahara, the Western Sea ; and it has a complexity, 
 a wavering changefulness along with its mere size, 
 which no poets or artists have defined as they have in 
 a sense defined those other things. Huge, labyrinthine, 
 dense, yet airy and plastic to the roving spirit, it troubles 
 
 8-2 
 
ii6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 the midnight stars, and conspires with the winds and the 
 setting sun to colour and mould the clouds. It is an 
 epitome of the world, of ' other people,' and plunging 
 into it the mind ranges through the humiliations or 
 oblivions of insignificance to all the consolations and 
 even triumphs of preserving its own integrity there, and 
 perhaps even — for some moments — the bliss of gliding 
 as a wave in the world-mind that towers and roars and 
 foams here with beauty and shipwreck and curious 
 flotsam on the tide. In little towns and villages there 
 is often no real incongruity with the fields in which they 
 lie, with their handful of lights at night. In large towns 
 there is a real interruption. The spirits of grass and 
 tree and pool have been driven underground ; ponderous 
 headstones of factory and warehouse keep them twisted 
 and helpless in their graves. But London, except in 
 paltry ways to lungs and feet, ends by overcoming any 
 such fanciful sense of its incongruity with Nature. And 
 that, too, not because of the excellent skies over it, the 
 river, the wind in the smoke, the rain on the face ; nor 
 because of the fine grass that will grow through the grilles 
 in the pavement round the trees by the National Portrait 
 Gallery and the Gaiety Theatre, or the dock and ground- 
 sel and grass and rose-bay that greedily adorn — as with 
 the hand that beflowered Nero's grave — the crude earth 
 and bricks of demolished buildings ; but simply on account 
 of its ancientness, its bulk, its humanity, and, arising out 
 of these, its inevitableness as part of what the sun shines 
 on. Of Aymer Malet in his novel of ' World's End ' 
 Jefferies wrote : ' Like all men with any pretence to 
 brains, though he delighted in Nature and loved the 
 country, there was a strong, almost irresistible desire 
 within him to mingle in the vast crowds of cities, to feel 
 that indefinable " life " which animates the mass.' He 
 said himself : ' I am very fond of what I may call a thick- 
 ness of the people such as exists in London '; ' I dream in 
 London quite as much as in the woodlands '; ' I like the 
 solitude of the hills and the hum of the most crowded 
 
IN LONDON AND THE SUBURBS 117 
 
 city ; I dislike little towns and villages.' In a crowd 
 there is, too, welcome distraction to one who knows that 
 the hearts of most hmnan beings can stand a longer siege 
 than Troy ; that every word is an arrow or a stone of 
 defence, if not offence ; that families are secret societies 
 against humanity, especially to one who, like Jefferies,, 
 asks : ' Has anyone thought for an instant upon the 
 extreme difficulty of knowing a person ?' In one of his 
 essays in ' Nature near London ' he shows that London 
 fascinated him by itself as well as by its power of such 
 consolation. ' It is the presence of man in his myriads,' 
 he wrote ; ' it is a curious thing that your next-door 
 neighbour may be a stranger, but there are no strangers 
 in a vast crowd. They all seem to have some relation- 
 ship, or rather, perhaps, they do not rouse the sense of 
 reserve which a single unknown person might.' He con- 
 tinues : ' Still, the impulse is not to be analyzed ; these 
 are mere notes acknowledging its power.' The neighbour- 
 hood of the city induced ' a mental, a nerve-restlessness ' 
 out in the Surrey fields ; ' the hills and vales, and meads 
 and woods, are like the ocean upon which Sinbad sailed ; 
 but coming too near the loadstone of London, the ship 
 wends thither, whether or no — at least, it is so with 
 me ; and I often go to London without any object what- 
 ever, but just because I must, and, arriving there, wander 
 whithersoever the hurrying throng carries me.' He tells us 
 of seeing Jupiter and the stars as he came down the Hay- 
 market or from the Strand. He watched the differences 
 of definition in the changing atmosphere with delight ; 
 the exquisite London fleetingness of impressions fortified 
 his keen interest in the weather. He knew the sunsets 
 from Westminster Bridge, * big with presage, gloom, 
 tragedy,' and the light of winter and spring sunsets 
 shining on the unconscious westward faces in Piccadilly. 
 Once he watched the sunrise from London Bridge, and 
 never forgot it. He dreamed in Trafalgar Square and 
 by the portico of the British Museum. To live fixed in 
 London was impossible to him ; yet of London, simply 
 
ii8 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 as a gaudy, opulent place, he was no mean admirer. 
 ' Let the grandees go to the opera,' he wrote in ' Amaryllis 
 at the Fair ' : ' for me the streets.' When he thought of 
 the shops he was a hearty countryman in his enthusiasm. 
 ' How delicious now to walk down Regent Street, along 
 Piccadilly, up Bond Street, and so on, in a widening 
 circle, with a thousand pounds in one's pocket, just to 
 spend, all your own, and no need to worry. ... To take 
 a lady — the lady — to St. Peter Robinson's, and spread 
 the silks of the earth before her feet, and see the awaken- 
 ing delight in her eyes and the glow on her cheek ; to buy 
 a pony for the " kids," and a diamond brooch for the 
 kind, middle-aged matron who befriended you years 
 since in time of financial need ; to get a new gun and in- 
 quire about the price of a deer-stalk in Scotland ; whetting 
 the road now and then with a sip of Moet — but onl}' one 
 sip, for j^our liver's sake — just to brighten up the imagi- 
 nation ; and so onwards in a widening circle, as sunlit 
 fancy led. Could Xerxes, could great Pompey, could 
 Caesar with all his legions, could Lucullus with all his 
 oysters, ever have enjo3^ed such pleasure as this — just 
 to spend money freely, with a jolly chuckle, in the streets 
 of London ? . . . No joy like waste in London streets — 
 happy waste, imaginative extravagance ; to and fro like 
 a butterfly !' London has the exuberance and careless- 
 ness of Nature herself. And which of the great Londoners 
 has excelled Jefferies, when he wrote of the life of his 
 uncle, Frederick Gyde, the Alere Flammaof ' Amaryllis,' 
 ' artist, engraver, bookbinder, connoisseur, traveller, 
 printer. Republican, conspirator, sot, smoker, dreamer, 
 poet, kind-hearted, good-natured, prodigal, shiftless, man 
 of Fleet Street, carpet-bag man, gentleman shaken to 
 pieces.' There is a wonderful feverish glow — a romantic 
 glow, even — together with a sad penetration, when he 
 writes of Fleet Street : ' Let the meads be never so sweet, 
 the mountain-top never so exalted, still to Fleet Street 
 the mind will return.' He is, in fact, one of the great 
 Londoners. What he disliked in London was the noise 
 
IN LONDON AND THE SUBURBS 119 
 
 and the grit. ' The noise wearying the mind to a state 
 of drowsy narcotism, you become chloroformed through 
 the sense of hearing, a condition of dreary resignation 
 and uncomfortable ease '; and when he had had too much 
 of it, he saw the faces of the crowd ' not quite human in 
 their eager and intensely concentrated haste ' on a wet 
 night. The ' gritty dust, too, it settles in the nostrils 
 and on the lips,' was especially horrible to him, and he 
 has reflected this horror in ' Amaryllis ' and in ' The 
 Dewy Morn,' where the grit on the papers and in the ink 
 has almost a ghostly effect. 
 
 Some years later Jefferies lived for a short time at 
 Eltham (14, Victoria Road), and used to enter town by 
 the London, Chatham and Dover railway-station at 
 London Bridge. The red-tiled Bermondsey roofs pleased 
 him as he saw them from the train. He liked to see the 
 vastness at once, which was impossible by the road. 
 ' Nowhere else is there an entrance to a city like this.' 
 From Bermondsey he saw the masts of ships. * Masts 
 are always dreamy to look at,' he wrote ; ' 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.' At 
 the same time as Stevenson, and without mere fancy, he 
 discovered the romantic in London. He loved the docks, 
 and his great red bowsprit of an Australian clipper is 
 an enduring London vision. ' If,' he asked — ' if Italian 
 painters had had such things as these to paint, if poets 
 of old time had had such things as these to sing, do you 
 imagine they would have been contented with crank 
 caravels and tales twice told already ? They had eyes 
 to see that which was around them. Open your eyes and 
 see those things which are around us at this hour.' Nor 
 was this a skin-deep idea. Sun and river and wind 
 overcame the grit. The colour of the Horse Guards and 
 
120 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 of women's dresses fed his avaricious eye. The pictures 
 in the National Gallery, the statues in the Museum, were 
 as real to him as hills and stars. Staying in a recess of 
 London Bridge in the summer morning sun, he enjoyed 
 the coloured ships and shadowed wharves and clear air ; 
 or, leaning on the parapet, felt the sun, as when he rested 
 in the fosse of Liddington Castle on his own Wiltshire 
 Downs. ' Nature,' he said, ' was deepened by the crowds 
 and foot-worn stones.' It was Trafalgar Square that, 
 on a summer day, forced him to ask, as he ' dreamed 
 under the beautiful breast of heaven — heaven brooding 
 and descending in pure light upon man's handiwork : 
 If the light shall thus come in, and of its mere loveliness 
 overcome every aspect of dreariness, why shall not the 
 light of thought and hope — the light of the soul — over- 
 come and sweep away the dust of our lives ?' On 
 London Bridge and by the Royal Exchange he ' felt the 
 presence of the immense powers of the universe ' — felt 
 himself ' in the midst of eternity, in the midst of the 
 supernatural, among the immortal.' So great was his 
 admiration that he called London Bridge ' the only real 
 place in the world.' The cities, he continues, ' run 
 towards London, as young partridges run to their mother. 
 The cities know that they are not real. They are only 
 houses and wharves and bricks and stucco — only out- 
 side. The minds of all men in them — merchants, artists, 
 thinkers — are bent on London. ... A house is not a 
 dwelling if a man's heart be elsewhere. Now, the heart 
 of the world is in London, and the cities with the simula- 
 crum of man in them are empty. They are moving images 
 only ; stand here, and you are real.' It is not the least 
 of the city's praises that it was part of the culture which 
 made Richard Jeffcries' mature work memorable. 
 
 Of his life at this period we have little evidence except 
 what is to be found in his books. As he wrote for many 
 newspapers and magazines, and changed his publisher 
 several times, he was pretty often in London, and must 
 have had his hours of disgust ; but that ' the town was 
 
IN LONDON AND THE SUBURBS 121 
 
 odious to him, the streets an abomination,' is an un- 
 recognizable statement of the facts. Only ' After 
 London ' supports this view ; there he makes London 
 survive only as the cause of a miasma and a stench. As 
 a rule, he accepts it as inevitable, and enjoys it pro- 
 foundly. 
 
 Having no literary friends, he was seldom the subject 
 or victim of reminiscences. Of human society he asked 
 for little but what was homely, and he got no more. 
 Strangers found him the loneliest of men in appearance, 
 and quite impossible to converse with. That he liked 
 this standing aloof ' in villa-seclusion, close by and yet 
 divided for a life-time,' is unlikely, though it gave him 
 greater freedom for his solitary daily walks — an hour 
 and a half between the end of his morning's work and his 
 one o'clock dinner, and the same following on his after- 
 dinner sleep of an hour. His habits were regular. Break- 
 fast was at eight, often ' nothing but dry toast and tea '; 
 then work. After tea he worked again until half-past 
 eight, when he had alight supper, ' with a glass of claret,' 
 and then read or talked until bedtime, at eleven. He 
 smoked ' very rarely,' which probably means that his 
 smoking was not a habit. He demanded silence in the 
 house. He was not a talker, but talked with ease and 
 vigour on his own subjects, most eagerly on the Labour 
 Question. His speech had retained none of the Wilt- 
 shire accent. He is said to have been slightly but dis- 
 tinctly marked as of yeoman birth by acknowledging, 
 without any loss to his independence, merely social 
 superiority, though when younger he was regarded as 
 having ' no proper ' {i.e., no low) sense of his own position, 
 and could not fawn or flatter or coax. One of his ac- 
 quaintances thought his avoiding of company so decided 
 as to be a conscious device to preserve ' his native sensi- 
 bilities.' He was certainly not to be taken captive by 
 any of the usual attractions of a town life ; solitude, the 
 spectacle of humanity, and home-life were his deepest 
 joys. ' A shy, proud recluse,' one calls him. In appear- 
 
122 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ance he was ' long, languid, and loitering,' whether he 
 sat or moved across a room ; * a long man from head to 
 foot ; his legs long, his arms long , . . somewhat droop- 
 ing eyelids, softly drooping mouth '; his expression 
 sensuous, tender, ' silent and aware.' In dress, when he 
 came to town, he was ' trim and town-like,' but never 
 noticeable except for the lack of umbrella and overcoat. 
 The result of his visits was that he ' began to make 
 money as a writer on country matters,' which is a way of 
 saying that he was able to pay his bills and to save less 
 than enough to keep himself and his wife and two children 
 when iUness forbade him even to dictate. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS — ' THE GAMEKEEPER AT 
 HOME'— 'WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY'— 
 'THE AMATEUR POACHER ' — ' ROUND ABOUT A 
 GREAT ESTATE' 
 
 The two or three country essays of 1875 and 1876 would 
 have been forgotten as certainly as ' The Scarlet Shawl ' 
 had they not been followed soon after his removal to 
 Surbiton by many more in the Pall Mall Gazette, some of 
 v/hich were reprinted as ' The Gamekeeper at Home ' in 
 1878. The rest, poorer as a rule than the reprinted 
 papers, are easily to be found, though all unsigned. As 
 early as December, 1876, in a letter to Mr. Oswald Craw- 
 furd, editor of the New Quarterly, Jefferies had begun 
 to think about this book and its successors. His first 
 thought was to make the Reservoir at Coate definitely 
 the centre of the book. ' If,' he writes, ' the birds which 
 I and others have shot there had been preserved — as I 
 now wish they had been — they would form a little 
 museum. My brother shot a brace of grebes [crested 
 grebes] there last week.' In this letter he expands more 
 than he usually does. ' I used,' he continues, ' to take 
 a gun for nominal occupation, and sit in the hedge for 
 hours, noting the ways and habits even of moles and 
 snails. I had my especial wasps' nest, and never was 
 stung. The secret with all living creatures is — quiet. . . . 
 The great Downs . . . are literally teeming with matter 
 for thought. I own that the result has been a profound 
 optimism — if one looks at Nature metaphysically. Since 
 
 123 
 
124 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 that pleasant time, which I still regret, I have corrected 
 my notes, and endeavoured to organize them by reading 
 the best books, I could find on such subjects, including 
 geology.' At first he was to have written the articles 
 for Mr. Crawfurd, and he goes on to suggest what he has in 
 mind. ' I should not,' he writes, ' attempt a laborious, 
 learned description, but rather choose a chatty style. 
 I would endeavour to bring in some of the glamour — 
 the magic of sunshine, and green things, and calm waters 
 ■ — if I could.' That is what he did for the Pall Mall 
 Now at length he has aimed at something new and within 
 his reach. He has begun to pour out great and small, 
 good and indifferent, from his memory and his note- 
 books, the treasures of country-lore. He takes the 
 Burderop Woods and adjacent fields and ponds, the keeper 
 Haylock and his predecessor Rawlings, and their cottage 
 in Hodson Bottom, and, using them freely and minutely, 
 makes his first book out of them. He knows it all 
 perfectly well, and talks about it with a rich, quiet ease. 
 He gives information about an hundred things — about the 
 keeper and his ways, his dogs, his guns and implements, 
 his surroundings, the cottages, the trees, the wild animals, 
 the birds, the fish — and he gives enough to have led a 
 publisher to write and ask him for a history of shooting, 
 of which he was thinking years later, but wrote only a 
 chapter. ' The Gamekeeper ' is almost as informing as 
 * Toilers of the Field,' yet were it shorn of everything 
 else it would not be half the book it is. For he gives his 
 information, and with it the spirit of his enjoyment of 
 those things. And a very simple enjoyment it is, for it 
 belongs to his youth and to only the simplest part of it. 
 He is the farmer's son who has knocked about with a 
 gun and seen the keepers and underkeepers a little more 
 than usual, with a curiosity and memory far above the 
 common. His absolute familiarity with country life is 
 an essential, but it is the joy of that life which makes 
 his book a memorable one. Even the countryman 
 recognizes that, while to the townsman it is the sun and 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 125 
 
 wind and rain and open country that count, long after 
 the facts are forgotten. Things occur in his pages as 
 they do on walks, haphazard and often unconnected. 
 Descriptions, portraits, narratives, arguments, odds and 
 ends of superstitions, customs, curiosities, come together 
 in Nature's own abundance. The writing is effortless, 
 and in places slipshod ; it hardly matters : the breath of 
 elaboration might have made it less rustic. As it stands 
 it is perhaps the first thoroughly rustic book in English, 
 by a countryman and about the country, with no alien 
 savours whatever. Even White's utmost simplicity is 
 that of a scholar, and smells of Oriel as much as of Sel- 
 borne. But it is significant that almost the subtlest part 
 of 'The Gamekeeper,' the essence and gospel, is put with 
 hardly a shade of incongruity into the keeper's mouth : 
 
 ' It's indoors, sir, as kills half the people ; being indoors 
 three parts of the day, and next to that taking too much 
 drink and vittals. Eating's as bad as drinking ; and 
 there ain't nothing like fresh air and the smell of the 
 woods. You should come out here in the spring, when 
 the oak timber is throwed (because, you see, the sap 
 be rising, and the bark strips then), and just sit down 
 on a stick fresh peeled — I means a trunk, you know — 
 and sniff up the scent of that there oak-bark. It goes 
 right down your throat, and preserves your lungs as the 
 tan do leather. And I've heard say as folk who work 
 in the tan-yards never have no illness. There's always a 
 smell from the trees, dead or living. I could tell what 
 wood a log was in the dark by my nose ; and the air is 
 better where the woods be. The ladies up in the great 
 house sometimes goes out into the fir plantations — the 
 turpentine scents strong, you see — and they say it's good 
 for the chest ; but, bless you, you must live in it. People 
 go abroad, I'm told, to live in the pine forests to cure 'em : 
 I say these here oaks have got every bit as much good in 
 that way. I never eat but two meals a day — breakfast 
 and supper ; what you would call dinner — and maybe in 
 the middle of the day a hunch of dry bread and an apple. 
 
126 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 I take a deal for breakfast, and I'm rather lear [hungry] 
 at supper ; but you may lay your oath that's why I'm 
 what I am in the way of health. People stuffs theirselves, 
 and by consequence it breaks out, you see. It's the same 
 with cattle ; they're overfed, tied up in stalls, stuffed, and 
 never no exercise, and mostly oily food, too. It stands 
 to reason they must get bad ; and that's the real 
 cause of these here rinderpests, and pleuro-pneumonia, 
 and what - nots. At least, that's my notion. I'm 
 in the woods all day and never comes home till 
 supper — 'cept, of course, in breeding time, to fetch the 
 meal and stuff for the birds — so I gets the fresh air, you 
 see ; and the fresh air is the life, sir. There's the smell 
 of the earth, too — 'specially just as the plough turns it 
 up — which is a fine thing ; and the hedges and the grass 
 are as sweet as sugar after a shower. Anything with a 
 green leaf is the thing, depend upon it, if you want to 
 live healthy. I never signed no pledge ; and if a man 
 asks me to take a glass of ale, I never says him no. 
 But I ain't got no barrel at home ; and all the time I've 
 been in this here place I've never been to a public. 
 Gentlemen give me tips — of course they does ; and much 
 obliged I be ; but I takes it to my missus. Many's the 
 time they've asked me to have a glass of champagne 
 or brandy when we've had lunch under the hedge ; but 
 I says no, and would like a glass of beer best, which I 
 gets, of course. No ; when I drink, I drinks ale : but 
 most in general I drinks no strong liquor. Great coat ! — 
 cold weather ! I never put no great coat on this thirty 
 year. These here woods be as good as a topcoat in cold 
 weather. Come off the open fields with the east wind 
 cutting into you, and get inside they firs and you'll feel 
 warm in a minute. If you goes into the ash-wood you 
 must go in farther, because the wind comes more between 
 the poles.'* 
 
 Fresh air, good ale, and juicy beef-steaks were the only 
 medicines which Jefferies never ceased to praise. 
 * The Gamekeeper at J/ome. 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 127 
 
 Next to this passage one of the most significant things 
 in the book is the claim of reason for animals, and that 
 also is made first by the keeper. If that interesting 
 chapter is ever written on the influence of the unlearned 
 — the Thurtells and the rest — on literature, through 
 their friendships with writing men, Haylock of Burderop 
 must not be omitted. Altogether the book may be said 
 to be the first revelation of matters which hundreds of 
 countrymen have known for centuries. In Jefferies all 
 the keepers, and poachers, and bird-scarers, and farmers 
 become articulate — as, for example, when he records 
 that ' the rabbit-burrow here at my elbow is not silent ; 
 it seems to catch and heighten faint noises from a dis- 
 tance. ... So that in all probability to the rabbit his 
 hole must be a perfect " Ear of Dionysius," magnifying 
 a whisper.' But to return to his youth meant a return 
 also to the ideas of his youth and of his environment. 
 He is the farmer's son and gamekeeper's friend, not only 
 in his heartiness and woodcraft, but in his callousness 
 and his careless acceptance of things as they are. For 
 the time being his attitude towards life is that of the 
 gamekeeper. With characteristic docility, having to 
 write about the gamekeeper, he becomes one ; and in 
 his crude abuse of poachers and veneration of the hunt 
 and the great house, in his genuine satisfaction at the 
 fact that in rabbiting ' the young gentlemen tip freely,' 
 and that the keeper ' is one of those fortunate individuals 
 whom all the world tips,' he even overdoes his part. 
 Simply because a labourer now and then kills a hare in 
 his allotment, he must sneer at the ' kindly talk uttered 
 over allotments '; and the keeper is so deified that he 
 and his ground-ash stick appear to be equal to all the 
 ingenious and robust mechanics of Swindon town. Yet 
 a keeper, it seems, may be contaminated ' without 
 volition of his own ' by contact with the bad men who 
 have not the luck to be keepers ! If it were not for the 
 poacher's own wit and knowledge that come out in half of 
 the best passages, the reader might be excused for disgust 
 
128 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 with such a policeman god as the book invokes. In the 
 whole there is no trace of the loftier ideas which had been 
 expressed, however uncertainly, in the luckless novels. 
 Yet these are little matters, only to be mentioned in 
 order that his later progress may be made clear ; for 
 here is good cheer, the smell of the morning, and the 
 freedom of a sweet land. 
 
 ' Wild Life in a Southern County,' also consisting of 
 papers from the Pall Mall Gazette, was published as a 
 book in 1879. Here also he returns to Coate, Burderop, 
 and the Reservoir, but ranges farther afield to Marl- 
 borough Forest, Draycot, Broad Hinton, Bishopston, 
 Aldbourne, covering much of the same ground as in his 
 early North Wilts Herald articles, and using, too, part of 
 his contributions to the Graphic ; while in the sixteenth 
 chapter he begins to include his observations from the 
 neighbourhood of Surbiton. Its twenty chapters con- 
 form roughly to the rough scheme of beginning at the 
 Downs, on Liddington Castle, and descending with a 
 stream to the lower land, to Coate Farm and the fields 
 and woods around. But the arrangement is even less 
 rigid than in ' The Gamekeeper'; the digressions are more 
 haphazard, the writing more careless. The writing of 
 newspaper articles of a certain length helps to develop 
 a habit of filling a proposed number of pages rather than 
 of achieving a firm and logical form demanded by the 
 substance. The length of an article demanded by an 
 editor has no necessary connection with the subject of 
 it. In prose such lengths are as destructive to order and 
 beauty as the fourteen lines of a sonnet commonly are to 
 sense. Jefferies' difficulty, writing with no precedent to 
 warn or guide, was unusually great, and his rich, un- 
 trained intelligence was an ordained victim. Almost to 
 the end of his life he is to be seen painfully struggling 
 with, or carelessly giving way to, the necessity of writing 
 essays of a standard length, introducing brief irrelevancies, 
 and seriously injuring what he really has to say. But 
 ' Wild Life,' though not without dulness and repetition. 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 129 
 
 overcomes those disadvantages by its abundance. Jefferies 
 is now much less a sportsman and more a naturahst and 
 ruminating countryman. In its range of knowledge, as 
 of country, it is beyond ' The Gamekeeper.' Coate Farm 
 and fields, the Downs, the camp and its prehistoric de- 
 fenders, the springs and streams, sport, agriculture, the 
 ways of birds, beasts, fish, insects, and reptiles, the 
 atmosphere, village life, village architecture and in- 
 dustries, superstitions and religion, are described by one 
 who has hardly yet known life without these things. As 
 the work of patient eyesight, the many notes on clouds 
 and mists are more than respectable ; those, again, for 
 example, like the possible explanations of the rooks' line 
 of flight morning and evening, mark decidedly the 
 irruption of an imaginative intelligence into natural 
 history, which is so often in danger of falling into the 
 hands of mere takers of notes ; others are accurate and 
 simply made, as where he transcribes straight from his 
 Surbiton notes, and they can hardly make an appeal 
 except to the boy-naturalist and the townsman pleased to 
 hear about everything rural. The human characters are 
 slighter than in ' The Gamekeeper,' but more varied and 
 sympathetically handled. Not only is the book richer 
 in material than its predecessor — so rich that it must 
 have a considerable value as a mere record of a certain 
 time and place in English life — but the treatment is 
 richer, more genial and humane. The waggon's history 
 in the sixth chapter, for example, is a good thing. It has 
 a foundation of special knowledge, but not in the narrow 
 manner of a specialist ; and upon this foundation there 
 is the writer's experience of life. Thus it has the merit 
 of some ripe craftsman's talk and the permanence of 
 simple writing. The book is remarkable, too, for its 
 attitude towards animals. Jefferies finds that the ant 
 has not infallible instinct, but ' faculties resembling those 
 of the mind '; he infers that the rook knows that a walking- 
 stick is not a gun ; and he says : ' The longer I observe 
 the more I am convinced that birds and animals often 
 
130 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 act from causes quite distinct from those which at first 
 sight appeared sufficient to account for their motions.' 
 And yet again : 
 
 ' The joy in hfe of these animals — indeed, of almost 
 all animals and birds in freedom — is very great. You 
 may see it in every motion : in the lissom bound of the 
 hare, the playful leap of the rabbit, the song that the 
 lark and the finch must sing ; the soft, loving coo of the 
 dove in the hawthorn ; the blackbird ruffling out her 
 feathers on a rail. The sense of living — the consciousness 
 of seeing and feeling — is manifestly intense in them all, 
 and is in itself an exquisite pleasure. Their appetites 
 seem ever fresh : they rush to the banquet spread by 
 Mother Earth with a gusto that Lucullus never knew in 
 the midst of his artistic gluttony ; they drink from the 
 stream with dainty sips as though it were richest wine. 
 Watch the birds in the spring ; the pairs dance from 
 bough to bough, and know not how to express their wQd 
 happiness. The hare rejoices in the swiftness of his 
 limbs ; his nostrils sniff the air, his strong sinews spurn 
 the earth ; like an arrow from a bow he shoots up the 
 steep hill that we must clamber slowly, halting half- 
 way to. breathe. On outspread wings the swallow floats 
 above, then slants downwards with a rapid swoop, and 
 with the impetus of the motion rises easily. Therefore it 
 is that this skull here ' [of a hare], ' lying so light in the 
 palm of the hand, with the bright sunshine falling on 
 it, and a shadowy darkness in the vacant orbits of the 
 eyes, fills us with sadness. " As leaves on leaves, so 
 men on men decay "; how much more so with these 
 creatures whose generations are so short !'* 
 
 The sense of their happiness is born out of his own — a 
 happiness akin to sorrow, because it is so exquisite, and so 
 much a part of youth. The use of a gun and its effects 
 have become habitual, and have left him quite free to 
 feel and reflect exactly as many men do who would not 
 willingly take any life. 
 
 * Wil{i Li'c in a Southcr/i County. 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 131 
 
 As in ' Greene Feme Farm,' belonging to the same 
 year, he is interested in the country crafts — in the mill- 
 wright, the rope-walker, the bell-founder, the basket- 
 maker and mop-maker — and in distinguishing local 
 usages ; he regrets their decay, because of their goodness 
 as much as of their age. He makes another revelation of 
 his view of art ; for he likes ' the poetry of life ' under 
 the harshness of an old hunting picture, the horses from 
 life, the men portraits, the hounds labelled with names ; 
 but he has not seen really truthful hunting scenes on 
 canvas : the best are conventional, and have too much 
 colour. He shows how it might be done : 
 
 * A thick mist clings in the hollow there by the osier-bed, 
 where the pack have overtaken the fox, so that you can- 
 not see the dogs. Beyond, the contour of the hill is lost 
 in the cloud trailing over it ; the foreground towards us 
 shows a sloping ploughed field, a damp brown, with a 
 thin mist creeping along the cold furrows. Yonder, 
 three vague and shadowy figures are pushing laboriously 
 forward beside the leafless hedge ; while the dirt-be- 
 spattered bays hardly show against its black background 
 and through the mist. Some way behind, a weary grey 
 — the only spot of colour, and that dimmed — is gamely 
 struggling — it is not leaping — through a gap beside a 
 gaunt oak-tree, whose dark buff leaves yet linger. But 
 out of these surely an artist who dared to face Nature as 
 she is might work a picture.'* 
 
 All through the book he sees things like this, as they 
 are, without a tinge of pastoral or other sentiment ; and 
 it is worth noticing that in the eleventh chapter he 
 mentions his dreaming in summer or standing to muse 
 in an early spring night, under the great oak that looked 
 over a great field to the Downs — perhaps the very oak 
 where he used to go to dream the dreams of ' The Story 
 of My Heart ' — but he mentions it with no dimmest hint 
 as yet of what those dreams are to bring forth, and he 
 is silent as to what he dreamed or mused. The import- 
 
 * Wild Life in a Southern County. 
 
 9—2 
 
132 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ance of those brief mystic moments may not yet have 
 come home to him, or he may have felt that the dreams 
 had no place in such a book. He remembers his shooting, 
 and bird-watching, and roaming, and his talks with 
 farmers, and sextons ; and he waits. 
 
 ' The Amateur Poacher,' consisting of articles from 
 the Pall Mall Gazette, and published in 1879, is on the 
 whole, as well as in the best of its parts, an advance from 
 ' The Gamekeeper ' and ' Wild Life.' Once more he is 
 at Coate Farmhouse and fields, Burderop, the Downs, 
 Wootton Bassett, and Marlborough, and this time as the 
 poacher or the not too scrupulous rambler with a gun. 
 He has the advantage now of writing frankly in the first 
 person about his own doings, and acknowledging several 
 ingenious village acquaintances. It is full of the life of 
 men whom he knew as he knew the fields — chiefly the 
 roguish and sporting side of them — but lively and faith- 
 ful, every word of it. Here first appears Molly the milk- 
 maid — the merry, hard-working maid at Coate Farm, 
 who used to say, when people laughed at Jefferies : ' Ah ! 
 you med laugh, but if you was inside Dick's yed for five 
 minutes you wouldn't want to get back into your own.' 
 He had described his birthplace inside and out in ' Wild 
 Life,' but in a detached way ; he still made it his business 
 to inform, and he had not yet ventured to suppose that 
 people would follow him for his own sake. In ' The 
 Poacher ' he has at once by good fortune the confidence 
 to write about Coate Farm as his own home. The 
 result is that no boy, at least, can read the book and not 
 remember for ever the stuffed fox grinning up in the 
 garret ; the garret itself, its old pistols and legendary 
 skeleton ; the perch-fishing ; the gun. 
 
 ' There are days in spring when the white clouds go 
 swiftly past, with occasional breaks of bright sunshine 
 lighting up a spot in the landscape. That is like the 
 memory of one's youth. There is a long, dull blank, 
 and then a brilliant streak of recollection. Doubtless it 
 was a year or two afterwards when, seeing that the 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 133 
 
 natural instinct could not be suppressed, but had better 
 be recognized, they produced a real gun (single barrel) 
 for me from the clock-case. 
 
 ' It stood on the landing just at the bottom of the dark 
 flight that led to the garret. An oaken case six feet high 
 or more, and a vast dial, with a mysterious picture of a 
 full moon and a ship in full sail that somehow indicated 
 the quarters of the year, if you had been imitating Rip 
 Van Winkle, and after a sleep of six months wanted to 
 know whether it was spring or autumn. But only to 
 think that, all the while we were puzzling over the moon 
 and the ship and the queer signs on the dial, a gun was 
 hidden inside ! The case was locked, it is true ; but 
 there are ways of opening locks, and we were always 
 handy with tools. This gun was almost, but not quite, 
 so long as the other. That dated from the time between 
 Stuart and Hanover ; this might not have been more 
 than seventy years old. And a beautiful piece of work- 
 manship it was : my new double breechloader is a coarse, 
 common thing to compare with it. Long and slender 
 and light as a feather, it came to the shoulder with 
 wonderful ease. Then there was a groove in the barrel 
 at the breech and for some inches up which caught the 
 eye and guided the glance like a trough to the sight at 
 the muzzle, and thence to the bird. The stock was shod 
 with brass, and the trigger-guard was of brass, with a 
 kind of flange stretching half-way down to the butt and 
 inserted in the wood. After a few minutes' polishing it 
 shone like gold, and to see the sunlight flash on it was 
 a joy. 
 
 ' You might note the grain of the barrel, for it had 
 not been browned ; and it took a good deal of sand to get 
 the rust off. By aid of a little oil and careful wiping 
 after a shower it was easy to keep it bright. Those 
 browned barrels only encourage idleness. The lock was 
 a trifle dull at first, simply from lack of use. A small 
 screw-driver soon had it to pieces, and it speedily clicked 
 again sweet as a flute. If the hammer came back 
 
134 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 rather far when at full cock, that was because the lock 
 had been converted from a flint, and you could not 
 expect it to be absolutely perfect. Besides which, as 
 the fall was longer the blow was heavier, and the cap 
 was sure to explode.'* 
 
 It is all so easy and natural ; the boy's and man's heart 
 is, and has been for twenty years, in these things ; and 
 when such a one is remembering and calling for power 
 to write them down, it will go hard if he is not answered. 
 There can be no doubt that Jefferies was answered. He 
 goes to an old mansion left by the family in the hands of 
 butler, and keeper, and maids ; his friend Dickon is in 
 love with one of the maids, and takes him there ; and 
 their merry irresponsibility and lawless shooting in the 
 woods slip into the simple, unelaborate sentences with 
 perfect truth. With still something of ' The Game- 
 keeper ' spirit he labels the roguish Oby as poacher, 
 fighting man, ' hardened against shame, an Ishmaelite 
 openly contemning authority and yet not insensible to 
 kindness '; but then gives his history with gusto, though 
 without seeming to commit himself, by putting it into 
 the old man's mouth. Luke, the pitiful rheumy rabbit 
 contractor, with his doddering artfulness, is another 
 character honestly set down. Huge Little John ferreting, 
 intent as a dog, and impatient of any method but his 
 own, ' wristing ' the rabbits' necks with quiet satisfaction, 
 is equally good. The talk of these men lacks the liveli- 
 ness and humour of Edwin Waugh's Lancashire sketches, 
 yet there is never a false note. They live. The great 
 heavy-laden waggon of life goes rocking dovNTi the lanes, 
 and the artist gathers up some of the wisps from the elm- 
 trees when it has passed. The waggon and the load dis- 
 appear, but there are the wisps wagging in the sun and rain 
 of late autumn, of winter, of spring, and of returning 
 summer, and to us who cannot gather them so, blessed are 
 those who can, like Jefferies. If the crop be poor, it was 
 grown in the earth, and has its value for us who descend 
 > * The Amateur Poacher. 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 135 
 
 into it again. We cannot refuse the meanest portrait, so 
 it be true. For if life has not been truly drawn, how 
 shall we know whether it ought to be uprooted, or a cure 
 attempted, or haply imitated ? And however ugly and 
 troublous to delicate souls, human joy is not denied to 
 it, and even miserable things a true-hearted man shall 
 make the bearers of joy. The finest thing in the book 
 is probably the visit to the Sarsen public-house, and 
 then the coursing on the Downs with Dickon, the land- 
 lady's son, which some might think a trivial matter out 
 of low life. But hear it : 
 
 ' The talk to-day, as the brown brandy, which the 
 paler cognac has not yet superseded, is consumed and 
 the fumes of coarse tobacco and the smell of spilt beer 
 and the faint, sickly odour of evaporating spirits over- 
 power the flowers, is of horses. The stable-lads from the 
 training-stables far up on the Downs drop in or call at 
 the door without dismounting. Once or twice a day a 
 tout calls and takes his " grub," and scribbles a report in 
 the little back-parlour. Sporting papers, beer-stained and 
 thumb-rmarked, lie on the tables ; framed portraits of 
 racers hang on the walls. Burly men, who certainly 
 cannot ride a race, but who have horse in every feature, 
 puff cigars and chat in jerky monosyllables that to an 
 outsider are perfectly incomprehensible. But the glib 
 way in which heavy sums of money are spoken of conveys 
 the impression that they dabble in enormous wealth. 
 
 'There are dogs under the tables and chairs; dogs in the 
 window-seat ; dogs panting on the stone flags of the 
 passage, after a sharp trot behind a trap, choosing the 
 coolest spot to loll their red tongues out ; dogs outside 
 in the road ; dogs standing on hind-legs, and painfully 
 lapping the water in the horse-trough ; and there is a 
 yapping of puppies in the distance. The cushions of 
 the sofa are strewn with dogs' hairs, and once now and 
 then a dog leisurely hops up the staircase. 
 
 ' Customers are served by the landlady, a decent body 
 enough in her way : her son, the man of the twuse, is up 
 
 H5ir^ 
 
136 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 n the " orchut " at the rear, feeding his dogs. Where 
 the " orchut " ends in a paddock stands a small shed ; 
 in places the thatch on the roof has fallen through in 
 the course of years and revealed the bare rafters. The 
 bottom part of the door has decayed, and the long nose 
 of a greyhound is thrust out, sniffing through a hole. 
 Dickon, the said son, is delighted to undo the padlock 
 for a visitor who is " square." In an instant the long 
 hounds leap up, half a dozen at a time, and I stagger 
 backwards, forced by the sheer vigour of their caresses 
 against the door-post. Dickon cannot quell the up- 
 roarious pack ; he kicks the door open, and away they 
 scamper round and round the paddock at headlong 
 speed. 
 
 ' What a joy it is to them to stretch their limbs ! 
 I forget the squalor of the kennel in watching their happy 
 gambols. I cannot drink more than one tumbler of 
 brown brandy-and-water ; but Dickon overlooks that 
 weakness, feeling that I admire his greyhounds. It is 
 arranged that I am to see them work in the autumn. 
 
 ' The months pass, and in his trap, with the famous 
 trotter in the shafts, we roll up the village street. Apple- 
 bloom and golden fruit, too, are gone, and the houses 
 show more now among the bare trees ; but as the rim of 
 the ruddy November sun comes forth from the edge of 
 a cloud there appears a buff tint everywhere in the back- 
 ground. When elm and ash are bare, the oaks retain 
 their leaves, and these are illumined by the autumn 
 beams. Overtopped by tall elms, and hidden by the 
 orchards, the oaks were hardly seen in the summer ; now 
 they are found to be numerous, and give the prevailing 
 hue to the place. 
 
 ' Dickon taps the dashboard as th(^ mare at last tops 
 the hill, and away she speeds along the level plateau for 
 the Downs. Two greyhounds arc with us ; two more 
 have gone on under charge of a boy. Skirting the hills a 
 mile or two, we presently leave the road and drive over 
 the turf ; there is no track, but Dickon knows his way. 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 137 
 
 The rendezvous is a small fir plantation, the young trees 
 in which are but shoulder-high. Below is a plain entirely 
 surrounded by the hills, and partly green with root crops ; 
 more than one flock of sheep is down there, and two 
 teams ploughing the stubble. Neither the ploughman 
 nor the shepherds take the least heed of us, except to 
 watch for the sport. The spare couple are fastened in 
 the trap ; the boy jumps up and takes the reins. Dickon 
 puts the slip on the couple that are to run first, and we 
 begin to range, 
 
 ' Just at the foot of the hill the grass is tall and grey ; 
 there, too, are the dead dry stalks of many plants that 
 cultivation has driven from the ploughed fields, and that 
 find a refuge at the edge. A hare starts from the verge 
 and makes up the Downs. Dickon slips the hounds, and 
 a faint halloo comes from the shepherds and ploughmen. 
 It is a beautiful sight to see the hounds bound over the 
 sward ; the sinewy back bends like a bow, but a bow 
 that, instead of an arrow, shoots itself ; the deep chests 
 drink the air. Is there any moment as joyful in life as 
 the second when the chase begins ? As we gaze, before 
 we even step forward, the hare is over the ridge and out 
 of sight. Then we race and tear up the slope ; then the 
 boy in the trap grasps the reins, and away goes the mare 
 out of sight, too. 
 
 'Dickon is long and raw-boned, a powerful fellow, strong 
 of limb, and twice my build ; but he sips too often at the 
 brown brandy, and after the first burst I can head him. 
 But he knows the hills and the route the hare will take, 
 so that I have but to keep pace. In five minutes, as 
 we cross a ridge, we see the game again ; the hare is 
 circling bqj:k — she passes under us not fifty yards away, 
 as we stand panting on the hill. The youngest hound 
 gains, and runs right over her ; she doubles ; the older 
 hound picks up the running. By a furze-bush she doubles 
 again ; but the young one turns her — the next moment 
 she is in the jaws of the old dog. 
 
 ' Again and again the hounds are slipped, now one 
 
138 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 couple, now the other ; we pant, and can scarcely speak 
 with running, but the wild excitement of the hour and 
 the sweet pure air of the Downs supply fresh strength. 
 The little lad brings the mare anywhere : through the 
 furze, among the fiint-pits, jolting over the ruts, she rattles 
 along with sure alacrity. There are five hares in the sack 
 under the straw when at last we get up and ' slowly drive 
 down to the highway, reaching it some two miles from 
 where we left it. Dickon sends the dogs home by the 
 boy on foot ; we drive round and return to the village 
 by a different route, entering it from the opposite direc- 
 tion. . . .'* 
 
 When such vitality begins to be really abundant in 
 literature, the moralists may begin to weed out. Jefferies 
 asks no questions in ' The Amateur Poacher.' Except 
 in his power to observe and portray, he seems the plainest 
 of countrymen, with his opinion that ' a strong man 
 must drink now and then.' 
 
 His observation is in most cases seconded by effective 
 expression ; he conveys a fact in a way that gives it a 
 value beyond the simple information. But in this book 
 he has entered upon his long course of recording minutely 
 what his microscopic glance perceived, and clearly it is 
 true ; yet too often not vivid enough for literature nor 
 exact enough for science, as, for example, here : 
 
 ' In January that ice that freezes in the ditches appears 
 of a dark colour, because it lies without intervening water 
 on the dead brown leaves. Their tint shows through the 
 translucent crystal, but near the edge of the ice three 
 white lines run round. If by any chance the ice gets 
 broken or upturned, these white bands are seen to be 
 caused by flanges projecting from the undcr-surface, 
 almost like stands. They are sometimes connected in 
 such a way that the parallel flanges appear like the letter 
 " h " with the two down-strokes prolonged. 'f 
 
 And this, again, is an extract from a notebook, and 
 in this state is of no value at all : 
 
 * The Amateur Poacher. f ^l^^'-i- 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 139 
 
 ' Overhead light-grey clouds, closely packed but not 
 rainy, drifted very slowly before a N.E. upper current.'* 
 
 Often the detail is neither finely wrought nor complete, 
 but it tells by its quantity, and by the rude spirit of life 
 in the whole. Of the man himself, little is yet revealed, 
 though much of his youth. He still accepts things just 
 as they are, enjoying their chance issues, as when Oby, 
 his fine for poaching paid, stands with tankard in hand 
 and touches his hat to the passing magistrate ' with a 
 gesture of sly humility.' Coming into contact with an 
 estate managed in a business-like way, he only reflects 
 that ' under the existing system of land tenure, an estate 
 cannot be worked like the machinery of a factory.' He 
 did not, I believe, do much, if any, shooting in Surrey, 
 but he was a sportsman nevertheless, from the way in 
 which he described the kind of shot that ' pleased me 
 most ' at a pheasant going so fast that the impetus 
 carried it dead many yards. Yet it is, perhaps, signi- 
 ficant that the book ends with the fine passage already 
 quoted — ' That watching so often stayed the shot that at 
 last it grew to be a habit : the mere simple pleasure of 
 seeing birds and animals, when they were quite uncon- 
 scious that they were observed, being too great to be 
 spoiled by the discharge ' — where he attributes his 
 pleasure in roaming with a gun not so much to the shoot- 
 ing as to the watching ; to the moving about in the 
 woods alone, walking ' with his hands in his boots,' 
 innocently rivalling the beasts in silence and skill ; to 
 the ' something which the ancients called divine ' that 
 is still to be found and felt in the sunlight and the pure 
 wind. 
 
 ' Round about a Great Estate ' was reprinted from the 
 Pall Mall Gazette in 1880. It is, I think, the pleasantest 
 of all his books to handle, shorter than the rest, the page 
 good and the type large — a book in almost its perfect 
 physical condition. It has two ludicrous irrelevancies, 
 yet I like it best of these four early books. The short 
 * The Amateur Poacher. 
 
140 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 preface marks the farthest intellectual advance which 
 Jefferies had yet made. He has given many notes on 
 the country life of the earlier half of the century, but, 
 he says, he would not wish it to continue or return : 
 
 ' My sympathies and hopes are with the light of the 
 future, only I should like it to come from nature. The 
 clock should be read by the sunshine, not the sun timed 
 by the clock. The latter is indeed impossible, for though 
 all the clocks in the world should declare the hour of 
 dawn to be midnight, the sun will presently rise just the 
 same.'* 
 
 But this was written after the book itself, which is of 
 the same calibre as the other three. It could hardly 
 have been otherwise, for where he is not drawing upon 
 the same early period of his o\\ti life, he is drawing upon 
 the memories of much older people, of his father and 
 grandfather, of the farmers round about, of old Mrs. 
 Rawlings, perhaps of Miller Brind at Liddington. It is 
 not a novel, but it contains more human character than all 
 the earlier novels and more than ' The Amateur Poacher.' 
 Hilary Luckett is probably his father, with something 
 added from other men, perhaps from Andrew Baden of 
 Day House Farm, his wife's father. The faint, adorable 
 Cicely may be a compound or his ideal country maid. 
 As in ' The Amateur Poacher,' his characters are not 
 meant to be completed, and they are drawn in his most 
 genial mood, so that they are naturally idyllic. They are 
 met by accident in their farms or fields ; they talk and 
 stroll together ; and then the brooks and birds and fields 
 insensibly steal upon the human figures. Aaron, with 
 the old-fashioned wallet on his back, is John Brown the 
 milker, or perhaps Abner Webb. Old Aaron is Job 
 Brown, the man of the little Coate shop. The hedge- 
 carpenter and cobbler who used the bacon for soling 
 boots is Thomas Smith — or ' John Smith ' — who worked 
 at Day House Farm. The flint-haulier was one 
 Stephen Walker of Chisledon. Here is Mrs. Jefferies at 
 * Round about a Great Estate. 
 
 i 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 141 
 
 her cheese-making ; here are mills and millers ; and 
 Jefferies himself delighting in throwing trees ; ' The Sun ' 
 at Coate ; the ' Hodson Ground '; and his favourite ballad 
 of Dowsabell. To judge from a reference in ' Cuckoo 
 Fields,' he had revisited Coate in 1879 at about the time 
 when the farmhouse and lands were sold. But there is 
 no trace of that in the gossip about Hilary : 
 
 ' If you should be visiting Okebourne Chace, and any 
 question should arise, whether of horses, dog, or gun, you 
 are sure to be referred to Hilary. Hilary knows all 
 about it : he is the authority thereabout on all matters 
 concerning game. Is it proposed to plant fresh covers ? 
 Hilary's opinion is asked. Is it proposed to thin out some 
 of the older trees ? What does Hilary say ? 
 
 ' It is a fact that people really believe no part of a 
 partridge is ever taken away after being set before him. 
 Neither bones nor sinews remain : so fond is he of the 
 brown bird. Having eaten the breast, and the juicy leg 
 and the delicate wing, he next proceeds to suck the bones ; 
 for game to be thoroughly enjoyed should be eaten like 
 a mince-pie, in the fingers. There is always one bone 
 with a sweeter flavour than the rest, just at the joint 
 or fracture : it varies in every bird, according to the 
 chance of cooking, but, having discovered it, put it aside 
 for further and more strict attention. Presently he 
 begins to grind up the bones in his strong teeth, com- 
 mencing with the smallest. His teeth are not now so 
 powerful as when in younger days he used to lift a sack 
 of wheat with them, or the full milking bucket up to the 
 level of the copper in the dairy. Still, they gradually 
 reduce the slender skeleton. The feat is not so difficult 
 if the bird has been weU hung:i. . . . 
 
 ' As we sat in his house one evening, there grew upon 
 our ears a peculiar sound, a humming deep bass, some- 
 what resembling the low notes of a piano with a pressure 
 on the pedal. It increased and became louder, coming 
 from the road which passed the house ; it was caused by 
 a very large flock of sheep driven slowly. The individual 
 
142 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 " baa " of each lamb was so mixed, as it were, uith the 
 bleat of its fellow that the swelling sound took a strange 
 mysterious tone ; a voice that seemed to speak of trouble, 
 and perplexity, and anxiety for rest. Hilary, as a 
 farmer, must of course go out to see whose they were, and 
 I went with him ; but before we reached the garden gate 
 he turned back, remarking, " It's Johnson's flock ; I know 
 the tang of his tankards." The flat-shaped bells hung 
 on a sheep's neck are called tankards ; and Hilary' could 
 distinguish one flock from another b}' the var^'ing notes 
 of their bells.' * 
 
 There is much masterly gossip, ■with a sensuous qualit\' 
 in the words and sound of it, beyond anj^thing he had yet 
 written. The delicious quiet of its best cannot be excelled. 
 When the subject of the moment is baking bread in a 
 brick oven, the writing is at one with that sweet toil 
 itself : 
 
 ' They still baked a batch of bread occasionally, but not 
 all that w^as required. Cicely superintended the baking, 
 passing the barm through a sieve with a wisp of clean 
 hay in it. The hay takes off any sourness, and insures 
 it being perfectly sweet. She knew when the oven was 
 hot enough by the gauge-brick : this particular brick, 
 as the heat increased, became spotted with white, and 
 when it had turned quite white the oven was ready. The 
 wood embers were raked out with the scraper, and the 
 malkin, being wetted, cleaned out the ashes. " Thee 
 looks like a gurt malkin " is a common term of reproach 
 among the poor folk — meaning a bunch of rags on the 
 end of a stick. We went out to look at the oven ; and 
 then Mrs. Luckett made me taste her black-currant gin, 
 which was very good. Presently we went into the 
 orchard to look at the first apple-tree out in bloom. 
 While there a magpie flew across the meadow, and as I 
 watched it Mrs. Luckett advised me to turn my back 
 and not to look too long in that direction. " For," said 
 she, " one magpie is good luck, but two mean sorrow ; and 
 • Round about a Great Estate. 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 143 
 
 if you should see three — goodness ! — something awful 
 might happen." '* 
 
 Or again : 
 
 ' Just outside the palings of the courtyard at Luckett's 
 Place, in front of the dadry, was a line of damson and 
 plum-trees standing in a narrow patch bordered by a 
 miniature box-hedge. The thrushes were always search- 
 ing about in this box, which was hardly high enough to 
 hide them, for the snails which they found there. They 
 broke the shells on the stone flags of the garden path 
 adjacent, and were often so intently occupied in the box 
 as to seem to fly up from under the very feet of anyone 
 who passed. 
 
 ' Under the damson-tree the first white snowdrops 
 came, and the crocuses, whose yellow petals often 
 appeared over the snow, and presently the daffodils and 
 the beautiful narcissus. There were cowslips and prim- 
 roses, too, which the boys last year had planted upside 
 down, that they might come up variegated. The earliest 
 violet was gathered there, for the comer was enclosed on 
 three sides, and somehow the sunshine fell more genially 
 in that untrimmed spot than in formal gardens where it 
 is courted. Against the house a pear was trained, and 
 opened its white bloom the first of all ; in its shelter the 
 birds built their nests. The chaffinches called cheerfully 
 on the plum-trees, and sang in the early morning. When 
 the apples bloomed, the goldfinches visited the same 
 trees at least once a day. 
 
 ' A damask rose opened its single petals, the sweetest- 
 scented of all the roses : there were a few strawberries 
 under the wall of the house ; by-and-by the pears above 
 enlarged, and the damsons were coated with bloom. On the 
 tall plum-trees hung the large purplish-red plums : upon 
 shaking the tree, one or two came down with a thud. The 
 branches of the damsons depended so low, looking, as it 
 were, right into the court, and pressing the fruit against 
 your very face as you entered, that you could not choose 
 
 ♦ Round about a Great Estate. 
 
144 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 but take some when it was ripe. A blue-painted barrel 
 churn stood by the door ; young Aaron turned it in the 
 morning, while the finches called in the plum-trees, but 
 now and then not all the strength of his sturdy shoulders 
 nor patient hours of turning could " fetch " the butter, 
 for a witch had been busy. 
 
 ' Sometimes, on entering the dairy in the familiar 
 country way, you might find Cicely, now almost come to 
 womanhood, at the cheese-tub. As she bent over it, her 
 rounded arms, bare nearly to the shoulder, were laved 
 in the white milk. It must have been from the dairy 
 that Poppaea learned to bathe in milk, for Cicely's arms 
 shone white and smooth, with the gleam of a perfect skin. 
 But Mrs. Luckett would never let her touch the salt, 
 which will ruin the hands. Cicely, however, who would 
 do something, turned the cheeses in the cheese-room 
 alone. Taking one corner of the clean cloth in her teeth, 
 in a second, by some dexterous sleight of hand, the 
 heavy cheese was over, though ponderous enough to puzzle 
 many a man, especially as it had to come over gently, 
 that the shape might not be injured. 
 
 ' She did it without the least perceptible exertion. At 
 the moment of the turn, when the weight must have been 
 felt, there was no knot of muscle visible on her arm. That 
 is the difference ; for 
 
 " When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw," 
 
 the muscles of the man's limb knot themselves and stand 
 out in bold relief. The smooth contour of Cicely's arm 
 never varied. Mrs. Luckett, talking about cheese as we 
 watched Cicely one morning, said people's taste had 
 much altered ; for she understood they were now fond of 
 a foreign sort that was full of holes. The old saying was 
 that bread should be full of holes, cheese should have 
 none. Just then Hilary entered, and completed the 
 triad by adding that ale should make you see double. 
 
 ' So he called for the brown jug, and he and I had a 
 glass. On my side of the jug stood a sportsman in 
 
From a daguerreotype. 
 
 ELIZABETH JEFFERIES, 
 the mother of Richard Jefferies. 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 145 
 
 breeches and gaiters, his gun presented, and ever in the 
 act to fire : his dog pointed, and the birds were flying 
 towards Hilary. Though rude in design, the scene was 
 true to nature and the times : from the buttons on the 
 coat to the long barrel of the gun, the details were 
 accurate, and nothing improved to suit the artist's fancy. 
 To me these old jugs and mugs and bowls have a deep 
 and human interest, for you can seem to see and know 
 the men who drank from them in the olden days. 
 
 ' Now, a tall Worcester vase, with all its elegance and 
 gilding, though it may be valued at £5,000, lacks that 
 sympathy, and may please the eye, but does not touch 
 the heart. For it has never shared in the jovial feast 
 nor comforted the weary ; the soul of man has never 
 communicated to it some of its own subtle essence. But 
 this hollow bowl whispers back the genial songs that 
 were shouted over it a hundred years ago. On the 
 ancient Grecian pottery, too, the hunter with his spear 
 chases the boar or urges his hounds after the flying deer ; 
 the women are dancing, and you can almost hear the 
 notes of the flute. These things were part of their daily 
 life ; these are no imaginary pictures of imaginary and 
 impossible scenes : they are simply scenes in which every- 
 one took part. So I think that the old English jugs 
 and mugs and bowls are true art, with something of the 
 antique classical spirit in them, for truly you can read 
 the hearts of the folk for whom they were made. . . .'* 
 
 The blissful ease and sincerity of these things are too 
 near perfection for questions to be asked about Jefferies' 
 education in art. In his visit to Tibbald, the miller, when 
 they talk about the millstones and ' the care, the skill, 
 the forethought, and the sense/of just proportion ' of the 
 millwright, he shows again how he regrets that machinery, 
 in destroying the handicraft, has taken away yet another 
 means of culture from the countryman. 
 
 The genial mood of this period has brought it about 
 that, although the book is crammed with odds and ends 
 
 * Round about a Great Estate. 
 
 10 
 
146 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 of local lore, it is as easy to read as a hedge of hazel and 
 oak and thorn and maple and dogwood and brier is to be 
 walked along ; and ' A Farmer of the Olden Times,' for 
 example, a picture of Uncle Jonathan at the Idovers, 
 about 1810, is a picture easy and mellow in treatment, 
 fine in detail, which makes it absurd to speak with any- 
 thing but respect of Jefferies' eye and feeling for humanity. 
 When in 1887 he lay dying, and writing — dictating, I 
 should say — his introduction to the ' Natural History 
 of Selborne,' he regretted that Gilbert White had left 
 the human life of his parish almost untouched. Against 
 Jefferies no such charge can be brought, and I cannot 
 think that White would have left us a more lively and 
 various scene had he taken the time for painting it 
 out of his long placid life. In these four books, from 
 ' The Gamekeeper ' to ' The Great Estate,' for almost 
 the first time in English literature a pure countryman 
 who is nothing but a countryman reveals his life and 
 neighbourhood. No man could be neglected who had 
 so much knowledge which it is impossible to acquire 
 by effort and time alone ; his power of showing the 
 joy in things, and of making them a means to joy, gives 
 him stni higher claims. Thus, at his best, he writes as if 
 his hand had in it part of that spirit which builds the 
 hills and lights the stars over them ; in his veins are the 
 saps of oak and ash and elm, the blood of things that run 
 and fly and creep. Like Constable, he might have said : 
 * I love every stile and stump and lane in the village ; 
 as long as I am able to hold a brush I shall never cease 
 to paint them.' 
 
 Though published in 1884, ' Red Deer ' belongs to the 
 same class as these four books. In June, 1882, Jefferies 
 was on Exmoor, watching the red-deer, trout-fishing, and 
 walking by Exe and Barle. ' Red Deer ' and some of 
 the essays in ' The Life of the Fields ' and ' Field and 
 Hedgerow ' were among the results. He seems not to 
 have gone farther to fulfil his youthful dream of Arthurian 
 Cornwall. Jefferies himself says of the book that ' it is 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 147 
 
 in the same style as " The Gamekeeper." '* It is, he says, 
 ' a minute account of the natural history of the wild deer 
 of Exmoor and of the mode of hunting them. I went 
 all over Exmoor a short while since on foot in order to 
 see the deer for myself ; and in addition I had the advan- 
 tages of getting full information from the huntsman 
 himself and from others who have watched the deer for 
 twenty years past. The chase of the wild stag is a bit 
 out of the life of the fifteenth century brought down to 
 our own times. Nothing has interested me so much, and 
 I contemplate going down again. In addition, there are 
 in the MS. a number of Somerset poaching tricks, which 
 were explained to me by gamekeepers and by a land- 
 owner there.' He points out that there are no competitors 
 in the field ; and ' as Somerset and Devon are annually 
 visited by some thousands of people for trout-fishing (I 
 was trout-fishing there lately), hunting, and the scenery, 
 I thought a book on the deer — which they all inquire 
 about — and full of local colour would be certain of some 
 sale, not only one year, but perhaps several seasons in 
 succession.' It is, in fact, one of the most readable 
 sporting treatises that exists, if treatise it may be called, 
 in spite of the fact that no sportsman would go to it for 
 information. It is of all Jefferies' books the most orderly, 
 consistent, and complete, if we exclude the make-weight 
 of two chapters at the end. Having set himself to write 
 a book on an attractive but little-known subject, he 
 became a reporting journalist again, and subdued himself 
 to the subject to such purpose that he seems to be the 
 docile gamekeeper's friend again — when, for example, 
 he writes : 
 
 ' The way to kill those birds [magpies] is to hang up a 
 dead lamb, poisoned, in a tree ; they tear the flesh, and 
 are destroyed by the poison it has absorbed. . . . Owls 
 are very numerous in the covers. Wood-owls or brown- 
 owls, as they are indifferently called, are considered by 
 the keepers destructive to game, especially to young 
 
 * In a letter to C. J. Longman, August 22, 1883. 
 
 10 — 2 
 
148 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 rabbits. . . . They will take a leveret. ... To draw 
 an owl from his nest in a hollow tree is not a pleasant 
 task, even with a glove on ; he will often manage to get 
 his sharp claws into the wrist. The way is to seize his 
 head and crush it, killing him instantly, for an owl's head 
 is soft, and can be crushed easily. . . . Buzzards are 
 sometimes shot, and are now worth something to sell to 
 collectors.'* 
 
 For the time being he has evidently entered into the 
 feelings of the game preserver and gamekeeper, and ' the 
 joy of life ' and even the facts about the wood-owls' 
 diet have passed out of mind. Nevertheless, he attains 
 to the opinion that ' too severe punishment ' of poachers 
 is responsible for their violence. 
 
 Jefferies has mastered his material, and amid all the 
 technique of an ancient and exclusive sport is never dull. 
 The landscape is suggested in its breadth and with just 
 enough detail, and it makes a comprehensible setting to 
 the whole. Only once does he pause in what was prob- 
 ably a rapidly written book to satisfy the exquisite 
 curiosity of his eye, when he has to speak of ' the ruddy 
 golden coat of the warrantable deer,' with the bright sun- 
 light shining on it ' so that the colour seemed unsteady, 
 or as if it was visibly emanating and flowing forth in 
 undulations. . . . There is an unsteadiness of surface 
 as if it came a little towards you, and was wavy.' The 
 writing, very careless in one or two places, is suited to 
 its purpose ; it never shines, but runs comfortably forward 
 with narrative, discussion, explanation, and pictures such 
 as this : 
 
 ' There is no more beautiful creature than a stag in 
 his pride of antler, his coat of ruddy gold, his grace of 
 form and motion. He seems the natural owner of the 
 ferny coombes, the oak woods, the broad slopes of heather. 
 They belong to him, and he steps upon the sward in 
 lordly mastership. The land is his, and the hills, the 
 sweet streams, and rocky glens. He is infmitely more 
 
 ♦ Red Deer, 
 
FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS 149 
 
 natural than the cattle and sheep that have strayed into 
 his domains. For some inexplicable reason, although 
 they too are in reality natural, when he is present they 
 look as if they had been put there and were kept there 
 by artificial means. They do not, as painters say, shade 
 in with the colours and shape of the landscape. He is 
 as natural as an oak, or a fern, or a rock itself. He 
 is earth-born — autochthon — and holds possession by 
 descent. Utterly scorning control, the walls and hedges 
 are nothing to him — he roams where he chooses, as fancy 
 leads, and gathers the food that pleases him. . . .'* 
 
 For its subject, its adequate statement and description 
 of matters even now little touched by books, and for 
 its author, ' Red Deer ' may long be remembered ; but 
 among his works it is something of a tour de force, and 
 is almost the only one which might be well liked and yet 
 not invite the reader to any of the others ; and in spite 
 of the advantage of unity which he gains from a well- 
 defined subject, it hardly makes us regret that he did 
 not oftener forsake the essay form, with all its encourage- 
 ment of looseness and irrelevance. 
 
 * Red Deer. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 'NATURE NEAR LONDON' 
 
 When he had written * The Gamekeeper ' and its three 
 companion books, Jefferies had all but exhausted his 
 notes of Coate Farm and the surrounding country ; he 
 had made a mental retrogression in order to use them 
 more vividly. When he writes about that county again 
 it is nearly always as one who, having travelled to a 
 distant city of the mind, can never return. His memories 
 of Wiltshire are inexhaustible ; but ' Wood Magic ' and 
 ' Bevis ' are not memories as were the earlier books. 
 The Surbiton country definitely appeared in ' Wild Life,' 
 and no doubt his observations there helped him in the 
 other books of that time ; but it was when he had emptied 
 his Wiltshire notebooks that he began to use chiefly 
 those of Surbiton. Parts of ' Nature near London ' were 
 written in 1881 ; so, too, was ' The Coming of Summer,' 
 and perhaps ' The Spring of the Year ' ; the material is 
 clearly taken from 1877 and the following years. And 
 not only is the material new, but the eye that sees and 
 the mind that broods over it is changed. The old, simpler 
 exuberance of ' The Poacher ' is lost. Thoughts have 
 troubled and checked it ; his health is finally to give 
 way in 1881 ; and the new surroundings are not a part 
 of him, as were the old, and he seems to see them more as 
 strange pictures — as pictures which his brooding and 
 solitary mind more and more informs ; the labourers 
 and farmers and keepers who used to move about the 
 Wiltshire fields have disappeared, and the landscape is 
 
 150 
 
' NATURE NEAR LONDON ' 151 
 
 rather inhuman for a time, for in Surrey he knew nobody, 
 though he saw ploughman and milker and harvester. 
 But he had to write, and the demand for his short country 
 papers having been established, he naturally kept to that 
 desultory form. He had made the discovery that it was 
 not necessary to go far into the country ' to find wild 
 birds and animals in sufficient numbers to be pleasantly 
 studied.' The subject would appeal to a London editor 
 and audience. The Standard, which had printed ' Hodge 
 and His Masters,' printed the papers collected under the 
 title of ' Nature near London ' in 1883. 
 
 In these papers he is no longer the sportsman, and not 
 obviously the countryman. He is the man of sensitive 
 eyes and ears, the artist in a narrow sense. He describes 
 a place, or more often a series of places, along the paths 
 and roads of a day's walk at a particular season, with 
 digressions, as memory or the need of comparison prompts 
 him, to other seasons and places. There is no aim at 
 exact unity and consistency of subject and treatment. 
 He is always the walker, moving about and taking notes. 
 It is doubtful if the most careful resident observer could 
 follow him accurately in half the papers, which resemble 
 the record of an actual walk, closed up so as to avoid 
 barren stretches, and of whatever is seen and thought in 
 the course of the walk. In ' Heathlands ' the movements 
 of a colony of ants fill half the space given to the fir and 
 heath of Oxshott. This increasing attention to small 
 things may have come the more rapidly for his inability 
 to walk as far as he used to do. He was always a careful 
 watcher of the skies, and the Thames Valley and the 
 neighbourhood of London gave his eyes a fuller harvest 
 than ever. He hardly found a sufficient outlet for his 
 knowledge of the atmosphere, its colour and form. 
 Ruskin surpasses him in his effects, and yet has not 
 Jefferies' exquisite eye ; with no other writer can there 
 be any comparison for variety and delicacy in description 
 of the coloured air. Some papers, such as ' Nutty 
 Autumn,' ' Wheatfields,' and 'A Barn,' have a unity of 
 
152 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 feeling and colour, and though they are not meant to 
 compete with painting, they have the effect of a rich, 
 humanized landscape. But it is the seasonableness of 
 the gossip which gives whatever unity they have to the 
 papers that are without a definite subject, such as ' Trees 
 about Town,' ' Kew Gardens,' ' A London Trout.' Thus 
 the repetition which is noticeable in ' The Coming of 
 Summer ' and ' Round a London Copse ' is inevitable. 
 Most are for the Londoners at whose doors these things 
 were being discovered. They inform ; they prove the 
 truth of his assertion that ' the quantity and variety of 
 life in the hedges was really astonishing ' ; and to mainly 
 urban minds they may long be pleasant — ' The River,' 
 ' Nutty Autumn,' and ' A Barn ' most deservedly so — 
 for they make a charming inventory even when, as in 
 ' The Spring of the Year,' they are but notes and dates 
 and place-names, such as Long Ditton Road, Red Lion 
 Lane, Hogsmill Brook, Cockrow Hill, Southborough and 
 Worcester Parks, Hook, Horton, and the footpath from 
 Roxby Farm to Chessington. Now and then, even in 
 these informing papers, Jefferies escapes to write of the 
 strength and glory of the spring sun : ' Joy in life ; joy 
 in life. The ears listen and want more : the eyes are 
 gratified with gazing, and desire yet further ; the nostrils 
 are filled with the sweet odours of flower and sap. The 
 touch, too, has its pleasures, dallying with leaf and 
 flower. Can you not almost grasp the odour-laden air 
 and hold it in the hollow of the hand ?' Or he remembers 
 the greenfinches' love-making in the elms. Probably he 
 took the advice which he gives in ' Footpaths,' ' Always 
 get over a stile.' 
 
 Where he catalogues, it is with an eye more bent upon 
 the finest detail of form and colour than before. In 
 ' A Brook ' he tells how he uses his sight : ' Even the 
 deepest, darkest water (not, of course, muddy) yields 
 after a while to the eye. Half close the eyelids, and while 
 gazing into it let your intelligence rather wait upon the 
 corners of the eye than on the glance you cast straight 
 
• NATURE NEAR LONDON ' 153 
 
 forward. For some reason when thus gazing the edge 
 of the eye becomes exceedingly sensitive, and you are 
 conscious of slight motion or of a thickness — not a 
 defined object, but a thickness which indicates an objeot 
 — which is otherwise quite invisible.'* Some of his 
 minute descriptions read like instructions to an artist, 
 and they prove a busy eye and nothing more ; others, 
 again, with an excellent curiosity and patient attempt 
 to record visible things not noticed before, may call for 
 the admiration of the humble, but can please few — as, 
 for example, in a description like this of the waves of an 
 eddy : 
 
 ' Now, walking behind the waves that roll away from 
 you, dark shadowy spots fluctuate to and fro in the trough 
 of the water. Before a glance can define its shape, the 
 shadow elongates itself from a spot to an oval, the oval 
 melts into another oval, and reappears afar off. When, 
 too, in flood-time, the hurrying current seems to respond 
 more sensitively to the shape of the shallows and the 
 banks beneath, there boils up from below a ceaseless 
 succession of irregular circles, as if the water there ex- 
 panded from a centre, marking the verge of its outflow 
 with bubbles and raised lines upon the surface. 'f 
 
 But in ' A Barn ' this observation has fallen into its 
 place, and has made a real picture, where there is 
 no detail impeding the whole, nor any struggle with 
 dead words, as in the piece just quoted. ' Wheat- 
 fields,' too, is beautiful in the exact detail and in the 
 suffused spirit of the whole. * Sweet summer,' he sa^^s, 
 ' is but just long enough for the happy loves of the 
 larks.' How tender he is now in speaking of the birds, 
 even of the sparrows ! ' I like sparrows,' he says, in 
 ' The Spring of the Year, 'J ' and am always glad to hear 
 their chirp ; the house seems still and quiet after the 
 nesting-time, when they leave us for the wheatfields, 
 where they stay the rest of the summer. What happy 
 
 * ' A Brook,' Nature near London. f ' The River,' ibid. 
 
 % Longman's Magazine, June, 1894. 
 
154 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 days they have among the ripening corn !' Actually, a 
 farmer's son who thinks of the happiness of sparrows in the 
 corn ! ' Nutty Autumn ' has some learned and delightful 
 colour notes. Artists may treasure them ; they may 
 teach others how to see ; but notes they remain, in spite 
 of the conclusion : 
 
 ' The autumn itself is nutty, brown, hard, frosty, and 
 sweet. Nuts are hard, frosts are hard ; but the one is 
 sweet, and the other braces the strong. Exercise often 
 wearies in the spring, and in the summer heats is scarcely 
 to be faced ; but in autumn, to those who are well, every 
 step is bracing and hardens the frame, as the sap is 
 hardening in the trees.'* 
 
 It was written in the autumn of 1881, and hints that he 
 was not one of those who are well. To this class of notes 
 belong the opening and other parts of ' The River,' the 
 end of ' The Crows,' and the description of the London 
 atmosphere floating out to the country before a north-east 
 wind. He writes, hi ' The River ': 
 
 ' There is a slight but perceptible colour in the atmo- 
 sphere of summer. It is not visible close at hand, nor 
 always where the light falls strongest, and if looked at 
 too long it sometimes fades away. But over gorse and 
 heath, in the warm hollows of wheatfields, and round 
 about the rising ground, there is something more than air 
 alone. It is not mist, nor the hazy vapour of autumn, 
 nor the blue tints that come over distant hills and 
 woods. 
 
 ' As there is bloom upon the peach and grape, so this 
 is the bloom of summer. The air is ripe and rich, full 
 of the emanations, the perfume, froip corn and flower 
 and leafy tree. In strictness the term will not, of course, 
 be accurate, yet by what other word can this appearance 
 in the atmosphere be described but as a bloom ? Upon 
 a still and sunlit summer afternoon it may be seen over 
 the osier-covered islets in the Thames immediately above 
 Teddington Lock.'f 
 
 • ' Nutty Autumn,' Nature near London. t 'The River,' ibid. 
 
' NATURE NEAR LONDON ' 155 
 
 Curiosity seems in places to outstrip his sense of 
 beauty ; he ceases to be an artist, and is perhaps not yet 
 a scientist. There is much curiosity in ' A Brook ' and 
 
 * A London Trout.' But the trout which his fond eyes 
 at length disentangled from the forms of water and weed 
 in the Hogsmill brook, and his watching, justify the 
 curiosity. He watched it for weeks, months, for four 
 seasons, and took great precautions that no one should 
 find out what he watched ; ' if anyone was following me, 
 or appeared likely to peer over the parapet, I carelessly 
 struck the top of the wall with my stick in such a manner 
 that it should project, an action sufficient to send the 
 fish under the arch '; and the river was colder, darker, and 
 less pleasant when it had gone. He has begun to think 
 about animals not merely as objects of study, or as 
 curious objects stuck prettily about the world. He 
 complains of ' staring eyes, heads continually turned from 
 side to side, starting at everything, sometimes bare places 
 on the shoulders,' when droves of cattle go by. In ' Trees 
 about To\\Ti ' he describes a platform, inaccessible to cats, 
 for the feeding of birds in winter. He detests the bird- 
 catchers who haunt suburban lanes. ' Pity it is,' he adds, 
 
 * that anyone can be found to purchase the product of 
 their brutality.' Some time later, in ' The Open Air,' 
 he expresses the opinion that all wild-life should be 
 encouraged and protected on the Thames, ' morally the 
 property of the greatest city in the world.' And yet it 
 is twaddle, he thinks, to fine a boy for taking a bird's 
 egg. It is hard, indeed, to say on what principle he 
 thinks protection wise. It is more likely that, instead 
 of a principle, he has three prejudices — love of individual 
 freedom, love of untouched Nature, and hatred of ' pre- 
 servation by beadle '; and they are very strong, for though 
 he is a trout-fisher, he says in one place that he would 
 be glad to see back again the creatures which preserva- 
 tion has destroyed. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 'WOOD MAGIC AND 'BEVIS' 
 
 Twice again before he left Surbiton Jefferies returned 
 to his native place in books : ' Wood Magic ' appeared in 
 1881, ' Bevis ' in 1882. In ' Wood Magic ' the httle boy 
 Bevis talks with the birds, the animals, and the butter- 
 flies, with the wind also ; and they answer him, often in 
 a manner implying that they have many experiences, 
 interests, and ideas in common with him. Bevis, petu- 
 lant, adventurous, impatient, and yet dreamy, in the 
 fields about Coate Farm, is a very real child ; and to some 
 it is a shock to pass from him to the kingdoms of the 
 animals, with their human ways, their councils, their 
 scandals, their plots, their wars and loves. Perhaps it 
 is a little surprising that Jefferies should apparently have 
 made so little effort to present the lively and fascinating 
 inhumanity of the animals, and some hint of the difference 
 between their motives and their gods and ours. It is less 
 surprising when we remember that he is writing for chil- 
 dren and as a child. He does not wantonly condescend to 
 the child, but returns naturally to the values which animals 
 had in the mingled real and fantastic of his own child- 
 hood. It may be due as much to education as to nature, 
 but it is true that the child is heartily anthropomorphic. 
 I have heard a child say, like Lucretius before him, that 
 the sun in the desert spaces of the sky feeds upon the 
 blue. The beasts appear to be changelings, emancipated, 
 to their gain as well as loss, from some human necessities. 
 It is in their four-lcggedness, or their wingedness, or their 
 habit of staying out all day and all night, that they seem 
 
 156 
 
• WOOD MAGIC ' AND ' BE VIS ' 157 
 
 chiefly to differ from children. Wings, feathers, fur, tails, 
 must often seem as mere disguises ; the lack of English 
 speech a mere lack, as it were an accident. In ' Wood 
 Magic ' Jefferies, or Bevis, makes good this deficiency. 
 If he is very far from saying the truest things about 
 this immeasurable commonwealth of various life in which 
 we have yet to learn our offices, he does give animal lives 
 a human reality. He has fallen, in fact, into just such 
 an ambuscade as awaits the allegorist, and it may be 
 said of his birds and beasts, as a rule, what was said by 
 Coleridge of some of the characters in ' Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress ' — that they are ' real persons with nicknames.' 
 More could not be expected if the treatment of the dogs 
 at Coate Farm was like that of Pan, the spaniel, in 
 * Wood Magic '; it is not exceptionally brutal, but it is 
 callous and off-hand. 
 
 To all who can return to the attitude of the folk-story 
 towards animals, regarding them as curious, often clever, 
 sometimes malicious, diminutive human beings, the book 
 is full of delight. The names of the birds — Kapchack, 
 the magpie ; Tchink, the chaffinch ; Choo Hoo, the wood- 
 pigeon ; Cloctaw, the jackdaw ; Te-te, the tomtit — are 
 charming, and it was a stroke of genius to make the 
 starlings the royal couriers. Prettily, too, are the charac- 
 teristic notes of the birds introduced into their speeches : 
 
 ' " I too-whoo should like to know if Tchack-tchack is 
 coming," said the wood-pigeon. . . . 
 
 ' " I think, think, the owl is very stupid not to begin," 
 said the chaffinch.'* 
 
 Nor is the book really misleading. It does not, at 
 least, underestimate the animal's intelligence and interest 
 in life. If it humanizes, it also throws many a flash 
 upon Nature's independence of humanity ; and it has 
 the great merit that for the time being a large tract of 
 country, hill and wood and field and water, is the property 
 of magpies, jays, wood-pigeons, hawks, rooks, and missel- 
 thrushes, of weasel, squirrel, fox, and rat, instead of 
 * Wood Magic. 
 
158 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 squires and tradesmen ; and over all this land, in defiance 
 of laws of trespass, they fly and run and creep, careless 
 of men, though admitting ' dear little Sir Bevis ' to the 
 council because he has power over fire and has a cannon. 
 That is a generous conception, with many delightful 
 results. And if the birds are usually human beings 
 with beaks and wings, one of the grasshoppers at least 
 is pretty clearly Jefferies himself, answering Bevis, 
 who has asked why all the birds go down to bathe on 
 Midsummer Day : 
 
 |, ' " Why ?" repeated the grasshopper ; " I never heard 
 anybody say anything about that before. There is 
 always a great deal of talking going on, for the trees have 
 nothing else to do but to gossip with each other ; but 
 they never ask why. ..." 
 
 * " Why don't you hop straight ?" said Bevis 
 presently. . . . 
 
 ' " How very stupid you are !" said the grasshopper. 
 " If you go straight, of course you can only see just what 
 is under your feet ; but if you go first this way and then 
 that, then you see everything. You are nearly as silly 
 as the ants, who never see anything beautiful all their 
 lives. Be sure you have nothing to do with the ants, 
 Bevis ; they are a mean, wretched, miserly set, quite 
 contemptible and beneath notice. Now, I go every- 
 where aU round the field, and spend my time searching 
 for lovely things ; sometimes I find flowers, and some- 
 times the butterflies come down into the grass and tell 
 me the news ; and I am so fond of the sunshine, I sing 
 to it all day long. Tell me, now, is there anything so 
 beautiful as the sunshine and the blue sky, and the green 
 grass, and the velvet and blue and spotted butterflies, 
 and the trees which cast such a pleasant shadow and 
 talk so sweetly, and the brook which is always running ? 
 I should like to listen to it for a thousand years." ' * 
 
 The Reed is even more like Jefferies : 
 
 ' There is no why at all. We have been listening to the 
 ♦ Wood Mai^c. 
 
• WOOD MAGIC ' AND ' BEVIS ' 159 
 
 brook, me and my family, for ever so many thousands of 
 years, and though the brook has been talking and singing 
 all that time, I never heard him ask why about anything. 
 And the great oak, where you went to sleep, has been 
 there, goodness me, nobody can tell how long, and every 
 one of his leaves (he has had millions of them) have all 
 been talking, but not one of them ever asked why ; nor 
 does the sun, nor the stars, which I see every night shining 
 in the clear water down there, so that I am quite sure there 
 is no why at all.'* 
 
 This impression of the great age, the happiness, the 
 inhumanity of Nature (or the unnaturalness of man), is 
 sometimes made with the force of a proverb or a folk-tale. 
 The irony, too, is often admirable, and I seem to see in 
 Kapchack, the omnipotent magpie, the crooked shadow of 
 a very august personage : 
 
 ' " It is," says the Toad, " a very dangerous thing to 
 talk about Kapchack, and everybody is most terribly 
 afraid of him ; he is so full of malice." 
 
 * " Why ever do they let him be King ?" said Be vis. 
 " I would not, if I were them. Why ever do they put 
 up with him, and his cruelty and greediness ? I will tell 
 the thrush and the starling not to endure him any 
 longer." 
 
 ' " Pooh ! pooh !" said the Toad. " It is all very well 
 for you to say so, but you must excuse me for saying, my 
 dear Sir Bevis, that you really know very little about it. 
 The thrush and the starling would not understand what 
 you meant. The thrush's father always did as Kapchack 
 told him, and sang his praises, as I told you, and so did 
 his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and all his 
 friends and relations, these years and years past. So 
 that now the thrushes have no idea of there being no 
 Kapchack. . . ." 'f 
 
 And yet this Kapchack, who was supposed to be of un- 
 counted years, was really only a distant descendant of the 
 original Kapchack ; for each King tore out an eye from 
 
 * Wood Magic. -f- Ibid. 
 
i6o THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 his eldest son to make him hke himself, and thus ensure 
 his succession — the King never dies — among his un- 
 suspecting subjects. 
 
 In several places Jefferies' strong feeling about Fate is 
 expressed with a quaint intensity, as when the Squirrel 
 tells Bevis : 
 
 ' " Elms indeed are very treacherous, and I recommend 
 you to have nothing to do with them, dear. . . . He can 
 wait till you go under him, and then drop that big bough 
 on you. He has had that bough waiting to drop on some- 
 body for quite ten years. . . . Now, the reason the elms 
 are so dangerous is because they will wait so long till 
 somebody passes. Trees can do a great deal, I can tell 
 you ; why, I have known a tree, when it could not drop a 
 bough, fall down altogether when there was not a breath 
 of wind, nor any lightning, just to kill a cow or a sheep, 
 out of sheer bad temper." '* 
 
 The flint lies in wait to upset a cart ; the water lies in 
 wait, ' and if they stop swimming a minute they will be 
 drowned ' ; and ' if you climb up a tree, be sure and 
 remember to hold tight, and not forget, for the earth 
 will not forget, but will pull you down to it thump, 
 and hurt you very much.'t Here, too, is that denial 
 of time, born of his mystic trances, which was later to 
 give his mind such a range backward and forward in 
 eternity : 
 
 ' " My dear," said the brook, " that which has gone by, 
 whether it happened a second since, or a thousand years 
 since, is just the same ; there is no real division betwixt 
 you and the past. You people who live now have made 
 up all sorts of stupid, very stupid, stories, dear ; I hope 
 you will not believe them ; they tell you about time and all 
 that. Now there is no such thing as time, Bevis, my 
 love ; there never was any time, and there never will be ; 
 the sun laughs at it, even when he marks it on the sun- 
 dial. Yesterday was just a second ago, and so was ten 
 thousand years since, and there is nothing between you 
 ♦ IVood MagiC' + Ibid. 
 
* WOOD MAGIC • AND ' BEVIS ' i6i 
 
 and then ; there is no wall between you and then — 
 
 nothing at all, dear " And the brook sang so low and 
 
 thoughtfully that Bevis could not catch what he said, but 
 the tune was so sweet, and soft, and sad that it made him 
 keep quite still. While he was listening the kingfisher 
 came back and perched on the hatch, and Bevis saw his 
 ruddy neck and his blue wings. 
 
 ' " There is nothing between you and then," the brook 
 began again, " nothing at all, dear ; only some stories 
 which are not true ; if you will not believe me, look at the 
 sun ; but you cannot look at the sun, darling, it shines so 
 bright. It shines just the same, as bright and beautiful ; 
 cind the wind blows as sweet as ever, and I sparkle and 
 sing just the same, and you may drink me if you like ; and 
 the grass is just as green ; and the stars shine at night. 
 Oh, yes, Bevis dear, we are all here just the same, my 
 love, and all things are as bright and beautiful as ten 
 thousand times ten thousand years ago, which is no 
 longer since than a second. 
 
 ' " But your own people have gone away from us — that 
 is their own fault. I cannot think why they should do 
 so ; they have gone away from us, and they are no longer 
 happy. Bevis, they cannot understand our songs — they 
 sing stupid songs they have made up themselves, and 
 which they did not learn of us, and then, because they are 
 not happy, they say : ' The world is growing old.' But it 
 is not true, Bevis, the world is not old ; it is as young as 
 ever it was. Fling me a leaf — and now another. Do not 
 you forget me, Bevis ; come and see me now and then, and 
 throw twigs to me and splash me." '* 
 
 The quiet tune of that singing brook runs through all 
 of Jefferies' books. To taste of its flashing water is a 
 sacrament in ' The Story of My Heart ' ; the recollection 
 of it saddens him in his last writing because he fears it is 
 not heard of men ; not to hear it amidst the wild question- 
 ing, the sad despairs, the sadder hopes, of the auto- 
 biography is to have missed the joyous heart of his work. 
 
 * Wood Magic. 
 
 II 
 
i62 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 The last chapter, where Sir Bevis talks with the wind, 
 brings back the same thought in an even more prophetic 
 way. The wind tells him of the man in the tumulus on 
 the hill : 
 
 ' " He died about a minute ago, dear, just before you 
 came up the hill. If you were to ask the people who live 
 in the houses, where they will not let me in (they care- 
 fully shut out the sun too), they would tell you he died 
 thousands of years ago ; but they are foolish, very foolish. 
 It was hardly so long ago as yesterday. Did not the 
 brook tell you all about that ? 
 
 ' " Now this man, and all his people, used to love me 
 and drink me as much as ever they could all day long and 
 a great part of the night, and when they died they still 
 wanted to be with me, and so they were all buried on the 
 tops of the hills, and you will find these curious little 
 mounds everywhere on the ridges, dear, where I blow 
 along. There I come to them still, and sing through the 
 long dry grass, and rush over the turf, and I bring the 
 scent of the clover from the plain, and the bees come 
 humming along upon me. The sun comes, too, and the 
 rain. But I am here most ; the sun only shines by day, 
 and the rain only comes now and then. 
 
 * " But I am always here, day and night, winter and 
 summer. Drink me as much as you will, you cannot 
 drink me away ; there is always just as much of me left. 
 As I told you, the people who were buried in those little 
 mounds used to drink me, and oh ! how they raced along 
 the turf, dear ; there is nobody can run so fast now ; and 
 they leaped and danced, and sang and shouted. I loved 
 them as I love you, my darling ; there, sit dowTi and rest 
 on the thyme, dear, and I will stroke your hair and sing 
 to you. . . . 
 
 ' " There never was a yesterday," whispered the wind 
 presently, " and there never will be to-morrow. It is all 
 one long to-day. When the man in the hill was you were 
 too, and he still is now you are here ; but of these things 
 you will know when you are older, that is, if you will only 
 
• WOOD MAGIC ' AND ' BEVIS ' 163 
 
 continue to drink me. Come, dear, let us race again." So 
 the two went on and came to a hawthorn-bush, and Bevis, 
 full of mischief always, tried to slip away from the wind 
 round the bush, but the wind laughed and caught him. 
 
 ' A little farther and they came to the fosse of the old 
 camp. Bevis went down into the trench, and he and the 
 wind raced round along it as fast as ever they could go, till 
 presently he ran up out of it on the hill, and there was the 
 waggon underneath him, with the load well piled up now. 
 There was the plain, yellow with stubble ; the hills beyond 
 it and the blue valley just the same as he had left it. 
 
 ' As Bevis stood and looked down, the wind caressed 
 him, and said : " Good-bye, darling, I am going yonder, 
 straight across to the blue valley and the blue sky, where 
 they meet ; but I shall be back again when you come next 
 time. Now remember, my dear, to drink me — come up 
 here and drink me." 
 
 ' " Shall you be here ?" said Bevis. " Are you quite 
 sure you will be here ?" 
 
 ' " Yes," said the wund, " I shall be quite certain to be 
 here ; I promise you, love, I will never go quite away. 
 Promise me faithfully, too, that you will come up and 
 drink me, and shout and race and be happy." 
 
 ' " I promise," said Bevis, beginning to go down the 
 hill ; " good-bye, jolly old Wind." 
 
 ' " Good-bye, dearest," whispered the wind, as he went 
 across out towards the valley. As Bevis went down the 
 hill, a blue harebell, who had been singing farewell to 
 summer all the morning, called to him and asked him to 
 gather her and carry her home, as she would rather go with 
 him than stay now autumn was near, 
 
 ' Bevis gathered the harebell, and ran with the flower 
 in his hand down the hill, and as he ran the wild thyme 
 kissed his feet, and said : " Come again, Bevis, come 
 again." At the bottom of the hill the waggon was loaded 
 now ; so they lifted him up, and he rode home on the 
 broad back of the leader.'* 
 
 * Wood Ma^ic. 
 
 II — 2 
 
i64 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 It will be said that Jefferies is prolix, and so he is, and 
 most so in his best work, for prolixity is part of the result 
 of the divine impetus which took him to his highest levels. 
 Nor is it wholly a fault, since to uproot it would be to 
 take away much good that is inseparable from it. It is a 
 fault which he shares with three other countrymen, all 
 poets, Drayton, and Wither, and William Browne of 
 Tavistock ; and he shares, too, their hearty sweet- 
 ness. 
 
 In ' Bevis : The Story of a Boy ' the child has grown to 
 be twelve or fourteen years old. There is little or none of 
 the fancy in it which fills ' Wood Magic ' ; there is no 
 dwelling with pathos or humour or condescension on 
 boyhood, but a reconstruction of great tracts of it ; the 
 man who grew out of Bevis is revealed only in half a dozen 
 passages, where he describes at length some state of mind 
 from which the child speedily emerged, or where an adult, 
 artistic attitude has lured him into the picture of old 
 ' Jumps,' and into some landscape touches a little out of 
 keeping with the blitheness of the main part. Though his 
 business is with the adventures of the boys, Bevis and 
 Mark, he cannot help showing that his return to the 
 period of childhood is not due simply to the fact that he 
 has two children of his own. He has begun to weigh the 
 significance of early impressions, to connect them with 
 later ones. Except that he has given Coate Farm and 
 its owner an advance to greater size and riches, the 
 surroundings are those of Jefferies' own boyhood. The 
 boy Mark is his younger brother, Harry Jefferies, a robust 
 and daring boy, who afterwards went to America and 
 stayed there. Bevis, masterful, petulant, impatient, and 
 dreamy, is Jefferies in the main. 
 
 In the first chapter Bevis is making a raft out of a 
 packing-case ; having made it, he and Mark take turns 
 in poling it about the stream ; then, tiring of it, they 
 discover the New Sea : 
 
 ' " Let's go round the Longpond," said Bevis ; " we 
 have never been quite round it." 
 
' \\'00D MAGIC ' AND ' BEVIS ' 165 
 
 ' " So we will," said Mark. " But we shall not be back 
 to dinner." 
 
 * " As if travellers ever thought of dinner ! Of course, 
 we shall take our pro\'isions with us." 
 
 ' " Let's go and get our spears," said Mark. 
 ' " Let's take Pan," said Bevis. 
 
 * " Where is your old compass ?" said Mark. 
 
 ' " Oh, I know — and I must make a map ; wait a minute. 
 We ought to have a medicine chest ; the savages will 
 worry us for physic ; and very likely we shall have dreadful 
 fevers." 
 
 * " So we shall, of course ; but perhaps there are wonder- 
 ful plants to cure us, and we know them, and the savages 
 don't — there's sorrel." 
 
 ' " Of course, and we can nibble some hawthorn leaf." 
 
 ' " Or a stalk of wheat." 
 
 ' " Or some watercress." 
 
 ' " Or some nuts." 
 
 ' " No, certainly not ; they're not ripe," said Bevis, 
 " and unripe fruit is very dangerous in tropical countries." 
 
 ' " W^e ought to keep a diary," said Mark. " When we 
 go to sleep, who shall watch first, you or I ?" 
 
 ' " We'll light a fire," said Bevis. " That will frighten 
 the lions ; they will glare at us, but they can't stand fire. 
 You hit them on the head with a burning stick." 
 
 ' So they went in, and loaded their pockets with huge 
 double slices of bread-and-butter done up in paper, apples, 
 and the leg of a roast duck from the pantry. . . .'* 
 
 And in or on Coate Reservoir — or the * Longpond,' or 
 * New Sea ' — and on ' The Plain,' a great meadow of Day 
 House Farm that slopes down to its shores, they are to be 
 found all through the book. They learn to swim in it, they 
 fish in it, and ride on catamarans, and after fitting sails to an 
 old blue boat, with a pool of bilge-water, dead insects, nnd 
 willow-leaves at the bottom, they are free of many islands 
 and creeks. They organize a battle of Pharsalia with a 
 crowd of other boys on ' The Plain.' They discover the 
 * Bez'is : The Story of a Boy, 
 
1 66 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 unknown island of New Formosa, make a gun and pro- 
 vision their island hut, and there maroon themselves. 
 There is nothing incredible or on a fantastic scale in the 
 whole book, and if once the author's enjoyment had 
 flagged, the narrative must have gone down in the deeps of 
 dulness. No talk could be more real than the talk of these 
 boys ; the hurry, confidence, exuberance are to the life, 
 with no graces, no heroism, added. The description of 
 their games, their quarrels, their plots, their fishing, 
 swimming, sailing, skating, shooting, is equally real, the 
 observation so hearty and genuine that there is no dull 
 place. They want to cut down a willow, and have 
 wearied of the axe : 
 
 * " I know," said Mark, " we must make a fire, and 
 burn the tree. We are savages, you know, and that is 
 how they do it." 
 
 ' " How silly you are !" said Bevis. " We are not 
 savages, and I shall not play at that. We have just 
 discovered this river, and we are going do\vn it on our 
 raft ; and if we do not reach some place to-night, and 
 build a fort, very likely the savages will shoot us. I 
 believe I heard one shouting just now — there was some- 
 thing rustled, I am sure, in the forest." '* 
 
 Bevis and Mark have gone to bed. 
 
 * Suddenly Bevis started up on his arm. 
 
 * " Let's have a war," he said. 
 
 ' " That would be first-rate," said Mark ; " and have 
 a great battle !" 
 
 ' " An awful battle," said Bevis ; " the biggest and 
 most awful ever known." 
 
 ' " Like Waterloo ?" 
 
 ' " Pooh !" 
 
 ' " Agincourt ?" 
 
 ' " Pooh !" 
 
 * " Mai — Mai," said Mark, trying to think of Malplaquet. 
 ' " Oh, more than anything !" said Bevis. " Some- 
 body will have to write a history about it." 
 
 * Bevt's : The Story of a Boy. 
 
• WOOD MAGIC ' AND ' BEVIS * 167 
 
 * " Shall we wear armour ?" 
 
 ' " That would be bow-and-arrow time. Bows and 
 arrows don't make any banging." 
 
 ' " No more they do. It wants lots of banging and 
 smoke, else it's nothing." 
 
 * " No ; only chopping and sticking." 
 
 * " And smashing and yelling." 
 ' " No, and that's nothing." 
 
 * " Only if we have rifles," said Mark thoughtfully, 
 " you see, people don't see one another ; they are so far 
 off ; and nobody stands on a bridge and keeps back all the 
 enemy all by himself." 
 
 ' " And nobody has a triumph afterwards with elephants 
 and chariots, and paints his face vermilion." 
 
 ' " Let's have bow-and-arrow time," said Mark ; " it's 
 much nicer ; and you sell the prisoners for slaves and get 
 heaps of money, and do just as you like, and plough up 
 the cities that don't please you." 
 
 ' " Much nicer," said Bevis. " You very often kill all 
 the lot, and there's nothing silly. I shall be King Richard 
 and have a battle-axe — no, let's be the Normans !" 
 
 ' " Wouldn't King Arthur do ?" 
 
 * " No ; he was killed ; that would be stupid. I've a 
 great mind to be Charlemagne." 
 
 ' " Then I shall be Roland." 
 ' " No ; you must be a traitor." 
 
 * " But I want to fight on your side," said Mark. 
 
 ' " How many are there we can get to make up the 
 war ?" 
 
 * They consulted, and soon reckoned up fourteen or 
 fifteen. 
 
 ' " It will be jolly awful," said Mark. " There will be 
 heaps of slain." 
 
 Let's have Troy," said Bevis. 
 
 That's too slow," said Mark. " It lasted ten 
 years." 
 
 ' " Alexander the Great — let's see, whom did he 
 fight ?" 
 
 
i68 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ' " I don't know ; people nobody ever heard of — no- 
 body particular — Indians and Persians, and all that 
 sort." 
 
 ' " I know," said Bevis ; " of course ! I know. Of 
 course, I shall be Julius Caesar !" 
 
 ' " And I shall be Mark Antony." 
 
 * " And we will fight Pompey." 
 
 ' " But who shall be Pompey ?" said Mark. 
 
 * " Pooh ! there's Bill, and Wat, and Ted ; anybody 
 will do for Pompey." '* 
 
 The boys ' bathed in air and sunbeam, and gathered 
 years of health like flowers from the field.' Enterprise 
 and independence, high spirits, love of the open air, are to 
 be felt, if not learnt, in every chapter of the book. As a 
 boy's book — I speak under correction from boys — it has 
 no fault, except, perhaps, that the exactness and abund- 
 ance of detail is disproportionate in a work that has, alas ! 
 to end. It is too dramatic for an epic, and its movement 
 is confused, not to speak of its being shamefully inter- 
 rupted by the description of an anemone-leaf. 
 
 It is full of evidence of Jefferies not only as a boy, but 
 as a man. It marks an advance from the genial, easy 
 treatment of the Lucketts in ' Round about a Great 
 Estate ' towards the minuteness of ' Amaryllis.' The 
 landscape is finer than in any of his earlier books — for 
 example, the sunrise in chapter xlviii., where he says : 
 ' I do not know how any can slumber with this over them. 
 . . . Such moments are beyond the chronograph and any 
 measure of wheels ; the passing of one cog may be equal to 
 a century, for the mind has no time. . . . What an 
 incredible marvel it is that there are human creatures that 
 slumber threescore and ten years, and look down at the 
 clods, and then say : " We are old ; we have lived seventy 
 years." Seventy years ! The passing of one cog is 
 longer ; seven hundred times seventy years would not 
 equal the click of the tiniest cog while the mind was living 
 its own life. Sleep and clods, with the glory of the earth, 
 
 * Bevis : The Story of a Boy. 
 
' WOOD MAGIC ' AND ' BEVIS ' 169 
 
 and the sun, and the sea, and the endless ether around 
 us ! Incredible marvel this sleep and clods and talk of 
 years. . . .'* 
 
 And I cannot help quoting this little piece : 
 
 * The summer shadow hngered on the dial, the sun 
 slowed his pace, pausing on his way, in the rich light the 
 fruits filled. The earth had Hstened to the chorus of the 
 birds, and as they ceased, gave them their meed of berry, 
 seed, and grain. There was no labour for them ; their 
 granaries were full. Ethereal gold floated about the hills, 
 filling their hollows to the brim with haze. Like a grape 
 the air was ripe and luscious, and to breathe it was a 
 drowsy joy. For Circe had smoothed her garment 
 and slumbered, and the very sun moved slow. . . . 
 
 ' The hazel bushes seemed quite vacant ; only one 
 bird passed while they were there, and that was a robin, 
 come to see what they were^doing, and if there was any- 
 thing for him. In the butchery of the Wars of the Roses, 
 that such flowers should be stained with such memories ! 
 It is certain that the murderers watched the robin perched 
 hard by. He listened to the voice of fair Rosamond ; he 
 was at the tryst when Amy Robsart met her lover. 
 Nothing happens in the fields and woods without a robin. 'f 
 
 Then, again, how fine the description of the swallows' 
 flight : ' With a camel's-hair tip the swallow sweeps the 
 sky. . . .' And the portrait of ' Jumps ' : ' His years pressed 
 heavy on him — very heavy, like a huge bundle of sticks ; 
 he was lost under his age. . . .' That exquisite physical 
 eye does not lead him astray ; it goes straight to its mark 
 like an arrow, but an arrow fledged with feathers from 
 no earthly wing ; and therefore the spiritual effect lives 
 on after the visual effect is dimmed or lost. 
 
 In a little while he will be ready for ' The Story of My 
 Heart.' He has already tried to begin it. 
 
 * Berts: The Story 0/ a Boy, t ^btd. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 ILLNESS— REMOVAL TO BRIGHTON— 'THE BREEZE ON 
 BEACHY HEAD" 
 
 In December, 1881, Jefferies fell ill of fistula, perhaps 
 tubercular in origin, and during the next twelve months 
 four times suffered the painful operation which is used to 
 cure this disease ; * the pain,' he wrote, ' w^as awful — 
 like lightning through the brain '* ; but he was not pros- 
 trate or unable to work for the whole of this time, since 
 in the middle of it he was on Exmoor. The wounds 
 were not all healed until January, 1883. Within a month 
 he began to feel a gnawing internal pain ; it was, he said, 
 like the gnawing of a rat at a beam, or the burning of 
 corrosive sublimate. He feared to travel by train lest 
 he should throw himself out. In March, 1884, he still 
 did not regard the illness as serious. In April, 1885, he 
 broke down. The pain was found to be due to ulceration, 
 perhaps also tubercular, of the small intestine. His 
 strength declined ; the wasting of his body was extreme. 
 He was starved and half delirious, and months of the 
 winter had been spent indoors. In June he could only 
 walk two hundred yards. In August it tore him to pieces, 
 he said, to walk a short distance. Suddenly, in Septem- 
 ber, 1885, he went down as if shot : his spine ' seemed to 
 suddenly snap 'f ; he could not sit or lie so as to use a pen 
 without distress ; for seven months he was helpless, and 
 in December was so weak that he could not dress himself. 
 South Africa and Algiers had been suggested to him for 
 
 * To Mr. C. P. Scott. t Ibid. 
 
 170 
 
 r 
 
SENTENCED TO DEATH 171 
 
 a winter rest. The Royal Literary Fund might have 
 borne the expense, since he was now too poor ; but he re- 
 fused such help, because he believed that the fund was 
 maintained by dukes and marquises, instead of authors 
 and journalists and publishers. He hated it for himself 
 as he hated the workhouse for the agricultural poor. 
 ' The idea of literature being patronized in these days 
 is too utterly nauseous.'* Perhaps, he said, he might 
 think differently were he a town-bom man. He admitted 
 that only a stimulus like that of travel or sea-air or Schwal- 
 bach could check the sinking. He had to be content with 
 the air of high-perched Crowborough, in Sussex. From 
 there, in September, 1885, he wrote : ' I cannot do any- 
 thing. Whatever I wish to do, it seems as if a voice said, 
 " No, you must not do it." Feebleness forbids. I think 
 I would like a good walk. " No." I think I would like to 
 write. " No." I think I would like to rest. " No." Always 
 ' * No "to everything. Even writing this letter has made the 
 spine ache almost past endurance. I cannot convey to 
 you how miserable it is to be impotent — to feel yourself 
 full of ideas and work and to be unable to effect it. It 
 is absolutely maddening. Still, the autumn comes on, 
 and there is no staying it.' A visit to the sea at Bexhill 
 brought him some ease, but he had an attack of vomiting 
 blood soon afterwards. In September, 1886, he described 
 himself as having been a complete invalid for some years. 
 In October, he said that for five years he had not slept 
 properly. A fund was now privately raised, and in 
 December, 1886, he was at Goring, near Worthing. He 
 studied medical books, especially on tuberculosis, and 
 wrote an account of his o\mi illness. His diseases, his 
 ' distressing neuralgia and other nerve sufferings,' were 
 caused at first, he suspected, by ' too ceaseless work.' 
 ' There are,' he says, ' few — very few, perhaps none 
 living — who have come through such a series of diseases. 'f 
 He was an intractable patient — prejudiced against the 
 diet, for example, that was imposed. He was now a 
 ♦ To Mr. C. P. Scott. t /^«^. 
 
172 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 skeleton. He had little money but what was given to 
 him. Confined indoors, he had nothing to write. He 
 could not express ideas which did not come to him boldly. 
 But the winter of 1886-87 passed more easily. In January 
 he dictated a little. In February, 1887, he was looking 
 forward to the warm days by the sea. Then, before the 
 end of March, he had a haemorrhage, and for a time could 
 not even dictate. On August 14, 1887, he died of ex- 
 haustion and clironic fibroid phthisis, a modified form, 
 in which the tissue resists the bacilli by a fibrous harden- 
 ing of the lungs. ' He was,' said one doctor, ' a very 
 marked case of hysteria in man ' ; another, who knew his 
 wTitings, says that his portrait ' indicates the scrofulous 
 diathesis, with its singularly impressionable temperament, 
 its rapturous enjoyment of a delight, and its intense 
 susceptibility to a pang.' In some way, not yet to be 
 explained, the mortal pining of his body was related to 
 the intense mental vivacity of his last years. ' Some of my 
 best work,' he writes, 'was done in this intense agony.'* 
 His sense of colour became more acute. He tells us that in 
 the long, hot summer days of 1884 he took his folding- 
 stool out to a cabbage-field near Eltham to see the poppies, 
 because ' every spot of colour is a sort of food.' He never 
 really ceased work, and it was after the beginning of his 
 chain of diseases in 1881 that he took the walks by which 
 he knew, as he says in one letter, the whole of the Sussex 
 Downs. Many of his essays in ' Field and Hedgerow ' 
 were written or dictated to his wife during the worst of 
 his illness. ' Amaryllis at the Fair ' was also written then. 
 He made many plans — in May, 1885, for example (when 
 writing a short note ' made his pulse beat as if he had been 
 using a sledgehammer 'f), offering a novel of which nothing 
 is known, called ' A Bit of Human Nature ' ; in May, 1886 
 (when ' anyone walking across the room heavily hurt him, 
 the jar shaking the injured intestine '), considering the 
 proposal that he should write a year-book or diary of 
 Nature. In his last year he undertook to write an intro- 
 * To Mr. C P. Scott. t Ibid. 
 
SENTENCED TO DEATH 173 
 
 duction to the ' Camelot ' edition of Gilbert White's 
 ' Selborne,' and finished it only a few months before 
 his death. Both parents and his sister and two 
 brothers survived him. His father lived to be eighty 
 years old, his mother almost as old ; the rest are still 
 alive. 
 
 Jefferies' illness, by confining his physical activity and 
 putting a keener and more perilous edge upon his sensitive- 
 ness, threw him back still more upon himself. London 
 had probably done a little of the same work before. 
 Leaving the familiar \\'^iltshire country, he had to forsake 
 many habits of mind and body, and to descend into him- 
 self more and more. After the sundering of those old 
 associations and the contact with London came the 
 impulse which produced the ' Amateur Poacher ' and its 
 companion books. After the confinement, the misery, 
 the self-examination of his illness in 1881-83 came the long 
 series of sensuous and impassioned contemplative essays, 
 and ' The Story of My Heart,' ' The Dewy Mom,' ' After 
 London,' and ' Amaryllis at the Fair.' 
 
 In 1882 he left Surbiton for the sea- air of West Brighton, 
 where he was living, at ' Savernake,' Lorna Road, in 
 December, and probably before that. The last two 
 chapters of ' Nature near London ' were composed among 
 these new surroundings. He was now once again within 
 reach of perfectly unspoilt country, above all, of the sea 
 and his natal air of the Downs. On the hills above Falmer, 
 Plumpton, and Fulking the grass was heaped with tumuli ; 
 the camps on these hills would recall those of Liddington 
 and Barbury ; the beauty of Mount Caburn, of Ditchling, 
 Firle, Wolstanbury, and Chanctonbury was the same in 
 kind as that of Hackpen, Whitehorse Hill, Wanborough 
 Downs, Martinsell, and Tan Hill ; below them, on the 
 north, lay the Weald, not unlike the low, fat, dairy country 
 of North Wiltshire, and on the south the sea, of which 
 he could only dream at Liddington. He had known 
 Sussex and the South Downs before in childish and later 
 visits to Eastbourne, Hastings, and Lewes ; and it was at 
 
174 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Pevensey, in 1880, that he made the seminal notes for 
 ' The Story of My Heart.' 
 
 As he drew near the Downs in the train he could read 
 no more. He forgot the dust of London, that ' fiUs the 
 eyes, and blurs the vision ' and ' chokes the spirit.' 
 ' There is,' he wrote. * always hope in the hills ' ; ' hope 
 dwells there, somewhere mayhap in the breeze, in the 
 sward, or the pale cups of the harebells.' He was at 
 home again on the Downs, on the ancient hill and its 
 earthwork ' alone with the wind.' The sea-air, the sight 
 of the waters, the wind, the holiday voices and dresses of 
 Brighton in sunlight, were champagne to him. In ' Sea, 
 Sky, and Down ' he saw the sea ' reflected in the plate- 
 glass windows of the street, . . . covering over the golden 
 bracelets and jewellery with a moving picture of the 
 silvery waves.' He used to walk up to the station to see 
 the happy, beautiful, jolly people arriving, and the cabs 
 * overgrown with luggage like huge barnacles,' and he 
 ' left feeling better.' He liked the dry bright air, in which 
 the liveliest colours were inlaid ; ' no tint is too bright — 
 scarlet, cardinal, anything the imagination fancies ' ; the 
 ' pleasant lines of people chatting, the human sunshine of 
 laughter ' ; the fishermen ; the women riding ; the opulence 
 of it all ; the old houses. ' This,' he says, ' is the land of 
 health.' Sea, the air of the hills, and sunshine are 
 ' medicines that by degrees strengthen not only the body, 
 but the unquiet mind.' And the first papers written in 
 Sussex, those included in ' Nature near London,' reflect a 
 larger enjoyment than any of those about Surrey. In 
 ' The South Down Shepherd ' he might have been on his 
 own Downs again. He is happy to see the ancient 
 shepherd and talk of the crooks — ' each village-made 
 crook had an individuality " — of the hares and foxes and 
 sheep-dog ; to see the oxen ploughing with an ancient 
 plough of a form slowly wrought out and as delicate as a 
 plant — ' in these curved lines and smoothness, in this 
 perfect adaptability of means to end, there is the spirit of 
 art showing itself, not with colour or crayon, but working 
 
SENTENCED TO DEATH 175 
 
 in tangible material substance.' The same thoughts came 
 to him as he looked at the old pottery in the Brighton 
 Museum. ' The Breeze on Beachy Head ' has something 
 of the joy of * The Poacher,' and also a deeper one and a 
 humanity more wide : 
 
 ' The waves coming round the promontory before the 
 west wind still give the idea of a flowing stream, as they 
 did in Homer's days. Here, beneath the cliff, standing 
 where beach and sand meet, it is still ; the wind passes 
 six hundred feet overhead. But yonder, every larger 
 wave rolling before the breeze breaks over the rocks ; a 
 white line of spray rushes along them, gleaming in the 
 sunshine ; for a moment the dark rock-wall disappears, till 
 the spray sinks. 
 
 ' The sea seems higher than the spot where I stand, its 
 surface on a higher level — raised like a green mound — as 
 if it would burst in and occupy the space up to the foot 
 of the cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I know ; but 
 there is an infinite possibility about the sea ; it may do 
 what it is not recorded to have done. It is not to be 
 ordered ; it may overleap the bounds human observation 
 has fixed for it. It has a potency unfathomable. There 
 is still something in it not quite grasped and understood — 
 something still to be discovered — a mystery. 
 
 ' So the white spray rushes along the low broken wall 
 of rocks, the sun gleams on the flying fragments of the 
 wave, again it sinks, and the rhythmic motion holds the 
 mind, as an invisible force holds back the tide. A faith of 
 expectancy, a sense that something may drift up from the 
 unknown, a large belief in the unseen resources of the 
 endless space out yonder, soothes the mind with dreamy 
 hope. 
 
 ' The little rules and little experiences, all the petty 
 ways of narrow life, are shut off behind by the ponderous 
 and impassable cliff ; as if we had dwelt in the dim light 
 of a cave, but coming out at last to look at the sun, a great 
 stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that there was 
 no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice shuts 
 
176 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 off our former selves of yesterday, forcing us to look out 
 over the sea only, or up to the deeper heaven. 
 
 ' These breadths draw out the soul ; we feel that we 
 have wider thoughts than we know ; the soul has been 
 living, as it were, in a nutshell, all unaware of its own 
 power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and 
 sky. Straight, as if sawn down from turf to beach, the 
 cliff shuts off the human world, for the sea knows no 
 time and no era ; you cannot tell what century it is from 
 the face of the sea. A Roman trireme suddenly rounding 
 the white edge-line of chalk, borne on wind and oar from 
 the Isle of Wight towards the grey castle at Pevensey 
 (already old in olden days), would not seem strange. 
 What wonder could surprise us coming from the wonderful 
 sea ?'* 
 
 ' The impassable precipice shuts off our former selves 
 of yesterday.' He sniffs immortal airs on the open road 
 ahead. 
 
 * ' The Breeze on Beachy Head,' Nature near London. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 'THE STORY OF MY HEART' 
 
 On June 22, 1883, Jefferies wrote* to say that he had 
 just finished writing a book about which he had been 
 meditating seventeen years ; he had called it ' The Story 
 of My Heart : An Autobiography.' He was then living 
 at West Brighton. The sea had once before strengthened 
 his original intention to write down his experiences ; he 
 tried or resolved to try again, but vainly. In 1880, once 
 more by the sea, at Pevensey, ' under happy circum- 
 stances,' he made a few notes which he kept. He was 
 then thirty-two or thirty-three — at the age when others, 
 such as Whitman, have received their illumination. Two 
 years later he began to write the book which was now 
 finished. 
 
 He had taken a long journey since first, when he 
 was eighteen, ' an inner and esoteric meaning ' began to 
 come to him ' from all the visible universe,' and ' inde- 
 finable aspirations filled him ' as a result of his intense 
 moments of oneness with Nature on the Downs. Those 
 and the even earlier experiences were brief momentary 
 ravishments of his daily life as student, sportsman, and 
 reporter. Had they been of long duration and frequent 
 occurrence, it seems likely that they would have had a 
 more immediate influence on his life and writing, and that 
 they would have become connected with his piety. As 
 he describes those moments in his maturity they are 
 elusive ; to the writer of the letters to the Times they can 
 
 * To Mr. C. J. Longman. 
 
 177 12 
 
178 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 hardly have reached the state of words. Here and there, 
 as in the novels and at the end of ' The Poacher,' are 
 passages which may be attributed to this spiritual side of 
 his life. But the mood, the very vocabulary, of these 
 early country books was against the revelation of which 
 he was in search ; the matter of those books could be the 
 subject of everyday talk, while it is likely that he said not 
 a word of his inner life until he wrote ' The Story of My 
 Heart.' The form of fiction, however, in ' Wood Magic ' 
 and in ' Bevis ' put Jefferies more at his ease, and he 
 could say of Bevis what he could not yet say of himself. 
 But now, at the age of thirty-four, with five more years to 
 die in — disease already strong upon his body, yet power- 
 less to deny him the pleasure of the north wind on the 
 hills — he was not shy of speaking out in his own person, 
 of going back to the fields of his youth to glean where 
 he had already reaped and harvested — fairy gleanings 
 gathered so late by the ghost of the reaper. 
 
 By this time he was a man of much irregular reading in 
 poetry, science, and philosophy. If we may judge from 
 his liking for Dryden, Longfellow, and translations from 
 the ' Odyssey ' and ' Faust,' he had no very strong taste 
 for the form of poetry, though I have heard that he read, 
 more widely than was then common, the Elizabethan 
 song-writers. The old ballads he certainly loved. He 
 praised Addison almost alone among older prose-writers ; 
 among contemporaries, he admired Stevenson, Bret Harte, 
 and Charles Reade, but not Dickens. Of books belonging 
 to him I have seen ' The Assemblies of Al Hariri ' (trans- 
 lated by Chenery), ' Bhagavad Gita ' (translated by J. 
 Cockburn Thomson), Swinburne's ' Poems and Ballads * 
 (1871) ; translations of the ' Iliad,' the Greek Minor 
 Poets and the Anthology, and Persius ; and Percy's 
 ' Reliques.' These were the remains of a collection which 
 began to dwindle long before his death. He read less and 
 less as time went on. ' The glamour of modern science 
 and discoveries,' he tells us, ' faded away.' But, in any 
 case, he was perhaps always an erratic reader who knew 
 
' THE STORY OF MY HEART ' 179 
 
 what he Hked, and found his food in the oddest ways, yet 
 was Ukely to go far astray. His judgment, too, was 
 uncertain ; in one of his letters* he complains of a 
 reviewer (not of one of his own books) in the Athencsum 
 simply on the ground that pubUc opinion was all against 
 him. He had, however, by the constant necessity of 
 moulding language to fit a more and more subtle subject- 
 matter, become the master — the still rather uncertain 
 master — of an easy, delicate, often sweet and, without 
 extravagance, luxuriant style. It was not, I think, 
 developed by much conscious effort, but grew to his use 
 like the handle of a walking-stick. It is at times grossly 
 careless in construction and in sound, probably because 
 he often wrote in haste or in an uneasy state. But, 
 given an entirely suitable subject, he wrote with a natural 
 fineness and richness and a carelessness, too, like the 
 blackbird's singing. He rises and falls with his subject 
 more than most writers, for his style was not a garment 
 in which he clothed everything indiscriminately. Reading 
 had given him his vocabulary, but no one model. Parts 
 of ' The Poacher ' and ' A Great Estate ' could not be 
 bettered, but his style afterwards left what seemed the 
 maturity of those books, and went through another 
 apprenticeship, and absorbed new orders of sensations and 
 emotions. His eyesight won fields unknown to him 
 before, both out of doors and in the British Museum and 
 the picture-galleries. Of his peculiar sensitiveness — 
 though to which of the senses it is to be referred I do not 
 know — he gives an instance in the migratory impulse men- 
 tioned in ' January in the Sussex Woods.' * I am,' he 
 writes, * personally subject twice a year to the migratory 
 impulse. I feel it in spring and autumn, say about 
 March, when the leaves begin to appear, and again as the 
 corn is carried, and most strongly as the fields are left in 
 stubble. I have felt it every year since boyhood, often so 
 powerfully as to be quite unable to resist it. Go I must, 
 and go I do, somewhere ; if I do not, I am soon unwell 
 
 * To Mr. C J. Longman. 
 
 12 — 2 
 
i8o THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 The general idea of direction is southerly, both spring and 
 autumn ; no doubt the reason is because this is a northern 
 country.'* 
 
 But five fine senses are not the sum even of a sensual 
 man, and in Jefferies they are humble in the service of the 
 soul that apprehends the beauty of life and the bitterness 
 because that must fade or die by the hand of Fate or Time 
 or Man himself. His love and enjoyment of beauty, far 
 more than his ill-health and pain, were the causes of his 
 sorrowfulness. Of melancholy he has little ; for, alike in 
 sorrow and in joy, he is keenly alive, and in both revolting 
 against the alterable conditions of hfe, and penetrating 
 them to see the beauty at the heart. Yet by this time his 
 ill-health was assured. I have heard that in his sleeplessness 
 he was known to ring all the bells of the house in which he 
 lay, unable to bear the isolation among those who slept. 
 Four years before the end he looked ' near death.' 
 
 He was now in the main a poet, in whose composition 
 there is a naturalist, a sportsman, a curious minded and 
 solitary countryman, as weU as a lover and interpreter of 
 life. He could still be only one of these things at a time, as 
 in ' Red Deer,' where he was a mere sportsman. When he 
 refused even to consider the possibility that there could 
 be anything better than fine white flour or a feather-bed ; 
 when he laughed at hygiene, or philanthropy, or temper- 
 ance, or other ' fads,' he was a countryman preserving his 
 cottage ideas. But more and more these portions of him 
 took a due and unobserved place in the poet, the larger 
 man who, though exquisitely sensitive, had no mere 
 delicacy and rejected no part of life in man or nature, 
 country or town. His taste was for quiet and seclusion 
 and the things that are old — ' give me the old road, the 
 same flowers ' — but that could never long restrain him 
 from the long ranging thoughts which soon put away 
 these things from him for ever. The old world of ' fear 
 God, honour the pheasant, and damn the rest ' became 
 dim to him. Something he may have lost, but the 
 
 * 'January in the Sussex Woods ' in Life of the Fields. 
 
'THE STORY OF MY HEART' i8i 
 
 neighbourhood of pheasants, at least, does men little good. 
 I knew a parish of 10,397 souls, of which 10,000 were 
 pheasants and the rest human beings, so miserable — 
 except seventeen of them at the big house and rectory — 
 that they were not even worth shooting or, as far as was 
 known, eating. Jefferies was no longer capable of taking 
 just an intelligent party view of things, of remaining an 
 observer and a gossip only, of leaving at the bottom of 
 the well the thoughts peculiarly his own and choosing 
 instead things as they are, and have been, and evermore 
 shall be. For at length the ' superstitions and tradition^ 
 acquired compulsorily in childhood '* fell away and dis 
 appeared, and he was free to do what he could by himself, 
 a lonely, an extremely isolated, man. 
 
 ' The Story of My Heart ' is a confession, a description, 
 of the stages by which he reached the ideas of his later life. 
 He has erased from his mind the traditions and learning 
 of the past ages, and stands ' face to face with the un- 
 known.' His general aim is ' to free thought from every 
 trammel, with the view of its entering upon another and 
 larger series of ideas than those which have occupied the 
 brain of man so many years. He believes that there is a 
 whole world of ideas outside and beyond those which now 
 exercise us.' 
 
 As a child he used to go away by himself, if only for 
 two or three minutes, ' to think unchecked.' ' Involun- 
 tarily,' he says, ' I drew a long breath, then I breathed 
 slowly. My thought, or inner consciousness, went up 
 through the illumined sky, and I was lost in a moment 
 of exaltation. This only lasted a very short time, 
 perhaps only part of a second, and while it lasted there 
 was no formulated wish.' There came, too, ' a deep, 
 strong, and sensuous enjoyment of the beautiful green 
 earth, the beautiful sky and sun,' and the thought * that 
 I might be like this ; that I might have the inner meaning 
 of the sun, the light, the earth, the trees and grass, 
 translated into some growth of excellence in myself, both 
 
 * The Story of My Heart. 
 
i82 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 of body and of mind ; greater perfection of physique, 
 greater perfection of mind and soul ; that I might be 
 higher in myself.'* 
 
 Later still, he walked along the Marlborough road to 
 the fir-trees, where he could ' think a moment ' with his 
 morning soul and eyes untroubled by recollection of irrele- 
 vant daily things. Such experiences — the being absorbed 
 and the exaltation — differently interpreted, or fitted into 
 different schemes of life, or neglected, or allowed to 
 leaven life by hidden ways, must come to many. A 
 sense of humour or much social intercourse may easily 
 subdue them or compel them to work underground. 
 Jefferies, perhaps because they belonged to the moments 
 when he was most remote from the painful life of 
 journalism or of his father's house, and because there 
 was no one with whom he could share or illuminate 
 them, cherished and dwelt upon them. Except in his 
 ready and devout acceptance of these spiritual intima- 
 tions, he resembles Behmen with his deep, inward 
 ecstasy ; and Behmen bore his mysticism about with 
 him in silence for twelve years. The mystic teachers 
 lucidly described in Mr. Edward Carpenter's ' Adam's 
 Peak to Elephanta ' attain to a similar ' universal or 
 cosmic consciousness.' They aim ' by will to surrender 
 the will ; by determination and concentration to press 
 inward and upward to that portion of one's being which 
 belongs to the universal '; they consciously, as Jefferies 
 unconsciously, use the long breath, followed by slow 
 breathing, as a physical introduction to the mystic state. 
 Jefferies also at times concentrated himself deliberately, 
 driving away ' by continued will ' all sense of outward 
 appearances. The novelty and strangeness of the mystic 
 state cause what are considered ' phantasmal trains of 
 delusive speculation ' in some minds. Tennyson, again, 
 by the repetition of his own name, reached a trance in 
 which * the individual seemed to dissolve and fade away 
 into boundless being . . . when death was an almost 
 * The Story of My Heart. 
 
'THE STORY OF MY HEART' 183 
 
 laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it 
 were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life.' In 
 Tennyson the influence of such trances must be sought 
 in his religious ideas and in whatever there is beyond 
 the visible and tangible in his handling of Nature. 
 One of the youngest and most interesting of poets now 
 alive — Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie — has described the 
 trance ' upon a hill, alone,' almost in the words of 
 Jefferies : 
 
 ' . . . And then suddenly, — 
 
 While perhaps twice my heart was dutiful 
 
 To send my blood upon its little race,— 
 
 I was exalted above surety, 
 
 And out of time did fall.' * 
 
 Other poets have had similar experiences, if we may 
 judge by results. A few have preserved some traces of 
 the moments themselves. Shelley's ' May Morning,' 
 for example, ' when I walked forth upon the glittering 
 grass,' may have brought him some such exaltation. 
 Wordsworth's ' Ode ' is in part a recollection of experi- 
 ences of this kind interpreted by him as ' intimations of 
 immortality.' Myers plainly called genius ' a kind of 
 exalted but undeveloped clairvoyance '; and something 
 like this trance happens to many who have not artistic 
 genius ; but the effect, in solution, whether in literature 
 or art or conduct, may not be easily perceptible, and the 
 extreme brevity of the entrancement may help it to be 
 ignored. 
 
 To Jefferies, then, we have to be grateful for describing 
 so vividly a matter of which the evidence cannot be too 
 great. Lying on the turf of Liddington Hill, he was 
 quite alone, having shaken off ' the petty circumstances 
 and the annoyances of existence ' during the climb 
 through ' rich pure air ' up the steep slope. 
 
 ' I was utterly alone with the sun and the earth. 
 Lying down on the grass, I spoke in my soul to the earth, 
 the sun, the air, and the distant sea far beyond sight. I 
 
 " Poems and Interludes (John Lane). 
 
i84 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 thought of the earth's firmness — I felt it bear me up ; 
 through the grassy couch there came an influence as if 
 I could feel the great earth speaking to me. I thought 
 of the wandering air — its pureness, which is its beauty ; 
 the air touched me and gave me something of itself. I 
 spoke to the sea : though so far, in my mind I saw it, 
 green at the rim of the earth and blue in deeper ocean ; 
 I desired to have its strength, its mj^stery and glory. 
 Then I addressed the sun, desiring the soul equivalent 
 of his light and brilliance, his endurance and unwearied 
 race. I turned to the blue heaven over, gazing into its 
 depth, inhaling its exquisite colour and sweetness. The 
 rich blue of the unattainable flower of the sky drew my 
 soul towards it, and there it rested, for pure colour is 
 rest of heart. By all these I prayed ; I felt an emotion 
 of the soul beyond all definition ; prayer is a puny thing 
 to it, and the word is a rude sign to the feeling, but I 
 know no other. 
 
 'By the blue heaven, by the rolling sun bursting through 
 untrodden space, a new ocean of ether every day un- 
 veiled. By the fresh and wandering air encompassing 
 the world ; by the sea sounding on the shore — the green 
 sea white-flecked at the margin and the deep ocean ; by 
 the strong earth under me. Then, returning, I prayed 
 by the sweet thyme, whose little flowers I touched with 
 my hand ; by the slender grass ; by the crumble of dry 
 chalky earth I took up and let fall through my fingers. 
 Touching the crumble of earth, the blade of grass, the 
 thyme flower, breathing the earth-encircling air, thinking 
 of the sea and the sky, holding out my hand for the sun- 
 beams to touch it, prone on the sward in token of deep 
 reverence, thus I prayed that I might touch to the un- 
 utterable existence infinitely higher than deity. 
 
 ' With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all 
 the intense communion I held with the earth, the sun and 
 sky, the stars hidden by the light, with the ocean — in no 
 manner can the thrilling depth of these feelings be written 
 — with these I prayed, as if they were the keys of an 
 
'THE STORY OF MY HEART' 185 
 
 instrument, of an organ, with which I swelled forth the 
 notes of my soul, redoubling my own voice by their 
 power. The great sun burning with hght ; the strong 
 earth, dear earth ; the warm sky ; the pure air ; the 
 thought of ocean ; the inexpressible beauty of all filled 
 me with a rapture, an ecstasy, an infiatus. With this 
 inflatus, too, I prayed. Next to myself I came and re- 
 called myself, my bodily existence. I held out my hand, 
 the sunlight gleamed on the skin and the iridescent nails ; 
 I recalled the mystery and beauty of the flesh. I thought 
 of the mind with which I could see the ocean sixty miles 
 distant, and gather to myself its glory. I thought of my 
 inner existence, that consciousness which is called the 
 soul. These, that is, myself — I threw into the balance 
 to weigh the prayer the heavier. My strength of body, 
 mind and soul, I flung into it ; I put forth my strength ; 
 I wrestled and laboured, and toiled in might of prayer. 
 The prayer, this soul-emotion was in itself — not for an 
 object — it was a passion. I hid my face in the grass, I 
 was M'holly prostrated, I lost myself in the wrestle, I 
 was rapt and carried away. . . . 
 
 ' Sometimes on lying down on the sward I first looked 
 up at the sky, gazing for a long time till I could see deep 
 into the azure and my eyes were full of the colour ; then 
 I turned my face to the grass and thyme, placing my 
 hands at each side of my face so as to shut out everything 
 and hide myself. Having drunk deeply of the heaven 
 above and felt the most glorious beauty of the day, and 
 remembering the old, old sea, which (as it seemed to me) 
 was but just yonder at the edge, I now became lost, and 
 absorbed into the being or existence of the universe. I 
 felt down deep into the earth under, and high above 
 into the sky, and farther still to the sun and stars. Still 
 farther beyond the stars into the hollow of space, and 
 losing thus my separateness of being came to seem like 
 a part of the whole. Then I whispered to the earth be- 
 neath, through the grass and thyme, down into the 
 depth of its ear, and again up to the starry space hid 
 
i86 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 behind the blue of day. Travelling in an instant across 
 the distant sea, I saw as if with actual vision the palms 
 and cocoanut-trees, the bamboos of India, and the 
 cedars of the extreme south. Like a lake with islands 
 the ocean lay before me, as clear and vivid as the plain 
 beneath in the midst of the amphitheatre of hills. 
 
 ' With the glory of the great sea, I said ; with the firm, 
 solid, and sustaining earth ; the depth, distance, and ex- 
 panse of ether ; the age, tamelessness, and ceaseless 
 motion of the ocean ; the stars, and the unkno\\Ti in 
 space ; by all those things which are most powerful 
 known to me, and by those which exist, but of which I 
 have no idea whatever, I pray. Further, by my own 
 soul, that secret existence which above all other things 
 bears the nearest resemblance to the ideal of spirit, in- 
 finitely nearer than earth, sun, or star. Speaking by an 
 inclination towards, not in words, my soul prays that I 
 may have something from each of these, that I may 
 gather a flower from them, that I may have in myself 
 the secret and meaning of the earth, the golden sun, the 
 light, the foam-flecked sea. Let my soul become en- 
 larged ; I am not enough ; I am httle and contemptible. 
 I desire a greatness of soul, an irradiance of mind, a 
 deeper insight, a broader hope. Give me power of soul, 
 so that I may actually effect by its will that which I strive 
 for. . . . Dreamy in appearance, I was breathing full of 
 existence ; I was aware of the grass blades, the flowers, 
 the leaves on hawthorn and tree. I seemed to live more 
 largely through them, as if each were a pore through 
 which I drank.'* 
 
 * I see now,' he says, ' that what I laboured for was 
 soul-life, more soul-nature, to be exalted, to be full of 
 soul-learning '; to map out the obscure country he had 
 discovered, to show its relation to the earth, to build 
 a long airy bridge from one to the other, that he and his 
 fellows might pass over and be blessed. Speaking ' not 
 in words,* his soul prayed to be enlarged, to have some- 
 
 * The Story of My Heart. 
 
From a photograph, 
 
 THE VENUS ACCROUPIE 
 of " Nature in the Louvre." 
 
 p. 187. 
 
•THE STORY OF MY HEART' 187 
 
 thing from sea and earth and air and stars, to be * full 
 of light as the sun's rays.' Not only did he feel to the 
 heights and the depths, but to the ' dimmest part ' in 
 the life of the earth, and from all the ages his soul desired 
 ' to take that soul-life which had flowed through them.' 
 Yet this present moment was ' as marvellous, as grand ' 
 as all that had gone before ; now was ' the wonder and 
 the glory.' The lucid water of the spring, the dew, the 
 storm wind, the summer air, the crescent moon, all 
 moved him to repeat his prayer. ' All the larks over the 
 green corn sang it to me, all the dear swallows.' At sight 
 of the sea ' the passion rose tumultuous as the waves.' 
 The sunset over London fanned it. It was deepest in 
 the presence of living human beauty. 
 
 ' In this lies the outcome and end of aU the loveliness of 
 sunshine and green leaf, of flowers, pure water, and sweet 
 air. This is embodiment and highest expression ; the 
 scattered, uncertain, and designless loveliness of tree and 
 sunlight brought to shape. Through this beauty I prayed 
 deepest and longest, and down to this hour. The shape — 
 the divine idea of that shape — the swelling muscle or the 
 dreamy limb, strong sinew or curve of bust, Aphrodite 
 or Hercules, it is the same. That I may have the soul-life, 
 the soul-nature, let divine beauty bring to me divine soul. 
 
 ' Statues also : the smallest fragment of marble carved 
 in the shape of a human arm will awake the desire I felt 
 in my hill-prayer.'* 
 
 Later came the need to put the prayer and the inde- 
 finable aspiration into such a form ' as would admit of 
 actually working upon the lines it indicated for some 
 good. And this was the prayer : 
 
 ' First, I desired that I might do or find something 
 to exalt the soul, something to enable it to live its 
 own life, a more powerful existence now. Secondly, 
 I desired to be able to do something for the flesh, to 
 make a discovery or perfect a method by which the 
 fleshly body might enjoy more pleasure, longer life, 
 ♦ The Story of My Heart. 
 
i88 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 and suffer less pain. Thirdly, to construct a more 
 flexible engine with which to carry into execution the 
 design of the will.'* 
 
 The bones, he quaintly says, should be 'firmer, somewhat 
 larger.' He desires beautiful shape and movement. ' I 
 believe,' he says, ' in the human form ; let me find some- 
 thing, some method, by which that form may achieve 
 the utmost beauty.' For the soul he desires a larger, 
 more continuous, more illuminated life than that which 
 it now meets with haphazard, a new and higher set of 
 ideas on which it should work. He believes in what he 
 can touch, but that guides him to another beauty as a 
 shadow guides us to the substance. Sometimes he himself 
 seems to use a power which has nothing to do with hearing 
 or touch or sight. He could ' feel ' the existence of the 
 man buried on the Downs, and the coexistence with that 
 man leads him to think that death does not affect the 
 personality. The idea of extinction, not that of continua- 
 tion, after death requires a ' miracle.' A man lay dead 
 in an outhouse at Coate, and as he passed it, it seemed to 
 him that the man was still alive. He * cannot understand 
 time ... by no possible means could I get into time if I 
 tried. I am in eternity now, and must there remain. 
 Haste not, be at rest, this Now is eternity. 'f Like 
 Traherne, he saw the corn as ' orient and immortal wheat '; 
 for as he moved about he felt in the midst of immortal 
 things — ' the sweetness of the day, the fulness of the earth, 
 the beauteous earth, how shall I say it ?' In ' The Open 
 Air ' he says that to him, as a boy, the earth was that 
 radiant vision which it would be to one set suddenly down 
 upon it ; and ' the freshness is still there.' In London, as 
 on the Downs, he felt out into the depths of the ether, and 
 * touched the supernatural, the immortal.' He asserts 
 no belief in alleged miracles, or that there have been 
 miracles ; but ' they would be perfectly natural.' so great 
 is the soul ; and he can conceive ' soul works by simple 
 will or thought a thousand times greater.' He feels on 
 
 The Story of My Heart. \ Ibid. 
 
'THE STORY OF MY HEART' 189 
 
 the verge of powers which would give ' an immense 
 breadth of existence, an abihty to execute what I now only 
 conceive.' But in the past only three discoveries seem 
 to him to be important : the existence of the soul, im- 
 mortality, the Deity. He is impatient of this poverty, 
 and would erase the superstition, ritual and ceremony, 
 built upon those ideas. He believes in something beyond. 
 If death be extinction — he is willing to admit it possible 
 — it is nothing : ' I think immortality. I lift my mind 
 to a fourth idea.' 
 
 Up to this point the book is the ' unflinchingly true ' 
 revelation of a human spirit which he called it, the writing 
 so simple and yet so pointed and tempered with passion 
 that there is no part which does not deeply pierce a human 
 mind. Even the fancy that he would like to have his 
 body burned on a hill-top after death acquires a sublimity 
 from the lofty melodies in which it is curiously lapped. 
 The rapture of the aspiration, had he never got beyond, 
 has wings as of eagles to bear up the heart towards noble 
 things. An unquenchable lust of the whole nature forced 
 him to question heaven and earth about life, and to under- 
 take a voyage bolder than Madoc's ; it has placed him 
 with several honourable men whom such a lust has brought 
 to at least as high an honour as the learning and tradition 
 which they lacked have gained for many a theologian and 
 philosopher. Sometimes, in the phrasing and cadence, 
 as in ' For the flesh, this arm of mine, the limbs of others 
 gracefully moving,' and in the idea — ' I believe in the 
 human form ' — he seems to be recalling Whitman, whose 
 ' Leaves of Grass ' delighted him. He sent a copy to his 
 father, that silent thinker. 
 
 There follows a passage in which he finds ' nothing 
 human in nature.' The creative forces in this world of 
 men and beasts and trees and stars might seem to be 
 sportive godlets. Such a view may be monstrous ; but 
 let us not forget that, like other monsters, it was earth- 
 bom, and born in the open air. The sea, the earth, the 
 sun, the trees, the hills, care nothing for human life. A 
 
190 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 great part of nature is ' distinctly anti-human.' ' The 
 miserably hideous things of the sea,' * the shapeless shape ' 
 of the toad, the snake that takes away the breath, even 
 the animals we can love, are repellent ; ' there is nothing 
 human in any living animal,' and they are ' without 
 design, shape, or purpose.' More absurdly he says : 
 ' Animals think to a certain extent, but if their concep- 
 tions be ever so clever, not having hands, they cannot 
 execute them.' The human mind cannot ' be fitted to the 
 cosmos ' : it is ' distinct — separate.' Nature is the work of 
 ' a force without mind,' not of a deity ; ' for what we under- 
 stand by the Deity is the purest form of idea, of Mind, 
 andnomind isexhibited in these.' Julius Caesar, whose bust 
 he watched at the British Museum, came ' nearest to the 
 ideal of a design-power arranging the affairs of the world 
 for good in practical things ' ; but human folly is ' ever 
 destroying our greatest.' In human affairs ' everything 
 happens by chance ' ; ' rewards and punishments are 
 purely human institutions, and if government be relaxed 
 they entirely disappear. No intelligence whatever inter- 
 feres in human affairs.' He has been in hell, and dreamed 
 more terrible dreams than when De Quincey lay dowTi 
 with crocodiles. We make our own happiness and order, or 
 not at all. These dreams only urge him yet more strongly 
 to search for a soul-life which shall be independent of 
 Nature and the idea of deity. He has really achieved 
 the most ancient discovery of the theologians — that 
 man stands apart from the rest of created things. But 
 instead of being humbled by this — of seeking for some 
 cause such as sin — he sees in the isolation a great hope. 
 It is man that is supreme in man's world. Let us give 
 way to our virtues and energies, and cease to look for help 
 apart from man. 
 
 Wliether these violent and intolerable dreams can be 
 traced to some early horror of seeing skulls turned up 
 by the plough, of reading of the sufferings of travellers and 
 prisoners, I do not know. They possibly owe something 
 to the ordinary countryman's attitude towards animals : 
 
'THE STORY OF MY HEART' 191 
 
 first, as things competing with himself for maintenance, 
 destroying crops, and even threatening Ufe by poison, 
 tooth, and claw; second, as objects of sport: so that it was 
 perhaps as true of him as of Felix Aquila, in ' After London,' 
 that he ' could not at times shake off the apprehensions 
 aroused by untoward omens, as when he stepped upon the 
 adder in the woods.' To such a one walking in the earth, 
 and seeing how beast and fish spend half their time in 
 avoiding men, the thought must come either that they 
 are irreparably alien, or that we are at fault ; if, indeed, 
 that other thought does not intrude, that it were better 
 to lie silent, a faggot of ruddy, fleshless bones that cause 
 no loathing to the bright birds, than to crash through this 
 merry world of dancing plumes and limbs and leaves. 
 That we and they are at fault is the more hopeful view. 
 Jefferies seems to have chosen the first. But in his 
 ' Nature and Eternity,' an essay that has some things in 
 common with ' The Story of My Heart,' there are thoughts 
 so opposed to these fancies, and so much more in harmony 
 not only with the spirit of the best human thought, but 
 with Jefferies' work as a whole, that I shall use it here. 
 The following passage throws a little more light upon 
 the nature of Jefferies' vision : 
 
 ' It is only while in a dreamy, slumbrous, half-mes- 
 merized state that Nature's ancient papyrus roll can be 
 read — only when the mind is at rest, separated from care 
 and labour ; when the body is at ease, luxuriating in 
 warmth and delicious languor ; when the soul is in accord 
 and sympathy with the sunlight, with the leaf, with the 
 slender blades of grass, and can feel with the tiniest insect 
 which climbs up them as up a mighty tree. As the 
 genius of great musicians, without an articulated word 
 or printed letter, can carry with it all the emotions, so 
 now, lying prone upon the earth in the shadow, with 
 quiescent will, listening, thoughts and feelings rise re- 
 spondent to the sunbeams, to the leaf, to the very blade 
 of grass. Resting the head upon the hand, gazing down 
 upon the ground, the strange and marvellous inner sight 
 
192 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 of the mind penetrates the sohd earth, grasps in part the 
 mystery of its vast extension upon either side, bearing 
 its majestic mountains, its deep forests, its grand oceans, 
 and almost feels the life which in ten million forms revels 
 upon its surface. Returning upon itself, the mind joys in 
 the knowledge that it, too, is a part of this wonder — akin 
 to the ten million creatures, akin to the very earth 
 itself. How grand and holy is this life ! how sacred the 
 temple which contains it ! . . . 
 
 ' This little petty life of seventy years, with its little 
 petty aims and hopes, its despicable years and con- 
 temptible seasons, is no more the life with which the mind 
 is occupied. ... It is a grand and ennobling feeling to 
 know that at this moment illimitable time extends on 
 either hand. . . . 
 
 ' The sight of that splendid disc carries the soul with it 
 till it feels as eternal as the sun.'* 
 
 He continues : 
 
 ' Would that it were possible for the heart and mind 
 to enter into all the life that glows and teems upon the 
 earth — to feel with it, hope with it, sorrow with it, and 
 thereby to become a grander, nobler being. Such a being, 
 with such a sympathy and larger existence, must hold in 
 scorn the feeble, cowardly, selfish desire for an immortality 
 of pleasure only, whose one great hope is to escape pain. 
 No. Let me joy with all living creatures; let me suffer with 
 them all — the reward of feeling a deeper, grander life would 
 be amply sufficient. . . . Let me have wider feelings, more 
 extended sympathies ; let me feel with all living things, 
 rejoice and praise with them. Let me have deeper know- 
 ledge, a nearer insight, a more reverent conception. Let 
 me see the mystery of life — the secret of the sap as it rises 
 in the tree — the secret of the blood as it courses through 
 the vein. . . . Never did vivid imagination stretch out 
 the powers of Deity with such a fulness, with such in- 
 tellectual grasp, vigour, omniscience, as the human mind 
 could reach to, if only its organs, its means, were equal 
 * ' Nature and Eternity ' {Lonjjmah's Magazine, May, 1895). 
 
' THE STORY OF MY HEART ' 193 
 
 to the thought. Give us, then, greater strength of body, 
 greater length of days ; give us more vital energy, let our 
 limbs be mighty as those of the giants of old. Supple- 
 ment such organs with nobler mechanical engines — with 
 extended means of locomotion ; add novel and more 
 minute methods of analysis and discovery. Let us 
 become as demi-gods. . . .'* 
 
 Reclining under a chestnut-tree in this mood, he says 
 that it is impossible to conceive ideas of murder, violence, 
 or aught degrading ; the whole existence is ' permeated 
 with reverent love.' In the future, he thinks, ' the 
 human race might be as we are this moment,' under the 
 chestnut-tree. 
 
 The finest passages follow : 
 
 ' It is probable that with the progress of knowledge it 
 will be possible to satisfy the necessary wants of existence 
 much more easily than now, and thus to remove one great 
 cause of discord. . . . 
 
 ' This blade of grass grows as high as it can, the nightin- 
 gale there sings as sweetly as it can, the goldfinches feed 
 to their full desire, and lay down no arbitrary rules of 
 life ; the great sun above pours out its heat and light 
 in a flood unrestrained. What is the meaning of this 
 hieroglyph, which is repeated in a thousand other ways 
 and shapes, which meets us at every turn ? It is evident 
 that all living creatures, from the zoophyte upwards — 
 plant, reptile, bird, animal, and in his natural state, in 
 his physical frame, man also — strive with all their power 
 to obtain as perfect an existence as possible. ... All tends 
 to one end, a fuller development of the individual, a 
 higher condition of the species ; still farther, to the pro- 
 duction of new races capable of additional progress. 
 Part and parcel as we are of the great community of 
 living beings, indissolubly connected with them from the 
 lowest to the highest by a thousand ties, it is impossible 
 for us to escape from the operation of this law. 
 
 ' The physical and the mental man are, as it were, a 
 ♦ ' Nature and Eternity ' {Long^natis Magazine^ May, 1895). 
 
 13 
 
194 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 mass of inherited structures, ... He is made up of the 
 Past. This is a happy and an inspiriting discovery . . . 
 which calls upon us for new and larger moral and physical 
 exertion, which throws upon us wider and nobler duties, 
 for upon us depends the future. 
 
 ' A whole circle of ideas of moral conceptions . . . 
 which were high and noble in the rudimentary being. . . . 
 Let these perish. . . . We must no longer allow the hoary 
 age of such traditions to blind the eye and cause the knee 
 to bend. . . . The very plants are wiser far. They seek 
 the light of to-day, the heat of the sun which shines at 
 this hour. . . . But ... it is necessary that some far- 
 seeing master-mind, some giant intellect, should arise, 
 and sketch out in bold, unmistakable outlines the grand 
 and noble future which the human race should labour 
 for 
 
 ' The faiths of the past, of the ancient world, now 
 extinct or feebly lingering on, were each inspired by one 
 mind only. The faith of the future, in strong contrast, 
 will spring from the researches of a thousand thousand 
 thinkers, where minds, once brought into a focus, will 
 speedily burn up all that is useless and worn out with a 
 fierce heat, and evoke a new and brilliant light. This 
 converging thought is one of the greatest blessings of 
 the day, made possible by the vastly extended means of 
 communication, and almost seems specially destined for 
 this very purpose.'* 
 
 The mood in which this was written must have been 
 a happier one, and it is justifiable to suppose that its 
 exalted and democratic optimism was due in no slight 
 degree to the clear vision that saw in all forms of life one 
 commonwealth, one law, one beauty. 
 
 These thoughts are at one with many which follow in 
 the later chapters of ' The Story of My Heart.' The 
 divine beauty of the flesh which he enjoyed in pictures 
 and statuary is curiously inwoven with the beauty of 
 Nature. A shoulder, a bust, gratifies the ' sea-thirst ' 
 
 * ' Nature and Eternity' {Longtnan's Ma^asine, May, 1895). 
 
'THE STORY OF MY HEART* 195 
 
 with which his throat and tongue and whole body have 
 often been ' parched and feverish dry.' The hps and 
 hair of Cytherea, ' Juno's wide back and mesial groove,' 
 slake the same thirst. These were they, he says of 
 the Greek men and women, ' who would have stayed 
 with me under the shadow of the oaks while the black- 
 birds fluted and the south air swung the cowslips. . . . 
 These had thirsted of sun, and earth, and sea, and sky 
 Their shape spoke this thirst and desire like mine.'* 
 It would, he says, have seemed natural to find ' butter- 
 flies fluttering among the statues.' But the books, the 
 human books, away from the sunlight, gave no thought 
 as the gleamy spring water did. 
 
 Turning again to men, the roaring press of them 
 opposite the Royal Exchange in London, he sees that 
 they will wither away with no result. But he does not 
 despair, though he believes that there is no ' theory, 
 philosophy, or creed ' to guide and shape ' this million- 
 handed labour to an end and outcome that will leave 
 more sunshine and more flowers to those who must suc- 
 ceed.' He is forced to express the desirable by the 
 images of sunshine and flowers. First, he says, we must 
 efface the learning of the past, and ' go straight to the 
 sun.' Though at last his prayer became ' less solely 
 associated with these things,' it is always the sun, the 
 hills, the wind, the flowers, the sea — the sea whose moving 
 waters he esteems as religiously as Keats. It is house- 
 life that he personally must escape from ' back to the 
 sun '; away from the preaching of house-life : ' Remain ; 
 be content ; go round and round in one barren path, a 
 little money, a little food and sleep, some ancient fables, 
 old age, and death.' As he is dissatisfied with what men 
 have done, so is he with thought itself and with experi- 
 ence. Those were his topmost moments when he prayed 
 without words, and * an ecstasy of soul accompanied 
 the delicate excitement of the senses '; this was the 
 chaos that gave birth to a dancing star. Thought must 
 
 • The Story of My Heart. 
 
 13—2 
 
196 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 expand so as to ' correspond in magnitude of conception ' 
 with sun and sea. This immeasurable soul-Hfe which 
 he desires is always associated with the flesh, as in its 
 origin it was associated with his own senses. Nothing 
 is of any use unless it gives him a stronger body and mind. 
 Again he demands a larger frame, a longer day, more 
 sunshine, a longer sleep to accumulate new force. And 
 this is the manner of his demand : 
 
 ' I live by the sea now ; I can see nothing of it in a 
 day ; why, I do but get a breath of it, and the sun sinks 
 before I have well begun to think. Life is so little and 
 so mean. I dream sometimes backwards of the ancient 
 times. If I could but have the bow of Ninus, and the earth 
 full of wild bulls and lions, to hunt them down, there 
 would be rest in that. To shoot with a gun is nothing ; 
 a mere touch discharges it. Give me a bow, that I may 
 enjoy the delight of feeling myself draw the string and 
 the strong wood bending, that I may see the rush of the 
 arrow, and the broad head bury itself deep in shaggy 
 hide. Give me an iron mace that I may crush the savage 
 beast and hammer him down. A spear to thrust through 
 with, so that I may feel the long blade enter and the push 
 of the shaft. The unwearied strength of Ninus to hunt 
 unceasingly in the fierce sun. Still I should desire 
 greater strength and a stouter bow, wilder creatures to 
 combat. The intense life of the senses, there is never 
 enough for them. I envy Semiramis ; I would have 
 been ten times Semiramis. I envy Nero, because of the 
 great concourse of beauty he saw. I should like to be 
 loved by every beautiful woman on earth, from the swart 
 Nubian to the white and divine Greek. 
 
 ' Wine is pleasant and meat refreshing ; but though I 
 own with absolute honesty that I like them, these are the 
 least of all. Of these two only have I ever had enough. 
 The vehemence of exertion, the vehemence of the spear, 
 the vehemence of sunlight and life, the insatiate desire 
 of insatiate Semiramis, the still more insatiate desire of 
 love, divine and beautiful, the uncontrollable adoration 
 
'THE STORY OF MY HEART* 197 
 
 of beauty, these — these : give me these in greater abun- 
 dance than was ever known to man or woman. The 
 strength of Hercules, the fulness of the senses, the rich- 
 ness of life, would not in the least impair my desire of 
 soul-life. On the reverse, with every stronger beat of 
 the pulse my desire of soul-life would expand. So it has 
 ever been with me ; in hard exercise, in sensuous pleasure, 
 in the embrace of the sunlight, even in the drinking of a 
 glass of wine, my heart has been lifted the higher towards 
 perfection of soul. Fulness of physical life causes a 
 deeper desire of soul-life. 
 
 ' Let me be physically perfect, in shape, vigour, and 
 movement. My frame, naturally slender, will not re- 
 spond to labour, and increase in proportion to effort, nor 
 will exposure harden a delicate skin. It disappoints me 
 so far, but my spirit rises with the effort, and my thought 
 opens. This is the only profit of frost, the pleasure 
 of winter, to conquer cold, and to feel braced and 
 strengthened by that whose province it is to wither 
 and destroy, making of cold, life's enemy, life's renewer. 
 The black north wind hardens the resolution as steel 
 is tempered in ice- water. It is a sensual joy, as sensuous 
 as the warm embrace of the sunlight, but fulness of 
 physical life ever brings to me a more eager desire of 
 soul-life. 
 
 ' Splendid it is to feel the boat rise to the roller, or 
 forced through by the sail to shear the foam aside like 
 a share ; splendid to undulate as the chest lies on the 
 wave, swimming, the brimming ocean round : then I 
 know and feel its deep strong tide, its immense fulness, 
 and the sun glowing over ; splendid to climb the steep 
 green hill : in these I feel myself, I drink the exquisite 
 joy of the senses, and my soul lifts itself with them. It 
 is beautiful even to watch a fine horse gallop, the long 
 stride, the rush of the wind as he passes — my heart beats 
 quicker to the thud of the hoofs, and I feel his strength. 
 Gladly would I have the strength of the Tartar stallion 
 roaming the wild steppe ; that very strength, what 
 
igS THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 vehemence of soul- thought would accompany it. But 
 I should like it, too, for itself. For I believe, with all 
 my heart, in the body and the flesh, and believe that it 
 should be increased and made more beautiful by every 
 means. I believe — I do more than think — I believe it 
 to be a sacred duty, incumbent upon every one, man and 
 woman, to add to and encourage their physical life, by 
 exercise, and in every manner. A sacred duty each 
 towards himself, and each towards the whole of the human 
 race. Each one of us should do some little part for the 
 physical good of the race — health, strength, vigour. 
 There is no harm therein to the soul : on the contrary, 
 those who stunt their physical life are most certainly 
 stunting their souls. 
 
 * I believe all manner of asceticism to be the vilest 
 blasphemy — blasphemy towards the whole of the human 
 race. I believe in the flesh and the body, which is 
 worthy of worship — to see a perfect human bod}'' un- 
 veiled causes a sense of worship. The ascetics are the 
 only persons who are impure. Increase of physical 
 beauty is attended by increase of soul beauty. The soul 
 is the higher even by gazing on beauty. Let me be 
 fleshly perfect. 
 
 * It is in myself that I desire increase, profit, and ex- 
 altation of body, mind, and soul. The surroundings, 
 the clothes, the dwelling, the social status, the circum- 
 stances are to me utterly indifferent. Let the floor of 
 the room be bare, let the furniture be a plank table, the 
 bed a mere pallet. Let the house be plain and simple, 
 but in the midst of air and light. These are enough — a 
 cave would be enough ; in a warmer climate the open 
 air would suffice. Let me be furnished in myself with 
 health, safety, strength, the perfection of physical ex- 
 istence ; let my mind be furnished with highest thoughts 
 of soul-life. Let me be in myself myself fully. The 
 pageantry of power, the still more fooHsh pageantry of 
 wealth, the senseless precedence of place ; words fail me 
 to express my utter contempt for such pleasure or such 
 
' THE STORY OF MY HEART ' 199 
 
 ambitions. Let me be in myself myself fully, and those 
 I love equally so. 
 
 ' It is enough to lie on the sward in the shadow of 
 green boughs, to listen to the songs of summer, to drink 
 in the sunlight, the air, the flowers, the sky, the beauty 
 of all. Or upon the hill-tops to watch the white clouds 
 rising over the curved hill-lines, their shadows descending 
 the slope. Or on the beach to listen to the sweet sigh 
 as the smooth sea runs up and recedes. It is lying 
 beside the immortals, in-drawing the life of the ocean, 
 the earth, and the sun. 
 
 ' I want to be always in company with these, with 
 earth, and sun, and sea, and stars by night. The petti- 
 ness of house-life — chairs and tables — and the pettiness 
 of observances, the petty necessity of useless labour, use- 
 less because productive of nothing, chafe me the year 
 through. I want to be always in company with the sun, 
 and sea, and earth. These, and the stars by night, are 
 my natural companions. 
 
 ' My heart looks back and sympathizes with all the 
 joy and life of ancient time. With the circling dance 
 burned in still attitude on the vase ; with the chase and 
 the hunter eagerly pursuing, whose javelin trembles to 
 be thrown ; with the extreme fury of feeling, the whirl of 
 joy in the warriors from Marathon to the last battle of 
 Rome, not with the slaughter, but with the passion — the 
 life in the passion ; with the garlands and the flowers ; 
 with all the breathing busts that have panted beneath 
 the sun. O beautiful human life ! Tears come in my 
 eyes as I think of it. So beautiful, so inexpressibly 
 beautiful ! 
 
 ' So deep is the passion of life that, if it were possible 
 to live again, it must be exquisite to die pushing the 
 eager breast against the sword. In the flush of strength 
 to face the sharp pain joyously, and laugh in the last 
 glance of the sun — if only to live again, now on earth, 
 were possible. So subtle is the chord of life that some- 
 times to watch troops marching in rhythmic order. 
 
200 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 undulating along the column as the feet are lifted, brings 
 tears in my eyes. Yet could I have in my own heart all 
 the passion, the love and joy, burned in the breasts that 
 have panted, breathing deeply, since the hour of Ilion, 
 yet still I should desire more. How willingly I would 
 strew the paths of all with flowers ; how beautiful a 
 delight to make the world joyous ! The song should 
 never be silent, the dance never still, the laugh should 
 sound like water which runs for ever. 
 
 * I would submit to a severe discipline, and to go 
 without many things cheerfully, for the good and happi- 
 ness of the human race in the future. Each one of us 
 should do something, however small, towards that great 
 end. At the present time the labour of our predecessors 
 in this country, in all other countries of the earth, is 
 entirely wasted. We live — that is, we snatch an exist- 
 ence — and our works become nothing. The piling up 
 of fortunes, the building of cities, the establishment of 
 immense commerce, ends in a cipher. These objects are 
 so outside my idea that I cannot understand them, and 
 look upon the struggle in amazement. Not even the 
 pressure of poverty can force upon me an understanding 
 of, and sympathy with, these things. It is the human 
 being as the human being of whom I think. That the 
 human being as the human being, nude — apart alto- 
 gether from money, clothing, houses, properties — should 
 enjoy greater health, strength, safety, beauty, and 
 happiness, I would gladly agree to a discipline like that 
 of Sparta. The Spartan method did produce the finest 
 race of men, and Sparta was famous in antiquity for the 
 most beautiful women. So far, therefore, it fits exactly 
 to my ideas. 
 
 ' No science of modern times has yet discovered a plan 
 to meet the requirements of the millions who live now, no 
 plan by which they might attain similar physical propor- 
 tion. Some increase of longevity, some slight improve- 
 ment in the general health is promised, and these are 
 great things, but far, far beneath the ideal. Probably the 
 
' THE STORY OF MY HEART ' 201 
 
 whole mode of thought of the nations must be altered 
 before physical progress is possible. Not while money, 
 furniture, affected show and the pageantry of wealth 
 are the ambitions of the multitude can the multitude 
 become ideal in form. When the ambition of the multi- 
 tude is fixed on the ideal of form and beauty, then that 
 ideal will become immediately possible, and a marked 
 advance towards it could be made in three generations. 
 Glad, indeed, should I be to discover something that 
 would help towards this end. 
 
 * How pleasant it would be each day to think. To-day 
 I have done something that will tend to render future 
 generations more happy. The very thought would make 
 this hour sweeter. It is absolutely necessary that some- 
 thing of this kind should be discovered. First, we must 
 lay down the axiom that as yet nothing has been found ; 
 we have nothing to start with ; all has to be begun afresh. 
 All courses or methods of human life have hitherto been 
 failures. Some course of life is needed based on things 
 that are, irrespective of tradition. The physical ideal 
 must be kept steadily in view.'* 
 
 It may be said that in this eloquence is the hectic flush 
 of the man doomed to an early death ; that here is the 
 weakling's morbid sympathy with strength. But its 
 movement, its parallel to Shelley's ' Be thou me, im- 
 petuous one !' place it beyond criticism far within the 
 realm of joy. 
 
 ' There is,' he says, ' no design and no evolution.' The 
 sequence from cause to effect does not seem to him inevit- 
 able. There is no ' must ' — which recalls the brook's 
 ' there is no why.' The balance of logic does not corre- 
 spond with life, with the irregular human frame, the 
 unbalanced tree ; and returning to his idea of the in- 
 humanity of Nature, he finds ' no humanity ' in our 
 bones, neither square nor round, and causing ' a sense of 
 horror, so extra-human are they in shape.' Instead of 
 arguing thence that human thought of human origin is 
 
 * The Story of My HcarL 
 
202 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 above this irregularity and ' inhuman ' nature, he beheves 
 that it is on a mistaken road, and has missed ' an immense 
 range of thought.' Our symmetrical and regular thought 
 is not fit for this unruly universe. Jefferies' hope 
 actually springs from this absence of design and of a 
 superior power, because ' all things become,' if we accept 
 this view, ' at once plastic to our will.' Nothing is done 
 for us ; then let us set about ruling the earth. Accidents 
 are crimes ; they and diseases are all preventable. Our 
 bodies are flawed by our ancestors ; ' none die of age. 
 The only things that have been stored up have been for 
 our evil and destruction, diseases and weaknesses crossed 
 and cultivated and rendered almost part and parcel of 
 our bones. In twelve thousand written years the world 
 has not yet built itself a House, nor filled a Granary, 
 nor organized itself for its own comfort. It is so 
 marvellous I cannot express the wonder with which it 
 fills me.'* 
 
 There is something savage in this child-like astonish- 
 ment at the way o fthe world, as of the barefoot man 
 who first sat down to muse why flints should tear his 
 flesh as he mounted the hill. 
 
 Nevertheless, he thinks it possible that death is un- 
 necessary. The beauty of the ideal human being indi- 
 cates immortality. Above all, man has a soul, an 
 ' inner consciousness which aspires,' and ' may yet dis- 
 cover things now deemed unnatural.' Now let us, there- 
 fore, ' begin to roll back the tide of death, and to set 
 our faces steadily to a future of life. It should be 
 the sacred and sworn duty of every one, once at 
 least during lifetime, to do something in person 
 towards this end. It would be a delight and pleasure 
 to me to do something every day, were it ever so 
 minute. . . .'f 
 
 Theory and experiment are good. Observation is 
 better still, for it can master chance. Like M. Maeter- 
 linck much later, he says that ' it is essential that 
 
 ♦ The Story of My Heart. \ Ibid. 
 
• THE STORY OF MY HEART ' 203 
 
 study should be made of chance ; it seems to me that an 
 organon might be deduced from chance as much as from 
 experiment.' Like that same thinker, it is for a ' first 
 valley of leisure '* that he craves, where labour will 
 become * less incessant, exhausting, less material, tyran- 
 nical, pitiless.' He repeats his behef that we can reach 
 ideas far outside the circle of to-day. Let all ' do their 
 utmost to think outside and beyond our present circle 
 of ideas.' ' What,' he asks, ' would be said if a carpenter 
 about to commence a piece of work examined his tools 
 and deliberately cast away that with the finest edge ?' 
 That tool is the soul, the mind of the mind, and it must 
 be our purpose to educate the soul ; and he is thinking 
 of that ' lofty moraUty ' which, says M. Maeterlinck, 
 ' presupposes a state of soul or of heart rather than a 
 code of strictly formulated precepts ... its essence 
 the sincere and strong wish to form within ourselves a 
 powerful idea of justice and of love that always rises 
 above that formed by the clearest and most generous 
 portions of our intelligence. 'f Just before the noble 
 conclusion of the book (' That I may have the fullest 
 soul-life '), Jefferies expresses his dissatisfaction with the 
 words he has used : ' I must leave my book as a whole,' 
 he says, ' to give its o\mi meaning to its words '; and 
 then ' after so much pondering, I feel that I know nothing, 
 that I have not yet begun.' 
 
 The book is a poem ; I had almost said a piece of music. 
 The ideas rise up and fall, lose their outlines, and, resur- 
 gent again, have not fulfilled their whole purpose until 
 the full-charged silence of the conclusion. Prose has 
 rarely reached such a length — I recall chiefly * Religio 
 Medici ' and the ' Cypress Grove ' of Drummond — and 
 yet retained this absolute, more than logical, unity, such 
 a complex consistency of moods that now shake the cliffs 
 and now cannot loosen the dew from the flower of the 
 grass. The reason, often beckoned to, can remain in 
 abeyance throughout much of the early enjoyment of 
 * The Buried Temple. \ Life and Flowers. 
 
204 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 these harmonies, and to miss this enjoyment is to miss 
 half the book. For the time being we watch this great 
 conflict of one of the Many with the One — 
 
 'Ceu cetera nusquam 
 Bella forent, nulli tota morerentur in orbe.' 
 
 Even without enjoying it in its entirety, the hoHness of 
 its energy in certain places cannot be passed by, and unless 
 we go to it with many amulets and ph3dacteries, we shall 
 believe that to love and admire that energy is at least to 
 open the heart a little wider to the joy and sorrow and 
 beauty of the world. Jefferies is a mystic, and speaks to 
 a world that is not mystic yet likes to hear a beautiful 
 voice, as that giant-king in the ' Arabian Nights ' liked to 
 hear the lamentation of the caged human being. And 
 were this book far wilder and more remote from 
 market-place and laboratory, the uncommon sincerity 
 and human sweetness that break through the many 
 veils could not be repudiated. Jefferies himself said in a 
 letter that he was ' no cabinet theorist ' ; that his favourite 
 lines were those in Goethe's ' Faust ' 
 
 ' All theory, my friend, is grey, 
 But green is life's bright golden tree.' 
 
 The gift of words in the book is undeniable, phrases like 
 ' the fresh and wandering air encompassing the world,' 
 and also the impetuosity of much of it, reminding us of 
 great poetry ; its sincerity added, it cannot be allowed 
 to die, except the death of becoming a document. Or is 
 it, then, so easy to know a man as we know this one ? Do 
 we commonly know one man by spending a lifetime with 
 a score ? Suppose this one wrong or deluding, yet to know 
 anyone as we can know him is to make us wiser and juster 
 in our lives and judgments. With him we can tread part at 
 least of the boundaries of humanity, or perchance learn 
 that what seemed a boundary is but a sea. And, again, 
 as a devout spirit he must be heard, a devout spirit without 
 one holy ancient relic save his own soul, and it is surely 
 
' THE STORY OF MY HEART ' 205 
 
 a tragic and inspiring spectacle to watch this spirit at 
 odds with the universe and time embattled. 
 
 The physician and the athlete have not done for the 
 body what Jefferies helps to do by proving it divine ; in 
 his book lies more incitement to a spiritual consideration 
 of the flesh than in any other. Athleticism and week-ends 
 in the country are not to be despised ; Jefferies would not 
 have despised them, though he thought little of short 
 races ; but they will fall away and recur before his ' I 
 believe in the body ' has even been fully understood. He 
 thinks of Nature as supplying men with strength and 
 desire and means for soul-life. He has rediscovered the 
 sources of joy in Nature, and foresees that what has fed his 
 lonely ecstasy in the Downs will distribute the same force 
 and balm among the cities of men below. They are, 
 indeed, perennial sources, but his passionate love of the 
 beautiful and joyous fill him with longing for the day when 
 they shall be universal too. In spite of that thought of 
 the inhumanity of Nature, I think that not Blake, not 
 ' Three years she grew in sun and shower,' so fills the mind 
 with the attainable harmony of the world in which man 
 has yet to learn his part. A few words of Blake are 
 quintessential, inexhaustibly fecund, but they are hiero- 
 glyphics, while the words of Jefferies are laced through 
 and through with sunlight and air, and they have the 
 power of wings. What other mystics have claimed seems 
 true of him — that he is a mouthpiece of Nature herself. 
 He has not, as others have done, sighed after an unsocial 
 virtue, but for one that touches all men ; his aim the 
 ultimate one of joy ; and therefore when he says, * I 
 believe in the body,' it is more than hygiene, and passes 
 into the beating of our hearts and into the music of life 
 itself. 
 
 He desires to study and sharpen and employ the soul, 
 * the keenest, the sharpest tool possessed by man,' and 
 those labours, it may be surmised, would amply fill the 
 time of leisure for which he yearns. He does not, any 
 more than M. Maeterlinck, pretend to draw up a syllabus 
 
2o6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 for disciples, and it is true of him, as of the greatest 
 teachers, that his best lovers never become his disciples, 
 since his work is to inspire, and, like wine, the ways of his 
 inspiration are many. The soul which he would educate 
 is what has brought him his noblest pleasures and deepest 
 hopes, and he believes it to be a common possession of 
 which he is simply a discoverer. Apparently he would 
 say that the soul is often troubled by the brain as, for 
 example, the eye at night is troubled, though hardly any 
 darkness is impenetrable to the eye that is freed from all 
 clouds of cogitation. In the same way had Coleridge, con- 
 vinced of the profound importance of the poet's inspira- 
 tion, planned an essay on poetry to supersede all the 
 books of morals and metaphysics. It was enough for 
 Jefferies to have had the idea that by the soul ' we have 
 our happiness or not at aU ' ; that the soul does away with 
 the need of using the word ' God,' and is to rule the world. 
 He cries in the wilderness, and the strangeness of the 
 crying cannot but avail. Life cannot remain the same 
 as it was before the book ; we must be a little more liberal, 
 more adventurous, more expectant and aware, than 
 before. In his passion for humanity he is with Lucretius 
 and Shelley, and his revolting note, like theirs, is woven 
 into the great music ; he has the true rhythm of life, as 
 the tide and also the earthquake has. It is the greatness 
 of his hope that makes him speak scornfully about the 
 achievement of the past, but it is due also in part to the 
 belief, natural in so isolated a man, that his experiences 
 were exceptional, and that old schemes of life were mis- 
 directed because they seemed to take nothing of the kind 
 into account. He accepts the inventions of science, and 
 would not part with them, any more than with his feather- 
 bed ; but they are only foundations whose place is under- 
 ground. He is impatient of the pride in them. They are 
 but engines, and they are deified. The soul should be 
 exalted and rule. It is uncertain what other ruler he 
 would have among men. He does not approach matters 
 of practice ; had he done so, he might have shown himself, 
 
' THE STORY OF MY HEART ' 207 
 
 as he usually did, cautious in proposing definite measures 
 of reform. But only the readers over head and ears in 
 love with things as they are could suppose that the co- 
 operation with posterity which he suggests is accessible 
 through party cries, or by a method open to our hap- 
 hazard modern tyrannies. In ' Nature and Eternity ' he 
 says : ' It is necessary that some far-seeing master-mind, 
 some giant intellect, should arise and sketch out in bold, 
 unmistakable outlines the grand and noble future which 
 the human race should labour for.'* This dream of a 
 master-mind and his regret over the death of Julius 
 CiEsar and Augustus recall the words : ' This man of the 
 future who will redeem us from the old ideal ... as also 
 from what had to grow out of this ideal ; . . . this beU of 
 noonday and the great decision which restores freedom 
 to the will, which restores to the earth its goal and to 
 man his hope ... he must come some day.'f But 
 Jefferies would not have made the mistake of so admiring 
 the unfettered great man's prowess as not to see the 
 beauty of the conquered and all the other forms of life 
 which the powerful would destroy if they might. He is 
 rather with Whitman, who eagerly embraces all life, not 
 because it is all equally good, but because we may spoil 
 all if we hastily condemn or destroy what has in it the 
 goodness of fresh life ; only the slothful and the imitative 
 are bad. To the end he is divinely discontented with this 
 goodly world, and inexpressibly sad it is to see one come 
 from such long draughts of beauty sorrowfully away ; yet 
 is it wholly a joyous book save to one who knows not how 
 to live. 
 
 When in his heat Jefferies desires that his soul might be 
 * more than the cosmos of life,' he must either be read in 
 heat or condemned ; only in the almost lyric sweep of the 
 whole is it passed. Yet such passages, weak in them- 
 selves, do but strengthen the force of the whole by their 
 testimony for the writer's honesty. A clever man would 
 have erased them ; but, then, a clever man would have 
 * Longman's Magazine^ 1895. | Nietzsche. 
 
2o8 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 rearranged the book and given it an appearance of 
 reasonableness which it could not long survive. It is by 
 the tones and gestures of the writer, in his words and 
 ideas and images, that he must be interpreted if he is to 
 inspire where he cannot instruct, and forbid the duck- 
 weed to mantle overhead. Nor let anyone rashly argue 
 that his prophecy is the offspring of morbid sensitiveness, 
 unless it be thought that by this time the plain man — if 
 any such there be — ought to be superseding the man of 
 genius in directing the world ; that we have had enough 
 of madmen who will go cheerfully to the hemlock or the 
 cross, or even live on, for an idea. He fought in the dim, 
 far-off, wavering van, of which we have yet no sure tidings, 
 his weapon the mountain harp or the pebbles of the brook, 
 and that, too, in spite of the acquaintance who urged him 
 to produce ' more saleable ware,' and the anonymous 
 Christian whose comment on the book was, ' The fool 
 hath said in his heart.'* 
 
 * In a letter to Jefferies. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 'THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS'— 'THE OPEN AIR.' 
 
 Jefferies lived at West Brighton until at least as late 
 as the end of June, 1884. In September he was at 
 14, Victoria Road, Eltham, a neighbourhood not unlike 
 that of Surbiton, and about as far from London, where he 
 spent less than a year, for in June, 1885, he was lodging 
 at Rehoboth Villa, Jarvis Brook, Rotherfield, Sussex, 
 while a cottage was sought for at Tunbridge Wells ; and 
 a little later he was at ' The Downs,' Crowborough, 
 where he lived until July, 1886, or later. ' The Life 
 of the Fields,' the next volume of essays to ' Nature 
 near London,' was published in 1884, and most of it was 
 written at Brighton. ' The Open Air,' published in 1885, 
 was written partly at Brighton, partly (for example, the 
 last four essays) at Eltham. His subjects were by no 
 means all taken from these neighbourhoods. In ' The 
 Field Play,' ' Bits of Oak Bark,' ' The Pageant of Summer,' 
 ' Meadow Thoughts,' ' Mind under Water,' and ' Sport 
 and Science,' for example, his thoughts are of Wiltshire, 
 or of some country in which it predominated. In ' By 
 the Exe ' and ' The Water Colley ' he is in Somerset. In 
 several papers he is thinking chiefly of London ; in one of 
 Paris, to which he must have paid a short visit at about 
 this time. These papers, contributed to many different 
 magazines and newspapers, fall, though not, of course, 
 without some reluctance, into three classes. The first 
 consists of lengths of notes, carefully wrought in parts, 
 but irregular, almost shapeless, and showing signs of 
 
 209 14 
 
210 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 fatigue or of painful concession to the ' essay * form, such 
 as ' Clematis Lane/ ' January in the Sussex Woods,' 
 ' By the Exe,' and others. Essays, accurately so called, 
 make the second class ; these are orderly discussions of a 
 given subject, the material supplied chiefly by his own 
 observation and reflection, as in ' Mind under Water,' 
 ' Birds Climbing the Air,' 'The Plainest City in Europe.' 
 In the third class come those papers with w^hich the first 
 might have ranked had they been more happily wrought. 
 They are impassioned descriptions or meditations, like 
 ' The Pageant of Summer,' ' Meadow Thoughts,' ' Sun- 
 light in a London Square,' ' Venice in the East End,' and 
 to these must be added the stories and sketches like 
 ' St. Guido,' and ' Bits of Oak Bark.' 
 
 In the first class, he is hampered by his notebooks and 
 the necessity of writing for the magazines. The reader 
 who wishes for country facts and ' no nonsense ' finds 
 them here. The fragments of pictures are often fine in 
 detail ; the observation of natural facts useful ; the 
 thoughts, as in ' January in the Sussex Woods,' lively and 
 new ; all reveal something of the main, and can be enjoyed 
 for his sake. 
 
 But the other two classes show more clearly and 
 favourably the Jefferies of 1883, 1884, and 1885 ; his 
 mind, his heart, and all his senses, his whole humanity, 
 is at work in them, and, above all, in the impassioned 
 descriptions and meditations. Some of the essays in 
 the second class show us what a naturalist Jefferies might 
 have become. He had been for years a great reader in 
 natural history : he mentions Linnaeus, Darwin, Lyell, 
 Maury, and others ; while among his books I have seen 
 Bevan's 'Honey Bee '; Morris's ' Butterflies '; Shuckard's 
 ' British Bees '; Lubbock's ' Ants, Bees, and Wasps '; 
 J. Bell Pettigrew's ' Animal Locomotion ; or, Walking, 
 Swimming, and Flying, with a Dissertation on Aero- 
 nautics.' His eye, as has been seen, was restless, 
 curious, and exact ; and his power of recording what he 
 saw in precise and vivid English was growing every year. 
 
From a pliotograph. 
 
 EI.I/.Vl'.ETH IKFKERIES, 
 the mother ofRichaid Jeft'eries. 
 
LATER ESSAYS 211 
 
 Implicit in that power, and of priceless value to it, was 
 his own complex joy in life, in the exertion of bodily, 
 and mental, and spiritual energies, whether in himself 
 and other men and women, or in bird and beast. That 
 and an eye continually on an object under natural con- 
 ditions raise ' The Hovering of the Kestrel ' and ' Birds 
 Chmbing the Air ' to a high place in natural history. 
 The description is so plain and matter of fact — though 
 it is also imaginative enough to bring the thing described 
 before the eyes of all but the most ignorant readers — that 
 it may seem of little account ; and true it is that it is 
 bound to be superseded by something yet more exact and 
 as vivid. But it is a model and a stimulus ; much natural 
 history is born dead through ignoring it ; and the best 
 belongs to the same class, and, whether due in any high 
 degree or not to Jefferies' influence, is beyond almost 
 everything that preceded his work. In this class of 
 his essays occurs his claim, consistently made all through 
 his life, for intelligence instead of hereditary instinct in 
 animals. He makes a genuine, and apparently, in part, a 
 successful attempt, in 'Mind under Water,' to get into the 
 mind of the fish, very much as Maeterlinck has done with 
 the dog. ' Birds,' he declares, ' are lively, intellectual, 
 imaginative, and affectionate creatures, and all their 
 movements are not dictated by mere necessity.' Only 
 through such an anthropomorphism, as we proudly call it, 
 can an understanding of other forms of life begin, and 
 it led Jefferies to a yet further stage — that of perceiving 
 that there may be things which ' weigh with ants ' at 
 present inaccessible to our intelligence, that our range 
 of ideas no more includes theirs than theirs includes ours. 
 He may have thought the more boldly on this subject 
 because he was at the time interested in the forms of 
 mental activity which cannot be classed with reason, as 
 the telepathic explanation of a coincidence in the ' Legend 
 of a Gateway ' shows. He may presently be proved to 
 have been wrong, but that it was a progressive error 
 there can be little doubt. 
 
 14 — 2 
 
212 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 The third class of Jefferies' essays appear to belong 
 chiefly to the period which brought forth ' The Story of 
 My Heart ' and ' The Dewy Morn.' Many of their 
 thoughts are to be traced to the stir from which sprang 
 ' The Story of My Heart '; some are almost repetitions 
 of parts of that book ; others are developments, or 
 further conclusions, or have faint infusions of the pro- 
 phetic mood after its fury has passed. In ' Meadow 
 Thoughts,' for example, some of the same thoughts 
 fall into their place among the visible beauties of Nature 
 with a tranquillity not to be found in the autobiography — 
 the contrast between the bright summer light and books, 
 and the correspondence between the light and ' some 
 likewise beautiful and wonderful truth ' as yet unknown, 
 and again the bitter, simple thought that ' no physical 
 reason exists why every human being should not have 
 sufficient, at least, of necessities.' The sunlight puts 
 out the words of the printed books as it puts out the 
 fire ; ' the very grass blades confound the wisest.' The 
 thought comes to him amid the weariness of printed 
 matter at the British Museum : the pigeons fleeting 
 about the portico lure him again to the something be- 
 yond thought. ' They,' he says, ' have not laboured in 
 mental searching as we have ; they have not wasted their 
 time looking among empty straw for the grain that is 
 not there. They have been in the sunlight. Since the 
 days of ancient Greece the doves have remained in the 
 sunshine. We who have laboured have found nothing. 
 In the sunshine, by the shady verge of woods, by the 
 sweet waters where the wild dove sips, there alone will 
 thought be found.' It is the cry, with a deeper tone in 
 it, which the poet cried : 
 
 'The swoon of Imogen, 
 Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den, 
 Are things to brood on with more ardency 
 Than the death-days of empires.' 
 
 There is the hope, too, that the beautiful and wonderful 
 thought hovering in the sunlight will come to earth — wiil 
 
LATER ESSAYS 213 
 
 come to us before it is so late that we take the gift in 
 weariness and dismay. In the spot-markings of butter- 
 flies' wings, of flowers, of eggs, he says, ' the sun has 
 written his commands, and the wind inscribed deep 
 thought,' and tells us that to-day the immortals who 
 walked on the earth when they were composed are among 
 us yet, ' if onl}^ we will give up the soul to these pure 
 influences.' The abundance, * the open-handed gener- 
 osity and divine waste of Nature,' again, lead him away 
 from the meanness forced upon us by circumstances to 
 the belief that some day ' no one need ever feel anxiety 
 about mere subsistence '; and yet it is pitiful that the 
 infant oak will not be transplanted to safety, and will 
 perish.' 
 
 In ' Sunlight in a London Square ' the thought of the 
 reapers sadly labouring sends him forward to ' a race 
 able to enjoy the flowers with which the physical work 
 is strewn.' For himself and others he desires longer, 
 more joyous life, and the pa.ssion of his wish seems half 
 a realization ; he desires it for the very birds — ' a hundred 
 years just to feast on the seeds and sing and be utterly 
 happy and oblivious of everything but the moment they 
 are passing.' In the same mood comes a pleading for 
 wiser treatment of ' the sullen poor who stand scornful 
 and desperate at the street-corners.' The holy spring, 
 the water and the light, give him of their truth, of the 
 sense of beauty which they bring with them ; in his 
 love of its purity there is an even profounder sentiment 
 than in Ruskin's passionate upbraiding of those who 
 defiled the Wandel springs. In ' The Pageant of Summer' 
 the hope is repeated : ' Earth holds secrets enough to 
 give them the life of the fabled Immortals.' Part at 
 least of the charm of that and the kindred essays lies in 
 the linking of spiritual things to their physical causes 
 among the coombes, the long wavering heights, the barley 
 and the grass, of the Downs, and the flowers of Coate 
 Farm itself. Earth, the mighty mother, emerges almost 
 personified in these essays, benign, abundant, hale. In 
 
214 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ' Beauty in the Country ' he says that ' it takes a hundred 
 and fifty years to make a beauty — a hundred and fifty 
 years out of doors. . . . All beautiful women come from 
 the country.' 
 
 The Wind and the Wheat speak these same things in 
 * St. Guido.' Joy in Nature ' makes to-day a thousand 
 years long backwards and a thousand years long for- 
 wards.' The Wheat is glad to be cut down for men's 
 sakes, knowing its tribe cannot die, ' but there is one 
 thing we do not like, and that is all the labour and the 
 misery which ends in nothing, not even a flower.' The 
 Wheat goes on : 
 
 ' " 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 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 wheat 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 minute 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 butterflies floating over us. This makes us 
 
LATER ESSAYS 215 
 
 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 jealous and selfish, 
 and so curiously infatuated with 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." '* 
 It is naughty Socialistic Wheat. Then, again, in ' One 
 of the New Voters,' Roger the reaper has swallowed a 
 gallon of harvest beer, ' probably the vilest drink in the 
 world ': ' upon this abominable mess the golden harvest 
 of English fields is gathered in.' Next day he can eat 
 no breakfast, but he drinks more of the beer, and 
 works fourteen hours, then to the inn. ' I think,' says 
 Jefferies, ' it would need a very clever man indeed to 
 invent something for him to do, some way for him to 
 
 * The Open Air. 
 
2i6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 spend his evening.' He sees no way out ; no way of 
 blunting the contrast between the golden sun and wheat 
 and the harvest slave. He has come to see that the 
 labourer's life is not, as the Times said in 1872, ' that life 
 of competency without care which poets dream of '; he 
 has even found that harvest wages may be earned too 
 hard. He sees no way out. He states an evil, and dimly 
 sees a good. He has discovered something divine in 
 Nature with which he cannot reconcile men as they are. 
 But he takes refuge in no fortress of dreams ; he never 
 forgets, he would never desert, men and the present. ' The 
 forest is gone,' he writes at Eltham, ' but the spirit of 
 Nature stays, and can be found by those who search for 
 it. Dearly as I love the open air, I cannot regret the 
 medieval 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.'* 
 
 But these essays are not to be judged by the thoughts 
 which occur in them. In the best he has created poetry 
 that gushes naturally, thought, emotion, and sensuous 
 picture, out of the loving contemplation of visible 
 things. 
 
 There are at least four ways of looking at visible things. 
 Take, for example, a rough, thistly meadow at night. 
 
 One man sees a multitude of tall, pale thistles in a field 
 of grey moonlight, knows them to be thistles, acknow- 
 ledges the fact, and passes on without pause. 
 
 One is startled by their appearance. They are unlike 
 thistles or any other plants as seen by day, and he has 
 never seen them so before. He stops to make sure 
 what they are, and at last remembers seeing them in a 
 commonplace light by day, and he allows the first im- 
 pression to die away. 
 
 Another sees them, and is startled, utterly forgetful 
 
 * The Open Air. 
 
LATER ESSAYS 217 
 
 that there was anything there when he passed before. 
 He cannot reason about them, is too lazy or excited to 
 go over and touch and see ; he returns home with a tale 
 of the unusual moonlight growth in the field at the edge 
 of the wood. In an earlier age he might have reported 
 the seeing of a mushroom flourishing of fairies. 
 
 Another sees them with a rapt placidity as something 
 beautiful and new, and his recollection or discovery that 
 they are thistles does not disturb his enjoyment. His 
 eye and heart feed together upon their strangeness and 
 beauty. He has really captured one of the visions which 
 clear eyes and an untarnished soul are summoning con- 
 tinually from inexhaustible and eternal Nature. 
 
 Jefferies is often like the first, and the result of this 
 kind of vision is his most pedestrian essay ; at his best, 
 as in ' The Pageant of Summer,' he is like the last. Being 
 a prose-writer, he cannot change the things themselves — 
 flower, and leaf, and sky — into melody and words, as the 
 poet can in verse. Prose is by its nature discursive and 
 explanatory, and Jefferies brings the objects before the 
 eyes, and gradually, by means of a phrase, a comment, or 
 a thought arising out of them, invests them with the 
 spirit of life which gave them their first significance to 
 him. Description and meditation, a beating heart and 
 memory aiding, grow and intertwine with all the appar- 
 ently ungoverned life of copse or meadow that comes to 
 have a separate identity of its own. He seeks no neat- 
 ness or balance, is impatient of the devices of the 
 city-bred artist. ' Is all the world,' he asks, ' to be 
 Versaillised ?' It is impossible without an example 
 to describe the process by which he passes out of the 
 delight of the eyes into the spiritual world, as in this 
 passage from ' The Pageant of Summer ': 
 
 ' Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just 
 visible as he passes ; did he pause, the light would be 
 apparent through their texture. On the wings of the 
 dragon-fly, as he hovers an instant before he darts, there 
 is a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more 
 
2i8 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 delicate than the minute filaments on a swallow's quiU, 
 more delicate than the pollen of a flower. They are 
 formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is re- 
 solved into the means and organs of life ! Though not 
 often consciously recognized, perhaps this is the great 
 pleasure of summer, to watch the earth, the dead particles, 
 resolving themselves into the living case of life, to see 
 the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by degrees 
 the perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come 
 the wings that by-and-by shall pass the immense sea. 
 It is in this marvellous transformation of clods and cold 
 matter into living things that the joy and the hope of 
 summer reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf, each 
 separate floret and petal, is an inscription speaking of 
 hope. Consider the grasses and the oaks, the swallows, 
 the sweet blue butterfly — they are one and all a sign and 
 token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So 
 that my hope becomes as broad as the horizon afar, 
 reiterated by every leaf, sung on every bough, reflected 
 in the gleam of every flower. There is so much for us 
 yet to come, so much to be gathered and enjoyed. Not 
 for you or me, now, but for our race, who will ultimately 
 use this magical secret for their happiness. Earth holds 
 secrets enough to give them the life of the fabled Im- 
 mortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief 
 that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers 
 and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven 
 into man's existence. He shall take from all their beauty 
 and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower is to me 
 so much more than stalk and petals. When I look in the 
 glass I see that every line in my face means pessimism ; 
 but in spite of my face — that is my experience — I remain 
 an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has etched 
 thin crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has cast 
 the original expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow 
 flow over us with little ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on 
 the beach. Let us not look at ourselves, but onwards, 
 and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field. 
 
LATER ESSAYS 219 
 
 He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the 
 ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright 
 of mind.'* 
 
 But the part in Jefferies' work is usually much less 
 than the whole. He has something like the abundance of 
 earth itself. Now and then there is a phrase like ' The 
 curved moon hung on the sky as the hunter's horn on 
 the wall,' or ' The storm passes and the sun comes out ; 
 the air is the sweeter and the richer for the rain, like 
 verses with a rhyme '; but it is not in such, were they twice 
 as numerous, that the merit of a piece consists. The 
 writing has the abundance of Nature ; the poetry resides 
 in the passionate level of the whole. To this passion 
 the words are truly subservient. No word astonishes ; 
 at their best the words are quietly effective ; they fall 
 now and then to the ungainly or commonplace. He did 
 not refer his periods to his ear ; also, he often wrote in 
 haste and pain. It is rare for him to produce a large 
 picture except by accident : when he does, he has his 
 eye on physical objects and attempts to render them by 
 accumulation and selection of details, and may be said 
 to compete with the effects of the brush in such a piece 
 as this from the ' Notes on Landscape Painting ': 
 
 * The earth has a way of absorbing things that are 
 placed upon it, of drawing from them their stiff individu- 
 ality of newness, and throwing over them something of 
 her own antiquity. As the furrow smooths and brightens 
 the share, as the mist eats away the sharpness of 
 the iron angles, so, in a larger manner, the machines 
 sent forth to conquer the soil are conquered by it, become 
 a part of it, and as natural as the old, old scythe and 
 reaping-hook. Thus already the new agriculture has 
 grown hoar. 
 
 ' The oldest of the modern implements is the threshing- 
 machine, which is historic, for it was once the cause of 
 rural war. ... It is as natural as the ricks : things grow 
 old so soon in the fields. 
 
 * The Life of the Fields. 
 
220 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ' On the fitful autumn breeze, with brown leaves 
 whirhng and grey grass rustling in the hedges, the hum 
 of the fly-wheel sounds afar, travelHng through the mist 
 which hides the hills. Sometimes the ricks are in the 
 open stubble, up the Down side, where the wind comes in 
 a long, strong rush, like a tide, carrying away the smoke 
 from the funnel in a sweeping trail ; while the brown 
 canvas, stretched as a screen, flaps and tears, and the 
 folk at work can scarce hear each other speak, any more 
 than you can by the side of the sea. Vast atmospheric 
 curtains — what else can you call them ? — roll away, 
 opening a view of the stage of hills a moment, and, 
 closing again, reach from heaven to earth around. The 
 dark sky thickens and lowers as if it were gathering 
 thunder, as women glean wheat-ears in their laps. It is 
 not thunder ; it is as if the wind grew solid and hurled 
 itself — as a man might throw out his clenched fist — at 
 the hill. The inclined plane of the mist-clouds again 
 reflects a grey light, and, as if swept up by the fierce gale, 
 a beam of sunshine comes. You see it first long, as it is 
 at an angle ; then overhead it shortens, and again 
 lengthens after it has passed, somewhat like the spoke of 
 a wheel. In the second of its presence a red handker- 
 chief a woman wears on the ricks stands out, the brass 
 on the engine glows, the water in the butt gleams, men's 
 faces brighten, the cart-horse's coat looks glossy, the straw 
 a pleasant yellow. It is gone, and lights up the backs 
 of the sheep yonder as it runs up the hill swifter than a 
 hare. Swish ! The north wind darkens the sky, and 
 the fly-wheel moans in the gloom ; the wood-pigeons go 
 a mile a minute on the wind, hardly using their wings ; 
 the brown woods below huddle together, rounding their 
 shoulders to the blast ; a great air-shadow, not mist, a 
 shadow of thickness in the air, looms behind a tiled roof 
 in the valley. The vast profound is full of the rushing 
 air. . . .'* 
 
 Here nothing is created. It might have been done 
 * The Life of the Fields. 
 
LATER ESSAYS 221 
 
 in a score of different ways equally well. It is the work 
 of a faithful observer, and it can suggest Nature to those 
 who know it. The words are such as the observer might 
 have used to another in order to describe a scene familiar 
 to them both. But the objects are written about ; they are 
 not presented as, for example, visible objects are presented 
 in Mr. Sturge Moore's " Rout of the Amazons." The 
 writing is nearer to the original than an auctioneer's 
 descriptions, but is not different in essential character. 
 For both are without imagination, the power that sees 
 a thing alive with the mind's eye, so that, even were that 
 thing outside to pass away for ever, it would still be clear 
 and with power of motion within the brain. To possess 
 that power is to enjoy and suffer life intensely : to give 
 that inward image another outer life, in words, in paint, 
 in marble, in melody, is to be an artist. Jefferies had 
 that power, but the images that he preserved in full 
 vitality were of emotions and sensations rather than of 
 physical objects. The emotion connected with an object 
 was usually more vivid in his mind than the object itself, 
 notwithstanding his powerful and faithful sight. Even 
 in the passage just quoted it is a feeling about the land- 
 scape that comes nearest to being created and made 
 alive. When the feeling is stronger and prevails, as in 
 the harvest landscape of ' The Dewy Morn,' and in many 
 passages in * The Pageant of Summer ' and ' Meadow 
 Thoughts,' Nature's loveliness, permanence, and abun- 
 dance is married to the writer's humanity in a manner 
 that effects a more rare and more difficult achievement — 
 one of Jefferies' greatest achievements — than the pictures 
 of Ruskin or of Stevenson. 
 
 In ' Sunlight in a London Square,' which is typical of 
 his later moralized landscape, there is no mere advice to 
 a landscape painter : 
 
 ' I stood under the portico of the National Gallery in 
 the shade, looking southwards, across the fountains and 
 the lions, towards the green trees under the distant tower. 
 Once a swallow sang in passpg on the wing, garrulous still 
 
222 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 as in the time of old Rome and Augustan Virgil. From 
 the high pediments dropped the occasional chatter of 
 sparrows, and the chirp of their young in the roofs. The 
 second brood ; they were late ; they would not be in time 
 for the harvest and the fields of stubble. A flight of blue 
 pigeons rose from the central pavement to the level line 
 of the parapet of the western houses. A starling shot 
 across the square, swift, straight, resolute. I looked for 
 the swifts, but they had gone, earliest of all to leave our 
 sky for distant countries. Away in the harvest-field the 
 reaper, pausing in his work, had glanced up at the one 
 stray fleck of cloud in the sky, which to my fancy might 
 be a Cupid on a blue panel, and, seeing it, smiled in the 
 midst of the corn, wiping his blackened face, for he knew 
 it meant dry weather. Heat, and the dust of straw, the 
 violent labour, had darkened his face from brown almost 
 to blackness — a more than swarthiness, a blackness. 
 The stray cloud was spreading out in filaments, each 
 thread drawn to a fineness that ended presently in dis- 
 appearance. It was a sign to him of continued sunshine 
 and the prosperity of increased wages. The sun from 
 whose fiery brilliance I escaped into the shadow was to 
 him a welcome friend ; his neck was bare to the fierceness 
 of the sun. His heart was gladdened because the sky 
 promised him permission to labour till the sinews of his 
 fingers stiffened in their crooked shape (as they held the 
 reaping-hook), and he could hardly open them to grasp 
 the loaf he had gained. 
 
 ' So men laboured of old time, whether with plough or 
 sickle or pruning-hook, in the days when Augustan Virgil 
 heard the garrulous swallow, still garrulous. An endless 
 succession of labour, under the brightness of summer, 
 under the gloom of winter ; to my thought it is a sadness 
 even in the colour and light and glow of this hour of sun, 
 this ceaseless labour, repeating the furrow, reiterating the 
 blow, the same furrow, the same stroke — shall we never 
 know how to lighten it, how to live with the flowers, the 
 swallows, the sweet, delicious shade, and the murmur of 
 
LATER ESSAYS 223 
 
 the stream ? Not the blackened reaper only, but the 
 crowd whose low hum renders the fountain inaudible, the 
 nameless and unknown crowd of this immense city 
 wreathed round about the central square. I hope 
 that at some time, by dint of bolder thought and freer 
 action, the world shall see a race able to enjoy it without 
 stint, a race able to enjoy the colours of the garden of 
 life. To look backwards with the swallow there is sad- 
 ness, to-day with the fleck of cloud there is unrest ; 
 but forward, with the broad sunlight, there is hope. . . .' 
 
 Then there are the passages where he is interested in 
 his own impressions, but has not advanced to a full 
 artistic use of them — as, for example, when he tells us of 
 the sense of wildness coming at the touch of the Reed 
 Canary Grass, or where he says that there is no purple in 
 ripe wheat which can be seen if it is looked for specially, 
 ' but when the distant beams of sunlight travelling over 
 the hill swept through the rich ripe grain, for a moment 
 there was a sense of purple on the retina.' The honesty 
 and exactness of that guarantee the quality of his work 
 and of his observation. 
 
 One piece of advice to those who would observe he repeats 
 several times : summer and winter keep in one place, 
 because in the course of a year every creature that is not 
 thoroughly local will pass over any given spot. It was 
 probably his own habit more and more, for though in a 
 letter written late in his life at Crowborough he speaks 
 of knowing the whole range of the South Downs, he was 
 compelled by ill-health to walk less and less. His earlier 
 writings were the work of a walker ; the later are the work 
 of one who lies or sits. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 'THE DEWY MORN' 
 
 ' The Dewy Morn,' originally written several years 
 before, but certainly revised, was published in 1884. 
 The manuscript was first sent to Messrs. Longman 
 from Brighton in December, 1883, with a note request- 
 ing that it shall not be given to a Tory reader, ' or 
 it will be condemned without mercy.' A large part 
 of it was almost certainly rewritten in its present form 
 at about the same time as ' The Story of My Heart.' 
 It has much of the same emotional thought ; it has the 
 same passion and impetuosity in style. Returning as he 
 did so often in ' The Story of My Heart ' to his youth, he 
 put his memories and his mature divinations into the 
 heroine of ' The Dewy Morn,' the beautiful country girl 
 Felise. In women he found the beauty he saw and loved 
 in Nature, as if, indeed, the}^ were made, as Blodeuwedd 
 was made by Gwydion, of the blossoms of the oak and 
 the blossoms of the broom and the blossoms of the 
 meadow-sweet, but with an added solemnity as of the 
 mountains and of light upon great waters. Perhaps he 
 had found more in one woman than in any other human 
 beings : certain it is that he early began to draw, or try to 
 draw, women of singular beauty and character, with a 
 vigour and originality, as in the Georgiana of his ' Restless 
 Human Hearts,' beyond the man. Cicely Luckett is a 
 fair, happy, sun-sweet shadow of a character. Frances in 
 ' Bevis ' is only pretty and female. In some of his Brighton 
 essays his admiration of well-dressed women riding or 
 
 224 
 
' THE DEWY MORN ' 225 
 
 walking in the superb sunlight gave an unusual sparkle 
 and gaiety to the writing. In ' Bevis,' in ' The Field 
 Play/ and in the early ' Midsummer Hum ' he sketched or 
 suggested several labourers' daughters of great freshness, 
 courage, and health. His ' Golden Brown ' is a pure piece 
 of worship of the peculiar beauty of young labouring 
 women, perhaps of gipsy blood (he was interested in gipsies 
 whom he often saw at Crowborough, and he read Smart 
 and Crofton's ' Dialect of the English Gipsies ') : — 
 
 ' Two young women, both in the freshness of youth 
 and health. Their faces glowed 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 beautiful. 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, gathering 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 can- 
 not 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. 
 
 ' The great painters knew it — Rubens, for instance ; 
 perhaps he saw it on the faces of the women who gathered 
 fruit or laboured at the harvest in the Low Countries 
 
 15 
 
226 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 centuries since. He could never have seen it in a city of 
 these northern 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 da\vn is often golden, often scarlet, or 
 purple and gold ; the sunset 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 sunshine 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 freshness of spring and was bro\vned by the 
 work of caterpillars ; they were in rags and jags, their shoes 
 had split, and their feet looked twice as wide in conse- 
 quence. Their hands were black ; not grimy, but abso- 
 lutely 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 dov\Ti in straight 
 ungraceful lines ; there was no colour of ribbon or flower, 
 to hght up the dinginess. 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, deliberate, 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 
 
'THE DEWY MORN' 227 
 
 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 un- 
 known 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 fortunate, 
 beautiful golden-brown in their cheeks, superb health in 
 their gait, they walked as the immortals on earth.'* 
 
 The beauty of a woman seemed to him so large and full 
 of divine correspondencies that in ' Beauty in the Country ' 
 he says : ' Her physique excels man's ' ; and that paper 
 is a prose counterpart to Wordsworth's ' Three years she 
 grew in sun and shower.' 
 
 ' 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 preciousness has been drawn. 
 From the south wind that breathed a century and a half 
 ago over the green wheat. From the perfume of the grow- 
 ing grasses waving over honey-laden clover and laughing 
 veronica, hiding the greenfinches, 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 
 
 * The Open Air. 
 
 15—2 
 
228 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 hundred years repeated. A hundred years of cowshps, 
 blue-bells, violets ; purple spring and golden autumn ; 
 sunshine, shower, and devvy mornings ; the night im- 
 mortal ; all the rhythm of Time unrolling. A chronicle 
 unwritten and past all power of writing : who shall pre- 
 serve a record of the petals that fell from the roses a 
 century ago ? The swallows to the house-top 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 seventeen is 
 centuries old. Is this why passion is almost sad ?'* 
 
 The arms, the torso, the mouth of woman uplift his 
 heart with a sense of the divine. 
 
 In ' The Dewy Morn ' he creates a woman who shall 
 justify this sense of her divinity, which she does without 
 losing her reality, nor even, except in her physical beauty, 
 rising above many other healthy young women in love. 
 She is a beautiful lover, born not out of the bitter sea, but 
 out of the streaming dew that makes the grass sweeter 
 than honeycomb, Jefferies is not merely interested in 
 her, but pours out her passion by an intense imaginative 
 act in which she absorbs him, yet retains her individuality; 
 she is virginal, like few heroines, entirely uncorrupted 
 by the author. She is the girl of ' Lov'e in the Valley ' seen 
 by a different lover. 
 
 Felise, a girl of twenty, lives with her uncle, Mr. Goring, 
 an independent man with some land and a house, who 
 has secluded himself, gardening, beekeeping, planting 
 trees, and meditating. The name Felise was possibly 
 given to her in the early first draft out of homage to 
 * Poems and Ballads.' The book tells first of her hearty, 
 joyous passion of love for Martial Barnard, a young 
 neighbour living on a big encumbered farm. He has long 
 thought himself in love with another, but his feeling has 
 stagnated, and he has fallen into an embittered state. He 
 admires Felise coolly, and is much with -her, but has 
 resolved not to fall in love. She will do anything 
 
 * rAe Open Air. 
 
'THE DEWY MORN' 229 
 
 to be with him, but his feeUng for her is only converted 
 to perfect love when he believes himself to be drowning 
 in an attempt to save the life of Felise's maid, Polly Shaw. 
 Another lover is Robert Godwin, the hard bailiff of the 
 great Cornleigh Estate, who has secretly grown tender 
 over her since she rolled in his mowing grass as a child 
 and he said nothing. Seeing her the frank lover of his 
 rival, Barnard, he one day seizes her, binds her, and tries 
 to make his horse trample on her face as she lies upon the 
 ground. Martial shoots the horse, and Godwin soon 
 afterwards kills himself. Martial's fortunes mend, and 
 he is able to marry Felise at the end of the book. 
 
 As a background there are the Downs and the swollen 
 Cornleigh Estate belonging to a stupid rich man who has 
 long represented the county in Parliament, and has gone 
 on rounding off his estate with the best nature in the 
 world, allowing his bailiff to see that no one not working 
 on the estate shall dwell in one of his cottages, to deny the 
 villagers access to drinking water, and so on. Goring is 
 a stiff, quiet opponent to Cornleigh ; Martial, in a long 
 speech at a meeting where everyone is bowing down to 
 Cornleigh, an eloquent opponent who has his coat torn 
 for his pains. 
 
 Goring, a musing, reticent fugitive from the superfluous 
 troubles of the world, is not a well-defined character, but 
 his library, his garden, his filbert walk, and the bathing- 
 pool in his woods, make a lovely refuge for Felise. They 
 are a pair not unlike Prospero and Miranda. 
 
 She has flawless physical strength, and at the opening 
 of the book her splendid energy, all the unhesitating 
 sensuousness of health, innocence, and youth, soars with 
 the emotion of love for Barnard. She is out by Ashpen 
 Hill a little after four in the summer morning. 
 
 ' Felise sat down on a great trunk of oak lying in the 
 lane by a gateway, and sighed with very depth of enjoy- 
 ment. There was a yellow-hammer perched on the gate, 
 and he had been singing. When Felise approached, he 
 ceased ; but seeing that she was quiet and intended him 
 
230 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 no harm, he began again. His four or five rising notes, 
 and the long-drawn idle-sounding note with which they 
 conclude, suited so well with the sunshine, they soothed 
 her still further. She sighed again, and let herself sit 
 loosely on the oak-trunk, like the yellow-hammer. He 
 had his back humped, and all his body rested comfortably. 
 So did she ; she permitted her back to bow, her shoulders 
 to stoop, her limbs to relax, and idle nature to have her 
 own way. After a while she sighed again. 
 
 ' She was bathing in the beauty of the morning — floating 
 upheld on the dewy petals. A swimmer lies on the warm 
 summer water, the softest of couches, extended at fuU 
 length, the body so gently held that it undulates slightly 
 with the faint swell. So soft is the couch it softens the 
 frame, which becomes supple, flexible, like the water itself. 
 
 ' Felise was lying on the flowers and grass, extended 
 under the sun, steeped in their sweetness. She visibly 
 sat on the oak-trunk — invisibly her nature was reclining, 
 as the swimmer on the sun-warmed sea. Her frame 
 drooped as the soul, which bears it up, flowed outwards, 
 feeling to grass, and flower, and leaf, as the swimmer 
 spreads the arms abroad, and the fingers feel the water. 
 She sighed with deep content, dissolving in the luxurious 
 bath of beauty. 
 
 * Her strong heart beating, the pulses throbbing, her 
 bosom rising and regularly sinking with the rich waves of 
 life ; her supple limbs and roundness filled with the plenty 
 of ripe youth ; her white, soft, roseate skin, the surface 
 where the sun touched her hand glistening with the dew 
 of the pore ; the bloom upon her — that glow of the morn 
 of life — the hair more lovely than the sunlight ; the grace 
 unwritten of perfect form — these produced within her a 
 sense of existence — a consciousness of being, to which she 
 was abandoned ; and her lips parted to sigh. The sigh 
 was the expression of feeling herself to be. 
 
 'To be ! To live ! To have an intense enjoyment in 
 every inspiration of breath ; in every beat of the pulse ; 
 in every movement of the limbs ; in every sense ! 
 
•THE DEWY MORN' 231 
 
 ' The rugged oak-trunk was pleasant to her. She placed 
 her hand on the brown, stained wood — stained with its 
 own sap, for the bark had been removed. She touched 
 it ; and so full of life was her touch, that it found a pleasure 
 in that rude wood. The brown boulder-stone in the lane, 
 ancient, smoothed, and ground in times which have 
 vanished like a cloud, its surface the colour of old polished 
 oak, reflecting the sun with a dull gleam — the very 
 boulder-stone was pleasant to her, so full of life was her 
 sense of sight. 
 
 ' There came a skylark, dropping over the hedge, and 
 alighted on a dusty level spot in the lane. His shadow 
 shot a foot long on the dust, thrown by the level beams of 
 the sun. The dust, in shadow and sunshine — the despised 
 dust — now that the lark drew her glance to it, was 
 pleasant to see. 
 
 ' All things are joyously beautiful to those who feel 
 themselves to be ; but it is only given to the chosen of 
 nature to know this exceeding delight. 
 
 ' In herself rapt, the whole face of earth and sky 
 ministered to her, each and all that made up the visible 
 world was flung at her feet. They did homage — Felise, 
 queen of herself, was queen of all. 
 
 ' It was love without a lover — love absorbed in itself. 
 Her whole existence was quivering with love ; this in- 
 tensity of life was love. She was gathering from sun- 
 light, azure sky and grassy fields, from dewy hills and 
 all the morning, an immense strength to love. Her 
 parted lips sighed — there was such store and warmth of 
 love within them. Without a thought she thought deeply, 
 pondering, weighed down on herself with weight of 
 feeling. Her own intense existence absorbed her. . . . 
 
 ' There was nothing large, gigantic, or Amazonian 
 about her ; it was the perfection of her physical nature, 
 not size or training. Her natural body had been further 
 perfected by a purely natural life. The wind, the sun, 
 the fields, the hills — freedom, and the spirit which dwells 
 among these, had made her a natural woman ; such a 
 
 / 
 
232 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 woman as Earth meant to live upon her surface, and as 
 Earth intended in the first origin of things : beauty and 
 strength — strength and beauty. 
 
 ' What a latent power of love was there in that richness 
 of blood, that depth of chest, that greatness of heart ! 
 Pure love, pure as the spring-water that comes from 
 the hills, was there ready to be poured forth — always 
 full, always pouring, always the same and always 
 pure.'* 
 
 She has seen Barnard hardly at all, and only a short 
 time ago for the first time. Long before, as she wandered 
 over the hills, her heart had been full of love ; meeting 
 Barnard is only the outlet for that love. 
 
 ' As she had roamed about the hills, and wandered in 
 the woods, or by the shore, musing in deep enjoyment 
 of the sunlight and the wind, love was coursing through 
 each vein, filling every throb of her heart. It was this 
 which gave such beauty to the flower, such colour to the 
 sky, such pleasant coolness to the stream. She awoke 
 to it in the morning as the swallows came to the eave by 
 the window ; they had been coursing long before through 
 the air while she lay sleeping. 
 
 ' She threw open her window and breathed it — the 
 sweet wind from the meadows brought it. All day the 
 sunlight poured it forth upon the green grass and rustling 
 leaves ; she moved in it as she moved in the sunbeams. 
 By night it was with her. An inexpressible fulness of 
 passion grew in her breast. 
 
 ' But could this be ? Could anyone love without an 
 object ? Is it possible for the heart to become full and 
 yet without an image ? Not perhaps with a small nature, 
 a narrow mind, a stunted being. With all great hearts 
 and true women it is always the case ; they love first in 
 themselves, they love without knowing why, or whom — 
 it is their very life. If such a great and noble woman were 
 enclosed in a prison from youth, and permitted no sight 
 of man, still to the end of existence she would love. The 
 * The Deivy Morn. 
 
'THE DEWY MORN' 233 
 
 divine flame lighted in her with life would burn on to the 
 last moment. 
 
 ' Felise's heart was lost before she saw him. She lost 
 it amid the flowers of the meadow, the wind on the hill, by 
 the rushing stream. She lost it in her study among her 
 books, her poetry of old Greece — songs of the ' Violet 
 Land ' — her ' Odyssey ' and dramas of Sophocles and 
 iEschylus ; among the stars that swept by over the hill ; 
 by the surge that ran up and kissed her feet. The pointed 
 grass stole it from her ; the fresh leaves of spring demanded 
 it ; all things beautiful took it from her. Her heart was 
 lost long since. 
 
 * The streamlet in the woods is full before the dove 
 alights to drink at it ; the flow^er in the grass has expanded 
 before the butterfly comes. A great passion does not 
 leap into existence as violets sprang up beneath the white 
 feet of Aphrodite. It has grown first. The grapes have 
 ripened in the sun before they are plucked for wine. 
 
 ' Her vigour of life was very great ; yet it was not that 
 that sent her to the fields and woods, to the hill-top and 
 the shore ; nor the abounding physical vigour which 
 forced her broad chest through the clear green sea ; nor 
 the strong muscle hidden in the rounded arm which drove 
 her boat over the waves. The soul that inspired the effort 
 was the love that was growing within her.'* 
 
 She walks, she runs, she swims, she rows, the fine 
 flower of all that Wiltshire downland to which the novelist 
 has added the sea. Her heart ' put a feeling ' into what- 
 ever she saw ; she brought the beauty to them. This is, 
 perhaps, one of Jefferies' inconsistencies. He had no 
 system, and he was not always studied in his expressions. 
 I do not think he means that there was no beauty 
 there before, but rather that she, the supreme expression 
 of natural beauty, came to the fields and the hills as the 
 dawn to set free a spirit already there. It is incon- 
 ceivable to me that such joy as hers and that of other 
 lovers in the presence of Nature should be merely as a 
 
 * The Denvy Morn. 
 
234 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 perfume or a sound that fills a senseless hall for a short 
 time. That joy is rather the discovery of sympathies and 
 affinities, heaven high, ocean deep, and wide as the 
 world. Felise emerges dominant from the expanse of 
 living things because she is human, but to say that she 
 brings them their beauty is as if a mole were to announce 
 that upon his mounds were based the pillars that upheld 
 the firmament. No, she bears gifts of beauty about with 
 her to flower and clod and cloud only in the sense that 
 she illuminates them for herself and her lover, and that 
 through her all created things are gladdened because in 
 her the divine, which they also partake, riots unwontedly ; 
 through her they speak and have new life. Jefferies 
 speaks more accurately when he says that until Barnard 
 came the land was incomplete ; he gave a meaning to it ; 
 and * she endowed him with all that she perceived in the 
 glory and mystery around her by day and night.' 
 Nature's reception of Felise makes these opening chapters 
 comparable, for their sensuous and holy delight, with few 
 things except the ' Epithalamion ' of Spenser and the love 
 scene between Esla and Cloten in the tenth book of ' The 
 Dawn in Britain.' 
 
 But the spiritual blitheness is not found only where 
 Felise is wandering, like Jefferies, alone and a lover. It 
 is allied in its warmth to Titian's ' Venus and Adonis,' and 
 has also a real dramatic value, in this scene where Felise, 
 as yet all but a stranger to Barnard, has compelled him to 
 stop and speak to her when he is riding on the Downs. 
 They can talk but awkwardly ; she looks straight in his 
 face, but he avoids her ; she strokes his horse. 
 
 ' He could not help but look, at the sound of his name. 
 He saw a face full of wistful meaning upturned to him. 
 Her golden hair had strayed a little on her forehead, three 
 or four glistening threads wandered over it, asking some 
 loving hand to smooth them back. The white brow 
 without a stain, a mark, a line ; no kiss there but must be 
 purified by the touch ; it was an altar which could not be 
 tainted — which would turn taint to purity. Large grey 
 
'THE DEWY MORN' 235 
 
 eyes that seemed to see him only — to whom the whole 
 world, the hills round them, the sky over, was not — eyes 
 that drew his towards them, and held his vision in defiance 
 of his will. If once you look over the side of a boat into 
 the clear sea, you must continue looking — the depth 
 fascinates the mind. Some depth in her rapt gaze 
 fascinated him. 
 
 ' Her eyebrows arched — not too much arched — the 
 curve of the cheek, roseate, almost but not quite smiling, 
 carried his thought downwards to her breathing lips. 
 Her lips were apart, rich, dewy, curved ; they kissed him 
 by their expression, if not in deed. In that instant his 
 heart throbbed violently ; the beat rose to thrice its usual 
 rate. 
 
 ' The first moment of awaking to a happy morning, the 
 daylight that means a joyful event ; the first view of the 
 sea in youth, when the blue expanse brings tears to the 
 eyes — in these there is some parallel to the sudden, the 
 extreme, and the delicious feeling that shot through him. 
 To reach the ideal of human happiness it is necessary to be 
 for the moment unconscious of all, except the cause. For 
 that moment he had no consciousness except of her, such 
 was the power of her passion glowing in her face. 
 
 ' Even Felise, eager to retain him with her, and un- 
 hesitatingly employing every means, could not maintain 
 that gaze. Unabashed and bold with love, she was too 
 true, too wholly his, to descend to any art. Her gaze, 
 passionate as it was, was natural and unstudied ; therefore 
 it could not continue. Her eyes drooped, and he was 
 released. 
 
 ' Immediately, as if stung to a sense of his honour, he 
 placed his hands on the horse, sprang up, and seated 
 himself. 
 
 ' " I — I have much to do," he said, embarrassed to the 
 last degree, and holding out his hand. 
 
 ' She would not see it. She took the bridle, and stroked 
 Ruy's neck, placing her cheek almost against the glossy 
 skin. Obeying the pressure of his knee, Ruy began to 
 
236 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 move slowly. She walked beside him, holding the bridle ; 
 but Riiy's long stride soon threatened to leave her behind. 
 For very shame, he could not but stay. At a touch Ruy 
 halted. She looked up at him ; he carefully avoided her 
 glance. The horse, growing restless, began to move again; 
 again, for courtesy's sake, he was compelled to check him. 
 Not a word had been spoken while this show was pro- 
 ceeding. 
 
 ' Barnard's face grew hot with impatience, or embarrass- 
 ment, or a sense that he was doing wrong in some manner 
 not at the moment apparent. Sideways, she saw his 
 glowing cheek. It only inflamed her heart the more ; the 
 bright colour, like the scarlet tints in a picture, lit up his 
 face. Next he controlled himself, and forced his features 
 and attitude to an impassive indifference. He would sit 
 like a statue till it pleased her to let him go. Ruy pulled 
 hard to get his neck free that he might feed again. 
 
 ' She stooped and gathered him some grass and gave it 
 to him. Twice she fed him. Barnard remained silent 
 and impassive. Still not a word between them. The 
 third time she gathered a handful of grass ; as she rose 
 her shoulder brushed his knee. She stood there, and did 
 not move. Her warm shoulder just touched him, no 
 more ; her golden hair was very near. She drew over a 
 tuft of Ruy's mane, and began to deftly plait it. Barnard's 
 face, in defiance of himself, flushed scarlet ; his very ears 
 burned. He stole half a glance sideways ; how lovely her 
 roseate cheek, the threads of her golden hair, against the 
 bay's neck ! Ruy was turning his nostrils round to 
 touch her, and ask for more grass. She swiftly plaited 
 his mane. 
 
 ' At that moment another horse neighed over the hill ; 
 they both looked round — no one was in sight. But Ruy 
 answered with a neigh, and in the same instant stepped 
 forward. Barnard pressed his knee ; Ruy began to move 
 faster. Barnard bowed ; his voice was temporarily 
 inarticulate, and he was gone.'* 
 
 * The Dewy Morn. 
 
 I 
 
'THE DEWY MORN' 237 
 
 There are at least three other passages between FeHse 
 and Barnard which would be enough to place this fiction 
 very high in spite of some awkwardness, as in the steps to 
 marriage after the crisis of the book. 
 
 The second passage is where Barnard, admiring but 
 not yet loving Felise, hides in the bracken by the bathing- 
 pool, and, watching Felise, is constrained to remain hidden 
 while she unexpectedly bathes before his eyes. In 
 ' Nature in the Louvre ' and in ' The Story of My Heart ' 
 Jefferies has written of the nude with something beyond 
 and above idolatry. The hip, the breast, the flank, the 
 back, the limbs, are dear to eye and heart ; they are loved 
 for their humanity ; and he gives them a universal sig- 
 nificance, and links them to the sunlight and the hills and 
 the sea. He found ' the idea of perfect human beauty — 
 the idea of shape and curve and motion ' in the writers 
 of Greece, ' even those of pure thought.' His attitude 
 towards this beauty is Greek, and it is more than Greek, 
 something more than Greek which I can only suggest by 
 saying that there is a feminine element in it which the 
 Greek never had. It is sensuous, without the bold flesh- 
 liness of Shakespeare's ' Venus and Adonis,' without the 
 headiness of Keats' ' Eve of St. Agnes,' without Pater's 
 languor. The whole passage should be compared with 
 that describing the similar scene of Damon and Musidora 
 in Thomson's ' Summer,' to which the stamp of a 
 more worldly nature has given a different charm. 
 Of shame there is not a touch, in Jefferies or in his 
 reader. 
 
 ' Felise opened the door of the bathing-room, and 
 stepped out upon the platform before it. She stood in 
 the shadow of the beeches behind ; all the rest of the 
 pool was in bright light. Her bathing-tunic was blue, 
 bordered with white, and fringed with gold — such a tunic 
 as might have been worn by a Grecian maiden. 
 
 ' It was loose about her shoulders : they were nearly 
 bare ; her arms quite so. In the shade the whiteness 
 and purity of her skin was wonderfully beautiful. It 
 
238 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 gleamed in the cool shade, more so than the yellow 
 iris flowers, though they had the advantage of bright 
 colour. 
 
 ' The beauty of a perfect skin is so great, to gaze at it 
 is happiness. The world holds no enjoyment like the view 
 of beauty. 
 
 ' Her white feet were at the very edge of the dull 
 boards, so that her reflection was complete in the water 
 had anyone been looking from the opposite shore. She 
 put up her hands to settle the strings of pearls in her hair, 
 to make certain that they would not come loose. It was 
 Felise's fancy to wear her pearls — her only jewellery and 
 dowry — when she bathed out of doors in the sunshine. 
 She decked herself for the bath — the bath not only in 
 water, but in the air and light — as if she had been going 
 to a temple in the ancient times. 
 
 ' With her hands employed at the back of her head and 
 arms raised, the contour of her form was accentuated. 
 The deep broad chest, the bust, the hips, filled out. The 
 action of lifting the arms in this manner opens the ribs, 
 decreases the waist, slightly curves the back, and extends 
 and develops every line. A sculptor should have chosen 
 her in such an attitude. 
 
 ' In a moment, lifting her hands and joining them high 
 above her head, she dived — the pearls glistened as she 
 passed out of the shadow into the sunlight, and the water 
 hid her completely. 
 
 ' The dove flew, startled from his branch in the beech ; 
 a swallow that had been coming to drink, as he flew, 
 mounted again into the air. 
 
 ' She rose at some distance from the diving-platform, 
 and immediately struck out slowly, swimming on her 
 chest. Her chin was well out of water, and sometimes 
 her neck ; her chest held so large a volume of air that she 
 was as buoyant as a water-bird. It needed no effort to 
 keep afloat ; all her strength was at liberty to be used in 
 propulsion. Swimming towards the hatch, presently she 
 turned and came back to the platform, then out again into 
 
'THE DEWY MORN' 239 
 
 the centre of the pool, where she floated, dived under, and 
 floated again. 
 
 * Gathering energy from practice and the touch of the 
 water, she now swam on her side, following the margin of 
 the pool all round, so as to have a larger course. Twice 
 she went round without a pause — swimming her swiftest, 
 equal, in a direct line, to several hundred yards. Still 
 joying in the sunlight and the water, she continued again 
 for the third circle. Her passage was even swifter, her 
 vigour grew with the labour. 
 
 ' The water drew back the tunic from her right shoulder, 
 which shone almost at the surface ; her white right arm 
 swept backwards, grasping the wave ; her left arm was 
 concealed, being under her, and deeper. It is the fastest, 
 the easiest, and the most graceful mode of swimming. In 
 the moment when her rounded right arm was sweeping 
 backwards, clearly visible in the limpid water^ — just as 
 the stroke was nearly completed — the sculptor might again 
 have obtained an inspiration. For at that moment there 
 was repose in action, the exertion of the stroke finishing, 
 the form gliding easily, the left cheek resting as if reposing 
 on the surface. 
 
 ' At the completion of the third round, Felise swam to 
 the shallow grassy shore, where Shaw was now waiting 
 for her. 
 
 ' " Oh, how you do panck !" (pant), said Shaw, laugh- 
 ing, as Felise walked up out of the water on to the turf, 
 and sat down at the edge of the shadow of the beech. 
 Her breast was heaving with the labour, her deep grey 
 eyes shone as if enlarged ; there was a slight increase of 
 colour in her face. She was not in the least exhausted ; 
 she was exhilarated to the utmost. Shaw chatted 
 beside her ; Felise neither heard nor heeded : she was 
 full of the influence of the air and light and limpid 
 fountain. 
 
 ' There was something almost sacred to her in the 
 limpid water, in the sweet air, and the light of day. The 
 flower in the grass was not only colour, it was alive. The 
 
240 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 water was not merely a smooth surface, the air not merely 
 an invisible current, the light not merely illumination. 
 As if they had been living powers, so they influenced her. 
 A feeling entered her from them : the light, the air, the 
 water, the soft sward on which her hand rested, life came 
 to her from them. 
 
 ' With them she felt her own life, she knew her own 
 fulness of existence. Like this the maidens of ancient 
 Greece sang to the stream when they filled their urns. 
 Even Socrates the wisest sat pondering in reverence by 
 the stream. Felise was full of the delicious influence of the 
 great powers of nature. This susceptibility rendered her 
 love so rich and deep. 
 
 ' She sat leaning on her left hand, her knees lying side- 
 ways, and her right hand on her ankle ; the upper part of 
 her form in shadow, her limbs in the brilliant light. The 
 beams fell on her white rounded knees ; the right knee 
 being uppermost was entirely in light, but it cast a partial 
 shadow on the left one. 
 
 ' Twins in exquisite whiteness and shape they reposed 
 together, the under one a little in advance. The knee- 
 cap (which in woman is small), slipping naturally aside, 
 left a space on the summit of each knee smooth and almost 
 level, perhaps in the least degree concave. Upon these 
 lovely surfaces the light rested lovingly ; in the wide earth 
 there was no spot the sun loved so well. 
 
 ' The rounded supple knee is where the form hinges ; 
 there all is poised. They are the centres from which 
 beauty rises. With the knee all grace begins ; they bend, 
 and at the same moment the neck bows, and the forehead 
 droops. Resting on them firmly the shape rises, the neck 
 is straightened, and the brow thrown back. All is poised 
 on the knee. 
 
 ' Because of its varying mood of grace the knee can with 
 difficulty be seized in sculpture or painting. The least 
 flexure alters the contour. Now from head to foot it is 
 the flesh that is beautiful, that which covers and conceals 
 the bones and muscles under its texture. Such is the rule, 
 
JAMES l.UCKETT JEKKKRIES, 
 the father of Richard Jefferies. 
 
' THE DEWY MORN ' 241 
 
 to express beauty you must delineate the adipose tissue ; 
 the knee is the exception. 
 
 ' Here the bone — the knee-cap — is but thinly covered, 
 and there is cartilage and sinew ; not much more than the 
 skin hides them. Here is the only place where the bone 
 and sinew can approach the surface — can be recognized — 
 and yet not interfere with the sense of loveliness. Why 
 so ? 
 
 ' Because at this centre motion commences ; the idea of 
 motion is inseparable from it, motion in graceful lines. 
 In walking it is the knee that gives the step, in the dance, 
 stooping to gather flowers, bending to prayer ; from the 
 knee passion springs to the arms of her lover. We have 
 seen these movements and admired them, and the eye 
 transfers their grace to the knee. 
 
 ' But it is also of itself shaped. There alone the bone 
 and sinew assume an exquisite form. I cannot tell you 
 why the human heart yearns towards that which is 
 rounded, smooth, shapely ; it is an instinct in the depth 
 of our nature. 
 
 ' The knee is so very human, so nearly sorrowful in its 
 humanity ; sorrow seeks its knees, sadness bends on them, 
 love desiring in secret does so on its knees. They have 
 been bent in many moods in so many lands so many many 
 centuries past. Human life is centred in the knee. In 
 the knee we recognize all that the heart has experienced. 
 
 ' Beautiful knees, the poise and centre of the form ! 
 Were I rich, how gladly I would give a thousand pounds 
 for a true picture of the knee ! and if the coloured shadow 
 on canvas were worth so much, how many times multiplied 
 the value of the original reality ! 
 
 ' However indifferent the person may be — the individual 
 — to see the knee is to love it for itself. 
 
 ' The shadow of the upper one partially encroached on 
 the lower ; round about the under knee, too, the short 
 grass rose. Immediately behind, the least way higher 
 than the upper knee, the bullion fringe of the tunic 
 drooped across the white skin. Her left hand rested 
 
 16 
 
242 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 among the daisies ; her feet reached nearly to some golden 
 lotus flowers. 
 
 ' The left, or under foot, was much hidden by the grass ; 
 the grass touched warm, having been hours in the sun- 
 shine. The upper foot was visible, and two straight 
 strokes — two parallel dimples crossed the large toe (the 
 thumb of the foot) at the second joint, 
 
 * She held her anlde lightly with her right hand, so that 
 her right arm descended beside her body. Bare from the 
 shoulder in its luxurious fulness, it reposed against her. 
 The slight pressure of its ovmi weight enlarged it midway 
 between the shoulder and the elbow. But the left arm 
 being straightened appeared, on the contrary, largest at 
 the shoulder. 
 
 ' That shoulder — the left — raised a little higher than 
 the other, on account of her position, was partly bare, 
 the tunic having slipped somewhat. Unconsciously she 
 pressed her cheek against it, feeling and caressing it. Her 
 shoulder lifted itself a little to meet the embrace of her 
 cheek, and the tunic slipped still more, giving it and that 
 side of her bust freedom to the air. She liked to feel her- 
 self ; the soft skin of the shoulder met the softer cheek ; 
 her lips touched the place where arm and shoulder are 
 about to mingle. 
 
 ' Shaw thought Felise had finished bathing, and 
 kneeling behind her, undid her hair, which fell and reached 
 the grass. It was somewhat wavy, very thick and long, 
 and delicate in texture. As it descended it concealed the 
 beautiful shoulders like a mantle. She took her strings of 
 pearls from Shaw, and held them in her right hand ; she 
 valued them greatly, and scarcely cared to let even Shaw 
 carry them. 
 
 ' A red butterfly came by and hovered about her knee, 
 inclined to alight, but perceiving that it glistened with 
 the water, flew onwards over the pool. 
 
 ' Felise moved her feet among the grass, she liked to 
 feel it ; she extended her foot to the golden lotus flowers. 
 But the moment of luxurious enjoyment of the sunlight 
 
'THE DEWY MORN' 243 
 
 and the air, the hberty of the tunic, was over ; her active 
 nature reasserted itself ; she rose and walked towards the 
 bathing apartment to dress. 
 
 ' " There's a rabbit in the ferns," said Shaw, following 
 her ; " I heard him rustle twice. Wonder why you won't 
 talk to-day, now. If I was to run round the water like 
 you swim round, I should die of pancking [panting], I 
 should." 
 
 ' She looked as if such exertion would overcome her : 
 short, plump, and merry. 
 
 ' Felise took no heed of Shaw's chatter ; she was think- 
 ing how to accomplish her resolution.'* 
 
 The liberty of innocence has hardly reached beyond 
 that. Barnard watching Felise, like Geoffrey in ' Greene 
 Feme Farm ' watching Margaret with ' the devotion of an 
 artist,' suggests a coldness, as of the sea, in the volup- 
 tuousness, peculiar, perhaps, to Jefferies himself. 
 
 The third passage is chapter xli., one of the richest 
 pastoral pictures in English, though pastoral is a poor 
 word to use of such realism in the portraits and the back- 
 ground. The August thunder booms far off at sea ; the 
 reapers reap in the brilliant sun ; and the lovers sit and 
 look out upon the land : ' Let us not outlive love in our 
 days, and come to look back with sorrow on those times. 
 You have seen the ships upon the sea ; they sail hither and 
 thither thousands of miles. Do they find aught equal to 
 love ? Can they bring back precious gems to rival it 
 from the rich south ?' There is no pastoral picture like 
 it for the beauty of human passion and the abundance 
 and sympathy of Nature round about. 
 
 The fourth passage is in the last pages of all. Felise and 
 Martial were married ; ' the man slept ; the woman, wake- 
 ful in her happiness, stole to the window where she had so 
 often sat of old time.' It was early in a morning of May, 
 and the contented woman is drawn against the vast 
 loveliness of dawn. ' A pure rest had come to her life. 
 Except to love and to love fulfilled, and then only to 
 
 * The Dewy Mprn. 
 
 16 — 2 
 
244 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 woman, is such rest ever given. For the heart, and the 
 hand, and the mind of a man are for ever driving onwards, 
 and no profundity of rest ever comes to his inmost 
 consciousness. At dawn he looks forward to the noon- 
 day.' Fehse did not look forward, but ' her heart 
 brimmed to the full of love.' In this passage Jefferies 
 has divined one of the clearest divisions between man 
 and woman, whilst making a picture of great beauty 
 that completes the portrait of Felise's youth. 
 
 The book is a portrait of Felise, Martial Barnard is not 
 as essential to the book, nor as interesting to Jefferies : 
 
 ' Comparatively his face was small for his height ; he 
 was not all face, as we see some men, whose countenances 
 seem to descend to the last button of their waistcoats. 
 His head was in just proportion, the summit and finish 
 of his shape, as a capital of a column. His hair had a 
 shade like the gold of Felise's, yet not in the least like 
 hers, for his was deeper, browner, as if the sun had burnt 
 it, as it had his cheek. Had it not been cropped so close, 
 his hair would have curled ; in the days of Charles II. such 
 hair would have been of priceless value to a cavalier, 
 curled locks flowing to the shoulder. 
 
 ' In outline his countenance was somewhat oval, his 
 features fine — a straight nose and chin well marked, but 
 not heavy. He had a short beard, and his head showed 
 the more to advantage, because he had a good neck, not 
 too thick. His eyes were blue, and framed in firmly- 
 drawTi eyebrows and long lashes. Though well built, he 
 was slender rather than stout ; his hands were brown, 
 but not large.' 
 
 He is revealed in many ways, as when he talks of 
 Shakespeare with his sweetheart ; but he is the intellectual 
 side of Jefferies himself, the emotional having been ex- 
 hausted in the character of Felise. It is the Jefferies of 
 1883 who makes the bold speech against the Cornleigh 
 interest, saying that ' there does not exist a race of freemen 
 on the face of the earth who have been so completely under 
 the thumb as farmers ' ; that ' there never will be any 
 
•THE DEWY MORN' 245 
 
 more prosperity in English agriculture till the entire 
 system is revised ; till a man can cultivate the land free 
 from vexatious hindrances, medieval hindrances, super- 
 stitious hindrances, and burdens such as tithes, ordinary 
 and extraordinary ' ; that the Church is ' a huge octopus ' ; 
 and, finally, that he has ' done with the steward, with the 
 solicitor, with the parson, with the gardener, and the 
 gamekeeper . . . with the groom, and the whole circle of 
 despicable sycophants.' There has been a change since 
 ' Hodge and His Masters.' It is noticeable everywhere, 
 and nowhere so much as where he speaks again of the 
 peasant's ingratitude : ' for one act of kindness in eighty 
 years, why should they feel grateful ?' The labourer 
 ' must still be a serf,' he says, when he can be turned out 
 of employment and home at once. He has become as 
 bitter against things as they are ordained by the land- 
 owners as he used to be against their opponents ; he is 
 pleased with what he called ' the deep etching ' in his 
 description of the Cornleigh estate, where if a girl has an 
 illegitimate child she and her parents, or whoever lives 
 with her, have to leave the cottage ; for * the rulers at the 
 House, whether the haughty ladies or their shaven advisers, 
 looked with such sacerdotal horror upon this inexpiable 
 crime that nothing less than absolute extinction could 
 suffice.' ' Why,' he asks, ' should any one person possess 
 the power to issue such a ukase ? They do possess the 
 power, and will do so while nine-tenths of each agricul- 
 tural hamlet are at the absolute disposal of the proprietor 
 of the soil.' He has nothing to say against the Ballot 
 Act now. Ridiculing Laetitia Cornleigh's scheme for 
 ' The Encouragement of Art Culture in the Homes of the 
 Poor,' he says true things about Art : 
 
 ' For the enjoyment of art it is first of all necessary to 
 have a full belly. 
 
 ' May I inquire, too, of any painter, if such chances to 
 light on these pages, whether he would consider it likely 
 to encourage a love of art merely to hang a picture on a 
 wall ? whether he has not known even well-educated and 
 
246 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 wealthy people who possessed scores of valuable pictures 
 without the least love of art ? whether, in short, even he, 
 a painter of pictures, considered pictures the whole end 
 and aim of art ? 
 
 ' Is not art rather in the man than on the wall ? 
 
 ' Once now and then I have been into the cottages of 
 farm labourers (who had the good fortune to possess 
 security of tenure) and found old oak furniture ; curious 
 grotesque crockery, generally much coloured — the favour- 
 ite colour red ; ancient brazen-faced upright clocks ticking 
 slowly, as the stars go slowly past in the quiet hours of 
 night ; odd things on the mantelpiece ; an old gun with 
 brass fittings, polished brass ornaments ; two or three old 
 books with leather bindings ; on the walls quaint smoke- 
 tinted pictures three-score years old. 
 
 ' Outside, trees in the garden — plums, pears, damsons — 
 trees planted by the owner for fruit and shade, but 
 mostly for solace, since it is a pleasant thing to see a tree 
 grow. These people, having no fear of being turned out 
 of doors, had accumulated such treasures, a chair at a 
 time, making the interior home-like. And out of doors 
 they had planted trees ; without love of trees, I doubt if 
 there be any art. Of art itself in itself they had had no 
 thought ; not one had ever tried to draw or paint. They 
 had coloured their strips of flower-garden or bordering 
 with bright yellow flowers ; that was all the paint they 
 knew. 
 
 ' Yet I think this home-life in itself was something like 
 true art. There was a sense of the fitness of things, and 
 good instinctive taste in the selection of interior fittings, 
 furniture, and even of colour. 
 
 ' Oak is our national wood, old oak, dark and deep- 
 shaded — Rembrandt oak — oak is part of our national art. 
 Brass polishes and gleams in sunlight through the window 
 or glows in the sparkle from winter's fire. It sets off the 
 black oak. Red-coloured chinaware (perhaps it is a shade 
 of pink) is gay and bright under low-pitched ceilings with 
 dark wood beams and no white ceiling. Yellow flowers 
 
• THE DEWY MORN ' 247 
 
 light up the brown mould. Altogether a realistic picture 
 painted in actual dark oak, actual brass, actual red c ina, 
 and actual yellow flowers. 
 
 ' Here then there was art in the man. Can you put 
 that taste in by hanging a picture on the wall ? Letitia's 
 pictures were chiefly of the pre-Raphaelite ecclesiastical 
 order — saints, saints' lives and deaths, such as were 
 painted in the fourteenth century, and with which life at 
 the present day has no sort of sympathy. 
 
 ' There was not a cottage-tenant on the estate of 
 Comleigh who could call his cottage his own securely 
 for more than six months. How, then, was it possible 
 for taste to grow up, or to exercise itself if it was there ? 
 
 ' There can be no art in a people who know that at any 
 moment they may be thrust out of doors. Art is of slow 
 growth. 
 
 ' Up in the north they say there is a district where the 
 labourers spend their idle hours in cutting out and 
 sticking together fiddles. I do not care twopence for a 
 fiddle as a fiddle ; but still I think if a labouring man 
 coming home from plough, and exposure to rough wind, 
 and living on coarse fare, can still have spirit enough left 
 to sit down and patiently carve out bits of maple wood 
 and fit them together into a complete and tunable fiddle, 
 then he must have within him some of the true idea of art, 
 and that fiddle is in itself a work of art. 
 
 ' Nothing of the sort will ever be possible in our cottage 
 homes till the people in them know that they can live 
 therein as long as they please provided they pay the rent, 
 and are not liable to be ordered off into the next county or 
 anywhere because they have displeased someone.'* 
 
 He laughs at the great new Maasbury Church that was 
 to replace the little old one, and to give the ' shaven 
 advisers ' the profit of the social influence gained by such 
 a change. But Jefferies never knew nor cared much 
 about the church, whether he praised it as a youth or 
 scorned it in his maturity. The scorn was better than 
 
 * The Dewy Morn. 
 
248 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 the praise, because it was more generous and more in 
 harmony with his character. Complacent praise never 
 did any good ; humane scorn of an old and confused 
 institution might possibly do good. It is a pity he took 
 to abuse ; but his nature was dogmatic, and abuse is the 
 superfluity of a dogmatic nature. He has learned, too, 
 that things may be imperfect and yet better than the 
 perfection of cloistered nullity, and he contrasts the 
 empty Cornleigh with Justice Shallow, who ' had heard the 
 chimes at midnight, had made the acquaintance of the 
 bona robas, had been intoxicated (by inference), had sown 
 wild oats in his youth.' 
 
 But along with this spirit of opposition Jefferies retains 
 much of the old — in his hate of Boards and beadles, and 
 his belief in ' good juicy meat ' and ale. Here he is 
 thinking again of Fate : ' Petty circumstances unregarded 
 lead men on, from step to step, from thought to thought, 
 action to action ; is this Fate ?' In other places, ' Some- 
 one has to suffer — always someone has to suffer ' ; and, 
 ' Nothing is ever a pleasure or a real profit to him who has 
 to labour for it. Truth — you die in the pursuit, and the 
 sea beats the beach as it did a thousand years ago,' Here, 
 too, the creed implied in all his books is definitely stated : 
 
 ' All of you with little children, and 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 trees — by hills and streams, if you 
 wish their highest education, that of the heart and the 
 soul, to be completed. 
 
 ' 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 
 emotion never to be forgotten. They will forget their 
 books — they will never forget the grassy fields. 
 
 ' If you wish your children to think deep things — to 
 
' THE DEWY MORN ' 249 
 
 know the holiest emotions — take them to the woods and 
 hills, and give them the freedom of the meadows, 
 
 ' It is of no use to palter with your conscience and say, 
 " They have everything ; they have expensive toys, 
 story-books without end ; we never go anywhere without 
 bringing them home something to amuse them ; they have 
 been to the seaside, and actually to Paris ; it is absurd, 
 they cannot want anything more." 
 
 ' But they do want something more, without which all 
 this expensive spoiling is quite thrown away. They want 
 the unconscious teaching of the country, and without that 
 they will never know the truths of this life. They need to 
 feel — unconsciously — the influence of the air that blows, 
 sun-sweetened, over fragrant hay ; to feel the influence of 
 deep shady woods, mile-deep in boughs — the stream — the 
 high hills ; they need to revel in long grass. Put away 
 their books, and give them the freedom of the meadows. 
 Do it at any cost or trouble to yourselves, if you wish them 
 to become great men and noble women.'* 
 
 Robert Godwin, the Cornleigh bailiff, hopeless lover of 
 Felise, is Jefferies' one successful concentration upon a 
 character in no way like himself. Like Barnard, he is 
 usually written about rather than revealed as Felise is ; 
 but his acute moments are as imaginatively drawn as 
 anything in the book. He was one to whom ' that scarce 
 definable culture — that idea which exists in the heart and 
 soul independent of outward appearances — the sense of a 
 beautiful inner life — so delicate a music was soundless in 
 his ears.' And ' the ground was solid under his feet ; 
 the sky afar off a mere translucent roof ; the sun a round 
 ball of heat, never seen unless he chanced to be driving 
 westwards towards sunset. . . . When his hands were still 
 and his frame reposed, his mind was simply vacant, like 
 that of a horse looking from his stable-door, or a dog by 
 his kennel.' He had ' the faculty of no imagination.' 
 Yet he never thought of anything else but Felise ; for 
 nine years ' a colourless eye watched her.' ' He lived in 
 * The Dewy Morn. 
 
250 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 a dream — this dreamless man ; he was absorbed in one 
 idea — an idea so fixed that his mind was vacant. . . . His 
 mind was with Fehse.' Then one day she promised to 
 go over to his house — really to see the horse which 
 Barnard had had to sell to Godwin. He stood near her, 
 having come in a fury to complain of her fishing where 
 she ought not to. He had never before been so near. 
 Her presence was ' almost an embrace,' and now ' his 
 abstraction was so intense that he was in a manner dead.' 
 Yet he worked correctly all the long summer day before 
 she was to come. In the evening he worked at his 
 accounts, wrote letters, made notes. His sister, tired of 
 writing, had her supper and went to bed. He went out 
 and waited until the mail-cart came for the letters. He 
 could not rest ; he took no notice of the sky at that time, 
 ' when, if ever it will, the soul reigns, and the coarse, rude 
 acts of day are forgotten in the aspiration of the inmost 
 mind.' 
 
 ' Robert returned to his bedroom, took off his coat, 
 looked at his bed, and put his coat on again. He did 
 not care to lie down. He lighted a great stable-lantern, 
 and went out of doors again. 
 
 * The hasp of the gate against which he had leaned 
 was a little shaky and loose ; he found the tools, went to 
 work, and put it to rights. Then he went into the orchard 
 to the garden-house, and examined the gardener's tools, 
 one by one, to see if they had been roughly used, or 
 injured ; if so, the man must pay. The man had been 
 digging ; with the lantern in his hand Robert paced 
 the distance dug to see how many yards he had com- 
 pleted. 
 
 * Robert went to the stable, looked in at Ruy, climbed 
 up into the tallet, and spied about to see if any forage 
 had been stolen. He examined the carter's collection 
 of horse-hair — his perquisite — to see if it was accumu- 
 lating too fast. 
 
 ' He brought out a stool and saw, and sawed up fire- 
 wood till he had made a goodly heap. He would have 
 
' THE DEWY MORN ' 251 
 
 done more, but that would encourage waste. If only a 
 little was cut up, only a little would be used. 
 
 ' He planed a piece of timber intended for the head of 
 a gate. He counted the poles aslant against the wood- 
 pile. Nothing else remaining that he could do, he re- 
 turned to the garden, took off his coat, set the lantern on 
 the grass, and dug where the gardener had left off. While 
 he dug the night went on — the night that was in no 
 haste to do anything ; and by degrees a pale light grew up 
 above the eastern horizon. The dawn comes early in 
 summer. 
 
 ' Still Robert dug steadily on till the other mail-cart 
 — the down mail — approached. He stopped and 
 listened ; the driver did not pull up, so there were no 
 letters. Robert scraped his boots, put away the spade, 
 blew out the lantern, and went indoors. 
 
 ' By the pale white light he looked again at his bed ; 
 but he could not lie down. There was no rest in him that 
 night. He lit his cheap candle and went up into the attic 
 overhead, where he had not been for years. The shutters 
 were perpetually closed up there, so that the place was 
 partly dark, although streaks of dawn came through 
 the chinks. The great bare room was full of ancient 
 lumber. 
 
 ' He set the candle on an oak press and fell to work, 
 sorting the confused mass which strewed the floor. Old 
 chairs — some broken, some perfect — a picture or two, 
 hair-trunks, books, bundles of newspapers, pieces of chain 
 — odd lengths thrown aside — nameless odds and ends, 
 such as candlesticks, parts of implements, the waste of a 
 century, all covered with dust and dead black cobwebs. 
 Dead cobwebs thick with dust, not the fine clean threads 
 the spider has in use ; webs which had been abandoned 
 fifty years ago. 
 
 ' The skeleton of a bird lay at the bottom of a hollow 
 in the pile, perhaps an injured swallow that had crept in 
 there to die. A pair of flintlock pistols, the flints still in 
 the hammers, were in very good condition, scarcely 
 
252 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 rusted ; Robert snicked the locks and examined them 
 carefully. He was black with dust and cobwebs. 
 
 ' Chairs and furniture he threw on one side, boxes on 
 another, papers and books in a corner, and soon began to 
 make order of confusion. 
 
 ' The light of morning came stronger through the chinks ; 
 the flame of the candle appeared yellow. The alchemy 
 of light was changing the sky without. 
 
 ' He worked on till footsteps sounded on the paths 
 outside, the carters had come to see to the horses. There 
 was someone at last to drive. 
 
 ' Robert went downstairs, and out to the pump ; there 
 he washed himself in the open air, as he had been made to 
 do years and years ago in his stern old father's time. 
 The habit adhered still ; the man was indeed all habit. 
 Then he visited the stables, and began to drive the carters ; 
 the night was over, the day had begun. 
 
 ' Overhead and eastwards there shone a glory of blue 
 heaven, illuminated from within with golden light. The 
 deep rich azure was lit up with an inner gold ; it was a 
 time to worship, to lift up, the heart. Is there anything 
 so wondrously beautiful as the sky just before the sun 
 rises in summer ? 
 
 ' There was a sound of cart-horses stamping heavily, 
 the rattle and creak of harness, the shuffle of feet ; a man 
 came out with a set forehead, grumbling and muttering ; 
 the driver was at work. 
 
 ' No one heeded the alchemy proceeding in the east, 
 which drew forth gold and made it shine in the purple.'* 
 
 Yet in selling Felise a horse, he insisted on ten pounds 
 more than the price she knew he had just given for it. 
 Later, he contrived more than once to have Felise and 
 Barnard together in his garden, to see with his own eyes 
 the love between them. Then, when at last he believed, 
 seeing her frank ardour, that ' she was Martial's mistress,' 
 he caught her, gagged her, threw her down, and vainly 
 tried to make the horse trample on her. Frustrated by 
 
 * The Dewy Mom. 
 
' THE DEWY MORN ' 253 
 
 Martial, he escaped, and after a frantic interview with 
 Felise,' Barnard, and Goring, shot himself. 
 
 With Godwin, the beautiful Felise, the half-emerging 
 Barnard, and the shadowy Goring ; with Felise's pretty 
 hapless maid, Polly Shaw, and Polly's lover and his old 
 father, and the phlegmatic miller ; with Cornleigh, and 
 his wife, the ' capital thing for Cornleigh,' the book might 
 have been the first in a long line of novels, giving a spiritual 
 and dramatic presentment of human life, and a perfectly 
 intimate, always relevant, background of landscape and 
 garden — nay, more than a background, since Nature is 
 stamped with the human characters as the hyacinth with 
 the signature of Apollo's grief. ' The Dewy Morn ' shows 
 more sides of the mature or maturing Jefferies than any 
 of its predecessors — his passion for beauty and humanity, 
 his sensuous and spiritual view of Nature and women, his 
 hatred of oppression, his impatience of delaying reform, his 
 belief in Fate, his growing curiosity about human character. 
 The writing, employed on description, portraiture, narra- 
 tive, reflection, and dialogue, is accordingly more varied, 
 nor is success denied to it. There are several places 
 where the easy omission of a phrase or two would have 
 cleared away an awkward fault, and the narrative pro- 
 gresses with a few small crudities to which the lack of 
 self-criticism blinded him. It is deftness only that is 
 wanting, and Jefferies was never deft. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 *AFTER LONDON' 
 
 * After London,' or ' Wild England,' was published in 
 1885, but finished in March or April, 1884. On April 2, 
 1884, he wrote* from Brighton that he had just put the 
 finishing touch to it, though in June, 1885, he said that 
 ' the MS. was completed three years since.' It is, he 
 says, ' in no sense a novel, more like a romance, but a 
 romance of a real character. . . . You will, I think, 
 do me the justice to say that it is original.' The two 
 years at Brighton were his most prolific. He wrote 
 there ' The Story of My Heart,' ' The Dewy Morn,' 
 ' Red Deer,' ' After London,' as well as many of the 
 essays in ' Nature near London,' ' The Life of the 
 Fields,' * The Open Air,' ' Field and Hedgerow,' and 
 some not yet reprinted from the magazines. This was an 
 oasis of comparative health and unbounded mental energy 
 after the illness of 1881-82, and as late as March 27, 1884, 
 he could write* that his illness was ' not at all serious, but 
 very annoying, being so apt to prevent his getting about ' ; 
 it had, in fact, kept him away from London for some time, 
 except to see a physician. So busy had he been that he 
 was told he wrote too much. 
 
 ' To me,' he answers,* ' it seems as if I wrote nothing, 
 more especially since my illness, for this is the third year 
 I have been so weakened. To me it seems as if I wrote 
 nothing, for my mind teems with ideas, and my difiiculty 
 is to know what to do with them. I not only sketch out 
 • To Mr. C. J. Longman. 
 254 
 
• AFTER LONDON ' 255 
 
 the general plan of a book almost instantaneously, but I 
 can see every little detail of it from the first page to the 
 last. The mere writing — the handwriting — is the only 
 trouble ; it is very wearying. At this moment I have several 
 volumes complete in my mind. Scarce a day goes by 
 that I do not put down a fresh thought. I have twelve 
 notebooks crammed full of ideas, plots, sketches for 
 papers, and so on.' 
 
 He continues : 
 
 ' What you say about publishing too often has no doubt 
 some truth in it, but I have no choice in that respect until 
 the publisher gives me a larger sum for the MS. These 
 trifling sums are of little value in the nineteenth and ex- 
 pensive century. I should not expose my possessions or 
 affairs to anyone else, but I believe I may be perfectly 
 sure of you. I have wanted to talk to you about these 
 things for some time, but my health has been so very 
 indifferent that I have not been able to get about.' 
 
 Notwithstanding his productiveness, his new book was 
 an excellent piece of writing, with some split infinitives, a 
 slip in construction, the use of ' assist ' for ' help,' and a few 
 other tokens of his usual indifference to trifles. Originally, 
 it was perhaps much longer than we know it now, for he 
 said that it was ' in three volumes.' It sprang, perhaps, 
 from the calm that followed the excitement of ' The Story 
 of My Heart,' ' The Dewy Morn,' and essays like ' The 
 Pageant of Summer,' and ' Sunny Brighton ' ; and of the 
 ideas in those books there is hardly a trace. Having 
 described the relapse of England into barbarism, and the 
 loss of everything characteristic of nineteenth-century 
 civilization, one so dogmatic and prophetic as Jefferies 
 might have been expected to make use of this oppor- 
 tunity, and to show us a Utopia. Instead of which, 
 the doings of the house of Aquila, a family which 
 has survived the relapse, are a continuation of the 
 games of Bevis. Here Bevis is grown a man and called 
 Felix Aquila ; Mark is now a big, proud soldier, called 
 Oliver ; the ' Governor ' — James Jefferies — is the Baron 
 
256 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Constans Aquila. The inland sea over which FeHx adven- 
 tures to the swampy site of London is Coate Reservoir 
 enlarged. It is a solemn, playful sequel to ' Bevis.' 
 
 ' The Relapse into Barbarism ' is one of Jefferies' 
 masterpieces in description. The calm, ironical detail 
 with which the change is depicted has a touch of Herodotus 
 and of Ordericus Vitalis, but is all his own, and reveals 
 an unsuspected strength of remorseless logic and restraint. 
 Hedges and woods spread so that ' by the thirtieth year 
 there was not one single open place, the hills only excepted, 
 where a man could walk, unless he followed the tracks of 
 wild creatures, or cut himself a path.' Ditches had been 
 filled up, weirs and bridges destroyed. Thames and 
 Severn overflowed, and made an inland sea between the 
 Cotswolds and the Downs, for the ruins of London blocked 
 the river, and were changed into swamp ' which no man 
 dare enter, since death would be his inevitable fate. 
 There exhales from this oozy mass so fatal a vapour that 
 no animal can endure it. The black water bears a greenish- 
 brown floating scum, which for ever bubbles up from the 
 putrid mud at the bottom. When the wind collects the 
 miasma, and, as it were, presses it together, it becomes 
 visible as a low cloud which hangs over the place. The 
 cloud does not advance beyond the limits of the marsh, 
 seeming to stay there by some constant attraction ; and 
 well it is for us that it does not, since at such times when 
 the vapour is thickest the very wild-fowl leave the reeds, 
 and fly from the poison. There are no fishes ; neither 
 can eels exist in the mud, nor even newts. It is dead.' 
 The same, or as bad a fate, has overtaken other cities. 
 ' The sites,' says the historian, ' are uninhabitable because 
 of the emanations from the ruins. Therefore they are 
 avoided. Even the spot where a single house has been 
 known to have existed is avoided by the hunters in the 
 wood. They say, when they are stricken with ague or 
 fever, that they must have unwittingly slept on the site 
 of an ancient habitation.' The wild animals are descended 
 from our domestic kinds ; they are the white and black 
 
• AFTER LONDON ' 257 
 
 cattle, the forest cats, and the black, yellow, and white 
 wood dogs, four kinds of wild swine, two of wild horses. 
 Tradition speaks of famous racehorses in the old time : 
 * Did but one exist, how eagerly would it be sought out, 
 for in these days it would be worth its weight in gold, 
 unless, indeed, as some afhrm, such speed only endured 
 for a mile or two.' Poultry and deer have become wild ; 
 the beaver, escaping from ' the dens of the ancients,' has 
 re-established itself. The richer and more cultivated 
 men left the country long ago, and the unlettered survivors 
 have few arts, no gunpowder and no steam. The railway 
 embankments are overgrown by thickets, the tunnels 
 broken down. 
 
 The Bushmen of the woods, descended from tramps, 
 are utterly savage and depraved. The gipsies still remain 
 apart in tents and on horses, attacking travellers. The 
 few cities are on the shores of the great lake. ' In the 
 provinces and kingdoms round about the lake there is 
 hardly a towTi where the slaves do not outnumber the free 
 as ten to one. ... If a man in his hunger steals a loaf, he 
 becomes a slave.' The mark of a noble is that he can 
 read and write. The nobles have no culture, and are dis- 
 tinguished chiefly by their courage. ' There are few books,' 
 says the historian, ' and still fewer to read them ; and these 
 all in manuscript, for though the way to print is not lost, it 
 is not employed, since no one wants books.' On the margin 
 of this state the Welsh and Irish wait for an opportunity 
 to rush in and destroy. Their ships hover in the lake. 
 
 ' Never, as I observed before, was there so beautiful an 
 expanse of water. How much must we sorrow that it has 
 so often proved only the easiest mode of bringing the 
 miseries of war to the doors of the unoffending ! Yet 
 men are never weary of sailing to and fro upon it, and 
 most of the cities of the present time are upon its shores. 
 And in the evening we walk by the beach, and from the 
 rising grounds look over its waters, as if to gaze upon their 
 loveliness were reward to us for the labour of the day.'* 
 
 * After London. 
 
 17 
 
258 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Baron Constans, head of the House of Aquila, is a 
 thoughtful, secluded, impoverished man, cultivating his 
 garden like James Jefferies and the old men in ' World's 
 End ' and ' The Dewy Mom.' He has no power at Court, 
 and has to give way to younger, more pushful men. He 
 has been a great wielder of the battle-axe, and has 
 invented a wheel for drawing water and a machine for 
 casting stones. The common people love him. The 
 place is flowing with milk and honey, but there is no 
 money. 
 
 His eldest son, Felix, has a few books and parchments 
 annotated by himself. By pondering over these he has 
 reconstructed much of the old knowledge. He prefers this 
 study to war, and is despised for it. His ' unbending 
 independence ' isolates him still more. Only in one thing 
 is he admitted to excel, in the use of the bow, and that is 
 an ignoble weapon. Yet it is he who notices the lack of 
 discipline and order which leaves the family stockade 
 imperfectly guarded. He lives the life of a student, but 
 also of a hunter, and, like Jefferies, he sells furs. He can- 
 not even hope to succeed to his father's estate, so heavily 
 is it encumbered. To his brother Oliver had fallen ' all 
 the blood and bone and thew and sinew of the house . . . 
 all the fiery, restless spirit and defiant temper ; all the 
 utter recklessness and warrior's instinct.' 
 
 Felix is making a canoe ; ' the individuality and interest 
 of the work ' would be lost were he to have it made for 
 him. Oliver helps, and the contrast between Felix's 
 originality and awkwardness and Oliver's bluff readiness 
 is carried further. In the intervals of work he walks 
 about the shore, and notices an important strategic 
 position, points it out to the prince anonymously, and is 
 ignored. 
 
 The brothers go together to Thyma Castle, where lives 
 Aurora, Felix's beloved. Oliver, handsome, ready, and 
 joyous, is at ease and happy with all the f casters ; Felix, 
 fancying himself despised, is morose, and even accuses 
 Aurora of flirtation. He is bent on a great voyage alone 
 
' AFTER LONDON ' 259 
 
 over the lake. That could satisfy his heart, and the June 
 morning sun * filled him with hope.' He leaves home 
 without a word. Once on the water ' his natural strength 
 of mind ' returns. His pensive eye sees in the strait 
 through which he passes the key to the lake. The 
 thought of Aurora leads him on in the hope of earning 
 recognition for his talents from a warring monarch — 
 Isembard of Aisi. Having landed, his poor appearance 
 brings him many vexations. Joining the army at last, 
 he suggests a new form of trigger for the crossbows ; he 
 resolves to point out the King's errors, and begins with the 
 words : ' Your Majesty, you are an incapable commander.' 
 The genial King sees the wisdom of his suggestion, and, 
 hearing of the new trigger, gives him clothes and a sword ; 
 but he is beaten out of camp for a proposal scoffed at by 
 the master of the artillery. He continues his voyage, and 
 reaches the lifeless water, the withered sedges, the falling 
 willow-leaves, the scummy surface, near the London 
 swamp. Irresistibly the wind carries him over the black 
 water. He lands on a plantless plain, hard, black, burnt, 
 and often hollow-sounding ; he grows drowsy amid 
 flickering vapours ; old houses dissolve in powder at his 
 touch ; he is among the skeletons of those who have come 
 to the poisonous land for treasure. Returning to his 
 canoe with one large diamond for Aurora, he is taken by a 
 steady wind once more to the sweet water, and hears the 
 voices of thrush and swallow. In a land of shepherds, 
 his unique adventures and skill with the bow gain him 
 kingly honours. His arrows destroy many in a fight with 
 gipsies, and put the rest to flight. The divination that 
 water is to be found in a certain place, his knowledge of 
 herbs, give him an embarrassing authority ; he is offered 
 kingship, and accepts it only during time of war. He 
 writes out the shepherd law. Yet he cannot forget 
 Aurora, and is ever on the look-out for a way of return by 
 land. He will bring Aurora here, and build a castle for 
 her. He gets leave to be away two months, and even 
 then shps off on a false pretext. It is a long journey 
 
 17 — 2 
 
26o THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 across unpenetrated forest, say from Guildford to 
 Marlborough : 
 
 ' Not only was there no track, but no one had ever 
 traversed it, unless, indeed, it were Bushmen, who to all 
 intents might be confused with the wild animals it 
 contained. 
 
 ' Yet his heart rose as he walked rapidly among the 
 oaks ; already he saw her, he felt the welcoming touch of 
 her hand ; the danger of Bushman or gipsy was as nothing. 
 The forest at the commencement consisted chiefly of 
 oaks, trees which do not grow close together, and so per- 
 mitted of quick walking. Felix pushed on, absorbed in 
 thought. The sun sank ; still onward ; and as the dusk 
 fell he was still moving rapidly westward.'* 
 
 That is the end. It is a wilful one, as if on an hexameter 
 instead of a pentameter, yet it needs no defence. Others 
 could have been found to conform to the needs of perhaps 
 a majority. But to end with suspended breath is as true 
 to Nature, and in keeping with this age ; it might be used 
 as a variation upon ' happily ever after ' or ' necessity is 
 great.' 
 
 The members of the House of Aquila are described with 
 sufficient intensity of detail as to their appearance, habits 
 of thought and conduct, and surroundings, to make us 
 willing to hear more of them, yet they are rather written 
 about than revealed. But though Felix himself is not 
 more than the others a complete creature of flesh and mind, 
 he develops into an interesting spirit rather than a man, 
 and his voyage is always fascinating. ' In the hearts of 
 most of us,' wrote Jefferies, looking at the dreamy masts 
 of Thames, ' 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.' This book was his 
 voyage, the answer to that need which had sent him to 
 see Moscow on foot as a boy. Few records of imagined life 
 are for the time being so desirable as that of the solitary 
 
 * After London. 
 
* AFTER LONDON ' 261 
 
 voyage, and especially the landing among the shepherds ; 
 it has the charm of the serene and the remote ; it is a 
 pastoral fluting with a grave undertone. Of the incidents, 
 the journey through the forest, with the dread of Bush- 
 men, is perfectly realized. It is pastoral, but it is the 
 unforced, half-allegorical significance in the adventures of 
 this new and sensitive mind in a strange world that holds 
 the book together. It must have been a curious joy to 
 Jefferies to set himself afloat in the canoe on that crystal 
 water, bold, yet self-torturing, soaring, independent, yet 
 crude and dogmatic ; to plunge at last into the ancient 
 wood and gain Aurora or perish. But it is also a bitter 
 book. The Fate of his other books is terribly exalted to 
 permit so mean a world, full of corruption, slavery, sus- 
 picion, uncertainty, instead of a hearty barbarism, after 
 the troublesome destruction of a whole civilization ; and it 
 is excusable to wonder that the relapse should have been 
 to a state so far below what not he alone dreamed of as 
 the lot of the man in the tumulus on the Downs. That it 
 is not a Utopia is redeemed by the happy thought that 
 just as Coate Reservoir was made to cover the marshy 
 fields below Burderop in order that the little Richard 
 Jefferies might sail and fish there, so the civilization of 
 England has been buried under an inland sea, that Felix 
 may sail on it alone and find adventures. Having created 
 a new world, Jefferies seems to have been so smitten with 
 the sight of wood and water that he himself ran down to it 
 and enjoyed and suffered there in earnest — laying great 
 schemes, making a ship, sailing her, exercising woodcraft, 
 killing gipsy after gipsy with his inevitable arrows, dream- 
 ing of a castle by the lake where he could take Aurora as 
 he dreamed of a hut on the island at Coate — and so doing 
 found it not different from the old world. It is a piece of 
 delightful self-indulgence that makes him describe the 
 playing of the ' Antigone,' chosen by Aurora, another of 
 his admirable women, fair, noble, sweet, but most shadowy 
 of them all. ' " Antigone " was her favourite, and she 
 wished Felix to see it. In some indefinable manner the 
 
262 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 spirit of the ancient Greeks seemed to her in accord with 
 the times, for men had, or appeared to have, so little 
 control over their own lives that they might well imagine 
 themselves overruled by destiny. . . .' She, too, in those 
 iron days, preserves almost alone ' the religion of the 
 primitive church ' and ' the duty of humanity to all, the 
 duty of saving and protecting life, of kindness and 
 gentleness ... a living protest against the lawlessness and 
 brutality of the time.' Felix does not oppose her, but is 
 ' simply untouched,' for his mind is too clear and his 
 knowledge of the physical sciences too great ; yet the 
 mystery of existence has impressed him in the solitary 
 forest, and though he despises superstitions, he cannot 
 shake off ' the apprehensions aroused by untoward 
 omens,' such as the stepping on an adder. In the chapter 
 on ' Superstitions,' founded on the manuscript of one who 
 had lived among the Romany and seen their worship and 
 sorceries, Fehx looks eagerly at ' the strange diagrams ' 
 which might be alchemical signs, just as Bevis pores over 
 the books of magic, and as Jefferies set his mind to work 
 at the sight of markings on eggs of birds and v/ings of 
 butterflies, at the shape of bones and of strange beasts, 
 at the divine curves of the human body. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 'AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR* 
 
 * Amaryllis at the Fair ' was the last book pubhshed by 
 Jefferies during his hfetime. Probably it was written 
 before May, 1886, since he then offered a book to a 
 publisher, saying, ' I think you will soon see that the 
 characters are from life ' ; this was most likely ' Amaryllis.' 
 He was very ill ; his spine had given way, and there was 
 no position in which he could lie or sit so as to use a pen 
 without distress ; and ' consequently,' he wrote, ' a vast 
 mass of ideas go into space, for I cannot write them down.' 
 In this book, also, he revisits Coate Farm — how different 
 a man from what he was in ' The Poacher,' ' Bevis,' ' The 
 Dewy Morn ' ! He painted his own youth in various ways 
 in ' The Poacher ' and ' The Story of My Heart ' and 
 other books, and he painted it amidst the fields of Coate. 
 He called upon them, also, to deepen the hnes of ' Meadow 
 Thoughts ' and ' Oak Bark.' But now Coate Farm (or 
 
 * Coombe Oaks,' as he calls it in ' Amarylhs ') no longer 
 belonged to a Jefferies, though James Luckett and his 
 wife still lived ; and Jefferies returns to it a sick, wise 
 man of thirty-six or thirty-seven, of many thoughts and 
 changes, if of no forgettings, with his love and his joy 
 deepened, the cup of beauty preserved and enriched by a 
 touch of bitterness that takes away any over-sweetness or 
 tendency to go sour. Almost the first words are : 
 ' There are no damask roses now, like there used to be in 
 summer at Coombe Oaks.' 
 
 The people are Amaryllis, a girl of sixteen ; her father 
 
 253 
 
264 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Iden, a farmer ; her mother, bom a Flamma ; Amadis 
 Iden, ' of the same stock of Idens, yet no relations,' aged 
 twenty-one ; Alere Flamma, aged forty-nine ; old Iden, 
 Amaryllis' grandfather ; and several others — farm people, 
 a squire's son, . , . They are not the people who lived 
 at Coate Farm, but are drawn from them : Amaryllis, 
 from Jefferies' sister, much younger than himself ; the 
 Idens from his father and mother ; Grandfather Iden from 
 John Jefferies, Richard's grandfather, who kept the 
 baker's shop ; Alere Flamma from Fred Gyde, Mrs. 
 Jefferies' brother, engraver and printer ; Amadis Iden 
 perhaps from Jefferies himself, but partly from John 
 Luckett Jefferies, his father's brother, draughtsman and 
 musician, who died young. 
 
 The main part of the framework also is taken from 
 Coate and the Jefferies family. Iden is an original, 
 thoughtful, unbusiness-hke man whose farm is going to 
 the bad ; his wife, soured by poverty, but stiU generous, 
 is at odds with him. Amaryllis could draw, if only she 
 could keep her fingers warm in the cold attic, and she is 
 a favourite with the baker, her grandfather, from whom 
 her father is estranged ; but, disliking the old man, she 
 will make none of the concessions that might have helped 
 to a reconciliation on the day of the fair ; she is proud, 
 and she has a sweetheart, the sickly Amadis. The end 
 of the story leaves her with him happy : 
 
 ' In the fitness of things Amaryllis ought not to have 
 been sitting there like this, with Amadis lost in the sweet 
 summer dream of love. 
 
 ' She ought to have loved and married a Launcelot du 
 Lake, a hero of the mighty arm, only with the income of 
 Sir Gorgius Midas : that is the proper thing. 
 
 ' But the fitness of things never comes to pass — every- 
 thing happens in the Turkish manner. 
 
 ' Here was Amaryllis, very strong and full of life, very, 
 very young and inexperienced, very poor and without the 
 least expectation whatever (for who could reconcile the 
 old and the older Iden ?), the daughter of poor and 
 
 I 
 
* AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 265 
 
 embarrassed parents, whom she wished and prayed to 
 help in their coming old age. Here was Amaryllis, full of 
 poetic feeling and half a painter at heart, full of generous 
 sentiments — what a nature to be ground down in the 
 sordidness of married poverty ! 
 
 ' Here was Amadis, extremely poor, quite feeble, and 
 unable to earn a shilling, just talking of seeing the doctor 
 again about this fearful debility, full, too, as he thought, 
 of ideas — what a being to think of her ! 
 
 * Nothing ever happens in the fitness of things. If 
 only now he could have regained the health and strength 
 of six short months ago — if only that, but you see, he 
 had not even that. He might get better ; true — he 
 might, I have tried 80 drugs and I am no better, I hope 
 he will. 
 
 ' Could any blundering Sultan in the fatalistic East 
 have put things together for them with more utter con- 
 tempt of fitness ? It is all in the Turkish manner, you 
 see. 
 
 ' There they sat, happier and happier, and deeper and 
 deeper in love every moment, on the brown timber in 
 the long grass, their hearts as full of love as the meadow 
 was of sunshine. 
 
 ' You have heard of the Sun's Golden Cup, in which 
 after sunset he was carried over Ocean's stream, while we 
 slumber in the night, to land again in the East and give 
 us the joy of his rising. The great Golden Cup in which 
 Hercules, too, was taken over ; it was as if that Cup had 
 been filled to the brim with the nectar of love and placed 
 at the [? their] lips to drink, inexhaustible. 
 
 'In the play of " Faust " — Alere's " Faust " — Goethe has 
 put an interlude, an Intermezzo ; I shall leave Amaryllis 
 and Amadis in their Interlude in Heaven. Let the Play 
 of Human Life, with its sorrows and its Dread, pause 
 awhile ; let Care go aside behind the wings, let Debt and 
 Poverty unrobe, let Age stand upright, let Time stop still 
 (oh, Miracle ! as the Sun did in the Vale of Ajalon). Let 
 us leave our lovers in the Interlude in Heaven. 
 
266 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 * And as I must leave them (I trust but for a little 
 while) I will leave them on the brown oak timber, sap- 
 stain brown, in the sunshine and dancing shadow of 
 summer, among the long grass and the wild flowers.'* 
 
 Five or six days fill the book. First, a March day, when 
 Amaryllis finds a daffodil in the garden and her father is 
 planting potatoes, and he talks to her about her great- 
 uncle Richard ; dinner follows, and Iden is left alone to 
 muse as he has done for thirty years, while the mice run 
 up to his knee and eat the crumbs of his bread and cheese. 
 Second is Lady Day, Fair Day ; AmarylHs watches the 
 fair-goers, the tramps, the farmers, the labourers, the 
 cattle and sheep, and one Jack Duck comes in to gossip 
 and take some of Iden's ' Goliath ale.' Amaryllis herself 
 goes to the fair, calls on Grandfather Iden (reputed to 
 have twenty thousand guineas in the iron box under his 
 bed), and has dinner with the crowd of relatives who come, 
 each to receive a sovereign from the old man, and the 
 most pleasing of them a spade guinea. Amarylhs wins 
 the guinea, but throws it away in her impatient dislike 
 of the old man, who does not help her father : then the 
 two go out into the crowd, from which the grandfather 
 takes her to see the manor-house of the Pamment family ; 
 she runs away, and her people at Coombe Oaks are 
 dehghted at her rebellion. Third, the day — many days 
 in one — when she sits up in the attic and tries to draw, but 
 is too unhappy because it is cold and the duns never let 
 her father rest. Then come the days in May when Iden, 
 Alere, Amadis, and Amaryllis talk in the round summer- 
 house ; and Alere suggests thoughts on Fleet Street, 
 Amadis on health, and Amaryllis on love. The char- 
 acters limn themselves in thought and speech and act, 
 and out of these few days spring Jeiferies' thoughts on 
 the life which he himself had seen and endured — the life of 
 thoughtful or passionate people swayed by poverty, by 
 ill-health, and by the products of their thoughts and 
 passions, whims, bad temper, generosity, disappointment, 
 
 * Amaryllis at the Fair. 
 
• AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 267 
 
 revolt. There is here no waste of energy on the plots that 
 led Jefferies astray in ' World's End ' and ' Greene Feme 
 Farm,' and compelled him into courses where his genius 
 availed not. The book has a form dictated solely by his 
 own mind and soul, and by the life he elected to project. 
 Here is nothing irrelevant or out of its place. Jefferies 
 has free play for all his nature, has no need to do what he 
 has no mind to, or to shirk. Though at the end he seems, 
 alas ! to promise another book, nothing is left unfinished, 
 though, indeed, he neglects to say that all lived happily for 
 ever after. You may like it or not, but to find fault with 
 the form is to assume that you know more about the life 
 at Coombe Oaks and about Jefferies than he himself knew, 
 and to confess that you want a detective story, a treasure- 
 hunt, a proof that the righteous man never begs for his 
 bread, or what not. Some have taken the trouble to say it is 
 not a novel. It is called ' Amaryllis at the Fair : a Novel,' 
 and has on the title-page the words of Alcseus : ' Our day 
 is but a finger ; bring large cups.' It is, at any rate, 
 a fiction, a statement of life through conversation, action 
 and reflection, and it is an artistic whole. Accept ' Panta- 
 gruel ' and ' Tristram Shandj^' and you must accept 
 ' Amaryllis,' however poor it may be. Reject it for its 
 ending — then rewrite it as was done with ' Paradise 
 Lost.' 
 
 And first for the characters. They are always seen at 
 once with the eye and the mind. Amaryllis, lovely, young, 
 and strong, stands out, ' the front line of her shape begin- 
 ning to bud like spring ' against the red brick wall as she 
 runs. She is running against the March east wind to tell 
 her father of the opened daffodil. At last Iden rises 
 from his potato-planting : 
 
 * " Trumpery rubbish — mean to dig 'em all up — would 
 if I had time," muttered the father. " Have 'em carted 
 out and drowed away — do for ashes to drow on the fields. 
 Never no good on to nobody, thaay thengs. You can't 
 eat 'em, can you, like you can potatoes ?" 
 
 * " But it's lovely. Here it is," and Amaryllis stepped 
 
268 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 on the patch tenderly, and lifted up the drooping face of 
 the flower. 
 
 ' " Ah, yes," said Iden, putting his left hand to his 
 chin, a habit of his when thinking, and suddenly quite 
 altering his pronunciation from that of the country folk 
 and labourers amongst whom he dwelt to the correct 
 accent of education. " Ah, yes ; the daffodil was your 
 great-uncle's favourite flower." 
 
 ' " Richard ?" asked Amaryllis. 
 
 ' " Richard," repeated Iden. And Amaryllis, noting how 
 handsome her father's intellectual face looked, wandered 
 in her mind from the flower as he talked, and marvelled 
 how he could be so rough sometimes, and why he talked 
 like the labourers, and wore a ragged coat — he who was 
 so full of wisdom in his other moods, and spoke, and 
 thought, and indeed acted as a perfect gentleman. 
 
 * " Richard's favourite flower," he went on, " He 
 brought the daffodils down from Luckett's ; every one in 
 the garden came from there. He was always reading 
 poetry, and writing, and sketching, and yet he was such 
 a capital man of business ; no one could understand that. 
 He built the mill, and saved heaps of money ; he bought 
 back the old place at Luckett's, which belonged to us 
 before Queen Elizabeth's days ; indeed, he very nearly 
 made up the fortunes Nicholas and the rest of them got 
 rid of. He was, indeed, a man. And now it is all 
 going again — faster than he made it. He used to take 
 you on his knee and say you would walk well, because 
 you had a good ankle." 
 
 ' Amaryllis blushed and smoothed her dress with her 
 hands, as if that would lengthen the skirt and hide the 
 ankles which Richard, the great-uncle, had admired when 
 she was a child, being a man, but which her feminine 
 acquaintances told her were heavy. 
 
 ' " Here, put on your hat and scarf ; how foolish of you 
 to go out in this wind without them !" said Mrs. Iden, 
 coming out. She thrust them into Amaryllis' unwilling 
 hands, and retired indoors again immediately. 
 
• AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 269 
 
 * " He was the only one of all the family," continued 
 her father, " who could make money ; all the rest could 
 do nothing but spend it. For ten generations he was 
 the only money-maker and saver, and yet he was as free 
 and liberal as possible. Very curious, wasn't it ? — only 
 one in ten generations — difficult to understand why none 
 
 of the others — why " He paused, thinking.' * 
 
 Or she leans by the wall her father built, up above 
 the road, and sees the fair-goers, herself watching with 
 critical reverie and a vague, unconscious eye for men. 
 Or she is with her grandfather, over ninety years old : 
 
 ' He took Amaryllis by the arm as she stood on the step 
 and pulled her into the shop, asked her if her father were 
 coming, then walked her down by the oven-door, and 
 made her stand up by a silver-mounted peel, to see how 
 tall she was. The peel is the long wooden rod, broad at 
 one end, with which loaves are placed in the baker's oven. 
 Father Iden being proud of his trade, in his old age had 
 his favourite peel ornamented with silver. 
 
 ' " Too fast — too fast," he said, shaking his head, and 
 coughing ; " you grow too fast ; there's the notch I cut 
 last year, and now you're two inches taller." He lowered 
 the peel, and showed her where his thumb was — quite 
 two inches higher than the last year's mark. 
 ' " I want to be tall," said Amaryllis. 
 ' " I daresay — I daresay," said the old man, in the 
 hasty manner of feeble age, as he cut another notch to 
 record her height. The handle of the peel was notched 
 all round, where he had measured his grandchildren ; 
 there were so many marks it was not easy to see how he 
 distinguished them. 
 
 ' " Is your father coming ?" he asked, when he had 
 finished with the knife. 
 
 ' " I don't know." This was Jesuitically true — she did 
 not know — she could not be certain ; but in her heart she 
 was sure he would not come. But she did not want to 
 hear any hard words said about him. • . .' t 
 
 * Amaryllis at the Fair. f ^^^^' 
 
270 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Or she is in the attic, chair and table by the window, 
 and a disused bedstead and a hnen-press (her bookcase) 
 behind : 
 
 ' Amaryllis went straight to the window and knelt down. 
 She brought a handful of violets, fresh-gathered, to place 
 in the glass which she kept there for her flowers. The 
 window was cut in the thick wall, and formed a niche, 
 where she had always had a tumbler ready — a common 
 glass tumbler, she could not afford a vase. 
 
 ' They were the white wild violets, the sweetest of aU, 
 gathered while the nightingale was singing his morning 
 song in the April sunshine — a song the world never hstens 
 to, more delicious than his evening notes, for the sunlight 
 helps him, and the blue of the heavens, the green leaf, and 
 the soft wind — all the soul of spring. 
 
 ' White wild violets, a dewdrop as it were of flower, 
 tender and dehcate, growing under the great hawthorn 
 hedge, by the mosses and among the dry, brown leaves of 
 last year, easily overlooked unless you know exactly where 
 to go for them. She had a bunch for her neck, and a 
 large bunch for her niche. They would have sunk and 
 fallen into the glass, but she hung them by their chins 
 over the edge of the tumbler, with their stalks in the 
 water. Then she sat down in the old chair at the table, 
 and rested her head on her hand. 
 
 * Except where she did this every day, and so brushed 
 it, a thin layer of dust had covered the surface (there was 
 no cloth) and had collected on her portfoho, thrust aside 
 and neglected. Dust on the indiarubber, dust on the 
 cake of Indian ink, dust invisible on the smooth surface 
 of the pencils, dust in the httle box of vine charcoal. 
 
 * The hoarse baying of the hungry wolves around the 
 house had shaken the pencil from her fingers — Siberian 
 wolves they were, racing over the arid deserts of debt, 
 large and sharp-toothed, ever increasing in number and 
 ferocity, ready to tear the very door down. There are 
 no wolves like those debt sends against a house. 
 
 ' Every knock at the door, every strange footstep up 
 
rro:ii a paint 
 
 FANNY JEFFERIES, 
 a grandmother of Richard Jefferies. 
 
• AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 271 
 
 the approach, every letter that came, was Hke the gnawing 
 and gnashing of savage teeth 
 
 ' Iden could plant the potatoes and gossip at the stile, 
 and put the letters unopened on the mantelshelf — a pile 
 of bills over his head where he slept calmly after dinner. 
 Iden could plant potatoes, and cut trusses of hay, and go 
 through his work to appearance unmoved. 
 
 ' Amaryllis could not draw — she could not do it ; her 
 imagination refused to see the idea; the more she con- 
 centrated her mind, the louder she heard the ceaseless 
 grinding and gnashing of teeth. 
 
 ' Potatoes can be planted and nails can be hammered, 
 bill-hooks can be wielded and faggots chopped, no matter 
 what the inward care. The ploughman is deeply in debt, 
 poor fellow, but he can, and does, follow the plough, and 
 finds, perhaps, some solace in the dull monotony of his 
 labour. Clods cannot feel. A sensitive mind and vivid 
 imagination — a delicately-balanced organization, that 
 almost lives on its ideas as veritable food — cannot do 
 like this. The poet, the artist, the author, the thinker, 
 cannot follow their plough ; their work depends on a 
 serene mind. 
 
 ' But experience proves that they do do their work under 
 such circumstances. They do ; how greatly then they 
 must be tortured, or for what a length of time they must 
 have suffered to become benumbed. 
 
 * Amaryllis was young, and all her feelings unchecked 
 of Time. She could not- sketch — that was a thing of 
 useless paper and pencil ; what was wanted was money. 
 She could not read, that was not real ; what was wanted 
 was solid coin. 
 
 ' So the portfolio was thrust aside, neglected and covered 
 with dust, but she came every day to her flowers in the 
 window-niche. . . . 
 
 ' She loved beauty for its own sake — she loved the sun- 
 hght, the grass and trees, the gleaming water, the colours 
 of the fields and of the sky. To listen to the running 
 water was to her a dear delight, to the wind in the high 
 
 / 
 
272 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 firs, or caught in the wide-stretching arms of the oak ; she 
 rested among these things, they were to her mind as sleep 
 to the body. The few good pictures she had seen pleased 
 her, but did not rouse the emotion the sunlight caused ; 
 artificial music was enjoyable, but not like the running 
 stream. It said nothing — the stream was full of thought. 
 
 ' No eager desire to paint like that or play like that was 
 awakened by pictures or music ; Amaryllis was a passive 
 and not an active artist by nature. And I think that is 
 the better part ; at least, I know it is a thousand times 
 more pleasure to me to see a beautiful thing than to write 
 about it. Could I choose I would go on seeing beautiful 
 things, and not writing.' * 
 
 Or she kneels and prays that her father and mother 
 shall be richer and happier, while downstairs the creditors 
 cry aloud : ' Pay me that thou owest !' — ' the very sum 
 and total,' says Jefferies, ' of religion.' Or, at the end, 
 she sits with Amadis in the garden. 
 
 Jefferies was doubtless thinking of his own early troubles 
 when he wrote : ' How unnatural it seems that a girl like 
 this, that young and fresh and full of generous feeling as she 
 was, her whole mind should perforce be taken up with the 
 question of money ; an unnatural and evil state of things. ' 
 And Amaryllis is, in fact, a pretty and happy-natured 
 country girl with the character of the youthful J eff eries, 
 in its quick temper, independence, sensitiveness, and 
 worship of beauty. She has beautiful hair, but is not yet 
 more than the promise of a beautiful woman. She is 
 tall, and has strong ankles. Of her appearance he tells 
 us little more, for she is in the passage between childhood 
 and womanhood, strong, eager, and full of life, but some- 
 thing dim, as one of her age often is within the cloud of 
 possibilities. For the rest she is a Flamma {i.e., a Gyde), 
 a revolutionary Flamma, and not an Iden (a Jefferies). 
 As with Felise, so with Amaryllis, Jefferies is in perfect 
 sympathy ; he enters into her life, he sorrows and enjoys 
 with her, and not only with her, but with the other 
 
 * Amaryllis at the Fair. 
 
' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 273 
 
 characters. He cannot detach himself from them and let 
 their characters work out a doom. He is up and among 
 them all the time, and they have him, like Rabelais, seeing 
 he cannot be their fellow-soldier, ' for their faithful brother, 
 refreshing and cheering, according to his little power, 
 their return from the alarms of the enemy.' He moves 
 from one to the other, listening for the music swept out of 
 them, praising them, fearing for them — in fact, one of them, 
 the chief character, at once the protagonist and the chorus. 
 
 Iden is drawn in the same way, a strong, handsome, 
 honest, generous man, deserving to live and glorify life, 
 but inevitably going under the sea of debt, of failure, of 
 a good, misunderstanding, nervous wife, of ' Fate.' He 
 plants his potatoes himself, stooping in his ragged coat 
 while the March wind blows : 
 
 ' The way in which he was planting potatoes was wonder- 
 ful, every potato was placed at exactly the right distance 
 apart, and a hole made for it in the general trench ; before 
 it was set it was looked at and turned over, and the thumb 
 rubbed against it to be sure that it was sound, and when 
 finally put in, a little mould was deHcately adjusted round 
 to keep it in its right position till the whole row was 
 buried. He carried the potatoes in his coat-pocket — 
 those, that is, for the row — and took them out one by 
 one ; had he been planting his own children he could not 
 have been more careful.' * 
 
 He was ' always at work, and he could talk so cleverly, 
 too,' thinks Amaryllis ; ' and knew everything, and yet 
 they were so short of money. How could this be ?' Her 
 wonder at this is like Jefferies' wonder that the human 
 race has not yet built a bam for its own use. But Iden 
 will have his mutton good, fetching it himself in a flag 
 basket, and seeing that it is hung. 
 
 ' No one could do it right but Mr. Iden himself. There 
 was a good deal of reason in this personal care of the meat, 
 for it is a certain fact that unless you do look after such 
 things yourself, and that persistently, too, you never get 
 
 * Amaryllis at jthe Fair. 
 
 18 
 
274 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 it first-rate. For this cause people in grand villas scarcely 
 ever have anything worth eating on their tables. Their 
 household expenses reach thousands yearly, and yet they 
 rarely have anything eatable, and their dinner-tables can 
 never show meat, vegetables, or fruit equal to Mr. Iden's. 
 The meat was dark brown, as mutton should be, for if it 
 is the least bit white it is sure to be poor ; the grain was 
 short, and ate like bread and butter, firm, and yet almost 
 crumbling to the touch ; it was full of juicy red gravy, and 
 cut pleasantly, the knife went through it nicely ; you can 
 tell good meat directly you touch it with the knife. It was 
 cooked to a turn, and had been done at a wood fire on a 
 hearth ; no oven taste, no taint of coal-gas or carbon ; 
 the pure flame of wood had browned it. Such emana- 
 tions as there may be from burning logs are odorous of 
 the woodland, of the sunshine, of the fields and fresh air ; 
 the wood simply gives out as it burns the sweetness it has 
 imbibed through its leaves from the atmosphere which 
 floats above grass and flowers. Essences of this order, if 
 they do penetrate the fibres of the meat, add to its flavour 
 a delicate aroma. Grass-fed meat, cooked at a wood fire, 
 for me. 
 
 * Wonderful it is that wealthy people can endure to 
 have their meat cooked over coal or in a shut-up iron box, 
 where it kills itself with its own steam, which ought to 
 escape. But then, wealthy villa people do do odd things. 
 Les Miserahles who have to write like myself must put up 
 with anything and be thankful for permission to exist ; 
 but people with mighty incomes from tea, or crockery- 
 ware, or mud, or bricks and mortar — why on earth these 
 happy and favoured mortals do not live like the gods 
 passes understanding. 
 
 ' Parisian people use charcoal : perhaps Paris will 
 convert some of you who will not listen to a farmer. 
 
 ' Mr. Iden had himself grown the potatoes that were 
 placed before him. They were white, floury, without a 
 drop of water in the whole dish of them. They were equal 
 to the finest bread — far, far superior to the bread with 
 
' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 275 
 
 which the immense city of London permits itself to be 
 poisoned. (It is not much better, for it destroys the 
 digestion.) This, too, with wheat at thirty shilhngs the 
 quarter, a price which is in itself one of the most wonderful 
 things of the age. The finest bread ought to be cheap. 
 
 ' " They be forty-folds," said Mr. I den, helping himself 
 to half a dozen. " Look at the gravy go up into um hke 
 tea up a knob of sugar." . . .' * 
 
 The good bread, good potatoes, good swede greens, and 
 good mutton, are a matter for our joy as long as human 
 beings remain corrupt and carnivorous. Yet he could not 
 drum the women into ' good, soHd, straightforward eating ' ; 
 they must have herrings for tea, snacks of pastry, vinegar 
 with greens, and so on. Rhubarb and black currants he 
 had every day in the season, and used to sweeten his hands 
 with the black-currant leaves. Jefferies himself liked 
 food and drink, if we may judge from his satisfaction with 
 the great eating of the labourers in ' Greene Feme Farm ' ; 
 with Hilary's way with a partridge, and his * lamb is never 
 good eating without sunshine ' ; with the many pleasures 
 of eating, if it be only home-made bread and butter in 
 ' Bevis ' ; with the joint and tart and ale in ' Hodge and 
 His Masters ' ; with the mullet and the juicy steak and 
 ale in ' The Dewy Morn ' ; and his love of ale and contempt 
 for lentils in ' Amaryllis.' In these matters he has at 
 times a fervour and a large sacred enjoyment almost 
 beyond Charles Lamb's. 
 
 After dinner, Iden muses by the fire, finishing his bread 
 and cheese, grumbling over the Standard; then he drowses, 
 his face resting on his hand, his head against the wainscot 
 of the wall, where the varnish is worn away and even 
 hollowed : 
 
 ' This human mark reminded one of the grooves worn 
 by the knees of generations of worshippers in the sacred 
 steps of the temple which they ascended on all-fours. 
 It was, indeed, a mark of devotion, as Mrs. Iden and others, 
 not very keen observers, would have said, to the god of 
 
 ♦ Amaryllis at the Fair. 
 
 18—2 
 
276 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Sleep ; in truth, it was a singular instance of continued 
 devotion at the throne of the god of Thought. 
 
 ' It was to think that Mr. Iden in the commencement 
 assumed this posture of slumber, and commanded silence. 
 But thought which has been cultivated for a third of a 
 century is apt to tone down to something very near 
 somnolence. 
 
 ' That panel of wainscot was, in fact, as worthy of 
 preservation as those on which the early artists dehneated 
 the Madonna and Infant, and for which high prices are 
 now paid. It was intensely — superlatively — human. 
 Worn in slow time by a human head within which a great 
 mind was working under the most unhappy conditions, 
 it had the deep value attaching to inanimate things which 
 have witnessed intolerable suffering. 
 
 ' I am not a Roman Catholic, but I must confess that 
 if I could be assured any particular piece of wood had 
 really formed a part of the Cross I should think it the 
 most valuable thing in the world, to which Koh-i-noors 
 would be mud. 
 
 ' I am a pagan, and think the heart and soul above 
 crowns. 
 
 ' That panel was in effect a cross on which a heart had 
 been tortured for the third of a century, that is, for the 
 space of time allotted to a generation. 
 
 ' That mark upon the panel had still a further meaning, 
 it represented the unhappiness, the misfortunes, the 
 Nemesis of two hundred years. This family of Idens had 
 endured already two hundred years of unhappiness and 
 discordance for no original fault of theirs, simply because 
 they had once been fortunate of old time, and therefore 
 they had to work out that hour of sunshine to the utmost 
 depths of shadow. 
 
 ' The panel of the wainscot upon which that mark had 
 been worn was in effect a cross upon which a human heart 
 had been tortured — and thought can, indeed, torture — 
 for a third of a century. For Iden had learned to know 
 himself, and despaired.'* 
 
 * Amaryllis (it the J'\iit\ 
 
 I 
 
' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 277 
 
 Mrs. Iden is watching him through the window, shaking 
 her fist at the thinker who was so still lest he should 
 frighten the mice, which at other times he killed without 
 mercy. After this Iden has a baked apple, and then has to 
 be nagged at by his wife, who can only now clear away 
 the dinner-things and get ready for tea. But she rushes 
 away, with tea unmade, to trample the daffodil violently 
 underfoot, and then, locking herself in her bedroom, to 
 cry over an old glove. 
 
 In the summer evening, after haymaking, Iden would 
 often go out and paddle barefoot in the sweet wet grass, 
 and Mrs. Iden would nag again, because nobody else did 
 that. They have lavender in the garden, and when the 
 London Flammas ask for some Coombe Oaks lavender, 
 husband and wife are drawn together ' over the hedge of 
 lavender ' for a little while. 
 
 One day Amaryllis comes down after dreaming — she 
 often dreamed it — that the thatch was on fire, and finds 
 Iden talking with Amadis and Alere, newly arrived. Iden 
 is making them welcome, and they are talking of the house 
 which ' the Idens of yore had built in a lonely spot, ex- 
 pressly in order that they might drink, drink, drink, 
 undisturbed by their unreasonable wives.' Then they 
 talk in the garden. It is all Iden's work, and it was said 
 that his father first quarrelled with him because he had 
 made it beautiful with trees and flowers. The apple- 
 bloom falls at his feet. Iden had planted the trees. ' It 
 was his genius to make things grow ... a sort of Pan, a 
 half-god of leaves and boughs, and reeds and streams, a 
 sort of Nature in human shape, moving about and sowing 
 Plenty and Beauty.' He could never hurry, but did the 
 work that lay about him — a man more clearly than most 
 others a part of the creative power of the world, at one 
 with earth and wind and sea. He should have had a life 
 as long as Jefferies desired — long life, long sleep — ' forty 
 hours of night and sleep would not be too much.' * 
 He lived as if this desire would be fulfilled, making 
 immortal oaken gates where the ordinary farmer would 
 
 * The Story of My Heart. 
 
278 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 have used a couple of rails. The best timber well 
 seasoned, the best workmanship, no haste, plenty of 
 talk and plenty of ' Goliath ' ale for the carpenter : ' it 
 was the Iden way.' 
 
 Beside him, Mrs. Iden is hardly more than a ghost, 
 nervous, irritable, shrill, shuffling, dissatisfied with every- 
 thing . . . but a very real ghost such as abounds in this 
 world. She lives chiefly in the passage where she has 
 been abusing Luce, the maid, for not doing things which 
 are in fact done. 
 
 ' So, flinging the duster at Luce, out she flew into the 
 court, and thence into the kitchen, where she cut a great 
 slice of bread and cheese, and drew a quart of ale, and 
 took them out to Bill Nye. 
 
 ' " Aw, thank'ee m'm," said Bill, from the very depth 
 of his chest, and set to work happily. 
 
 ' Next, she drew a mug for Jearje, who held it with one 
 hand and sipped, while he turned with the other ; his 
 bread and cheese he ate in like manner, he could not wait 
 till he had finished the churning. 
 
 ' " Verily, man is made up of impatience," said the 
 angel Gabriel in the Koran, as you no doubt remember ; 
 Adam was made of clay (who was the sculptor's ghost 
 that modelled him ?), and when the breath of life was 
 breathed into him, he rose on his arm and begun to eat 
 before his lower limbs were yet vivified. This is a fact. 
 " Verily, man is made up of impatience." As the angel 
 had never had a stomach or anything to sit upon, as the 
 French say, he need not have made so unkind a remark ; 
 if he had had a stomach and a digestion like Bill Nye and 
 Jearje, it is certain he would never have wanted to be an 
 angel. 
 
 ' Next, there were four cottage children now in the court, 
 waiting for scraps. 
 
 ' Mrs. Iden, bustling to and fro like a whirlwind, swept 
 the poor little things into the kitchen and filled two 
 baskets for them with slices of bread and butter, squares 
 of cheese, a beef bone, half a rabbit, a dish of cold potatoes. 
 
' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 279 
 
 two bottles of beer from the barrel, odds and ends, and so 
 swept them off again in a jiffy. 
 
 ' Mrs. Iden ! Mrs. Iden ! you ought to be ashamed of 
 yourself, that is not the way to feed the poor. What 
 could you be thinking of, you ignorant farmer's wife ! . . . 
 
 ' No wasteful bread and butter, no scandalous cheese, 
 no abominable beef bone, no wretched rabbit, no prodigal 
 potatoes, above all, No immoral ale ! 
 
 ' There, Mrs. Iden. 
 
 ' Go to the famous Henry Ward Beecher, that shining 
 light and apostle, Mrs. Iden, and read, mark, learn, and 
 inwardly digest what he says : 
 
 ' " A man who cannot live on bread is not fit to live. 
 A family may live, laugh, love, and be happy that eats 
 bread in the morning with good water, and water and 
 good bread at noon, and water and bread at night." 
 
 ' Does that sound like an echo of the voice that ceased 
 on the Cross ? 
 
 ' Guilty Mrs. Iden, ignorant farmer's wife ; hide your 
 beef and ale, your rabbit and potatoes. . . .' * 
 
 Such lively, faithful scenes of domestic life, and such 
 luxuriant colouring out of Jefferies' prejudice, are of the 
 essence of the book. It is with Grandfather Iden that 
 there is some dramatic play of characters, and the conflict 
 of Iden and Flamma blood is most nearly seen between 
 him and Amaryllis. They are side by side for some time, 
 the fair child and the grim ancient man bent like an S. 
 Amaryllis is angry with him for his quarrel with her 
 father, and yet giving way a little for her family's sake. 
 The old man is fond of hef^ — he in his ' great, grey, tottering 
 hat,' bent under as heavy a load as strong Jack Duck 
 under two sacks of wheat — fond of roast pork as of flowers 
 and bright leaves, fond of the lord of the manor and all 
 his works, cherishing a Beaconsfield peacock's feather. 
 At the dinner he goes from chair to chair of the thirty- 
 two sycophantic relatives expecting gold. Coming to his 
 son's empty chair, he stands and leans over it, the happy 
 
 * Amaryllis at the Fair. 
 
28o THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 chatterers suddenly still ; and as he groans, Amaryllis 
 thinks him more monstrous than ever, remembering 
 the crack in her mother's boot. As a great treat he 
 takes her over the Pamments' manor-house, but, sick of 
 him and of the young Pamment's eye for her, she breaks 
 away and runs home, and the quarrel is reinforced by a 
 letter about the neglect of her education. Everything 
 in the book is as natural as that. It is that plain, coarse, 
 bitter, occasionally merry life, with no developing story 
 to lure us on, stated with mordant ease, which is of all 
 things the most rarely achieved. The labourers and Luce, 
 the maid, work and eat and drink ; there is no mystery ; 
 no one loves above him in rank ; but they appear and 
 reappear with a truth which hardly any English writer 
 has given to agricultural labourers. Jefferies does not 
 go far with them ; he has no occasion ; they are only 
 clattering about the yard : but his handling is absolutely 
 sympathetic and understanding. Mr. Hardy is far more 
 dramatic, far more psychological, and also far cleverer in 
 effects, but he is seldom so right. Barnes has the same 
 homeliness and close observation, but with an idyllic 
 colouring or suppression. 
 
 Jefferies' friendly intimacy with his characters is 
 nowhere so hearty as with Alere Flamma. He is in 
 many ways different from his creator or reviver, but it 
 gave Jefferies great pleasure to think about him. He 
 is far from the ideal man such as Jefferies might have 
 created at the time of ' The Story of My Heart,' but in 
 the real world of the remaining actual years Alere was 
 after his own heart. Jefferies enters so much into the 
 spirit of his devil-may-care generosity, tenderness, inde- 
 pendence and mirth that he does not trouble to put 
 speeches into Alere's mouth, and in places the two are 
 indivisible. The Flamma family, says Jefferies, was 
 mercurial, revolutionary, hot republican, a ' nervous, 
 excitable, passionate, fidgety, tipsy, idle, good-for- 
 nothing lot . . . almost all flecked with talent like white 
 foam on a black horse, a spot or two of genius, and the 
 
' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 281 
 
 rest black guilt or folly.' Alere's shaking hands could 
 ' draw deHcate lines without a flaw ' (as Fred Gyde drew 
 Day House Farm). He made designs for bindings, did 
 some of the tooling himself, drew and engraved, and helped 
 in the printing-house in Fleet Street. He had drawers 
 full of unsorted sketches, landscapes, flowers, studies from 
 the nude. His studio was a plain, not very old room, 
 with no gauntlets and breastplates, Turkish guns, no 
 ' properties,' but books everywhere, and music, ' for 
 Flamma was fond of his many-keyed flute.' He could 
 not get out of Fleet Street. There he lived and worked, 
 and ' he could stop when he liked and take a swig of stout.' 
 He did as he chose, not as bidden ; and so made little 
 money, and only a little fame. 
 
 ' Alere liked pulling off the proofs in his shirt-sleeves, 
 swigging his stout, smoking on the sly, working with all 
 the genius of an inspired mechanic one moment and 
 dropping into absolute idleness the next, spending infinite 
 pains in finishing one bit of work, as if his very life 
 depended on the smoothing of an edge of paper, putting 
 off the next till the end of the month, pottering, sleeping, 
 gossiping, dreaming over old German works, and especially 
 dreaming over Goethe, humming old German songs — 
 for he had been a great traveller — sometimes scrawling 
 a furious Mazzinian onslaught in a semi-Nihilist foreign 
 print, collecting stray engravings, wandering hither and 
 thither. 
 
 ' Alere Flamma, artist, engraver, bookbinder, con- 
 noisseur, traveller, printer, repubhcan, conspirator, sot, 
 smoker, dreamer, poet, kind-hearted, good-natured, 
 prodigal, shiftless, man of Fleet Street, carpet-bag man, 
 gentleman shaken to pieces. 
 
 ' He worked in his shirt-sleeves and drank stout, but 
 nothing vulgar had ever been recorded against Alere 
 Flamma. He frequented strong company — very strong 
 meat — but no vile word left his hps.' * 
 
 Jefferies is almost envious of this so different life. He 
 
 * Amaryllis at the Fair, 
 
282 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 always hankered after travel and adventure, but he did 
 not go farther than to receive, but not to accept, an 
 invitation to go out as correspondent to the Zulu War ; 
 lying ill in January, 1886, he regretted that he had not 
 gone. 
 
 Alere worked until he had perhaps ten pounds, and then 
 paused, and smoked, and gave away his money. He ' did 
 not seem to trouble himself about the dogs ' in London 
 streets ; ' he saw so much of the human nuisances.' He 
 and Jefferies thought little of the organization of which 
 the one great advantage is that ' by no possible means 
 can you risk giving a penny to a man not of high moral 
 character, though he be perishing of starvation.' He 
 was no genius neglected or destroyed by intemperance : 
 he simply had no ambition and no ' business avarice.' 
 When the rats began to run up the waU in broad daylight, 
 he packed his carpet-bag and came to Coombe Oaks ; 
 and presently he began to sing old songs, student-songs, 
 songs from Goethe, and played ' delicious airs of Mozart 
 chiefly ' for Amaryllis. 
 
 ' By Flamma's side there stood a great mug of the 
 Goliath ale, and between his lips there was a long church- 
 warden pipe. 
 
 ' The Goliath ale was his mineral water ; his gaseous, 
 alkaline, chalybeate liquor ; better by far than Kissingen, 
 Homburg, Vichy ; better by far than mud baths and hot 
 springs. There is no medicine in nature, or made by 
 man, like good ale. He who drinks ale is strong. 
 
 ' The bitter principle of the aromatic hops went to his 
 nervous system, to the much-suffering liver, to the clogged 
 and weary organs, bracing and stimulating, urging on, 
 vitalizing anew. 
 
 ' The spirit drawn from the joyous barley warmed his 
 heart ; a cordial grown on the sunny hill-side, watered 
 with dew and sweet rain, coloured by the light, a liquor 
 of sunshine, potable sunbeam. 
 
 ' Age mingling hops and barley in that just and equit- 
 able proportion, no cunning of hand, no science can 
 
' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR * 283 
 
 achieve, gave to it the vigour of years, the full manhood 
 of strength. 
 
 ' There was in it an alchemic power analysis cannot 
 define. The chemist analyzes, and he finds of ten parts, 
 there are this and there are that, and the residue is 
 " volatile principle," for which all the dictionaries of 
 science have no explanation. 
 
 ' " Volatile principle " — there it is, that is the secret. 
 That is the life of the thing ; by no possible means can 
 you obtain that volatile principle — that alchemic force — 
 except contained in genuine old ale. 
 
 ' Only it must be genuine, and it must be old ; such as 
 Iden brewed. 
 
 ' The Idens had been famous for ale for generations. 
 
 * By degrees Alere's hand grew less shaky ; the glass 
 ceased to chink against his teeth ; the strong, good ale 
 was setting his Fleet Street liver in order. 
 
 ' You have " liver," you have " dyspepsia," you have 
 " kidneys," you have " abdominal glands," and the doctor 
 tells you you must take bitters — i.e., quassia, buchu, 
 gentian, cascarilla, calumba ; aperients and diluents, 
 podophyllin, taraxacum, salts ; physic for the nerves and 
 blood, quinine, iron, phosphorus ; this is but the briefest 
 outline of your draughts and preparations ; add to it, for 
 various purposes, liquor arsenicalis, bromide of potassium, 
 strychnia, belladonna. 
 
 ' Weary and disappointed, you turn to patent medicines 
 — American and French patent physic is very popular 
 now — and find the same things precisely under taking 
 titles, enormously advertised. 
 
 ' It is a fact that nine out of ten of the medicines com- 
 pounded are intended to produce exactly the same effects 
 as are caused by a few glasses of good old ale. The 
 objects are to set the great glands in motion, to regulate 
 the stomach, brace the nerves, and act as a tonic and 
 cordial ; a little ether put in to aid the digestion of the 
 compound. This is precisely what good old ale does, and 
 digests itself very comfortably. Above all things, it 
 
284 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 contains the volatile principle, which the prescriptions 
 have not got. 
 
 ' Many of the compounds actually are beer, bittered 
 with quassia instead of hops ; made nauseous in order 
 that you may have faith in them. 
 
 ' " Throw physic to the dogs," get a cask of the true 
 Goliath, and " drenk un down to the therd hoop." 
 
 ' Long before Alere had got to the first hoop the rats 
 ceased to run up the wall, his hand became less shaky, he 
 began to play a very good knife and fork at the bacon and 
 Iden's splendid potatoes ; by-and-by he began to hum old 
 German songs. 
 
 ' But you may ask, how do you know, you're not a 
 doctor, you're a mere story-spinner, you're no authority ? 
 I reply that I am in a position to know much more than a 
 doctor. 
 
 ' How can that be ? 
 
 ' Because I have been a Patient. It is so much easier 
 to be a doctor than a patient. The doctor imagines what 
 his prescriptions are like and what they will do ; he 
 imagines, but the Patient knows'* 
 
 He completes the charm of Coombe Oaks and of 
 ' Amaryllis at the Fair ' : 
 
 ' There was Alere Flamma singing in the summer- 
 house ; Amadis Iden resting on the form ; Amaryllis 
 standing by him ; Bill Nye munching ; Jearje indolently 
 rotating the churn with one hand, and feeding himself 
 with the other ; Luce sitting down to her lunch in the 
 kitchen ; Iden lifting his mug in the bow-window ; Jack 
 Duck with his great mouth full ; eight people — and four 
 little children trotting down the road with baskets of 
 food. 
 
 ' " The lazy lot of people in this house ; I never saw 
 anything like it." 
 
 ' And that was the beauty of the place, the " Let us 
 not trouble ourselves ;" " a handful in Peace and Quiet " 
 is better than set banquets ; crumbs for everybody, and 
 
 * Antaryllis at the Fair. 
 
 \ 
 
' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 285 
 
 for the robin, too ; " God listens to those who pray to 
 Him. Let us eat, and drink, and think of nothing ;" 
 beheve me, the plain plenty, and the rest, and peace, and 
 sunshine of an old farmhouse, there is nothing like it in 
 this world ! 
 
 ' " I never saw anything hke it. Nothing done ; 
 nothing done ; the morning gone and nothing done ; and 
 the butter's not come yet !" 
 
 ' Homer is thought much of ; now, his heroes are always 
 eating. They eat all through the " Iliad," they eat at 
 Patroclus' tomb ; Ulysses eats a good deal in the 
 " Odyssey " : Jupiter eats. They only did at Coombe 
 Oaks as was done on Olympus.' 
 
 Such a mixture never was : the man from Fleet Street 
 playing Mozart, Iden making his immortal gate, lovely 
 Amaryllis tending the sick Amadis, the labourers at their 
 work or drinking the good ale, the apple-bloom falling, 
 the buttercups high in the meadow, the shadow of the 
 bailiff still in possession. 
 
 Next after ' The Story of My Heart ' comes ' Amarylhs * 
 as a complete, expressive book, full of Jefferies himself 
 and of the world as he saw it. In the autobiography he 
 was overflowing with the inspiration which he had been 
 receiving in solitude for the first thirty years of his life, 
 and its proper expression was the solemn, swift, joyful, 
 but mirthless ecstasy of that book. In ' Amaryllis ' 
 there is no speed, no sweep of thought like the long line 
 of the sculptured, houseless Downs, but, instead, the 
 crowded criss-cross lines of the ridgy hamlet, with gable, 
 and roof, and chimney, and rick, and elm, and the vast 
 honeycomb of London itself. Yet it is just as much a 
 whole, full as it is of unconventional masterly transitions, 
 breathing one spirit. Here Jefferies' rebelliousness comes 
 down from heaven to the street : the church, charity, 
 architecture, London, everything as it is, makes a butt 
 for laughter, scorn, and hate — everything save the hearts 
 of men. Sometimes he has a large ripe sadness, which 
 is not the wasteful, fatal sadness at all, as when he worships 
 
286 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 the wainscot worn by his father's head ; or he has a naive, 
 ferocious anger, as when he points to the men and women 
 tramps, the Things, that go sUp-slop to the fair, ' not 
 equal in value to the sheep . . . not worth anything when 
 they're dead,' ' Fate ' is here stronger than ever : Iden 
 is unfortunate for a hundred reasons, and ' after all said 
 and done, Fate.' Everything ' is in the Turkish manner,' 
 he says, making Grand- Viziers of Barbers, making great 
 Iden and fair Amaryllis the quarry of creditors. Never- 
 theless, night has enfolded the hamlet, lamps are lighted, 
 the snow is piled without, and Mrs. Iden has warmed her 
 elder wine ; her husband's potatoes are buried in the warm 
 ashes : Jefferies has but two years to live, and it is loving- 
 kindness which, after all, he feels and makes feel, as he 
 draws up to the fire, towards a world not yet fit for the 
 life he dreamed of on the Dov^ns. Until men and women 
 are ready for that paUet ' in the midst of air and light,' 
 that plain and simple house, there is much goodness in 
 the farm when men speak truth and drain large cups. 
 With all its unhappiness, the house, and in some degree 
 the book, with all its honesty, is a consoling one. We 
 seem to hear the poet who sang : A great storm comes 
 out of the heavens, the streams are frostbound ; pile up 
 the fire, mix lavishly the honey-sweet wine, and lay your 
 head on a cushion soft. 
 
 ' Let the grandees go to the opera,' he says ; ' for 
 me the streets.' In his mind he cannot get away from 
 that terrible beautiful ' thickness of people,' London, 
 any more than Alere could. The vastness, variety, 
 complexity, opulence, disorder, are a delight as well 
 as a pain. It is all wrong, and meantime let us love 
 it — love it, except the sycophancy and the tyranny ; 
 Jefferies would add also ' thrift and — twaddle.' How 
 delicious, he says — the man who has to crawl upstairs on 
 hands and knees when he is so fortunate as to have got 
 downstairs ! — ' How delicious now to walk down Regent 
 Street, along Piccadilly, up Bond Street, and so on, in a 
 widening circle, with a thousand pounds in one's pocket, 
 
* AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 287 
 
 just to spend, all your own, and no need to worry when 
 it was gone ! . . . 
 
 ' The exquisite delight of utterly abandoned extrava- 
 gance, no counting — anathemas on counting and calcula- 
 tion ! If life be not a dream, what is the use of living ? 
 
 ' Say what you will, the truth is we all struggle on in 
 hope of living in a dream some day. This is my dream. 
 Dreadfully, horribly wicked, is it not, in an age that 
 preaches thrift and — twaddle ?' 
 
 London seems to him to have something of the ex- 
 uberant carelessness of Nature, still pouring gifts, still 
 inexhaustible, as careless also of men. He says, ' if he 
 could only write the inner life of Fleet Street,' he would 
 vanquish Balzac, Zola, Hugo, ' not in any grace of style 
 or sweeping march of diction, but just pencil-jotted in 
 the roughest words to hand, just as rich and poor, well- 
 dressed ladies and next-door beggars are bundled into a 
 train.' In no other book but this, written under the 
 inspiration of London, wTitten ' to describe a bit of human 
 life exactly as it really is,' would he have found a place 
 for Raleigh Pamment, ' late hours, tobacco, whisky, and 
 ballet-dancers writ very large indeed on his broad face,' 
 who was a hero to his valet. The valet ' swore in Raleigh's 
 very words, and used to spit like him.' Jefferies seems to 
 see a breath of the Divine in this sportsman's generous 
 energy, perhaps in his free spending of money. 
 
 It is a medley, ' in the Turkish manner,' like life itself, 
 with a Pantagruelian flow — Red Lion Court, Coate 
 Farm, sweetest fields of love, and early morning pave- 
 ments spotted by expectorations — the rich crowd, and 
 then old Dr. Butler with his ' Hum ! A' have lived 
 twenty years on pork. Let 'n yet it !' and ' If you want 
 to get well, you go for a walk in the maming afore the 
 aair have been braathed auver.' The urn is shaken, 
 but the lot -drawers take their fates in a dream. In no 
 other of his books does his humour, so much despised, show 
 itself so abundantly. He had not humour according to the 
 largest definition that can be given to the word. It was 
 
288 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 not twisted inextricably into the strands of his nature ; 
 it was often invisible, and let us be thankful for it that 
 yet another man of genius has been denied this heaven- 
 descended monkey as a lifelong inseparable companion. 
 Yet humour he had, if humour can be intermittent. It 
 takes several forms. It perceives the minor inconsistencies 
 of life, and can become jocularity. The commonest form 
 is archness, a quiet dryness, with a twist in the phrasing 
 peculiar to him — something so personal as to suggest a 
 trick of speech or facial expression. Thus, he describes 
 the way in which the spell of the low publican draws* 
 ' logs of timber and faggots half across the parish, which 
 will pull pheasants off their perch, extract trout from the 
 deep, and stay the swift hare in midst of her career.' 
 And ' who,' he asks,t ' would suspect an oyster of deceit ?' 
 and teUs of an old gentleman who insisted on having his 
 oysters opened, not at the shop, but at his door. ' He 
 feared the craft and subtility of the wicked oyster.' So, 
 again, in the passage on the pewter tankard in ' Greene 
 Feme Farm.' Facetiousness is never far away, as in 
 ' Fish somehow slip through ordinary rules, being slimy 
 of surface.' It can descend to a mere one-man drollery, 
 or to an elephantine jeer, or a snarling chuckle, as at 
 charity, thrift, hygiene, etc. It can rise also to a sar- 
 castic extravagance, as when he asked why the otter is 
 killed in the Thames. J ' 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 ?' To be described as dr^ly amusing, perhaps, 
 are such passages as where he speaks of that ' marvel of 
 our civilization ' — ' The Thames is swearing-free. . . . 
 You may begin at the mouth, off the Nore, and curse your 
 way up to Cricklade. A hundred miles for swearing is a fine 
 preserve.' Sometimes it lends him an admirable metaphor. 
 But in ' Amaryllis ' it makes its nearest approach to 
 true irony, and perhaps is such, in spite of a certain 
 
 * Hodiic and His Masters. t The Deny Mom. 
 
 X The Open Air. 
 
• AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 289 
 
 self-consciousness which makes the reader pretty sure 
 that these things are not yet part of the writer's natural 
 armour, but are like javelins used for the moment's 
 purpose, a little feverishly, as in this : 
 
 ' I would infinitely rather be a tallow-chandler, with a 
 good, steady income and no thought, than an author; 
 at the first opportunity I mean to go into the tallow 
 business.' 
 
 Or in this : 
 
 ' Some noble physicians have tried the effect of dinigs 
 upon themselves in order to advance their art ; for this 
 they have received Gold Medals, and are alluded to as 
 Benefactors of Mankind. 
 
 ' I have tried the effects of forty prescriptions upon 
 My Person. With the various combinations, patent 
 medicines, and so forth, the total would, I verily believe, 
 reach eighty drugs. 
 
 ' Consequently, it is clear I ought to receive eighty gold 
 medals. I am a Benefactor eighty times multiplied ; the 
 incarnation of virtue ; a sort of Buddha. Kiss my knees, 
 ye slaves ! 
 
 ' I have a complaisant feeling as I walk about that I 
 have thus done more good than any man living. 
 
 * I am still very ill.' 
 
 It is best of all where it is least verbal, where it lurks 
 and gives a glow to whole pages, as in the description of 
 Iden's dinner. It is, however, let us admit, an armour 
 which he is assuming against the world, now that increas- 
 ing poverty and illness have denied him the Downs, and 
 oncoming age has denied him the dream. For there are 
 two ways of opposing the world — by poetry, by en- 
 thusiasm, when a man believes in his dream, in spite 
 of the contradictions of life ; and by humour, when he 
 smiles at the contrast between himself and the Other 
 Dreamer whose dreams came true. 
 
 19 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 'FIELD AND HEDGEROW AND OTHER ESSAYS- 
 DEATH 
 
 * Field and Hedgerow ' was published in January, 1889, 
 and consists largely of Jefferies' latest essays, composed 
 during his last illness at Sea View, Goring, together v\ith 
 some of considerably earlier date — ' Nature in the Louvre,' 
 for example, having been written early in 1884, while 
 ' Field Sports in Art ' was published in 1885. Other 
 essays of the same and earlier dates were piinted in the 
 posthumous ' Toilers of the Field ' of 1892. Some that 
 were printed in the magazines have not been reprinted. 
 Their subjects are taken from the neighbourhood of Coate, 
 of Surbiton, of Brighton, of Crowborough, and from 
 London, Exmoor, and the Quantocks. Some of these 
 have already been touched on ; some, like ' An Extinct 
 Race,' ' Orchis Mascula,' ' The Golden-crested Wren,' and 
 ' House Martins,' are too slight to be valuable except to 
 the complete lover of Jefferies ; others belong to the same 
 class of irregular, patchwork essays as several, heretofore 
 mentioned, in ' The Life of the Fields ' and ' The Open 
 Air.' Such are, for example, ' Country Places,' ' April 
 Gossip,' ' The Time of Year,' and ' Mixed Days of May 
 and December.' The rest fall into the other two classes — 
 of essays, first, dealing more or less systematically with a 
 definite subject, as in ' Nature and Books,' ' Locality and 
 Nature,' ' Field Sports in Art,' ' After the County 
 Franchise,' and the introduction to White's ' Selborne '; 
 and, second, of essays which have a structure made at 
 least as much by the emotions as by the intellect, and 
 
 290 
 
LAST ESSAYS 291 
 
 such are, among others, ' Hours of Spring,' ' Winds of 
 Heaven,' ' My Old Village,' and ' Nature and Eternity.' 
 The best of these two classes are examples of Jefferies' 
 ripest art and most advanced ideas, even though he could 
 often see the clouds only through a window, and could 
 escape from pain, from ' the iron grip of hell,' only for 
 moments while he was writing them. In several it is 
 clear that he is thinking about death as something that 
 is for him. In the passage on phthisis, which he had been 
 studying, in ' Some April Insects '; in the sadness of the 
 hour when he saw the emperor moth on that sunny 
 second day of April — ' to think it will never return '; in 
 the looking back (in ' Walks in the Wheatfields ' and ' My 
 Old Village ') to Coate, to the cornfields under the Downs, 
 and to the brook ; in the vividness of his Crowborough 
 winter picture — in these things there is death. 
 
 His own poverty and pain contributed, perhaps, a little 
 to the bitterness of his writing on poverty at this time. 
 He would revive the tithe — ' the monstrous injustice of 
 the extraordinary tithe ' — if only the poor and aged and 
 injured of the village might have it. He seemed to see 
 the workhouse as the labourer does in the wintry moon 
 when first the rheumatism forbids him to rise — ' that 
 blot on our civilization — the workhouse '; and to give 
 the children a midday meal at the school, he said, ' would 
 be only simple justice after so many centuries.' ' What 
 a triumph for the Jubilee Year,'* he wrote (or, I should 
 say, dictated) in 1887, his death-year, at sight of the old 
 notice-board saying : 
 
 ' All persons found wandering abroad, lying, lodging, 
 or being in any barn, outhouse, or in the open air, and 
 not giving a good account of themselves, will be appre- 
 hended as rogues and vagabonds, and be either publicly 
 whipt or sent to the house of correction, and afterwards 
 disposed of according to law, by order of the magistrates. 
 Any person who shall apprehend any rogue or vagabond 
 will be entitled to a reward of ten shillings.' 
 
 * ' Country Places,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 
 19 — 2 
 
292 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 The notice reminds him that even now the workhouse 
 endures, men are imprisoned for debt, and ' in the West 
 End of London a poor woman, an ironer, being in debt, 
 her six children's clothes were seized.' He cries out upon 
 ' the enormous weight of ecclesiastical bricks and mortar 
 that cumbers the land,' while the vagrom man with 
 nothing in his pocket must not sleep in the open. Walk- 
 ing in the wheatfields, he remembers how the reapers 
 reaped when he was a boy : 
 
 ' Their necks grew black, much like black oak in old 
 houses. Their open chests were always bare, and flat, 
 and stark, and never rising with rounded, bust-like muscle 
 as the Greek statues of athletes. 
 
 ' The breast-bone was burned black, and their arms, 
 tough as ash, seemed cased in leather. They grew visibly 
 thinner in the harvest-field, and shrunk together — all flesh 
 disappearing, and nothing but sinew and muscle remain- 
 ing. Never was such work. The wages were low in 
 those days, and it is not long ago, either — I mean the all- 
 year-round wages. The reaping was piecework, at so 
 much per acre — like solid gold to men and women who 
 had lived on dry bones, as it were, through the winter. 
 So they worked and slaved, and tore at the wheat as if 
 they were seized with a frenzy, the heat, the aches, the 
 illness, the sunstroke, always impending in the air, the 
 stomach hungry again before the meal was over. It was 
 nothing. No song, no laugh, no stay — on from morn till 
 night, possessed with a maddened desire to labour, for 
 the more they could cut the larger the sum they would 
 receive ; and what is man's heart and brain to money ? 
 So hard, you see, is the pressure of human life that these 
 miserables would have prayed on their knees for permis- 
 sion to tear their arms from the socket, and to scorch and 
 shrivel themselves to charred human brands in the furnace 
 of the sun. 
 
 * Does it not seem bitter that it should be so ? Here 
 was the wheat, the beauty of which I strive in vain to 
 tell you, in the midst of the flowery summer, scourging 
 
LAST ESSAYS 293 
 
 them with the knot of necessity ; that which should give 
 hfe pulhng the hfe out of them, removing their existence 
 below that of the cattle, so far as the pleasure of living 
 goes. Without doubt, many a low mound in the church- 
 yard — once visible, now level — was the sooner raised over 
 the nameless dead because of that terrible strain in the 
 few weeks of the gold fever. This is human life, real 
 human life — no rest, no calm enjoyment of the scene, no 
 generous gift of food and wine lavishly offered by the 
 gods, the hard fist of necessity for ever battering man to 
 a shapeless and hopeless fall.'* 
 
 Experience and reading have not blinded him to the 
 blunt cruelty of life. He feels it like the child whom fire 
 burns for the first time. He is like the poet who in his 
 childhood stretched out his hand to feel as well as to see 
 the beauty of water boiling in a pot, and was scalded for 
 it. He seems to exclaim directly that beauty and joy are 
 right, and all else wrong, and with all the more frankness 
 and terrible simplicity because he has learned it for him- 
 self. Venturing into politics, he is still indignant because 
 the country, though it wants to abolish the vestiges of 
 feudalism and is beginning to unite against tithes, yet 
 ' votes Conservative, and places a Conservative in office. 
 ... It would break down the monopoly of the railways, 
 and at the same time would like a monopoly of protec- 
 tion for itself.' Not far from a cottager himself, he can 
 sympathize with cottagers who put unprofitable senti- 
 ments before self-interest. ' I would rather my children 
 shared my crust,' he says, ' than fed on roast-beef in a 
 stranger's hall.' Like them, he says he does not care for 
 small sums, little gains. In ' After the County Franchise 't 
 he tries to look forward to a village council that shall 
 represent the people, in place of a Board of Guardians 
 which is ' land and money simply.' The power to vote 
 must bring the labourers some such council, but let them 
 beware of borrowing ; let them prefer a rude discomfort. 
 
 * ' Walks in the Wheatfields,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 \ Longman's Magazine.^ 1887. 
 
294 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Why, he asks, should the council not possess its own 
 village ? Why should we not live in our own houses ? 
 He even asks, Can an owner of this kind of property be 
 permitted to refuse to sell ? Which is a pertinent but 
 saucy question for this yeoman's son to ask. He ven- 
 tures to suggest that ten or twenty out of a thousand 
 acres should be purchasable by force ' at a given and 
 moderate price,' and points out, with naive and most 
 troublesome logic, that the railways have as great a 
 privilege. As things are, the labourer is a hand-to-mouth 
 nomad bound for the workhouse — the word ' pauper ' 
 Jefferies detests so much that it is painful for him to use 
 it — ' because the owner of ten thousand acres is by no 
 means obliged to part with a minutest fragment of it.' 
 The Poor Laws would, he thinks, be unnecessary if there 
 were a good system of insurance. He complains of the 
 'glacier-like ' movements of Government, of the ' mediaeval 
 law ' which prevents the use of steam on the common 
 roads. The Church has lost all hold of him, and, not only 
 as an artist, he dislikes the very towers and steeples. 
 
 ' I wish the trees, the elms, would grow tall enough and 
 thick enough to hide the steeples and towers which stand 
 up so stiff and stark, and bare and cold, some of them 
 blunted and squab, some of them sharp enough to impale, 
 with no more shape than a walking-stick, ferrule upwards, 
 every one of them out of proportion and jarring to the 
 eye. If by good fortune you can find a spot where you 
 cannot see a steeple or a church-tower, where you can 
 see only fields and woods, you will find it so much more 
 beautiful, for Nature has made it of its kind perfect. 
 The dim sea is always so beautiful a view because it is 
 not disfigured by these buildings. In the ships men live, 
 in the houses among the trees they live ; these steeples 
 and towers are empty, and no spirit can dwell in that 
 which is out of proportion. Scarcely anyone can paint a 
 picture of the country without sticking in one of these 
 repellent structures. The oast houses, whose red cones 
 are so plentiful in Kent and Sussex, have quite a different 
 
LAST ESSAYS 295 
 
 effect ; they have some colour, and by a curious fehcity 
 the builders have hit upon a good proportion, so that the 
 shape is pleasant. These, too, have some use in the 
 world.'* 
 
 In another place he points out that the country people 
 have chapels, churches, Salvation Army barracks, but no 
 cottage hospital, no provision for the aged or infirm, no 
 library or lectures, no good water : ' all this fervour and 
 building of temples and rattling of the Salvation Army 
 drum and loud demands for the New Jerusalem, and not 
 a single effort for physical well-being or mental training. 'f 
 To this dying man it was an astonishing sight. At the 
 same time, he was becoming antipathetic to the cottager 
 in other ways — in the matter of destroying life, for 
 example. He points out the cruelty and stupidity in 
 killing birds, especially the insectivorous. The sparrows 
 are his friends, and he has always let them build about 
 his house ; and even for the purpose of identification, he 
 says that he objects to trapping insects, because he dis- 
 likes ' to interfere with their harmless liberty. 'J 
 
 In ' The Wiltshire Labourer '§ he goes on with the 
 subject. There is, he finds, ' the same insolvency, the 
 same wearisome monotony of existence in debt, the same 
 hopeless countenances and conversation,' among the 
 farmers. They cannot keep their sons on the land. The 
 state of farming drives him into a naive wonder that the 
 earth should lie idle for so many months in the year ; 
 he calls it ' a reproach to science.' || The labourers have 
 improved in ' social stature '; they want blacking instead 
 of grease, more fashionable clothes, and therefore more 
 money. Ten years before, Jefferies had praised those 
 who built better cottages and gave large gardens and allot- 
 ments to the labourers. The population has become more 
 
 * ' Walks in the Wheatfields,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 ■)• ' Country Sunday,' ibid. 
 X ' Some April Insects,' ibid. 
 § Longman's Magazine, 1887. 
 II 'Idle Earth,' /*J/V/., 1894. 
 
296 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 wandering, in spite of this, because there is no fixity of 
 tenure. ' You cannot have a fixed population unless it 
 has a home, and the labouring population is practically 
 homeless. As to the allotments, cottagers do not think it 
 a favour to be allowed to rent land at three times what the 
 farmer pays for it.'* Why, he asks, cannot landowners 
 let cottages direct, and give the labourers security so long 
 as rent is paid ? Better still, let them give facilities for 
 the gradual purchase of the freehold by the labourers. 
 They ' deserve ' settled homes. ' Deserve '! The word 
 is revolutionary, and that Jefferies should soberly point 
 out what a class of men deserves, as if that were some 
 reason for giving it, marks an interesting change from the 
 year of his letters to the Times ; it marks the intrusion 
 of his ideals into practical matters. Writing as a practical 
 man, he says that the labourers deserve settled homes. 
 
 The labour question, he sees, is everywhere. Books 
 and papers are ' carefully flavoured to suit the masses 
 who work. ... Is it religion ? The pickaxe is already 
 laid to the foundation of the church tower.' Though the 
 son of a farmer who hated the ranters, he is delighted 
 with the chapel where the labourer is not despised. 
 ' Was it,' he asks, ' merely a coincidence that the clerical 
 eye was opened just at the moment when Hodge became 
 a voter P'f Money is more and more ; in the posthumous 
 ' Thoughts on the Labour Question '% he pictures men 
 working hard in great heat or amid great risks, all for 
 the golden sovereign. ' Throw a golden sovereign upon 
 the mahogany table and listen. The circular disc of 
 heavy metal rebounds and rings clear as a bell — as a 
 bell calling slaves to obey the best of its owner.' ' It 
 is,' he writes, ' a great game of roulette, this world of 
 ours — a huge gambling establishment. You who are so 
 bitter against Capital, how dearly you would like to be 
 a Capitalist ! Then, for Heaven's sake, let us all have a 
 
 * ' Idle Earth,' in Longman^ s^ 1894. 
 
 f 'The Country Sunday,' Field and Hedgerow, 
 
 X Pall Mall Gazette^ November 10, 1891. 
 
LAST ESSAYS 297 
 
 fair chance : do not make its possession dependent upon 
 morality, virtue, genius, personal stature, nobility of 
 mind, self-sacrifice, or such rubbish.' His were not the 
 times in which a poet could write : ' I have been young, 
 and now am old ; yet I have not seen the righteous for- 
 saken, nor his seed begging bread.' 
 
 But there is a large and not always latent power of 
 conservatism in Jefferies as in the land itself ; it emerges 
 now and then, as if a mastodon heaved up the earth and 
 thrust its shoulders out in the midst of the street. His 
 spirit, his own special part of himself, that which belongs 
 to the years since 1848, is capable of the bravest flights ; 
 but there were many years before 1848, and they, too, are 
 in him, and he is of them. Hence a labourer's sentiment 
 or a farmer's prejudice easily threatens his tower of 
 ivory, ' pinnacled dim in the intense inane '; hence he 
 can never quite get away from Coate Farm, its half- 
 dozen little fields, and his good father making the bad 
 best of it. He delights in Linnaeus' ' Tour in Lapland ' 
 ' because it gives a smack in the face to modern pseudo- 
 scientific medical cant about hygiene, showing how the 
 Laplanders break every " law," human and " Divine," 
 ventilation, bath, and diet — all the trash — and therefore 
 enjoy the most excellent health, and live to a great old 
 age.'* 
 
 So also the unscientific and unhistorical man in him 
 scorns ' infallible instinct ' and ' evolution ' as explana- 
 tions of birds' nests. ' An examination of birds' nests, 
 if conducted free of prejudice, will convince any in- 
 dependent person neither that the one nor the other 
 explains these common hedge difficulties 'f — e.g., the fact 
 that nests are too small for the fledglings, which ' bubble 
 over ' the edge. The county wants new land laws, but 
 votes Conservative ; it ' has learned to read, and does not 
 buy books. 'J Jefferies used to think that the country- 
 
 * ' Nature in Books,' Field and Hedgerow, 
 
 I 'Bird's Nests,' ibid. 
 
 X ' Walks in the Wheatfields,' ibid. 
 
298 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 man was going to become a reader ; but now, he says, 
 the books are by townsmen, the pictures are derived from 
 the stage. Nature herself is a good enough book. At 
 the end of an essay on ' Enghsh Cottage Ideas ' he says : 
 * The best of us are pohshed cottagers.'* Of a chaffinch 
 — ' my chaffinch ' — he can write : 
 
 * The loving soul, a-thrill in all his nerves, 
 A life immortal as a man's deserves.' t 
 
 But let him return to sport, and his ' dear skylarks ' 
 and happy greenfinches seem to be quite forgotten. 
 ' Hares,' he writes, ' are almost formed on purpose to 
 be good sport, and make a jolly good dish, a pleasant 
 addition to the ceaseless round of mutton and beef to 
 which the dead level of civilization reduces us. Coursing 
 is capital, the harriers first-rate. 'J His imagination had 
 bounds to it, and the hare which he saw as he lay alone 
 on the Downs had nothing to do with the one that cried 
 out before the hound or made ' a jolly good dish.' As he 
 says himself, speaking of things in general, ' character 
 runs upwards, not downwards. It is not the nature of 
 the aristocrat that permeates the cottager, but the nature 
 of the cottager that permeates the aristocrat. . . . All 
 alike try to go in the same old groove, till disaster visits 
 their persistence. It is Enghsh human nature.' § His 
 inconsistencies are true to Nature and to the country 
 mind. ' Man made the town,' and in the town man 
 builds up a new world of logic and ideas. But the 
 country meanwhile exists and absorbs. Jefferies is 
 fascinated by the gypsies, without a Deity, ' under 
 English oaks and beeches ' : 
 
 ' So old, they went through civilization ten thousand 
 years since ; they have worn it all out, even hope in the 
 future ; they merely live acquiescent to fate, like the red 
 deer. The crescent moon, the evening star, the clatter 
 of the fern-owl, the red embers of the wood fire, the 
 
 ♦ ' Cottage Ideas,' Field mid Hedgero^v. f ' My Chaffmch,' ibid. 
 X 'Walks in the VVheatfields,' ibid. i 'Cottage Ideas,' ibid. 
 
LAST ESSAYS 299 
 
 pungent smoke blown round about by the occasional 
 puffs of wind, the shadowy trees, the sound of the horses 
 cropping the grass, the night that steals on till the stubbles 
 alone are light among the fields — the gipsy sleeps in his 
 tent on mother earth ; it is, you see, primeval man with 
 primeval Nature. One thing he gains, at least — an iron 
 health, an untiring foot, women whose haunches bear 
 any burden, children whose naked feet are not afraid of 
 the dew.'* 
 
 Few townsmen could accept, as Jefferies did, the 
 Downs and the crowd by the Mansion House and the 
 docks, not merely as theoretically all of one spirit, but 
 in his heart. For him, the steam-plough and the reaping- 
 machine, as well as oak and violet ; he wants the light 
 railway to call at the farmyard gate. And yet he has 
 always a sense of the contrast between what belongs to 
 an outdoor and what belongs to an indoor tradition, 
 rejecting the indoor very heartily as when he rejects the 
 great book on colours, because it deals with the artificial 
 and not with Nature. He asks if it would be possible 
 ' to build up a fresh system of colour language by means 
 of natural objects.' And, again, ' I found,' he says, 
 ' from the dandelion that there were no books. 'f Unless 
 the writers have gone to Nature, their books are hihlia 
 ahihlia. He likes White, because ' he was not full of 
 evolution when he walked out, or variation, or devolu- 
 tion, or degeneration. He did not look for microbes 
 everywhere. His mind was free and his eye open. 'J 
 He has gone through many books to get news of the 
 dandelion, but he sits on the thrown timber and wants 
 the soul of the flowers. Science he respects ; he wants 
 alchemy, too. 
 
 ' Let us not be too entirely mechanical, Baconian, and 
 experimental only ; let us let the soul hope and dream 
 and float on these oceans of accumulated facts, and feel 
 
 * ' Just before Winter,' Field a7id Hedgerow. 
 
 \ ' Nature and Books,' ibid. 
 
 X Preface to Natural History of Selborne. 
 
300 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 stiU greater aspirations than it has ever known since first 
 a flint was chipped before the glaciers. . . .'* 
 
 So, also, he wants an art that will face the real and yet 
 ideahze. ' He who has got the sense of beauty in his 
 eye can find it in things as they really are.' His is the 
 true realism, and his philosophy of art is excellent when 
 he comments : ' In these landscape days we put our 
 pictures on the wall only, and no imagination into the 
 things we handle and use.' f 
 
 Consciously often, unconsciously sometimes, he is feel- 
 ing after the causes of this harmony between Nature 
 and the works of men. A statue kno\\Ti as ' Venus 
 Accroupie ' in the Louvre brings him and us almost 
 in sight of them : 
 
 ' At a third visit it seemed to me that the statue had 
 gro\Mi much more beautiful in the few days which had 
 elapsed since I first saw it. Pondering upon the causes 
 of this increasing interest, I began to see that one reason 
 was because it recalled to my memory the loveliness 
 of Nature. Old days which I had spent wandering 
 among deep meadows and by green woods came back to 
 me. In such days the fancy had often occurred to me 
 that, besides the loveliness of leaves and flowers, there 
 must be some secret influence drawing me on as a 
 hand might beckon. The light and colour suspended in 
 the summe'r atmosphere, as colour is in stained but trans- 
 lucent glass, were to me always on the point of becoming 
 tangible in some beautiful form. The hovering lines and 
 shape never became sufficiently defined for me to know 
 what form it could be, yet the colours and the light 
 meant something which I was not able to fix. . . , Here 
 there came back to me this old thought born in the 
 midst of flowers and wind-rustled leaves, and I saw that 
 with it the statue before me was in accord. The living 
 original of this work was the human impersonation of 
 the secret influence which had beckoned me on in the 
 
 * Preface to Natural History ofSelborne. 
 I 'Field Sports in Art,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 
LAST ESSAYS 301 
 
 forest and by running streams. She expressed in loveli- 
 ness of form the colour and light of sunny days ; she 
 expressed the deep aspiring desire of the soul for the 
 perfection of the frame in which it is encased, for the 
 perfection of its own existence. . . . Though I cannot 
 name the ideal good, it seems to me that it will be in 
 some way closely associated with the ideal beauty of 
 Nature.'* 
 
 It is, in fact, beauty that he so hardily loves — beauty 
 somehow associated in his mind with physical strength, 
 with sincerity and truth. Impermanent as mist breathed 
 on the mirror of eternity, he perceives that the steam- 
 plough, like the old Sussex plough, the new Australian 
 clipper, and the crank caravels of old time, are good 
 and divine because they are fearless expressions of the 
 one energy that propagates and slays. ' The earth is 
 right and the tree is right,' he says ; ' trim either, and 
 all is wrong.' Of poppies he says : ' There is genius in 
 them, the genius of colour, and they are saved '; of the 
 sweetness of the bird's song in an early morning of 
 spring : ' Genius is nature, and his lay, like the sap in 
 the bough from which he sings, rises without thought.' 
 
 These last words are from one of the finest of his essays 
 in the personal and poetic class. It was written during 
 illness and exile from the fields, when he saw the lark 
 through the window-pane. It was, it is said, the last 
 essay written with his own hand, some time in the spring 
 of 1886. He thought of the bloom of the gorse outside, 
 ' shut like a book,' but soon to open ; of the sunlight 
 and wind at their work. ' I wonder to myself,' he says, 
 ' how they can all get on without me — how they manage, 
 bird and flower, without me to keep the calendar for 
 them.' 
 
 ' All the grasses,' he continues — ' all the grasses of the 
 meadow were my pets : I loved them all ; and perhaps 
 that was why I never had a " pet," never cultivated a 
 flower, never kept a caged bird, or any creature. Why 
 
 * ' Nature in the Louvwe,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 
302 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 keep pets when every wild free hawk that passed over 
 head in the air was mine ? I joyed in his swift, careless 
 flight, in the throw of his pinions, in his rush over the 
 elms and miles of woodland ; it was happiness to see his 
 unchecked life. What more beautiful than the sweep 
 and curve of his going through the azure sky ? These 
 were my pets, and all the grass. Under the wind it 
 seemed to dry and become grey, and the starlings running 
 to and fro on the surface that did not sink now stood high 
 above it and were larger. The dust that drifted along 
 blessed it, and it grew. Day by day a change ; always 
 a note to make. The moss drying on the tree-trunks, 
 dog's-mercury stirring under the ash-poles, bird's-claw 
 buds of beech lengthening : books upon books to be 
 filled with these things. I cannot think how they manage 
 without me. 
 
 ' To-day through the window-pane I see a lark high 
 up against the grey cloud, and hear his song. I cannot 
 walk about and arrange with the birds and gorse-bloom ; 
 how does he know it is the time for him to sing ? With- 
 out my book and pencil and observing eye, how does he 
 understand that the hour has come ? To sing high in 
 the air, to chase his mate over the low stone wall of the 
 ploughed field, to battle with his high-crested rival, to 
 balance himself on his trembling wings, outspread a few 
 yards above the earth, and utter that sweet little loving 
 kiss, as it were, of song — oh, happy, happy days ! So 
 beautiful to watch, as if he were my own, and I felt it 
 all ! It is years since I went out amongst them in the 
 old fields, and saw them in the green corn ; they must be 
 dead, dear little things, by now. Without me to tell 
 him, how does this lark to-day that I hear through the 
 window know it is his hour ?'* 
 
 What utterly abandoned sincerity is here ! Writing 
 seldom comes so near to a sob without causing disgust. 
 Seldom, save in Shelley, is the veil between the poet and 
 the reader living after him so transparent. It is the 
 
 * ' I^Iours of Spring,' Field ami Hedgerow, 
 
LAST ESSAYS 303 
 
 writing of one in whose veins the sea floweth, who is 
 clothed with the heavens, crowned with the stars, as 
 Traherne says — one who so loves and enjoys the world 
 that he is ' covetous and earnest to persuade others to 
 enjoy it.' Thinking of all these things, Jeffcries remem- 
 bers his error to believe that because he loved the earth, 
 the earth loved him. He recalls how he once walked 
 ' gaily ' up to Beachy Head, joying in sun and wind, and 
 crunching the shells of long-dead things for which Nature 
 cares as much as for him. That sends him to the thought 
 of ' The Story of My Heart ': ' We must look to ourselves 
 to help ourselves. We must think ourselves into an 
 earthly immortality ';* for so he calls a divine fulness 
 of life. And the little pebble in the grass teaches him 
 that he is a soul, ' because he is not that that touches 
 the nerves of his hand '; the chief use of matter is ' to 
 demonstrate to us the existence of the soul.' He returns 
 to the beauty of the earth, of the forest-clad hills about 
 Crowborough, even in winter, when the sky was ' black 
 and faintly yellow — brutal colours of despotism — 
 heaven striking with clenched fist.' Earth is always 
 beautiful, and ' the heart, from the moment of its first 
 beat, instinctively longs for the beautiful.' But it is 
 frost-bound, and a labouring man who would not go to 
 the workhouse asks to be allowed to dig in the garden : 
 
 * Nature, earth, and the gods did not help him ; sun 
 and stars, where were they ? He knocked at the door 
 of the farms and found good in man only — not in Law 
 or Order, but in individual man alone. 'f 
 
 The snow and wind will not spare the gypsy woman 
 lying with her babes. ' Nothing good to man but man. 
 Let man, then, leave his gods and lift up his ideal beyond 
 them.' The birds also starve — only one thrush is left. 
 And yet ' the buzzing crowds of summer were still under 
 the snow.' Then the long frost breaks ; the wind is in 
 the south, and the gorse in flower. But an old man goes 
 past in a waggon on the bed in which he had slept seventy- 
 
 * * Hours o{ Spring,' jFie/ii ami Hedgerow. t /<^«V/. 
 
 / 
 
304 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 three years. ' It is not the tyranny of anyone that has 
 done it ; it is the tyranny of circumstance, the lot of man.' 
 But the sycamore bud opens ; there are lambs, there are 
 butterflies ; the plough can break the clod. And yet 
 there is no order, he says, as of a drill ; the wild flowers 
 are not found by a foot-measure. 
 
 * Nature has no arrangement, no plan, nothing judicious 
 even. The walnut-trees bring forth their tender buds, 
 and the frost turns them — they have no mosaic of time 
 to fit in, like a Roman tessellated pavement. Nature is 
 like a child, who will sing and shout, though you may be 
 never so deeply pondering in the study, and does not 
 wait for the hour that suits your mind. You do not 
 know what you may find each day. Perhaps you may 
 only pick up a fallen feather, but it is beautiful, every 
 filament. Always beautiful ! everything beautiful ! And 
 are these things new — the ploughman and his team, the 
 lark's song, the green leaf ? Can they be new ? Surely 
 they have been of old time ! They are, indeed, new — 
 the only things that are so ; the rest is old and grey, and 
 a weariness.'* 
 
 So it ends. How true, how false, how unreasonable, it 
 all is ! Why is he not working in the slums to improve 
 the lot of men whom the gods will not help ? He does 
 but add to the difficulty and absurdity of life, to lie there 
 ill and poor in the monotonous frost, looking out of the 
 window, all manner of memories, hopes, joys, sorrows 
 coming to his heart as doves to the dovecot. And yet does 
 he not in the end extract more joy than sorrow from it 
 all ? Is it not a triumph of beauty and life ? It makes 
 for goodness, joy, and beauty in its proclamation that life 
 can endure most dog-like things and yet flourish exceed- 
 ingly. Always these two truths — the exuberance of 
 Nature and the divinity of man. Even if it were all a 
 nightmare, the very truthfulness of the agitated voice, 
 rising and falling in honest contemplation of common 
 sorrows, would preserve it, since it is rarely given to the 
 • ' Hours of Spring,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 
 1 
 
LAST ESSAYS 305 
 
 best of men to speak the truth. Its shape is the shape 
 of an emotional mood, and it ends because the emotion 
 ends. It is music, and above, or independent of, logic. 
 It obeys some deeper law than that which any model 
 could teach. It really has the effect of music, with its 
 succession of thoughts and images wrought into as real a 
 unity as there is in ' Phaselus ille ' or the * Ode to a 
 Nightingale.' Some would say the effect is that of 
 religious music, but it rebels against all the gods, against 
 all things except life. 
 
 In ' The July Grass ' another of his old thoughts has 
 returned. At the sight of a scarlet-spotted fly enjoying 
 the sun — ' if the sunshine were a hundred hours long, still 
 it would not be long enough ' — he resolves that he will 
 not think ; he will be unconscious, he will live. He has 
 there met, perhaps, the most tragic condition of man's 
 greatness — his self-consciousness. If the sea-waves were 
 to be self-conscious, they would cease to wash the shore ; 
 a self-conscious world would fester and stink in a month. 
 Many men survive the terror. Jefferies survived it, and 
 desired to be like the scarlet-spotted fly. Has the Nature 
 of which he spoke ambiguous, terrible things in ' The 
 Story of My Heart ' taken a sharp revenge ? or is she 
 only showing the maternal extremity of her love, that 
 she makes him say, ' All things that are beautiful are 
 found by chance, like everything that is good '? It is 
 the same cry as the poet's ' Let us keep our lives simple 
 and passionate.' In one place, having defended the in- 
 telligence of ants, hinting at ' some consideration of 
 which we are ignorant, but which weighs with ants,' he 
 says : * I do not know that I am myself more rational.'* 
 But he is not content to gaze at the scarlet and gold and 
 crimson and green of July, to see, to drink it, but desires 
 ' in some way to make it part of me, that I might live it.' 
 Oh, the unprofitable sweetness of life, sweetest when it 
 passes briefly and unconsciously like a poppy's blossom- 
 ing ! Jefferies will not be content until he has seen it all. 
 
 * 'Among the Nuts,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 
 I 20 
 
3o6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 It is wonderful that he does not meet such a fate as that 
 of Faustus, with such senses as he had, feeUng ' a sense 
 of blue as he faces the strong breeze , . . wind-blue, not 
 the night-blue or heaven-blue, a colour of air.'* Sitting 
 among the hops in the oast-chamber until his mind ' was 
 full of fancy, imagination, flowing with ideas,' a ' sense 
 of lightness and joyousness ' hfted him up ; he ' wanted 
 music, and felt full of laughter. 'f He seems to see every- 
 thing, and to endeavour to record everything clearly, even 
 when it is of little artistic or scientific value. Thus, he 
 notes that the colour of the old oak-leaves ' is too brown 
 for buff ; it is more like fresh harness.' He notes, among 
 the wind's labours, the ruffling of the mole's velvet back. 
 Wonderful it is that he should write at all, after this 
 restless roving with the winds and diving in the waters, 
 this care for all the business of the earth as if truly it 
 could not go on without him, as if he had 
 
 ' The cloudy winds to keep 
 Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.* 
 
 f' That he is an artist so often is hardly less surprising 
 than it would be had James Luckett Jefferies been one, 
 or Uncle Jonathan at the Idovers. In ' An English Deer- 
 Park,'J and such papers, he sometimes appears to be 
 expressing a view like theirs — the view of a man who 
 has a plenty of country lore in his heart, so that calm and 
 beautiful old things flow naturally from his pen. Some 
 of this has only reached the form of gossip, as in ' The 
 Countryside : Sussex,' ' Country Places,' ' Buckhurst 
 Park,'§ ' Summer in Somerset,' but incomparable gossip, 
 often to be valued as a vivid record of a certain time and 
 place, and having a great charm for the townsman and 
 the sportsman. By this abundance and confusion as of 
 Nature he shows his birth out of the soil, with which, 
 indeed, he seems still to maintain an irrefragable connec- 
 tion. But what gives life and significance to them, and 
 
 * 'Winds of Heaven,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 t 'The Countryside : Sussex,' ibid. 
 % Ibid. § Ibid. 
 

 Facsimile of a letter from Richard Jefferies, Dec. 3, 1886. ^ ^^ 
 
LAST ESSAYS 307 
 
 makes them more than extracts from Nature, is the 
 quickening imagination. He has built images of certain 
 things in his brain with such clearness and of such close 
 relationship to his own life and thought that they make 
 a new world, where, without imagination, we should have 
 missed a thousand things that Nature has. ' At every 
 hour of the day,' he says,* ' I am accustomed to call up 
 figures at will before my eyes, which stand out well 
 defined and coloured to the very hue of their faces.' 
 Without this imagination there is no life. Imagination 
 is not an artistic quality, but a quality pertaining to 
 intensity of life, to reality, and it is possessed by the 
 ploughman, sailor, or mechanic as commonly as by the 
 artist, and by it they live, or, more accurately, by their 
 possession they prove that they live, and do not endure 
 the life in death of the unimaginative. The intellect and 
 the perpetually decaying frame speak aloud in tones 
 which mean that death comes soon and death ends all ; 
 that when the breath is out of our bodies all is over, and 
 the visible world of men and women and Nature and art 
 is no more to us than, in a few days, we are to them. But 
 imagination stops our ears against the song of the cold 
 sirens on the rocks, and helps us to go on living as if for 
 ever, to do and to be the greatest and most god-like 
 things, making nothing of time or death. Thus, the con- 
 trast is not between imagination and reality, but between 
 imagination and death ; it is better to say between love 
 and death, for imagination is the most sacred child of love. 
 Jefferies himself says of beauty which only the imagina- 
 tion can hold that it is * an expression of hope ; . . . while 
 the heart is absorbed in its contemplation, unconscious 
 but powerful hope is filling the breast. 'f 
 
 ' My Old Village,'^ one of the last, if not the last, of his 
 essays, is perhaps the finest of all in its naturalism, its 
 pathos, its beauty, its perfection of form, as of a copse or 
 a worn tree which we recognize as perfect because it has 
 
 * 'Field Sports in Art,' Field atid Hedgerow. 
 f ' Nature in the Louvre,' ibid. % Ibid. 
 
 I 20—2 
 
308 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 grown to the sound of music. ' John Bro^vn is dead,' it 
 begins, and Richard Jefferies' father wrote in a copy of 
 the magazine where it first appeared : ' He was my milker 
 and workman for eighteen or twenty years, and was the 
 first man my son could remember. His father was Job 
 Brown.' Jefferies goes on to recall the cottage where 
 Brown lived, and the raised piece of wood across the door- 
 way over which he slipped on coming home in the even- 
 ing, and fell forward dead on the brick floor — ' hard to 
 fall on and die.' There, by the strong labourer's cottage, 
 the first violets came. He remembers John Brown's 
 strength, his mighty mowing. ' If a man's work that he 
 has done all the days of his life could be collected and 
 piled up around him in visible shape, what a vast mound 
 there would be beside some ! If each act or stroke was 
 represented, say, by a brick, John BrovMi would have 
 stood the day before his ending by the side of a monu- 
 ment as high as a pyramid. Then if in front of him could 
 be placed the sum and product of his labour, the profit to 
 himself, he could have held it in his clenched hand like a 
 nut, and no one would have seen it.'* He remembers, too, 
 this man's going off to Swindon with a wallet for the bread, 
 his tipsy gravity as he carried a yoke of milk, bathing 
 himself at length in it as he fell. They had small-pox in 
 the cottage near. ' That terrible disease seemed to quite 
 spoil the violet bank opposite, and I never picked one 
 there afterwards.' Nearly twenty years before Jefferies 
 had wanted to leave Coate because it was ' tainted ' by his 
 own illness. It was John Brown's tall chimney that he 
 saw — and we can still see — coming home at all hours, a 
 comfortable sight when he still believed in ghosts. ' The 
 ghosts die as we grow older ; they die, and their places 
 are taken by real ghosts.' The next cottage (going 
 towards Coate Farm) was Job Brown's, and he remembers 
 the little shopkeeper who ' had a way of shaking hands 
 with you with his right hand, while his left hand was 
 casually doing something else in a detached sort of way.' 
 * ' My Old Village,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 
LAST ESSAYS 309 
 
 He caught rats and rabbits and moles ; he sold ' such 
 immense dark-brown jumbles, such cheek-distenders . . . 
 I really think I could eat one now.' But Job is long 
 dead. Next came the water-bailiff's cottage, with the 
 oars leaning against it, and the punt with a list, the big 
 gun, the shrewish wife — dead now. Then the thatched 
 village, hiding irregularly up lanes and among elms. But 
 not one of the farmers is left, not even the strong young 
 man, ' the hardy, dark young man, built of iron, broad, 
 thick, and short, who looked as if frost, snow, and heat 
 were all the same to him.' In his prime a sunstroke sent 
 him to bed, and in twelve months he was buried. ' Of 
 them all,' of all the people Jefferies knew or used to see, 
 ' I verily believe there was but one soul living in the same 
 old house.' The trees, too — 
 
 ' I think I have heard that the oaks are down. They 
 may be standing or down ; it matters nothing to me. 
 The leaves I last saw upon them are gone for evermore, 
 nor shall I ever see them come there again ruddy in 
 spring. I would not see them again even if I could ; 
 they could never look again as they used to do. There 
 are too many memories there. The happiest days become 
 the saddest afterwards. Let us never go back, lest we, 
 too, die. There are no such oaks anywhere else — none 
 so tall and straight, and with such massive heads, on 
 which the sun used to shine as if on the globe of the 
 earth, one side in shadow, the other in bright light. 
 How often I have looked at oaks since, and yet have 
 never been able to get the same effect from them ! Like 
 an old author printed in another type, the words are the 
 same, but the sentiment is different. The brooks have 
 ceased to run. There is no music now at the old hatch 
 where we used to sit in danger of our lives, happy as 
 kings, on the narrow bar over the deep water. The 
 barred pike that used to come up in such numbers are 
 no more among the flags. The perch used to drift down 
 the stream, and then bring up again. The sun shone 
 there for a very long time, and the water rippled and 
 
 / 
 
310 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 sang, and it always seemed to me that I could feel the 
 ripphng and the singing and the sparkling back through 
 the centuries. The brook is dead, for when man goes 
 Nature ends. I dare say there is water there still, but it 
 is not the brook ; the brook is gone, like John Brown's 
 soul. There used to be clouds over the fields — white 
 clouds in blue summer skies. I have lived a good deal 
 on clouds. They have been meat to me often ; they 
 bring something to the spirit which even trees do not. 
 I see clouds now sometimes when the iron grip of hell 
 permits for a minute or two ; they are very different 
 clouds, and speak differently. I long for some of the 
 old clouds that had no memories. There were nights in 
 those times over those fields — not darkness, but night — 
 full of glowing suns and glowing richness of life that 
 sprang up to meet them. The nights are there still — 
 they are everywhere ; nothing local in the night — but it 
 is not the night to me seen through the window. 
 
 ' There used to be footpaths. . . .'* 
 
 There was the footpath where, ' a hundred years ago, 
 a little old man with silver buckles on his shoes ' used to 
 walk once a week to drink milk with his children at the 
 farm — Coate Farm, for Richard Jefferies' father has put 
 a note alongside this passage, saying ' My father ' — and 
 the path to the railway where Richard, as a boy, used to 
 go to see the broad-gauge engines sweep by. 
 
 ' I wish I could feel like that now. The feeling is not 
 quite gone, even now, and I have often since seen those 
 great broad-gauge creatures moving alive to and fro like 
 Ezekiel's wheel-dream beside the platforms of Babylon 
 with much of the same old delight. Still, I never went 
 back with them to the faded footpath. They are all 
 faded now, these footpaths. 'f 
 
 The walnut-trees at home are dead, where he used to 
 sit with a ' great volume by Sir Walter Scott,' and balance 
 the luxuries of reading and eating nuts ; where he read 
 of the lost caravan that found princely hospitality at an 
 
 * • My Old Village,' Field and Hedf^erow. t Ibid. 
 
LAST ESSAYS 311 
 
 unexpected oasis, and came away with pearls and rubies, 
 only to find they had been away, not a month or two, but 
 twenty years, and as they grew old one by one they set 
 out to find the city of the oasis, but left their bones among 
 the palms and water of the mirage. 
 
 The ash-copses are cut, where he used to go with the 
 little copy of Shakespeare's poems and sonnets, never 
 reading it out of doors, yet carrying it about until it was 
 worn. 
 
 ' Was everyone, then, so pleasant to me in those days ?' 
 So he suddenly interrupts his memories. There was not 
 one friendly ; they were indifferent to him, he to them. 
 He will not remember the noisy scapegrace, nor his cousin 
 Jimmy Cox, nor his brother Harry, not Alere, nor Amadis, 
 nor Molly, the milkmaid. 
 
 ' I planted myself everywhere under the trees in the 
 fields and footpaths by day and by night, and that is why 
 I have never put myself into the charge of the many- 
 wheeled creatures that move on the rails and gone back 
 thither, lest I might find the trees look small, and the 
 elms mere switches, and the fields shrunken, and the 
 brooks dry, and no voice anywhere. Nothing but my 
 own ghost to meet me by every hedge. I fear lest I 
 should find myself more dead than all the rest, and verily 
 I wish, could it be without injury to others, that the sand 
 of the desert would rise and roll over and obliterate the 
 place for ever and ever.'* 
 
 But, he says, he need not wish this ; and then with 
 unlucky mock gravity, which could only have succeeded 
 had it been irony, he goes on to point out with firstly, 
 secondly, and seventhly, that beyond his own there is no 
 evidence to support what he has said about the sparkle 
 of the brook and the old man with the silver buckles and 
 the footpaths . . . ' so that perhaps, after all, I was mis- 
 taken, and there never was any such place or any such 
 meadows, and I was never there. And perhaps, in 
 course of time, I shall find out also, when I pass away 
 * ' My Old Village,' Field and Hedgerow. 
 
312 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 physically, that, as a matter of fact, there never was any 
 earth.' 
 
 It is most mournful music, but it is music. At first 
 sight it is one of the most numbing and desperate things 
 outside of our own lives. With its interruptions, its 
 moodiness, it is an exquisite portrait of an hour in the 
 life of a sensitive egoist, with disease and poverty against 
 him, looking backward, as Lamb and Hood looked back- 
 ward. Were it nothing more, it might seem to be one 
 of those pieces that check the heart and make against 
 life. But it is more ; it is not merely a swaying wreck 
 that drifts to the whirlpool and death of its desire. 
 Languor, acquiescence, retrospection can effect nothing, 
 even if sometimes they guide a pen. Behind this gloom 
 there is intense vitality, a stirring and a promise of the 
 lightning which, purging the gloom, brings the rain and 
 the sunlight of beauty and joy again. The piece has that 
 intensity which makes pure sorrow the equal of pure joy, 
 so keen is it, so expressive of the whole character, so rich in 
 apprehensions of Nature and men. Jefferies' style here 
 attains its greatest simplicity, the highest expressiveness 
 of the period which followed ' The Story of My Heart ' 
 and produced ' Amaryllis.' He was dictating, not writing. 
 There is no long-sought mot propre intruding upon the 
 sentences that are like speech and, as is not rare in 
 Jefferies, are unafraid of slang. There is nothing ornate, 
 nothing luxurious ; his eye is quiet. Like ' Winds of 
 Heaven,' ' Hours of Spring,' and others, it has the effect 
 of music, in spite of its lack of melody or pattern. It is a 
 lonely human voice speaking clearly as the heart moves 
 it on the plainest matters. Again and again it touches 
 the source of tears, then suddenly ceases. That they are 
 the tears of a dying man is an accident, and is not neces- 
 sary to the effect of the whole. They are also the tears 
 of one who is still young. In some ways the style, un- 
 affected, sufficient, without peculiarities, within reach of 
 the commonplace, recalls that of ' The Amateur Poacher.' 
 But in these ten years of passionate thought and observa- 
 
 1 
 
LAST ESSAYS 313 
 
 tion, of much life and much writing, he has found himself ; 
 and now it is no longer the sportsman, or the naturalist, 
 or the agriculturist, or the colourist, or the mystic, that 
 speaks, but a man who has played these parts and been 
 worn and shaped by them, by work and pain. Whether 
 this was but a stage towards an end never to be at- 
 tained — 
 
 ' Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, 
 And burned is Apollo's laurel bough ' — 
 
 or only the last stage before death, it is impossible to 
 say. But it is certain that these last years, these last 
 months, brought gifts that had not been received when 
 ' The Amateur Poacher,' when ' The Story of My Heart ' 
 and ' The Dewy Morn ' were written. The observation 
 was as line as ever, and the humanity was deeper and 
 more varied, and his maturing interest in men made 
 him regret that White ' did not leave a natural history 
 of the people of his day.'* When he undertook the 
 preface to the ' Natural History of Selborne ' in 
 February, 1887, he was ' a perfect invalid.' Sending 
 it to Mr. Ernest Rhys, in June, he wished that he had 
 had time for a longer essay. William Sharp had sent 
 him a copy of Whitman's ' Specimen Days ' as a token 
 of esteem ; and Jefferies was still enough alive to ask, 
 ' Why doesn't Mr. Sharp send me his " Leaves of Grass," 
 as a companion to " Specimen Days " ?' But his work 
 was done. He had few more months to live, and he 
 spent them in weakness and pain, though not without 
 intervals of pleasure ; for Mr. J. W. Northf tells how, at 
 this time, when he was at Goring on a visit, Jefferies 
 arranged for him and Mrs. Jefferies a trip to Arundel, 
 partly that he might, ' unrebuked, spend some of his 
 latest hard earnings in a pint of " Terrier Jouet " for my 
 supper,' and on their return he was standing against 
 the doorpost to welcome them. During these months 
 
 * Preface to White's Selborne. 
 
 t Pall Mall Gazette^ August 16, 1887. 
 
314 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ' the Bible was his constant companion.'* Three weeks 
 before his death Mrs. Jefferies was reading to him from 
 St. Luke (vi. 20), and Jefferies said : ' Those are the 
 words of Jesus ; they are true, and all philosophy is 
 hollow. 't At another time he said : ' I have done wrong 
 and thought wrong ; it was my intellectual vanity. 'J 
 Later still, apparently, Mrs. Jefferies told Mr. J.\V.North§ 
 that their time had long been spent in prayer together 
 and in reading St. Luke. ' Almost his last intelligible 
 words were : " Yes, yes ; that is so. Help, Lord, for 
 Jesus' sake. Darling, good-bye. God bless you and 
 the children, and save you all from such great pain." ' 
 
 Lying sleepless in the night, according to Besant, || 
 who wrote within a year of Jefferies' death, * the simple 
 old faith came back to him,' and he ' died listening with 
 faith and love to the words contained in the old Book ' 
 {i.e., the Bible). But a few years later, discussing this 
 ' conversion ' with Mr. Henry S. Salt, Besant wrote : 
 
 ' I stated in my " Eulogy " that he died a Christian. 
 His wife read to him from the Gospel of St. Luke, and he 
 acquiesced. But, / have since been informed, he was weak — 
 too weak not to acquiesce, and his views never changed 
 from the time that he wrote " The Story of My Heart." 
 For my own part, it surprised me to hear that a man who 
 had written those pages should ever return to orthodoxy, 
 but I had no choice but to record the story as it happened 
 and was told to me. . . . When a man gets as far as 
 Jefferies — when he has shed and scattered to the winds 
 all sacerdotalism and authority — he does not go back. 
 You neglected to notice that, if he went back at all, it 
 was not to ask for the priest or the last Sacraments of 
 the Church. He was satisfied with the words of the 
 great socialist and anti-sacerdotalist ' {i.e., Jesus). ^ 
 
 * C. W. M., in Gir/s' Own Paper, December 21, 1889. 
 t Ibid. \ Ibid. 
 
 § Pall Mall Gazette, August 16, 1887. 
 II Eulogy of Richard Jefferies. 
 ^ Quoted in The Faith of Richard Jefferies., by Henry S. Salt. 
 
LAST ESSAYS 315 
 
 This incident has been interpreted in two ways. One 
 party says that Jefferies died an orthodox Christian, 
 and some would even go so far as to make him a sort of 
 Dr. Faustus, who was redeemed at the last hour. The 
 other party says : 
 
 ' Herein is the simple explanation of Jefferies' alleged 
 conversion. He was very weak — so weak that he perhaps 
 could not but yield outward acquiescence to the affec- 
 tionate importunities of those around him, while still 
 inwardly holding the views which, as he recently avowed, 
 " expressed his most serious convictions." So long as 
 he retained any slight measure of health and strength ; 
 so long as he was able, even at rare intervals, to enjoy 
 that vital communion with Nature on which his whole 
 being depended ; so long, in fact, as he was Richard 
 Jefferies, and not a shattered wreck, he was a free- 
 thinker. Even at the last he withdrew no syllable of his 
 writings ; he saw no priest ; he made no acceptance of 
 any sort of dogma. His own published statements 
 remain, and will remain, beyond dispute or question, the 
 authoritative expression of his life-creed.'* 
 
 With the interpretations that come of private grief and 
 affection, nobody outside the family and friends of the 
 dead is concerned. But there are some narrow sectarians 
 who would ignore the work of Jefferies' maturity, and lay 
 stress upon words which might be paralleled from the 
 condemned cell. They strike him when he is down, 
 which is a liberty hardly to be conceded to Christians, 
 even when the opponent is a freethinker. They do not 
 claim that his thought progressed to this orthodox end ; 
 but, intruding upon a matter of the spirit with dead 
 words — with words once spiritual in which they have 
 slain the spirit — they would drag the dead man into an 
 unquiet air, as of a political election, in order that he 
 who pursued the truth may vote as a partisan. His 
 pursuit was tripped up by death, and to attach any 
 importance to his fallen hours is to cast scorn upon life, 
 
 * Richard Jefferies : His Life and His Ideals, by Henry S. Salt. 
 
3i6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 and is like ridiculing the lover and praiser of a vanished 
 beauty because she is now a handful of dust. It is even 
 more impious and absurd, since Jeff cries' work survives 
 and is a power. The last words of anyone, distorted by 
 mortal pain and the circumstances of parting, cannot be 
 a power, whether he dies acquiescent, or dehrious, or 
 fuddled by death, or with pain-wrung blasphemy on his 
 lips. Those who would make capital out of these words 
 of Jefferies — and how far are they ' intelligible,' and is 
 not ' all philosophy is hollow ' almost equal to blasphemy ? 
 — are already comfortable in their own conceit, and need 
 not this poor addition to their calendar. The majority 
 will be those who, orthodox Christian or not, see in the 
 work of Jefferies, when he was most alive, a force at one 
 with the good that is in the world, with what makes for 
 wisdom, beauty, and joy, whether it can usefully be con- 
 nected with Christianity or not. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 RECAPITULATION 
 
 Richard Jefferies was, then, always a child of the 
 soil, as well as of the earth in a larger sense. From 
 father and mother he had the blood of Wiltshire and 
 Gloucestershire farmers. He was the second child (the 
 eldest child, a daughter, died young) of a younger son 
 of a younger son. But it was country blood with a 
 difference : both Gyde and Jefferies had been dipped 
 in London, and had followed there the trade of printing ; 
 and though old John Jefferies, the grandfather, retired 
 early, and not quite contentedly, to the mill and the 
 bakery and the farm, and Charles Gyde ' of Islington ' 
 was buried in Pitchcombe churchyard, they had been 
 troubled by this change from the fields to Fleet Street 
 and back again. Richard's mother, in spite of her good 
 butter, was not a countrywoman, and she was soured by 
 the life of one. His father left Wiltshire as a young man, 
 and travelled roughly, seeing the cities of the United 
 States. Of their sons, the two younger worked on the 
 farm till it was given up ; then the second of them went 
 to America and stayed there. The youngest lives in a 
 town. Richard Jefferies, the eldest son, would hardly 
 ever work on the land. Some of his schooldays and 
 most of his early holidays he spent near London, at Syden- 
 ham, and when he was very young began to be interested 
 in his uncle's printing-works. Most of his relations had 
 seen more of books than the majority of country people 
 Two of his uncles were men of unusual accomplishment 
 — John Luckett Jefferies, a draughtsman and musician ; 
 
 3^7 
 
3i8 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Frederick Gyde, draughtsman and engraver. Uncle and 
 aunt sent books to Coate Farm. Father and grandfather 
 had a taste for books. 
 
 The boy gave no early promise, and no special care was 
 taken of him. He attended the ordinary schools of the 
 poorer middle class, and those irregularly and never 
 after he was fifteen. When not at school, he was out of 
 doors, picking up the usual knowledge of a farmer's son, 
 but carefully, and more and more with the help of books. 
 Home life was not happy ; he was a retiring and un- 
 popular boy, not strong, but of great courage. Whether 
 he was more unpopular than any unusual boy is likely 
 to be I do not know ; but all through his life he seems 
 to have attracted little affection, and his writings show 
 that, in return, he loved, but had no likings. Something 
 there was in him, perhaps, akin to his uncomfortable 
 humour, which unconsciously repelled — something that 
 creeps into his writings, particularly in the more emphatic 
 parts, and gives us a twinge as at an unpleasant voice. 
 He dreamed away much time, and came early to a sense 
 of loneliness among men and of peculiar intimacy with 
 Nature, whom he first courted as a sportsman. Un- 
 willing to work on the farm, he was obliged to do something 
 soon after his schooldays, and he took to reporting for a 
 local newspaper when he was seventeen. He began to 
 read books of science and philosophy. He found himself 
 at still greater odds with his family, who accused him of 
 indolence. He expressed himself in crude, sensational 
 stories and in local histories. He suffered from severe 
 illnesses and great weakness several times. When he 
 was not much past twenty he was engaged to the daughter 
 of a neighbouring farmer. 
 
 Then he was moved by the agitation of the agricultural 
 labourers for higher wages to write some articles on the 
 condition of the Wiltshire labourer, and these were printed 
 as letters in the Times. Here he first showed a power of 
 forcible and simple expression, and a knowledge of those 
 things among which his home life and work had thrown 
 
RECAPITULATION 319 
 
 him. His point of view was that which the small farmer 
 would naturally take, but the sense and force of the 
 writing was worthy of the best journalism, and had he 
 continued to work in this way he might have made a 
 good middle-class income in London. But he was 
 becoming master of an instrument on which he wanted 
 to play other tunes. Instead of short stories, he now 
 wrote novels, which are nearly always absurd where they 
 concern well-dressed people who tip in gold, but are 
 charming and true wherever the life of the country and 
 of quiet country people is touched. By fiction he hoped 
 in vain to make a large sum of money for himself and the 
 wife whom he married in his twenty-sixth year ; but he 
 did succeed in acquiring, partly by means of it, a more 
 emotional and profound means of expression than he 
 was likely to have done by his sensible and practical 
 articles on agriculture and country society. He lost 
 money by his fiction, and wrote fewer magazine articles 
 than he might have done had he given himself exclusively 
 up to them, according to the posthumous advice of a 
 biographer. Meantime his intimacy with Nature was 
 ripening. He was becoming a richly experienced observer 
 of wild life in the South of England under all conditions ; 
 and his passionate moments of oneness with Nature were 
 becoming clearer, more intelligible to himself, and more 
 capable of articulate expression. Thus, he was at the 
 same time developing along parallel paths his faculties 
 as a watcher of birds and animals, of colour and form in 
 earth and sky, as critic of social conditions, as student of 
 human life, and as mystic. During this period of various 
 and often wasteful production, nearly the whole of the 
 third decade of his life, his health was fairly good, and 
 when he was almost thirty he moved to Surbiton, near 
 London, in order to be closer to editors and publishers 
 and the British Museum. 
 
 He had already begun to write short sketches of the 
 country, of the men, the wild life, and the landscape ; 
 but it was only after reaching Surbiton that he began to 
 
320 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 concentrate himself upon this work. London thriUed 
 and delighted and repelled him, and probably stimulated 
 him. He certainly found a market there for his work, 
 which was readily printed in newspapers and magazines, 
 and afterwards published with applause in the form of 
 books. With little arrangement, but with the charm of 
 exuberance and freshness, he poured out his stores of 
 country knowledge. There had been unlettered men 
 who knew much that he knew ; there had been greater 
 naturalists and more experienced sportsmen, more 
 magical painters — at least, in verse — of country things ; 
 but no one English writer before had had such a wide 
 knowledge of labourers, farmers, gamekeepers, poachers,of 
 the fields, and woods, and waters, and the sky above them, 
 by day and night ; of their inhabitants that run and fly 
 and creep, that are still and fragrant and many-coloured. 
 No writer had been able to express this knowledge with 
 such a pleasing element of personality in the style that 
 mere ignorance was no bar to its enjoyment. When he 
 wrote these books — ' The Amateur Poacher ' and its 
 companions — he had no rival, nor have they since been 
 equalled in purity, abundance, and rusticity. The wTiter 
 was clearly as much of the soil as the things which he 
 described. In his books the things themselves were 
 alive, were given a new life by an artist's words, a life 
 more intense than they had had for any but the few 
 before they were thus brought on to the printed page. 
 Here was the life of man and animal, the crude and lavish 
 beauty of English country-life in the nineteenth century, 
 with glimpses of the older life remembered by the men 
 and women who still ploughed or kept sheep in Wiltshire 
 and Surrey. In writing these four books, Jefferies was 
 mainly drawing upon his memory and his Wiltshire notes, 
 depicting things as he had seen and known them in his 
 childhood and youth. The expression is mature, indeed, 
 but the matter simple, the spirit, as a rule, one of whole- 
 some old-fashioned enjoyment, the reflection contented 
 and commonplace. 
 
RECAPITULATION 321 
 
 When these books had been written his good health 
 was at an end, and when, in ' Nature near London,' he 
 came to describe scenes which he had not known as a 
 young man, there was a new subtlety in the observation, 
 at once a more microscopic and a more sensuous eye, 
 more tenderness, a greater love of making pictures and 
 of dwelling upon colours and forms. There was no more 
 of the rude rustic content to be out rabbiting and fishing. 
 The tall countryman who knew and loved all weathers 
 as they came was bending, and spring was now intensely 
 spring to his reawakened senses. The seasons, night and 
 day, heat and cold, sun and rain and snow, became more 
 sharply differentiated in his mind, and came to him with 
 many fresh cries of joyous or pathetic appeal. In the 
 early books the country lies before us very much as it 
 would have appeared to James Luckett or old John 
 Jefferies. They would have recognized everything in 
 them, if they had had the luck to read them ; the sport, 
 the poaching, the curious notes on wild things, the old 
 customs and pieces of gossip — these stand out clear and 
 unquestionable as in an old woodcut. It was a priceless 
 gift, smelling of youth and the days before the steam- 
 plough. But how different these later essays ! Pain, 
 anxiety, fatigue, had put a sharp edge on life — a keen 
 edge, easily worn out. He was still glad to be with a 
 shepherd, to hear about the sport, but it was character- 
 istic of the new period that he should watch a trout for 
 days and years, and be careful lest anyone should rob 
 the pool of it ; that he should love the old wooden plough 
 with no machine-made lines, and discover the ' bloom ' 
 in the summer atmosphere ; and confess that he often 
 went to London with no object, and, arriving there, wan- 
 dered wherever the throng might carry him. In these 
 later essays there is often much observation that may be 
 read for its own sake. But something was creeping into 
 the style, staining it with more delicate dyes. The bloom 
 in the atmosphere, the hues on an old barn-roof, were in 
 part his own life-blood. In the earlier work we think 
 
322 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 only of the author where he is explicitly autobiographical, 
 though we may exercise our fancy about him in an 
 irrelevant way. Many had seen Nature just so, though 
 he was alone in so writing of it. In the later he was 
 more and more a singular man, a discoverer of colours, 
 of moods, of arrangements. This was the landscape of 
 sensuous, troubled men ; here were most rare, most deli- 
 cate, most fleeting things. The result was at once por- 
 traiture and landscape. Perhaps the mystic element in 
 Jefferies, unintentionally asserted, gave its new serious- 
 ness to this work. Except in the last words of ' The 
 Poacher,' there had been little sign of it ; but now, in 
 the fanciful narrative of ' Wood Magic ' and the auto- 
 biographical story of ' Bevis,' the mystic promise was 
 clear in those passages where the child Bevis talked to 
 the wind or felt with his spirit out to the stars and to 
 the sea. For a long time Jefferies must have been im- 
 perfectly conscious of the meaning of his mystic com- 
 munion with Nature. It was as a deep pool that slowly 
 fills with an element so clear that it is unnoticed until it 
 overflows. It overflowed, and Jefferies wrote ' The Story 
 of My Heart ' in a passion. 
 
 Here for the first time was the whole man, brain, heart, 
 and soul, the body and the senses, all that thought and 
 dreamed and enjoyed and aspired in him. At every 
 entrance the universe came pouring in, by all the old 
 ways and by ways untrodden before. The book is the 
 pledge of the value of Jefferies' work. It reveals the 
 cosmic consciousness that had become fully developed in 
 him soon after he turned thirty. Such acute humanity 
 as is to be found in ' The Story of My Heart ' gives us 
 confidence that what its possessor did in his prime, before 
 and after it, is not to be neglected of those who are 
 touched by mortal things. To past, present, and future 
 he offers a hand that is not to be denied. Having tasted 
 of physical, mental, and spiritual life, and aware of the 
 diverse life of the world, in man, in beast, in tree, in 
 earth, and sky, and sea, and stars, he comes to us as from 
 
 J 
 
RECAPITULATION 323 
 
 a holy feast, face flushed, head crowned. He was dis- 
 contented to some purpose with our age, with modernity, 
 and not merely discontented, for he unsealed a new 
 fountain of religious joy, and in the books that followed, 
 whether he wrote of men or of Nature, he gave a rich, 
 sensuous, and hearty pleasure, lofty delights of the spirit, 
 a goad to a bolder, more generous life in our own inner 
 deeps and in our social intercourse ; he pointed to an 
 everlasting source of truth and joy ; he created a woman, 
 Felise, whom it is a divine inspiration to know, and others, 
 men and women, scarred, mournful, but undespairing, 
 whose ordinary humanity, as in ' Amaryllis,' was drawn 
 with such minuteness and love that we enjoy while we 
 suffer, and rise ourselves with a useful discontent and an 
 impulse towards what is more beautiful and true. ' The 
 Story of My Heart ' gathered up into itself all the spiritual 
 experiences which had been dimly hinted at in the early 
 novels and outdoor books. As an autobiography it is 
 unsurpassed, because it is alone. It is a bold, intimate 
 revelation of a singular modern mind in a style of such 
 vitality that the thoughts are as acts, and have a strong 
 motive and suggestive power. ' The De\vy Morn,' which 
 followed, embodied the passion of the autobiography in 
 the form of woman, beautiful and young and passionate. 
 Jefferies' thinking was symptomatic of the age rather 
 than original ; it is stimulating because it is personal. 
 ' He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must 
 blur the margent with interpretations, and load the 
 memory with doubtfulnesse ; but he commeth to you with 
 words set in delightful proportion, . . . and with a tale, 
 forsooth, he commeth unto you, with a tale which holdeth 
 children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner.' 
 His asserted lack of tradition, his rebuke of the past, his 
 saying that the old books must be rewritten, is a challenge 
 to the present to take heed of itself. There is no real 
 lack of a sense of the past in one who has a sense of 
 co-operation with the future, which adds to the dignity 
 of life, gives a social and eternal value to our most solitary 
 
 21 — 2 
 
324 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 and spiritual acts, and promises us an immortality more 
 responsible than that of the theologians, as real if not as 
 flattering. 
 
 The mystic consciousness which gave the original im- 
 pulse to ' The Story of My Heart ' did not die away, 
 though it was but seldom distinctly expressed after 
 ' The Dewy Morn.' It was diffused through his maturest 
 essays, nevertheless, such as ' The Pageant of Summer,' 
 ' Meadow Thoughts,' ' Nature in the Louvre,' and ' Winds 
 of Heaven,' effecting a greater seriousness, a wider rami- 
 fication of suggestion, a deeper colouring ; while in the 
 semi-scientific essays it is to be found in the increased 
 imagination, and in the essays criticizing agricultural con- 
 ditions it takes the form of deeper sympathies and more 
 advanced thought. It gave a more solemn note to the 
 joy which is the most striking thing in all his books, 
 whether it is the joy of the child, the sportsman, the 
 lover, the adventurer, the mystic, the artist, the friend 
 of men. Against this his ill-health is nothing to record, 
 except as something triumphed over by the spirit of life. 
 His sadness came of his appetite for joy, which was in 
 excess of the twenty-four hours day and the possible 
 threescore years and ten. By this excess, resembling the 
 excess of the oak scattering its doomed acorns and the 
 sun parching what it has fostered, he is at one with 
 Nature and the forces of life, and at the same time by 
 his creative power he rescues something of what they 
 are whirling down to oblivion and the open sea, and 
 makes of it a rich garden, high-walled against them. 
 
 Many of the essays in ' The Open Air ' and ' The Life 
 of the Fields ' belong to the same inspiration. Nature, 
 described by passionate words, is harmonized with the 
 writer's mind and with his hopes for humanity. Natural 
 beauty and humanity are always together there. He 
 wished to plunge human thought into sea and air and 
 green things that it might be restored, as he hoped to be 
 restored himself in the air of Brighton and Crowborough. 
 Almost fevered was his joy in seeing and thinking of the 
 
RECAPITULATION 325 
 
 beauty of Nature and humanity. Ideas, images, allusions, 
 a rhythm here, a thought there, recurring like a burden, 
 produce an extraordinarily opulent effect, whether the 
 subject is a fashionable crowd, a railway-station, or a 
 midsummer hedge. This brilliancy can be hectic and 
 end in languor, perhaps, but ultimately it is bracing, and 
 the north-west wind blows more often than the south. 
 
 There followed ' After London,' ' Amaryllis,' and many 
 of the essays in ' Field and Hedgerow.' The exuberance 
 of colour and fancy in the preceding period was slowly 
 settling down. In ' Amaryllis ' there is none of the glory 
 of ' The Dewy Morn.' There is even an appearance, in 
 some of this later work, of a return to the style of ' The 
 Poacher,' though that simple lucidity and ease was 
 refined and enriched by the poetic years between. 
 ' Amaryllis ' was as new and individual as the auto- 
 biography. It tells no tale, and its construction is 
 obviously unusual, as well as strong and inartificial ; 
 but it gives a picture of a small English farmhouse, and 
 of a farmer and his family, which is humorous, pathetic, 
 and intensely alive. Restless and sad and gay and 
 wonderfully kind was the humanity that saw the Idens 
 and the Flammas thus ; that painted them stroke by 
 stroke, correcting or enhancing earlier effects, until the 
 whole thing breathed. ' Wild Flowers,' ' My Old Village,' 
 ' Hours of Spring,' and many more were from the same 
 source. They have the same minute observation, the 
 same maturity of comment, the same atmosphere laden 
 with opposites. They are pieces of impassioned prose, in 
 which the writer, expressing his thoughts and recollec- 
 tions, moulded the form of the essay into something as 
 original as it was in the hands of Hazlitt or Lamb. Both 
 in their mingling of reflection and description, and in 
 their abundant play of emotion, they stand by them- 
 selves and enlarge the boundaries of this typical form 
 of English prose. 
 
 Few men have put themselves into words with such 
 unconsidered variety. He expressed the whole range of 
 
326 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 a man's experience in the open air. This was not done 
 without risks and some loss. He commented on many 
 matters of his day and country. His lonely, retiring, 
 and yet emphatic egoism made a hundred mistakes, 
 narrow, ill-considered, splenetic, fatuous. He was big 
 enough to take these risks, and he made his impression 
 by his sympathies, his creation, not by his antipathies. 
 He drew Nature and human life as he saw it, and he saw 
 it with an unusucd eye for detail and with unusual wealth 
 of personality behind. And in all of his best writing he 
 turns from theme to theme, and his seriousness, his utter 
 frankness, the obvious importance of the matter to him- 
 self, give us confidence in following him ; and though the 
 abundance of what he saw will continue to attract many, 
 it is for his way of seeing, for his composition, his glowing 
 colours, his ideas, for the passionate music wrought out 
 of his life, that we must chiefly go to him. He is on the 
 side of health, of beauty, of strength, of truth, of im- 
 provement in life to be wrought by increasing honesty, 
 subtlety, tenderness, courage, and foresight. His own 
 character, and the characters of his men and women, 
 fortify us in our intention to live. Nature, as he thought 
 of it, and as his books present it, is a great flood of 
 physical and spiritual sanity, ' of pure ablution round 
 earth's human shores,' to which he bids us resort. Turn- 
 ing to England in particular, he makes us feel what a 
 heritage are its hills and waters ; he even went so far as 
 to hint that some of it should be national. It is he who, 
 above all other writers, has produced the largest, the 
 most abundant, and the most truthful pictures of Southern 
 English country, both wild and cultivated. 
 
 Of the man himself we know, and apparently can know, 
 very little. He spent as much as possible of his short 
 life of thirty-eight years in the valleys and on the hills 
 of Wiltshire, Surrey, Kent, and Sussex. His reading was 
 wide, but of eccentric range. In habits he was always 
 simple, and he did nothing unusual except to look after 
 his own affairs. He made few friends ; his habit of taking 
 
RECAPITULATION 327 
 
 long solitary walks, and later his ill health, kept him 
 from seeking society, and he was happy with the relations 
 and the friends of simple tastes among whom he found 
 himself. He was homely and unaffected in their com- 
 pany, and with them, as with literary and other acquaint- 
 ances, he talked not much, but easily, on his own subjects 
 and on current matters. He wrote few letters, and in 
 none, apparently, expressed himself with anything like 
 the deeper egoism of his books. His life went perfectly 
 well, nourished by his own energy and by domestic affec- 
 tion. He had one difficulty — ill health — which in its 
 turn threatened poverty. So long as he could send 
 articles to the papers and magazines he was well off, but 
 seldom able to save. He enjoyed, simply and passionately, 
 his own life and the life of others, and in his books that 
 enjoyment survives, and their sincerity and variety keep, 
 and will keep, them alive ; for akin to, and part of, his 
 gift of love was his power of using words. Nothing is 
 more mysterious than this power, along with the kindred 
 powers of artist and musician. It is the supreme proof, 
 above beauty, physical strength, intelligence, that a man 
 or woman lives. Lighter than gossamer, words can 
 entangle and hold fast all that is loveliest, and strongest, 
 and fleetest, and most enduring, in heaven and earth. 
 They are for the moment, perhaps, excelled by the might 
 of policy or beauty, but only for the moment, and then 
 all has passed away ; but the words remain, and though 
 they also pass away under the smiling of the stars, they 
 mark our utmost achievement in time. They outlive the 
 life of which they seem the lightest emanation — the 
 proud, the vigorous, the melodious words. Jefferies' 
 words, it has been well said, are like a glassy covering 
 of the things described. But they are often more than 
 that : the things are forgotten, and it is an aspect of 
 them, a recreation of them, a finer development of them, 
 which endures in the written words. These words call 
 no attention to themselves. There is not an uncommon 
 word, nor a word in an uncommon sense, all through 
 
328 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 Jefferies' books. There are styles which are noticeable 
 for their ver}^ lucidity and naturalness ; Jefferies' is not 
 noticeable even to this extent. There are styles more 
 majestic, more persuasive, more bewildering, but none 
 which so rapidly convinces the reader of its source in the 
 heart of one of the sincerest of men. Sometimes it is 
 slipshod — in sound often so, for he had not a fine ear. 
 It comes right, as a rule, by force of true vision and 
 sincerity. On a moving subject, and amidst friends, he 
 would speak much as he wrote. He did not make great 
 phrases, and hardly any single sentence would prove him 
 a master. He could argue, describe visible things and 
 states of mind ; he could be intimate, persuasive, and 
 picturesque. No one quoted so rarely as he. He drew 
 many sides of indoor and outdoor rustic life, human and 
 animal, moving and at rest, and in his words these things 
 retain their pure rusticity. Later, the neighbourhood of 
 London made him dwell more sensuously than before on 
 the natural beauty which contrasted with the town. 
 Later still, the sensuous was merged and mingled with 
 the spiritual, and the effect was more and more poetic — 
 it might be said religious ; and his style expanded to aid 
 these larger purposes, thus being able in turn to depict 
 Nature from the points of view of the countryman, of 
 the sensuous painter, of the poet of humanity. So, too, 
 with human life. Whether he touched it lightly and 
 pictorially, as in ' Round about a Great Estate,' or with 
 love and fire, as in ' The Dewy Mom,' or with minute 
 reconstruction of acts, thoughts, conversation, and en- 
 vironment, as in ' Amaryllis,' he was equal to the different 
 demands upon his words. Though he had read much, it 
 was without having played the sedulous ape that he 
 found himself in the great tradition, an honourable 
 descendant of masters, the disciple of none, and himself 
 secure of descendants ; for he allied himself to Nature, 
 and still plays his part in her office of granting health, and 
 hearty pleasure, and consolation, and the delights of the 
 senses and of the spirit, to men. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. BOOKS AND OTHER WRITINGS OF RICHARD 
 JEFFERIES 
 
 1866. North Wilts Herald : ' To a Fashionable Bonnet,' ' Traits 
 
 of the Olden Time,' ' A Strange Story,' ' Henrique Beau- 
 mont,' ' Who will Win ? or, American Adventure,' 
 ' Masked,' ' T.T.T.,' ' The Battle of 1866.' 
 
 1867. North Wilts Herald (April) : ' History of Malmesbury.' 
 1867-72. North Wilts Herald and Swindon Advertiser : Topo- 
 graphical and other articles on Swindon and the neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 1868. ' Caesar Borgia ; or. The King of Crime : a Tragedy ' (un- 
 
 published) . 
 
 1870. Verses on the Exile of the Prince Imperial (unpublished). 
 
 1871. 'Fortune; or, The Art of Success' (sent to D'Israeli; 
 
 unpublished) . 
 
 1872. Swindon Advertiser (November 4) : ' Antiquities of Swindon 
 
 and its Neighbourhood — Upper Upham.' 
 
 The Times (November 14 and 23) : Three letters on Wilt- 
 shire Labourers and on the Allotment System. 
 
 ' Only a Girl,' novel (unpublished). 
 
 1873. ' Reporting, Editing, and Authorship : Practical Hints for 
 
 Beginners in Literature.' By R. Jefferies. (London : 
 John Snow and Co., 2, Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row.) 
 
 ' A Memoir of the Goddards of North Wilts. Compiled 
 from Ancient Records, Registers, and Family Papers ' by 
 Richard Jefferies, Coate, Swindon. (Privately printed 
 by Simmons and Botten, Shoe Lane, E.C.) 
 
 ' Jack Brass, Emperor of England.' (T. Pettit and Co., 
 Soho.) 
 
 Fraser's Magazine : 'The Future of Farming.* 
 
 1874. ' The Scarlet Shawl,' a novel. (London : Tinsley Brothers.) 
 Fraser's Magazine : ' A Railway Accidents Bill,' ' The 
 
 Farmer at Home,' ' The Labourer's Daily Life,' ' An 
 English Homestead,' ' John Smith's Shanty.' 
 New Quarterly : ' The Size of Farms.' 
 ' The Rise of Maximin,' a novel (unpublished). 
 Wilis ArchcBological Society's Magazine (March) : ' Swindon, 
 its History and Antiquities.' 1 
 329 ' 
 
330 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 1875. ' Restless Human Hearts,' a novel ; 3 vols. (London : 
 
 Tinsley Brothers.) 
 
 ' In Summer Tim.e,' a novel (unpublished). 
 
 ' The New Pilgrim's Progress ; or, A Christian's Painful 
 Progress from the Town of Middle Class to the Golden 
 City ' (unpublished). 
 
 Fraser's Magazine : ' Field-Faring Women,' ' The Story of 
 Swindon,' ' The Shipton Accident.' 
 
 Graphic : ' Women in the Field,' ' Marlborough Forest ' 
 (October 23), ' Village Churches ' (December 4). 
 
 New Quarterly and Mark Lane Express : ' Village Organiza- 
 tion.' 
 
 New Quarterly : ' Allotment Gardens.' 
 
 Standard : ' Cost of Agricultural Labour.' 
 
 1876. ' Suez-cide ; or. How Miss Britannia bought a Dirty Puddle, 
 
 and lost her Sugar-Plums.' (London : John Snow and 
 
 Co.) 
 Graphic : ' The Midsummer Hum ' (July 15). 
 Fortnightly : ' The Power of the Farmers.' 
 
 1877. ' World's End : A Story in Three Books,' 3 vols. (London : 
 
 Tinsley Brothers.) 
 Fraser's Magazine : ' Unequal Agriculture.' 
 New Quarterly : ' The Future of Country Society.' 
 
 1878. * The Gamekeeper at Home ; or. Sketches of Natural His- 
 
 tory and Rural Life ' (reprinted from Pall Mall Gazette, 
 
 and anonymous at first). (London : Smith, Elder and 
 
 Co.) 
 ' The Proletariate : The Power of the Future,' and ' The 
 
 History of the English Squire ' (planned, but unwritten 
 
 [?] and unpublished.) 
 First version of ' The Dewy Morn ' (unpublished) . 
 Fraser's Magazine : ' A Great Agricultural Problem.' 
 
 1879. ' Wild Life in a Southern County ; by the Author of " The 
 
 Gamekeeper at Home " ' (reprinted from the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, anonymous). (London : Smith, Elder and Co.) 
 
 'The Amateur Poacher ; by the Author of " The Game- 
 keeper at Home " ' (reprinted from the Pall Mall Gazette, 
 anonymous). (London : Smith, Elder and Co.) 
 
 Time (April, ) : ' Greene Feme Farm,' in eleven 
 
 chapters serially. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette : ' Under the Snow ' (January i), ' Mid- 
 summer, '79 ' (December 12). 
 
 1880. 'Hodge and his Masters' (reprinted from the Standard)) 
 
 2 vols. (London : Smith, Elder and Co.) 
 ' Round about a Great Estate ' (reprinted from the Pall 
 Mall Gazette). (London : Smith, Elder and Co.) 
 
 1881. 'Wood Magic,' a fable. (London: Casscll, Petter and 
 
 Galpin; now published by Messrs. Longmans, Green and 
 Co.) 
 
 1882. ' Be vis : the Story of a Boy.' (London : Sampson Low and 
 
 Co. ; now published by Messrs. Duckworth and Co.) 
 Knowledge : ' The Sun and tlie Brook ' (October 13). 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 331 
 
 1883. 'Nature near London' (reprinted from the Standard). 
 
 (London : Chatto and Windus.) 
 ' The Story of My Heart : My Autobiography.' (London : 
 
 Longmans, Green, and Co.) 
 Standard : ' On the Downs ' (March 23). 
 
 1884. * Red Deer.' (London : Longmans, Green and Co.) 
 
 ' Life of the Fields.' (London : Chatto and Windus.) 
 (Reprinted from Time, Longmans', Graphic, Standard, 
 Manchester Guardian, Magazine of Art, Gentleman' s Maga- 
 zine, National Review, St. James's Gazette, Pall Mall 
 Gazette.) 
 
 ' The Dewy Mom,' 2 vols. (London : Bentley ; transferred 
 to Macmillan and Co.) Out of print. 
 
 Chambers' Journal : ' A King of Acres ' (January), ' Birds 
 of Spring ' (March) . 
 
 Longmans' : ' After the County Franchise ' (February). 
 
 1885. ' After London ; or. Wild England.' (London : Cassell and 
 
 Co. ; now published by Duckworth and Co.) 
 ' The Open Air.' (London : Chatto and Windus.) (Re- 
 printed from English Illustrated Magazine, Chambers' 
 Journal, Good Words, Longmans' , Manchester Guardian, 
 Pall Mall, St. James's, Standard.) 
 ' A Bit of Human Nature,' novel (unpublished). 
 1887. ' Out of the Season,' in ' The Dove's Nest and Other Tales.' 
 (London : Vizetelly.) 
 ' Amaryllis at the Fair.' (London : Sampson Low and Co. ; 
 
 now published by Duckworth and Co.) 
 Longmans' Magazine : ' The Wiltshire Labourer.' 
 Preface to White's ' Natural History of Selbome.' (Lon- 
 don : Walter Scott.) 
 1889. ' Field and Hedgerow : being the Last Essays of Richard 
 Jefferies, collected by his Widow.' (London : Longmans, 
 Green and Co.) (Reprinted from Longmans' , Fortnightly, 
 Pall Mall, Chambers', Manchester Guardian, Standard, 
 English Illustrated, Art Journal, Magazine of Art, The 
 Century.) 
 1892. ' The Toilers of the Field.' (London : Longmans, Green 
 and Co.) (Reprinted from the Times, Eraser's, and 
 Longmans' .) 
 
 1894. Longmans' : 'The Spring of the Year ' (June), ' The Idle 
 
 Earth ' (December) . 
 
 1895. Longmans' : ' Nature and Eternity ' (May), ' Vignettes from 
 
 Nature ' (July). 
 
 1896. ' The Early Fiction of Richard Jefferies,' edited by Grace 
 
 Toplis (London : Simpkin, Marshall and Co.) (Reprinted 
 
 from the North Wilts Herald and Swindon Advertiser.) 
 'T. T. T.' (Wells : Artliur Young.) (Reprinted from the 
 
 North Wilts Herald.) 
 1904. ' Amaryllis at the Fair,' with introduction by Edward 
 
 Garnett. (London : Duckworth and Co.) 
 ' Be vis : the Story of a Boy,' with introduction by E, V. 
 
 Lucas. (London : Duckworth and Co.) 
 
332 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 II. BOOKS AND OTHER WRITINGS RELATING TO 
 RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 1887. ' Richard Jefferies and the Open Air,' by Lord Lymington 
 
 {National Review, October). 
 Obituary Notices in Pall Mall Gazette, August 15 and 16 
 (the latter being by Mr. J. W. North) ; Athenceum, 
 August 20 ; Academy, August 20 ; Saturday Review, 
 August 27 ; Daily News, North Wilts Herald, etc. 
 
 1888. ' The Story of a Heart,' by H. S. Salt, in To-Day, June. 
 'Richard Jefferies,' by E. Garnett {Universal Review, 
 
 November). 
 ' The Eulogy of Richard Jefiferies,' by Walter Besant 
 
 (Chatto and Windus) . 
 ' The Eulogy ' reviewed {Pall Mall Gazette, November 17). 
 Article in Athencsum, December 8, by W. E. Henley. 
 
 1889. ' Richard Jefferies,' by Alan Wright {Girl's Own Paper. 
 
 August 31). 
 ' Richard Jefferies,' by C. W. M. {Girl's Own Paper, 
 December 21). 
 
 1890. ' Richard Jefferies,' by F. Greenwood {Scots Observer, 
 
 August 2). 
 
 ' Notes on Richard Jefiferies ' {Murray's Magazine, Sep- 
 tember). 
 
 ' Round about Coate,' by P. Anderson Graham {Scots 
 Observer, October 18). 
 
 ' The Mulberry-Tree,' a poem by Jefferies {Scots Observer, 
 November 8). 
 
 ' Richard Jefferies,' with portrait, in Great Thoughts, 
 December. 
 
 ' The Life of Henry David Thoreau,' by H. S. Salt (Bentley 
 and Son). Contains comparisons between Thoreau and 
 Jefferies. 
 
 ' Views and Reviews : Essays in Appreciation,' by W. E. 
 Henley (London : Nutt). See pp. 177-182 for article re- 
 printed from AthencBum of December 8, 1888. 
 
 ' The Books of Richard Jefferies ' {Nature Notes, i. 194). 
 
 1891. 'Richard Jefferies,' article in Allibone's 'Critical Dic- 
 
 tionary of English Literature.' 
 
 ' Richard Jefferies,' by H. S. Salt, in Temple Bar, June. 
 
 ' Nature in Books : Some Studies in Biography,' by P. 
 Anderson Graham (London : Mcthuen and Co.) See 
 Chapter I., ' The Magic of the Fields.' 
 
 ' The Pernicious Works of Richard Jefferies,' correspond- 
 ence in Pall Mall Gazette, September 8-21. 
 
 ' Did Richard Jefferies die a Christian ? Reminiscences by 
 People who knew Him.' Interviews with Mr. Charles 
 Jefferies and ' One who knew Jefferies ' {Pall Mall 
 Gazette, September 22). 
 
 ' Did Richard Jefferies die a Christian ? An Authoritative 
 Account of the Closing Scene.' Extracts from C. W. M.'s 
 1889 article {Pall Mall Gazette, October 3). 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 
 
 1891. 'The Conversion of Richard Jefiferies,' by H. S. Salt 
 
 {National Reformer, October i8). 
 J, ; ' Thoughts on the Labour Question : Passages from Un- 
 published Chapters by Richard Jefferies ' (article in Pall 
 Mall Gazette, November lo). 
 ' Woman in the Writings of Richard Jefferies,' by C. A. 
 
 Foley [Scots Magazine, February). 
 Publisher' s Circular, December 5. 
 
 1892. ' Homes and Haunts of Richard Jefferies ' {Pall Mall Budget, 
 
 August 25). 
 Paragraphs relative to the Goddard ' Memoir,' in Globe, 
 
 June II, and previously. 
 ' The Unveiling of the Bust ' (articles in Saturday Review, 
 
 March 12 ; Nature Notes, iii. 87 ; Salisbury Journal, 
 
 April 2 ; Sarum Diocesan Gazette). 
 ' Richard Jefferies ' {Marlburian, November 16). 
 ' Richard Jefferies,' a poem by Mary Geoghegan {Temple 
 
 Bar, January). 
 ' Richard Jefferies,' a poem by W. H. A. E. (Rev. W. H. A. 
 
 Ewance, Twickenham), in Wilts County Mirror, April 8. 
 Saturday Review, March 12. 
 The Marlburian, February 16. 
 
 1893. Inlander Leaflets — No. i, ' Richard Jefferies,' by Dr. S. A. 
 
 Jones ; reprinted in pamphlet form from the Inlander, 
 
 March, 1893 (the Register Publishing Co., Ann Arbour, 
 
 Michigan, U.S.A., pp. 12). 
 ' Richard Jefferies,' with a bibliography, by G. E. Dartnell, 
 
 {Wilts Archaeological Magazine, June, pp. 69-99). 
 Appeal for help in restoration of Chiseldon Church (see 
 
 Morning Post, December 23, and other papers). 
 ' Wiltshire Words : a Glossary of Words used in the County 
 
 of Wiltshire,' by G. E. Dartnell and Rev. E. H. Goddard, 
 
 pp. xix and 235 (London : Oxford University Press, 
 
 1893). 
 
 ' Richard Jefferies in Salisbury Cathedral,' with illustra- 
 tions, by Miss Thomas {Literary Opinion, April ; also 
 some notes in same number). 
 
 ' Round about Coate,' by P. Anderson Graham {Art Journal, 
 January), with illustrations by H. E. Tidmarsh. 
 
 The Clique, June 10 and 17, and July i. 
 
 1894. ' Richard Jefferies : a Study,' by H. S. Salt, with a portrait. 
 
 (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co, 1894. Pp. viii, 128. 
 Foolscap 8vo., cloth, 2s. 6d. ; Dilettante Library, large- 
 paper edition, 1894, ^os. 6d. nett, with portrait and draw- 
 ings by Miss Bertha Newcombe.) 
 
 ' Richard Jefferies : the Man and his Work,' by J. L. Veitch. 
 A lecture given at the Salisbury Museum, February 5, 1894. 
 Reprinted in pamphlet form from the Salisbury and 
 Winchester Journal of February 10 (Salisbury : Bennett 
 Brothers, pp. 20). 
 
 ' Richard Jefferies and his Home in Wiltshire,' by Bertha 
 [ Newcombe (in Sylvia's Journal, March, pp. 192-198). 
 
334 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 1894. ' A Suggested Richard Jefferies Club,' letter signed ' Charle3 
 
 Farr, Broadchalke ' (in Salisbury Journal, April 28). 
 ' Richard Jefferies the Naturalist,' by B. G. Johns (Sunday 
 
 Magazine, May). 
 ' Richard Jefferies as Descriptive Writer,' by Irving Muntz 
 
 [Gentleman's Magazine, November). 
 
 1895. 'The Poet-Naturalists— III. Richard Jefferies.' by W. H. 
 
 Jupp, with portrait [Great Thoughts, March 23 and 30). 
 
 1896. ' Thoughts from the Writings of Richard Jefferies,' selected 
 
 by H. S. H. Waylen. (Messrs. Longmans.) 
 ' In Praise of the Country,' by H. D. Traill [Contemporary 
 
 Review, vol. lii., p. 477). 
 Swindon Advertiser, December 12. 
 ' Richard Jefferies : a Poem,' by W. Gibson [Great Thoughts, 
 
 August). 
 ' A Study of Richard Jefferies,' by Charles Fisher [Temple 
 
 Bar, December). 
 ' Richard Jefferies at Surbiton,' by Charles G. Freeman 
 
 [Surbiton Times). 
 ' Idyllists of the Country-side,' by George H. Ellwanger. 
 
 (New York : Dodd, Mead and Co.) 
 Devizes Gazette, December 31. 
 1898. ' The Interpretation of Nature,' by A. W. Keen [Great 
 
 Thoughts, September). 
 'Richard Jefferies ' [Worthing Gazette, April 27). 
 
 * Richard Jefferies,' by Oswald Crawford [Idler, October). 
 
 1900. ' Richard Jefferies,' by M. R. Hoste [Argosy, June). 
 
 1901. ' Richard Jefferies' Great Prayer,' by J. Dunk [Great 
 
 Thoughts, July). 
 
 ' Richard Jefferies at Home,' by Darby Stafford [Badmin- 
 ton Magazine, September). 
 
 ' The Tender Mercies of a Great Naturalist,' by Arthur 
 Harvie [Humane Review, July 7). 
 
 1902. Report of speeches at the unveiling of memorial tablets 
 
 at Swindon, Coate [North Wilts Herald, November 21, 
 1902). 
 Academy, November 22. 
 
 1903. Devizes Gazette, September 3. 
 
 Letter by C. J. Cornish [Spectator, March 21). 
 
 1904. ' The Summer Psalms of Richard Jefferies,' by Arthur 
 
 Harvie [Inquirer, August 20). 
 Bookman, June. 
 
 1905. ' Homes and Haunts of Richard Jefferies ' [English Illus- 
 
 trated, February). 
 ' Richard Jefferies in London ' [Academy, June 10). 
 
 * A Neglected Romance ' (review of ' After London '), by 
 A. Glutton Brock [Speaker, November 4). 
 
 ' Passages from the Nature Writings of Richard Jefferies,' 
 
 by A. H. Hyatt. (Chatto and Windus.) 
 'Richard Jefferies,' by G. E. Dartncll [Wilts and Dorset 
 
 Bank Annual). 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 335 
 
 1905. ' The Bookman Illustrated History of English Literature,' 
 
 by Thomas Seccombe and W. Robertson Nicoll. 
 
 1906. ' The Faith of Richard Jefferies,' by Henry S. Salt. (Lon- 
 
 don : Watts and Co., 17, Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, 
 E.C.) 
 
 1907. Review of ' The Story of My Heart ' by Edward Thomas 
 
 {Bookman, October). 
 
 1908. ' Richard Jefferies,' by T. Michael Pope {Academy, March 
 
 28). 
 ' The Fiction of Richard Jefferies,' by Edward Thomas 
 
 {Reader's Review, July). 
 Journal of Education, October. 
 No date. Article by Richard Garnett in ' Dictionary of National 
 
 Biography,' vol. xxix. 
 References in — 
 
 ' Nature in Downland,' by W. H. Hudson. 
 
 ' Highways and Byways in Sussex,' by E. V. Lucas. 
 
 ' Round About Wiltshire,' by A. G. Bradley. 
 
 ' Adventures in Criticism,' by ' Q.' 
 
 ' Fleet Street Eclogues ' (first series), by John Davidson. 
 
 ' Friedrich Nietzsche : the Dionysian Spirit of the Age,' by 
 
 A. R. Orage. 
 ' Windlestraw,' by Pamela Tennant. 
 ' A Short History of Wiltshire,' by W. Francis Smith. 
 ' Life of H. D. Thoreau,' by Henry S. Salt. 
 ' Wiltshire Words,' by G. E. Dartnell and E. H. Goddard. 
 ' The Book of the Open Air,' edited by Edward Thomas. ^ 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abercrombie, Lascelles, 183 
 
 ' After London,' 20, 47, 60, 121, 
 
 173, 191, 254, 255-262 (detailed 
 
 treatment), 325 
 ' After the Country Franchise,' 
 
 290, 291 
 ' Agricultural Life, The,' 83 
 Agriculture, modern. See ' Spirit ' 
 Aldbourne, 4, 5, 13, 54, 76 
 ' Allotment Gardens, On,' 87 
 'Amaryllis at the Fair,' 21, 24, 
 
 25, 29, 31, 47, 118, 119, 168, 
 
 172, 173, 263-287, 312, 323, 325, 
 
 328 
 ' Amateur Poacher, The,' 16, 19, 
 
 20, 24, 36 ; quoted, 46; 48, 132- 
 
 139 (detailed treatment), 150, 
 
 T-71. 175. 178, 179. 263, 312, 
 
 313, 320, 322, 325 
 ' Among the Nuts,' 305 
 ' Ancient Swindon,' 12 
 ' April Gossip,' 290 
 Aubrey, 2 ; quoted by JeSeries, 9 ; 
 
 12. 13, 54, 55 
 
 Badbury (described), 18, 92, 93 
 Baden, Jessie, 64, 65, 75, 96 
 Barnes, William, 280 
 ' Beauty in the Country,' 214, 
 
 227-228 (quoted) 
 Beecher, H. W., 279 
 Behmen, 182 
 Besant, Sir Walter, 314 
 Bevan's ' Honey Bee,' 210 
 ' Bevis,' 20 ; quoted, 36, 43 ; 44, 
 
 45, 150, 156, 164-169, 178, 224, 
 
 225, 255-256, 262, 263, 275, 
 
 322 
 Bexhill, 171 
 
 Bible, the, 40, 63, 64, 93, 314 
 'Birds Climbing the Air,' 210, 
 
 211 
 ' Birds' Nests,' 297 
 
 336 
 
 ' Bit of Human Nature, A,' 172 
 
 ' Bits of Oak Bark,' 209, 210 
 
 Blake, William, 205 
 
 Books read by Jefferies, 40, 41, 
 45, 46, 53, 54, 55. 64, 75. 76, 
 93, 99, 100, 178, 210, 310 
 
 ' Breeze on Beachy Head, The,' 
 
 175 
 
 Brighton, i, 173, 177, 209, 224, 
 254, 290 
 
 Broad Hinton, 10, 13 
 
 Browne, Thomas, ' Religio Me- 
 dici,' 203 
 
 Browne, William, 164 
 
 Brussels, 68-70 
 
 ' Buckhurst Park,' 306 
 
 Buckland's ' Curiosities of Natural 
 History,' 109 
 
 Burderop, 7, 13, 19, 29, 35, 41-42, 
 93, 132, 261 
 
 ' By the Exe,' 209, 210 
 
 Caesar, Augustus, 207 
 
 ' Caesar Borgia,' 64 
 
 Caesar, Julius, 207 
 
 Carpenter, Edward, 'Adam's Peak 
 to Elephanta,' 182 
 
 Catullus, 305 
 
 Cedric and Ceawlin, 8 
 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, 92 
 
 Chiseldon, i, 5, 8, 13, 18, 23, 64, 93 
 
 ' Clematis Lane,' 210 
 
 Coate, 20-22. See also 307-311 
 
 Coate Farm, i, 21-22, 25, 30; 
 state of prosperity in JelTeries' 
 infancy, 32 ; description, 34- 
 35 ; state in 1865 47 ; 56, 62, 96, 
 129, 132, 141, 150, 156, 164, 
 263, 264, 290, 291, 297 
 
 Coate Reservoir, 13, 19, 20, 35, 
 39, 40, 42, 123. 165, 256, 261 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 206 
 
 ' Coming of Summer, The,' 150 
 
INDEX 
 
 337 
 
 Cooper, Fenimore, 41 
 
 'Cost of Agricultiiral Labour, 
 
 The,' 84 
 ' Cottage Ideas,' 298 
 Country Life, 24-30 
 ' Country Places,' 290, 291, 306 
 ' Countryside : Sussex, The,' 306 
 ' Country Sunday, The,' 295, 296 
 Crowborough, i, 171, 209, 290, 
 
 291. 303 
 Culpeper, 45 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 53, 210 
 
 Day House Farm, 20, 21, 65, 96, 
 140, 281 
 
 Dc Quincey, Thomas, 190 
 
 ' Dewy Mom, The,' 14 ; quoted, 
 66, 67; 97, 103, 119, 173, 212, 
 221, 224, 228-253, 254, 255, 258, 
 263, 275, 288, 313, 323, 324, 
 325. 328 
 
 Disraeli, 74 
 
 Don Quixote, 45 
 
 Doughty, C. M., 7, 234 
 
 Downs, the, i, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13-17 
 (described), 97, 129, 131, 132, 
 174, 177, 223, 229, 291 
 
 Draycot Folliatt, 13, 17, 24, 141 
 
 Drayton, Michael, 54, 164 
 
 Drummond, William, ' The Cy- 
 press Grove,' 203 
 
 ' Early Fiction,' 53 
 
 Eltham, 119, 172, 209 
 
 ' English Deer-Park, An,' 306 
 
 ' English Homestead, An,' 83 
 
 Exmoor, 146, 170, 290 
 
 ' Extinct Race, An,' 2, 290 
 
 ' Farmer at Home, The,' 83 
 
 Faust, 45 
 
 ' Field and Hedgerow,' 38, 55, 
 
 146, 172, 254, 290-312, 325 
 ' Field-Faring Women,' 83 
 ' Field Play, The,' 209, 225 
 ' Field Sports in Art,' 290, 300, 307 
 Fortnightly, the, 84 
 ' Fortune,' 75 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, 11, 83, 84, 91 
 ' Future of County Society, The,' 
 
 84 
 ' Future of Farming, The,' 83 
 
 ' Gamekeeper at Home, The,' 19, 
 36, 39, 105, 107, 123-128, 129, 
 150 
 Girls' Own Paper, the, 314 
 ' Goddard.' See ' Memoir ' 
 
 ' Golden Brown,' 225-227 
 ' Golden-crested Wren, The,' 290 
 Goring, i, 171, 290, 313 
 Graphic, the, 10, 107, iii, 128 
 ' Great Agricultural Problem, A,' 
 
 84 
 Greek literature, 46, 55, 64, 178 
 ' Greene Feme Farm,' 8, 18, 19, 
 
 45, 103-106, 131, 243,267.275, 
 
 288 
 Gyde, Elizabeth, 28-29 
 Gyde, Frederick, 28-29, 264, 281, 
 
 317 
 
 Hardy, Thomas, 280 
 
 Harrild, Mrs., 39, 40, 46, 48, 50, 
 
 55, 56, 60-61, 62, 63, 73 
 Harrild, Thomas, 28, 39,46, 53, 56, 
 
 61 (death), 64 
 Hazlitt, William, 325 
 ' Henrique Beaumont,' 50 (quoted) 
 ' History of the English Squire, 
 
 A,' 84 
 ' History of Malmesbury, The,' 64 
 ' History of Swindon,' 72, 75-76 
 ' Hodge and his Masters,' 84, 89- 
 
 90, 150, 245, 275, 288 
 Hodson Bottom, 19, 41 
 ' Hours of Spring,' 291, 301-304, 
 
 312, 325 
 ' House Martins,' 290 
 ' Hovering of the Kestrel, The,' 
 
 ' Idle Earth,' 295, 296 
 ' Instinct, Essay on,' 61 
 ' In Summer-Time,' 96 
 
 ' Jack Brass : Emperor of Eng- 
 land,' 77 
 
 ' January in the Sussex Woods,. 
 179-180, 210 
 
 Jeflferies, the name, 23 ; the 
 family, 24, 25 
 
 Jefferies, Charles, 29 
 
 Jefferies, Ellen, 29 
 
 Jefferies, Henry James, 29 ; 
 'Mark ' in ' Bevis,' 164, 258 
 
 Jefferies, James Luckett {a), 12, 25, 
 26-27 
 
 Jefferies, James Luckett (b), 25, 
 27, 28 ; his character, 29-32, 55, 
 
 317 
 Jefferies, John, 25, 264, 317 
 Jefferies, John Luckett, 27, 28, 62, 
 
 264, 317 
 Jefferies, John Richard : birth, 
 
 I, 29 ; as a skater, 2, 42 ; bap- 
 I 22 
 
338 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 tism, 12 ; his country, 1-12 ; 
 the Do^^'ns, 13-17 ; visits print- 
 ing-house as a child, 28 ; his 
 appearance, 29 ; early surround - 
 '"gs, 35-36 ; early attitude 
 towards Nature, 36-38 ; at a 
 private school, 39 ; fishing, 
 39 ; home teaching, 40 ; other 
 teachers, 41 ; love of sport and 
 observation, 42 ; early reading, 
 45-46 ; journey to France, 46 ; 
 to Liverpool, 47 ; habits in 
 adolescence, 47-48 ; early 
 writings, 50 et seq. ; hand- 
 writing, 53 ; interest in anti- 
 quity, 53 ; religion, 56, 57 ; 
 seriously ill, 60 ; courtship, 65 
 ef seq. ; at Brussels, 68-70 ; oc- 
 casional articles, 73-74 ; ' Me- 
 moir of Goddards,' and ' Swin- 
 don and its Antiquities,' 76-77 ; 
 ' Jack Brass,' 77 ; ' Reporting, 
 Editing, and Authorship,' yj- 
 78 ; Letters to the Times. 80- 
 83 ; ' True Tale,' 82 ; further 
 magazine articles, 83-84, 91 ; 
 ' The Scarlet Shawl,' 93-96 ; 
 ' Restless Human Hearts,' 93, 
 96. 100 ; marriage, 96 ; ' World's 
 End,' 100-103 ; ' Greene Feme 
 Farm,' 103-106 ; early country 
 WTitings, 107-110; his prede- 
 cessors, 107-109 ; at Sydenham, 
 III ; at Surbiton, 111-115 ; im- 
 pressions of London, 1 14-120; 
 appearance and habits, 121- 
 122; 'The Gamekeeper at 
 Home,' 124-128 ; ' Wild Life in 
 a Southern County,' 128-132 ; 
 'The Amateur Poacher,' 132- 
 1 39 ; ' Round about a Great 
 Estate,' 139-146; 'Red Deer,' 
 146-149 ; ' Nature near Lon- 
 don,' 150-155; 'Wood Magic,' 
 156-164; ' Be vis,' 164-169; 
 taken ill with fistula, and under- 
 goes operations, 170 ; internal 
 ulceration, 170; ha;morrhage, 
 171, 172 ; death from chronic 
 fibroid phthisis, 172 ; effects of 
 chronic invalidism, 173; 'The 
 Story of My Heart,' 177-191, 
 194-208 ; his mystic moments, 
 181-183; ' Nature and Eternity,' 
 191-194, 207 ; ' The Life of the 
 Fields,' 209-214, 217-223 ; ' The 
 Open Air,' 214-217; at Brigh- 
 ton, Eltham. and Crowborough, 
 
 209 ; visits Paris, 209 ; ' The 
 Dewy Mom,' 224-253 ; ' After 
 London,' 254-262 ; ' Amaryllis 
 at the Fair,' 263-289 ; his 
 humour, 287-289 ; ' Field and 
 Hedgerow,' 290-312 ; last days, 
 313-314; supposed death-bed 
 recantation, 314-316; life and 
 writings reviewed, 317-328 
 ' Jefferies Land,' 54-55 
 Jcfferies, Richard, 24, 25 
 Jefferies, Sarah, 29 
 Jeffries, John and Sarah, 24 
 Jeffries, William and Hannah, 24 
 Jesse, Edward, ' Favourite 
 Haunts and Rural Studies,' 108 ; 
 ' The Month of May : A Rural 
 Walk,' 108 
 ' John Smith's Shanty,' 83 
 ' July Grass, The,' 305 
 ' Just Before Winter,' 299 
 
 Keats, John, 195, 237, 303 
 Kingsley's ' Prose Idylls,' 109 
 Knox, ' Ornithological Rambles 
 
 in Sussex,' 108 
 ' Koenigsmark the Robber,' 46 
 
 ' Labourer's Daily Life, The,' 83 
 Lamb, Charles, 325" 
 ' Legend of a Gateway,' 211 
 Letters of Jefferies, 32, 39, 40, 48, 
 50, 55, 60-61, 63, 68-70, 70-72, 
 123-124, 147, 170-172, 177, 179, 
 204, 254 
 Liddingdon Clump, 4, 5, 20 
 ' Life^of the Fields, The,' 59, 65-66 
 (quoted), 146, 179-180 (quoted), 
 209-215, 217-223, 254, 290, 324 
 Linnaeus, 210, 297 
 ' Locality and Nature,' 290 
 London, 39, 56, 61, iii, 114-121, 
 195, 209, 212, 213, 256, 275, 
 286-287, 290, 317, 321, 328 
 London and Faringdon road, the, 2 
 Longman's Magazine, 153, 191- 
 
 192, 192 et seq., 293, 295 
 Lubbock's ' Ants, Bees, and 
 
 Wasps,' 210 
 Luckett, Fanny, 25 
 Lucretius, 156, 206 
 Lyell, 53, 210 
 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 98, 202-203. 
 
 205-206, 211 
 Marlborough, 5, 6, 8, 23, 75, 132 
 ' Marlborough Forest,' 47, 107, 109. 
 
 See also Savernake Forest, 5 
 
INDEX 
 
 339 
 
 ' Masked,' 51 
 
 Maury, 210 
 
 ' Meadow Thoughts,' 39, 209, 210, 
 212, 221, 263, 324 
 
 ' Memoir of the Goddards of North 
 Wilts, A,' 76 
 
 Meredith, George, 228 
 
 'Midsummer Hum,' 107, no, 225 
 
 ' Mind under Water,' 209, 210, 211 
 
 ' Mixed Days of May and Decem- 
 ber,' 290 
 
 Moore, T. Sturge, 221 
 
 Morris, ' Butterflies,' 210 
 
 ' My Chaffinch,' 298 
 
 ' My Old Village,' 25, 291, 307-312 
 
 ' Natuue and Books,' 290, 296-297, 
 
 299 
 ' Nature and Eternity,' 191-192 
 
 (quoted), 192-194, 207, 291 
 ' Nature in the Louvre,' 237, 290, 
 
 300-301, 307, 324 
 'Nature near London,' 107, 112, 
 
 114, 117, 150-155, 173,174-176, 
 
 254. 321 
 
 ' New Pilgrim's Progress ; or, A 
 Christian's Painful Progress 
 from the Town of Middle Class 
 to the Golden City, The,' 96 
 
 New Quarterly, the, 83-84, 123 
 
 Nietzsche, 207 
 
 North Wilts Herald, the, 11, 50, 53, 
 61, 74, 128 
 
 ' Notes on Landscape- Pain ting,' 
 219 
 
 ' Oak Bark,' 263 
 
 ' Odyssey,' 45 
 
 ' One of the New Voters,' 215 
 
 ' Only a Girl,' 75 
 
 ' Open Air, The,' 24, 38, 155, 188, 
 
 215-217, 225-228 (quoted), 254, 
 
 288, 324 
 ' Orchis Mascula,' 290 
 
 ' Pageant of Summer, The,' 209, 
 210, 213, 217-219 (quoted), 221, 
 
 254. 324 
 Pall Mall Gazette, 73, 123, 124, 
 
 128, 132. 1.9, 296, 313, 314 
 Paris, 209 
 Pater, Walter, 237 
 'Percy's Reliques,' 45, 178 
 Pettigrew, J. Bell, ' Animal Loco- 
 motion ; or, Walking, Swim- 
 ming, and Flying, with a Dis- 
 sertation on Aeronautics,' 210 
 
 ' Pilgrim's Progress, The,' 46 
 ' Plainest City in Europe, The,' 210 
 ' Power of the Farmers, The,' 84 
 ' Proletariate, the Power of the 
 Future, The,' 84 
 
 Railway Accidents Bill, the, 91 
 Reading, Jeflferies'. ' See Books ' 
 ' Red Deer,' 146-149, 180, 254 
 ' Reporting, Editing, and Author- 
 ship,' 77-78 
 ' Restless Human Hearts,' 93, 96, 
 
 97-100, 224 
 Ridger, Fanny, 25 
 Ridgeway, the, 2, 3, 7, 8, 18 
 ' Rise of Maximus, The,' 96 
 Rotherfield, 209 
 
 ' Round about a Great Estate,' 
 18, 19, 20, 25, 43, 139-146, 168, 
 179. 328 
 Ruskin, John, 151, 213, 221 
 
 ' St. Guido,' 210, 214-215 (quoted) 
 St. John's ' Short Sketches of the 
 Wild Sports and Natural His- 
 tory of the Highlands,' 108 
 Salt, Henry S., 314, 315 
 Savernake Forest, 5, 6 
 ' Scarlet Shawl, The,' 52, 93-96. 
 
 123 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 310 
 ' Sea, Sky, and Down,' 174 
 Shakespeare, William, 40, 45, 229, 
 
 237, 244, 248 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 183, 201, 
 
 206, 303 
 ' Shipton Accident, The,' 91 
 Shuckard's ' British Bees,' 210 
 Sidney, Sir Philip (quoted), 323 
 ' Size of Farms, The,' 83 
 ' Some April Insects,' 291, 295 
 Somerset, 209 
 
 ' South Down Shepherd, The,' 174 
 Spenser, Edmund, 234 
 ' Spirit of Modern Agriculture, 
 
 The,' 87 
 ' Sport and Science,' 22 (quoted), 
 
 209 
 ' Spring of the Year, The,' 1 50 
 Standard, the, 84, 151 
 Stevenson, R. L., 178, 221 
 ' Story of My Heart, The,' 14, 39, 
 43, 56 (quoted), 57-59. 67, 79 
 (quoted), 92, in, 131, 161, 169, 
 173, 174, 177-208,212,224,237, 
 254, 255, 263, 278, 280, 285, 
 303. 305. 312, 313. 314. 322. 
 323. 324 
 
340 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ' story of Swindon,' 91 
 ' Strange Story, A,' 51 
 ' Suez-cide ; or. How Miss Britan- 
 nia Bought a Dirty Puddle and 
 lost her Sugar Plums,* 96 
 ' Summer in Somerset,' 306 
 ' Sunlight in a London Square,' 
 
 210, 213, 221-223 (quoted) 
 ' Sunny Brighton,' 255 
 Surbiton, iii, 123, 156, 290, 319 
 Swinburne, A. C, 93, 178, 228 
 Swindon, i, 11, 25, 32, 41, 76, 96, 
 
 105, III 
 Swindon Advertiser, the, 27, 55, 74 
 Sydenham, 40, 56, 61, 67, 72 
 
 'T. T. T.,' p. 51 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 182-183 
 Thomson, James, 237 
 Thoreau, 22 
 
 ' Thoughts on the Labour Ques- 
 tion,' 296 
 Time, 103 
 
 ' Time of Year, The,' 290 
 Times, the, 80-83, 296, 318 
 'Toilers of the Field," 45, 84, 85, 
 
 85-89, 124, 290 
 Traherne, Thomas, 188, 303 
 ' Traits of the Olden Time," 52 
 ' True Tale of the Wiltshire 
 Labourer, A,' 82 
 
 * Unequal Agriculture,' 84 
 
 Venice in the East End,' 210 
 ' Village Churches,' 107, 109-110 
 ' Village Organization,' 84 
 'Walks in the Wheatfields,' 291, 
 294-295, 297, 298 
 
 ' Water Colley, The,' 209 
 Waterton's ' Essays on Natural 
 
 History,' 107-108 
 Waugh, Edwin, ' Lancashire 
 
 Sketches,' 134 
 Wayland Smith's cave, 2, 3 
 White's ' Selborne,' 53, 107, 125; 
 
 Jefferies' Introduction to, 146, 
 
 172-173, 290, 299, 300, 313 
 White Horse, 2, 3 ; the smaJl, 10, 
 
 51 
 Whitman, Walt, 189, 207, 313 
 ' WTio will Win ?' 5 1 
 ' Wild England,' sub-title of 
 
 ' After London,' q.v. 
 ' Wild Flowers,' 325 
 ' Wild Life in a Southern County,' 
 
 2, 17, 20, 21, 42, 106, 107, 108, 
 
 128-132 150 
 Wilts and Gloster Standard, 65 
 Wiltshire (refuge of Iberians and 
 
 Celts), 5; 23, 53, 54, 76. 80-83. 
 
 209, 233 
 Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal, 2, 
 
 20, 42 
 ' Wiltshire Labourer, The,' 295 
 ' Winds of Heaven,' 291, 306, 312, 
 
 324 
 Wither, George, 164 
 ' Women in the Field,' 84 
 ' Wood Magic,' 19, 36 (quoted), 
 
 37, 150, 156-164, 178, 321 
 Wootton Basset, 2, 9, 23, 54, 75, 
 
 132 
 Wordsworth, William, 183, 205, 
 
 227 
 'World's End,' 67, 100-103, 116, 
 
 258, 267 ^ ., 
 
 Wroughton, 9, 13 
 
 BIILINC AND SONS, LT1>., PKINTERS, GUILUKOKD. 
 
C«ortf«p}ul3p & S<m L^ 
 
340 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 ' story of Swindon,' 91 
 ' Strange Story, A,' 5 1 
 ' Suez-cide ; or, How Miss Britan- 
 nia Bought a Dirty Puddle and 
 lost her Sugar Plums,' 96 
 ' Summer in Somerset,' 306 
 ' Sunlight in a London Square,' 
 
 210, 213, 221-223 (quoted) 
 ' Sunny Brighton,' 255 
 Surbiton, iii, 123, 156, 290, 319 
 Swinburne, A. C, 93, 178, 228 
 Swindon, i, 11, 25, 32, 41, T6, 96, 
 
 105, III 
 Swindon Advertiser, the, 27, 55, 74 
 Sydenham, 40, 56. 61, 67, 72 
 
 'T. T. T.,' p. 51 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 182-183 
 Thomson, James, 237 
 Thoreau, 22 
 
 ' Thoughts on the Labour Ques- 
 tion,' 296 
 Time, 103 
 
 * Time of Year, The,' 290 
 Times, the, 80-83, 296, 318 
 'Toilers of the JFiel'd,' 45, 84, 85, 
 
 85-89, 124, 290 
 Traherne, Thomas, 188, 303 
 ' Traits of the Olden Time,' 52 
 ' True Tale of the Wiltshire 
 Labourer, A,' 82 
 
 ' Unequal Agriculture,' 84 
 
 Venice in the East End,' 210 
 ' Village Churches,' 107, 109-110 
 ' Village Organization,' 84 
 'Walks in the Wheatfields,' 291, 
 294-295, 297, 298 
 
 ' Water Colley, The,' 209 
 Waterton's ' Essays on Natural 
 
 History,' 107-108 
 Waugh, Edwin, ' Lancashire 
 
 Sketches,' 134 
 Wayland Smith's cave, 2, 3 
 White's ' Selborne,' 53, 107, 125; 
 
 Jeflferies' Introduction to, 146, 
 
 172-173, 290, 299, 300, 313 
 White Horse. 2, 3 ; the small, 10, 
 
 51 
 Whitman, Walt, 189, 207, 313 
 ' WTio will Win ?' 51 
 ' Wild England,' sub-title of 
 
 ' After London,' q.v. 
 ' Wild Flowers,' 325 
 ' Wild Life in a Southern County,' 
 
 2, 17, 20, 21, 42, 106, 107, 108, 
 
 128-132 150 
 Wilts and Gloster Standard, 65 
 Wiltshire (refuge of Iberians and 
 
 Celts), 5; 23, 53, 54, 76. 80-83. 
 
 209, 233 
 Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal, 2, 
 
 20, 42 
 ' Wiltshire Labourer, The,' 295 
 ' Winds of Heaven,' 291, 306, 312, 
 
 324 
 Wither, George, 164 
 ' Women in the Field,' 84 
 ' Wood Magic,' 19, 36 (quoted), 
 
 37, 150, 156-164, 178, 321 
 Wootton Basset, 2, 9, 23, 54, 75, 
 
 132 
 Wordsworth, William, 183, 205, 
 
 227 
 'World's End,' 67, 100-103, Ji<5, 
 
 258, 267 J , 
 
 Wroughton, 9, 13 
 
 i! 
 
 on. LING ANU SUNS, LTD., 1-KINTERS, GUILUKOKD. 
 

UNIVERblii BERKELEY 
 
 AR 27 1918 
 
 CI i6 
 
 AUG 30 \92^ 
 
 50Tn-7,'16 
 
U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 CDHbDDDSlfi 
 
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