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Title: The Open Air
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<h1 align="center">THE OPEN AIR</h1>
<h2 align="center">RICHARD JEFFERIES</h2>
<br>
<br>
<p>NOTE</p>
<p>For permission to collect these papers my thanks are due to the
Editors of the following publications: <br>
<i>The Standard</i>, <i>English Illustrated Magazine</i>,
<i>Longman's Magazine</i>, <i>St. James's Gazette</i>,
<i>Chambers's Journal</i>, <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, <i>Good Words</i>,
and <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>.<br>
R.J.</p>
<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
<p><a href="#1">SAINT GUIDO</a></p>
<p><a href="#2">GOLDEN-BROWN</a></p>
<p><a href="#3">WILD FLOWERS</a></p>
<p><a href="#4">SUNNY BRIGHTON</a></p>
<p><a href="#5">THE PINE WOOD</a></p>
<p><a href="#6">NATURE ON THE ROOF</a></p>
<p><a href="#7">ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS</a></p>
<p><a href="#8">THE MODERN THAMES</a></p>
<p><a href="#9">THE SINGLE-BARREL GUN</a></p>
<p><a href="#10">THE HAUNT OF THE HARE</a></p>
<p><a href="#11">THE BATHING SEASON</a></p>
<p><a href="#12">UNDER THE ACORNS</a></p>
<p><a href="#13">DOWNS</a></p>
<p><a href="#14">FOREST</a></p>
<p><a href="#15">BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY</a></p>
<p><a href="#16">OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY</a></p>
<p><a href="#17">HAUNTS OF THE LAPWING</a></p>
<p><a href="#18">OUTSIDE LONDON</a></p>
<p><a href="#19">ON THE LONDON ROAD</a></p>
<p><a href="#20">RED ROOFS OF LONDON</a></p>
<p><a href="#21">A WET NIGHT IN LONDON</a></p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="1">SAINT GUIDO</a></h3>
<p>St. Guido ran out at the garden gate into a sandy lane, and down
the lane till he came to a grassy bank. He caught hold of the
bunches of grass and so pulled himself up. There was a footpath on
the top which went straight in between fir-trees, and as he ran
along they stood on each side of him like green walls. They were
very near together, and even at the top the space between them was
so narrow that the sky seemed to come down, and the clouds to be
sailing but just over them, as if they would catch and tear in the
fir-trees. The path was so little used that it had grown green, and
as he ran he knocked dead branches out of his way. Just as he was
getting tired of running he reached the end of the path, and came
out into a wheat-field. The wheat did not grow very closely, and
the spaces were filled with azure corn-flowers. St. Guido thought
he was safe away now, so he stopped to look.</p>
<p>Those thoughts and feelings which are not sharply defined but
have a haze of distance and beauty about them are always the
dearest. His name was not really Guido, but those who loved him had
called him so in order to try and express their hearts about him.
For they thought if a great painter could be a little boy, then he
would be something like this one. They were not very learned in the
history of painters: they had heard of Raphael, but Raphael was too
elevated, too much of the sky, and of Titian, but Titian was fond
of feminine loveliness, and in the end somebody said Guido was a
dreamy name, as if it belonged to one who was full of faith. Those
golden curls shaking about his head as he ran and filling the air
with radiance round his brow, looked like a Nimbus or circlet of
glory. So they called him St. Guido, and a very, very wild saint he
was.</p>
<p>St. Guido stopped in the cornfield, and looked all round. There
were the fir-trees behind him—a thick wall of
green—hedges on the right and the left, and the wheat sloped
down towards an ash-copse in the hollow. No one was in the field,
only the fir-trees, the green hedges, the yellow wheat, and the sun
overhead, Guido kept quite still, because he expected that in a
minute the magic would begin, and something would speak to him. His
cheeks which had been flushed with running grew less hot, but I
cannot tell you the exact colour they were, for his skin was so
white and clear, it would not tan under the sun, yet being always
out of doors it had taken the faintest tint of golden brown mixed
with rosiness. His blue eyes which had been wide open, as they
always were when full of mischief, became softer, and his long
eyelashes drooped over them. But as the magic did not begin, Guido
walked on slowly into the wheat, which rose nearly to his head,
though it was not yet so tall as it would be before the reapers
came. He did not break any of the stalks, or bend them down and
step on them; he passed between them, and they yielded on either
side. The wheat-ears were pale gold, having only just left off
their green, and they surrounded him on all sides as if he were
bathing.</p>
<p>A butterfly painted a velvety red with white spots came floating
along the surface of the corn, and played round his cap, which was
a little higher, and was so tinted by the sun that the butterfly
was inclined to settle on it. Guido put up his hand to catch the
butterfly, forgetting his secret in his desire to touch it. The
butterfly was too quick—with a snap of his wings disdainfully
mocking the idea of catching him, away he went. Guido nearly
stepped on a humble-bee—buzz-zz!—the bee was so alarmed
he actually crept up Guido's knickers to the knee, and even then
knocked himself against a wheat-ear when he started to fly. Guido
kept quite still while the humble-bee was on his knee, knowing that
he should not be stung if he did not move. He knew, too, that
humble-bees have stings though people often say they have not, and
the reason people think they do not possess them is because
humble-bees are so good-natured and never sting unless they are
very much provoked.</p>
<p>Next he picked a corn buttercup; the flowers were much smaller
than the great buttercups which grew in the meadows, and these were
not golden but coloured like brass. His foot caught in a creeper,
and he nearly tumbled—it was a bine of bindweed which went
twisting round and round two stalks of wheat in a spiral, binding
them together as if some one had wound string about them. There was
one ear of wheat which had black specks on it, and another which
had so much black that the grains seemed changed and gone leaving
nothing but blackness. He touched it and it stained his hands like
a dark powder, and then he saw that it was not perfectly black as
charcoal is, it was a little red. Something was burning up the corn
there just as if fire had been set to the ears. Guido went on and
found another place where there was hardly any wheat at all, and
those stalks that grew were so short they only came above his knee.
The wheat-ears were thin and small, and looked as if there was
nothing but chaff. But this place being open was full of flowers,
such lovely azure cornflowers which the people call
bluebottles.</p>
<p>Guido took two; they were curious flowers with knobs surrounded
with little blue flowers like a lady's bonnet. They were a
beautiful blue, not like any other blue, not like the violets in
the garden, or the sky over the trees, or the geranium in the
grass, or the bird's-eyes by the path. He loved them and held them
tight in his hand, and went on, leaving the red pimpernel wide open
to the dry air behind him, but the May-weed was everywhere. The
May-weed had white flowers like a moon-daisy, but not so large, and
leaves like moss. He could not walk without stepping on these mossy
tufts, though he did not want to hurt them. So he stooped and
stroked the moss-like leaves and said, "I do not want to hurt you,
but you grow so thick I cannot help it." In a minute afterwards as
he was walking he heard a quick rush, and saw the wheat-ears sway
this way and that as if a puff of wind had struck them.</p>
<p>Guido stood still and his eyes opened very wide, he had
forgotten to cut a stick to fight with: he watched the wheat-ears
sway, and could see them move for some distance, and he did not
know what it was. Perhaps it was a wild boar or a yellow lion, or
some creature no one had ever seen; he would not go back, but he
wished he had cut a nice stick. Just then a swallow swooped down
and came flying over the wheat so close that Guido almost felt the
flutter of his wings, and as he passed he whispered to Guido that
it was only a hare. "Then why did he run away?" said Guido; "I
should not have hurt him." But the swallow had gone up high into
the sky again, and did not hear him. All the time Guido was
descending the slope, for little feet always go down the hill as
water does, and when he looked back he found that he had left the
fir-trees so far behind he was in the middle of the field. If any
one had looked they could hardly have seen him, and if he had taken
his cap off they could not have done so because the yellow curls
would be so much the same colour as the yellow corn. He stooped to
see how nicely he could hide himself, then he knelt, and in a
minute sat down, so that the wheat rose up high above him.</p>
<p>Another humble-bee went over along the tips of the
wheat—burr-rr—as he passed; then a scarlet fly, and
next a bright yellow wasp who was telling a friend flying behind
him that he knew where there was such a capital piece of wood to
bite up into tiny pieces and make into paper for the nest in the
thatch, but his friend wanted to go to the house because there was
a pear quite ripe there on the wall. Next came a moth, and after
the moth a golden fly, and three gnats, and a mouse ran along the
dry ground with a curious sniffling rustle close to Guido. A shrill
cry came down out of the air, and looking up he saw two swifts
turning circles, and as they passed each other they
shrieked—their voices were so shrill they shrieked. They were
only saying that in a month their little swifts in the slates would
be able to fly. While he sat so quiet on the ground and hidden by
the wheat, he heard a cuckoo such a long way off it sounded like a
watch when it is covered up. "Cuckoo" did not come full and
distinct—it was such a tiny little "cuckoo" caught in the
hollow of Guido's ear. The cuckoo must have been a mile away.</p>
<p>Suddenly he thought something went over, and yet he did not see
it—perhaps it was the shadow—and he looked up and saw a
large bird not very far up, not farther than he could fling, or
shoot his arrows, and the bird was fluttering his wings, but did
not move away farther, as if he had been tied in the air. Guido
knew it was a hawk, and the hawk was staying there to see if there
was a mouse or a little bird in the wheat. After a minute the hawk
stopped fluttering and lifted his wings together as a butterfly
does when he shuts his, and down the hawk came, straight into the
corn. "Go away!" shouted Guido jumping up, and flinging his cap,
and the hawk, dreadfully frightened and terribly cross, checked
himself and rose again with an angry rush. So the mouse escaped,
but Guido could not find his cap for some time. Then he went on,
and still the ground sloping sent him down the hill till he came
close to the copse.</p>
<p>Some sparrows came out from the copse, and he stopped and saw
one of them perch on a stalk of wheat, with one foot above the
other sideways, so that he could pick at the ear and get the corn.
Guido watched the sparrow clear the ear, then he moved, and the
sparrows flew back to the copse, where they chattered at him for
disturbing them. There was a ditch between the corn and the copse,
and a streamlet; he picked up a stone and threw it in, and the
splash frightened a rabbit, who slipped over the bank and into a
hole. The boughs of an oak reached out across to the corn, and made
so pleasant a shade that Guido, who was very hot from walking in
the sun, sat down on the bank of the streamlet with his feet
dangling over it, and watched the floating grass sway slowly as the
water ran. Gently he leaned back till his back rested on the
sloping ground—he raised one knee, and left the other foot
over the verge where the tip of the tallest rushes touched it.
Before he had been there a minute he remembered the secret which a
fern had taught him.</p>
<p>First, if he wanted to know anything, or to hear a story, or
what the grass was saying, or the oak-leaves singing, he must be
careful not to interfere as he had done just now with the butterfly
by trying to catch him. Fortunately, that butterfly was a nice
butterfly, and very kindhearted, but sometimes, if you interfered
with one thing, it would tell another thing, and they would all
know in a moment, and stop talking, and never say a word. Once,
while they were all talking pleasantly, Guido caught a fly in his
hand, he felt his hand tickle as the fly stepped on it, and he shut
up his little fist so quickly he caught the fly in the hollow
between the palm and his fingers. The fly went buzz, and rushed to
get out, but Guido laughed, so the fly buzzed again, and just told
the grass, and the grass told the bushes, and everything knew in a
moment, and Guido never heard another word all that day. Yet
sometimes now they all knew something about him, they would go on
talking. You see, they all rather petted and spoiled him. Next, if
Guido did not hear them conversing, the fern said he must touch a
little piece of grass and put it against his cheek, or a leaf, and
kiss it, and say, "Leaf, leaf, tell them I am here."</p>
<p>Now, while he was lying down, and the tip of the rushes touched
his foot, he remembered this, so he moved the rush with his foot
and said, "Rush, rush, tell them I am here." Immediately there came
a little wind, and the wheat swung to and fro, the oak-leaves
rustled, the rushes bowed, and the shadows slipped forwards and
back again. Then it was still, and the nearest wheat-ear to Guido
nodded his head, and said in a very low tone, "Guido, dear, just
this minute I do not feel very happy, although the sunshine is so
warm, because I have been thinking, for we have been in one or
other of these fields of your papa's a thousand years this very
year. Every year we have been sown, and weeded, and reaped, and
garnered. Every year the sun has ripened us and the rain made us
grow; every year for a thousand years."</p>
<p>"What did you see all that time?" said Guido.</p>
<p>"The swallows came," said the Wheat, "and flew over us, and sang
a little sweet song, and then they went up into the chimneys and
built their nests."</p>
<p>"At my house?" said Guido.</p>
<p>"Oh, no, dear, the house I was then thinking of is gone, like a
leaf withered and lost. But we have not forgotten any of the songs
they sang us, nor have the swallows that you see to-day—one
of them spoke to you just now—forgotten what we said to their
ancestors. Then the blackbirds came out in us and ate the creeping
creatures, so that they should not hurt us, and went up into the
oaks and whistled such beautiful sweet low whistles. Not in those
oaks, dear, where the blackbirds whistle to-day; even the very oaks
have gone, though they were so strong that one of them defied the
lightning, and lived years and years after it struck him. One of
the very oldest of the old oaks in the copse, dear, is his
grandchild. If you go into the copse you will find an oak which has
only one branch; he is so old, he has only that branch left. He
sprang up from an acorn dropped from an oak that grew from an acorn
dropped from the oak the lightning struck. So that is three oak
lives, Guido dear, back to the time I was thinking of just now. And
that oak under whose shadow you are now lying is the fourth of
them, and he is quite young, though he is so big.</p>
<p>"A jay sowed the acorn from which he grew up; the jay was in the
oak with one branch, and some one frightened him, and as he flew he
dropped the acorn which he had in his bill just there, and now you
are lying in the shadow of the tree. So you see, it is a very long
time ago, when the blackbirds came and whistled up in those oaks I
was thinking of, and that was why I was not very happy."</p>
<p>"But you have heard the blackbirds whistling ever since?" said
Guido; "and there was such a big black one up in our cherry tree
this morning, and I shot my arrow at him and very nearly hit him.
Besides, there is a blackbird whistling now—you listen.
There, he's somewhere in the copse. Why can't you listen to him,
and be happy now?"</p>
<p>"I will be happy, dear, as you are here, but still it is a long,
long time, and then I think, after I am dead, and there is more
wheat in my place, the blackbirds will go on whistling for another
thousand years after me. For of course I did not hear them all that
time ago myself, dear, but the wheat which was before me heard them
and told me. They told me, too, and I know it is true, that the
cuckoo came and called all day till the moon shone at night, and
began again in the morning before the dew had sparkled in the
sunrise. The dew dries very soon on wheat, Guido dear, because
wheat is so dry; first the sunrise makes the tips of the wheat ever
so faintly rosy, then it grows yellow, then as the heat increases
it becomes white at noon, and golden in the afternoon, and white
again under the moonlight. Besides which wide shadows come over
from the clouds, and a wind always follows the shadow and waves us,
and every time we sway to and fro that alters our colour. A rough
wind gives us one tint, and heavy rain another, and we look
different on a cloudy day to what we do on a sunny one. All these
colours changed on us when the blackbird was whistling in the oak
the lightning struck, the fourth one backwards from me; and it
makes me sad to think that after four more oaks have gone, the same
colours will come on the wheat that will grow then. It is thinking
about those past colours, and songs, and leaves, and of the colours
and the sunshine, and the songs, and the leaves that will come in
the future that makes to-day so much. It makes to-day a thousand
years long backwards, and a thousand years long forwards, and makes
the sun so warm, and the air so sweet, and the butterflies so
lovely, and the hum of the bees, and everything so delicious. We
cannot have enough of it."</p>
<p>"No, that we cannot," said Guido. "Go on, you talk so nice and
low. I feel sleepy and jolly. Talk away, old Wheat."</p>
<p>"Let me see," said the Wheat. "Once on a time while the men were
knocking us out of the ear on a floor with flails, which are sticks
with little hinges—"</p>
<p>"As if I did not know what a flail was!" said Guido. "I hit old
John with the flail, and Ma gave him a shilling not to be
cross."</p>
<p>"While they were knocking us with the hard sticks," the Wheat
went on, "we heard them talking about a king who was shot with an
arrow like yours in the forest—it slipped from a tree, and
went into him instead of into the deer. And long before that the
men came up the river—the stream in the ditch there runs into
the river—in rowing ships—how you would like one to
play in, Guido! For they were not like the ships now which are
machines, they were rowing ships—men's ships—and came
right up into the land ever so far, all along the river up to the
place where the stream in the ditch runs in; just where your papa
took you in the punt, and you got the waterlilies, the white
ones."</p>
<p>"And wetted my sleeve right up my arm—oh, I know! I can
row you, old Wheat; I can row as well as my papa can."</p>
<p>"But since the rowing ships came, the ploughs have turned up
this ground a thousand times," said the Wheat; "and each time the
furrows smelt sweeter, and this year they smelt sweetest of all.
The horses have such glossy coats, and such fine manes, and they
are so strong and beautiful. They drew the ploughs along and made
the ground give up its sweetness and savour, and while they were
doing it, the spiders in the copse spun their silk along from the
ashpoles, and the mist in the morning weighed down their threads.
It was so delicious to come out of the clods as we pushed our green
leaves up and felt the rain, and the wind, and the warm sun. Then a
little bird came in the copse and called, 'Sip-sip, sip, sip, sip,'
such a sweet low song, and the larks ran along the ground in
between us, and there were bluebells in the copse, and anemones;
till by-and-by the sun made us yellow, and the blue flowers that
you have in your hand came out. I cannot tell you how many there
have been of these flowers since the oak was struck by the
lightning, in all the thousand years there must have been
altogether—I cannot tell you how many."</p>
<p>"Why didn't I pick them all?" said Guido.</p>
<p>"Do you know," said the Wheat, "we have thought so much more,
and felt so much more, since your people took us, and ploughed for
us, and sowed us, and reaped us. We are not like the same wheat we
used to be before your people touched us, when we grew wild, and
there were huge great things in the woods and marshes which I will
not tell you about lest you should be frightened. Since we have
felt your hands, and you have touched us, we have felt so much
more. Perhaps that was why I was not very happy till you came, for
I was thinking quite as much about your people as about us, and how
all the flowers of all those thousand years, and all the songs, and
the sunny days were gone, and all the people were gone too, who had
heard the blackbirds whistle in the oak the lightning struck. And
those that are alive now—there will be cuckoos calling, and
the eggs in the thrushes' nests, and blackbirds whistling, and blue
cornflowers, a thousand years after every one of them is gone.</p>
<p>"So that is why it is so sweet this minute, and why I want you,
and your people, dear, to be happy now and to have all these
things, and to agree so as not to be so anxious and careworn, but
to come out with us, or sit by us, and listen to the blackbirds,
and hear the wind rustle us, and be happy. Oh, I wish I could make
them happy, and do away with all their care and anxiety, and give
you all heaps and heaps of flowers! Don't go away, darling, do you
lie still, and I will talk and sing to you, and you can pick some
more flowers when you get up. There is a beautiful shadow there,
and I heard the streamlet say that he would sing a little to you;
he is not very big, he cannot sing very loud. By-and-by, I know,
the sun will make us as dry as dry, and darker, and then the
reapers will come while the spiders are spinning their silk
again—this time it will come floating in the blue air, for
the air seems blue if you look up.</p>
<p>"It is a great joy to your people, dear, when the reaping time
arrives: the harvest is a great joy to you when the thistledown
comes rolling along in the wind. So that I shall be happy even when
the reapers cut me down, because I know it is for you, and your
people, my love. The strong men will come to us gladly, and the
women, and the little children will sit in the shade and gather
great white trumpets of convolvulus, and come to tell their mothers
how they saw the young partridges in the next field. But there is
one thing we do not like, and that is, all the labour and the
misery. Why cannot your people have us without so much labour, and
why are so many of you unhappy? Why cannot they be all happy with
us as you are, dear? For hundreds and hundreds of years now the
wheat every year has been sorrowful for your people, and I think we
get more sorrowful every year about it, because as I was telling
you just now the flowers go, and the swallows go, the old, old oaks
go, and that oak will go, under the shade of which you are lying,
Guido; and if your people do not gather the flowers now, and watch
the swallows, and listen to the blackbirds whistling, as you are
listening now while I talk, then Guido, my love, they will never
pick any flowers, nor hear any birds' songs. They think they will,
they think that when they have toiled, and worked a long time,
almost all their lives, then they will come to the flowers, and the
birds, and be joyful in the sunshine. But no, it will not be so,
for then they will be old themselves, and their ears dull, and
their eyes dim, so that the birds will sound a great distance off,
and the flowers will not seem bright.</p>
<p>"Of course, we know that the greatest part of your people cannot
help themselves, and must labour on like the reapers till their
ears are full of the dust of age. That only makes us more
sorrowful, and anxious that things should be different. I do not
suppose we should think about them had we not been in man's hand so
long that now we have got to feel with man. Every year makes it
more pitiful because then there are more flowers gone, and added to
the vast numbers of those gone before, and never gathered or looked
at, though they could have given so much pleasure. And all the work
and labour, and thinking, and reading and learning that your people
do ends in nothing—not even one flower. We cannot understand
why it should be so. There are thousands of wheat-ears in this
field, more than you would know how to write down with your pencil,
though you have learned your tables, sir. Yet all of us thinking,
and talking, cannot understand why it is when we consider how
clever your people are, and how they bring ploughs, and
steam-engines, and put up wires along the roads to tell you things
when you are miles away, and sometimes we are sown where we can
hear the hum, hum, all day of the children learning in the school.
The butterflies flutter over us, and the sun shines, and the doves
are very, very happy at their nest, but the children go on hum, hum
inside this house, and learn, learn. So we suppose you must be very
clever, and yet you cannot manage this. All your work is wasted,
and you labour in vain—you dare not leave it a minute.</p>
<p>"If you left it a minute it would all be gone; it does not mount
up and make a store, so that all of you could sit by it and be
happy. Directly you leave off you are hungry, and thirsty, and
miserable like the beggars that tramp along the dusty road here.
All the thousand years of labour since this field was first
ploughed have not stored up anything for you. It would not matter
about the work so much if you were only happy; the bees work every
year, but they are happy; the doves build a nest every year, but
they are very, very happy. We think it must be because you do not
come out to us and be with us, and think 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 unhappy; I was very unhappy this morning till you came
running over and played with us.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"Sixpence," said Guido. "It's quite a new one."</p>
<p>"And other things quite as silly," the Wheat continued. "All the
time the flowers are flowering, but they will go, even the oaks
will go. We think the reason you do not all have plenty, and why
you do not do only just a little work, and why you die of hunger if
you leave off, and why so many of you are unhappy in body and mind,
and all the misery is because you have not got a spirit like the
wheat, like us; you will not agree, and you will not share, and you
will hate each other, and you will be so avaricious, and you will
<i>not</i> touch the flowers, or go into the sunshine (you would
rather half of you died among the hard stones first), and you will
teach your children hum, hum, to follow in some foolish course that
has caused you all this unhappiness a thousand years, and you will
<i>not</i> have a spirit like us, and feel like us. Till you have a
spirit like us, and feel like us, you will never, never be happy.
Lie still, dear; the shadow of the oak is broad and will not move
from you for a long time yet."</p>
<p>"But perhaps Paul will come up to my house, and Percy and
Morna."</p>
<p>"Look up in the oak very quietly, don't move, just open your
eyes and look," said the Wheat, who was very cunning. Guido looked
and saw a lovely little bird climbing up a branch. It was
chequered, black and white, like a very small magpie, only without
such a long tail, and it had a spot of red about its neck. It was a
pied woodpecker, not the large green woodpecker, but another kind.
Guido saw it go round the branch, and then some way up, and round
again till it came to a place that pleased it, and then the
woodpecker struck the bark with its bill, tap-tap. The sound was
quite loud, ever so much more noise than such a tiny bill seemed
able to make. Tap-tap! If Guido had not been still so that the bird
had come close he would never have found it among the leaves.
Tap-tap! After it had picked out all the insects there, the
woodpecker flew away over the ashpoles of the copse.</p>
<p>"I should just like to stroke him," said Guido. "If I climbed up
into the oak perhaps he would come again, and I could catch
him."</p>
<p>"No," said the Wheat, "he only comes once a day,"</p>
<p>"Then tell me stories," said Guido, imperiously.</p>
<p>"I will if I can," said the Wheat. "Once upon a time, when the
oak the lightning struck was still living, and when the wheat was
green in this very field, a man came staggering out of the wood,
and walked out into it. He had an iron helmet on, and he was
wounded, and his blood stained the green wheat red as he walked. He
tried to get to the streamlet, which was wider then, Guido dear, to
drink, for he knew it was there, but he could not reach it. He fell
down and died in the green wheat, dear, for he was very much hurt
with a sharp spear, but more so with hunger and thirst."</p>
<p>"I am so sorry," said Guido; "and now I look at you, why you are
all thirsty and dry, you nice old Wheat, and the ground is as dry
as dry under you; I will get you something to drink."</p>
<p>And down he scrambled into the ditch, setting his foot firm on a
root, for though he was so young, he knew how to get down to the
water without wetting his feet, or falling in, and how to climb up
a tree, and everything jolly. Guido dipped his hand in the
streamlet, and flung the water over the wheat, five or six good
sprinklings till the drops hung on the wheat-ears. Then he said,
"Now you are better."</p>
<p>"Yes, dear, thank you, my love," said the Wheat, who was very
pleased, though of course the water was not enough to wet its
roots. Still it was pleasant, like a very little shower. Guido lay
down on his chest this time, with his elbows on the ground,
propping his head up, and as he now faced the wheat he could see in
between the stalks.</p>
<p>"Lie still," said the Wheat, "the corncrake is not very far off,
he has come up here since your papa told the mowers to mow the
meadow, and very likely if you stay quiet you will see him. If you
do not understand all I say, never mind, dear; the sunshine is
warm, but not too warm in the shade, and we all love you, and want
you to be as happy as ever you can be."</p>
<p>"It is jolly to be quite hidden like this," said Guido. "No one
could find me; if Paul were to look all day he would never find me;
even Papa could not find me. Now go on and tell me stories."</p>
<p>"Ever so many times, when the oak the lightning struck was
young," said the Wheat, "great stags used to come out of the wood
and feed on the green wheat; it was early in the morning when they
came. Such great stags, and so proud, and yet so timid, the least
thing made them go bound, bound, bound."</p>
<p>"Oh, I know!" said Guido; "I saw some jump over the fence in the
forest—I am going there again soon. If I take my bow I will
shoot one!"</p>
<p>"But there are no deer here now," said the Wheat; "they have
been gone a long, long time; though I think your papa has one of
their antlers,"</p>
<p>"Now, how did you know that?" said Guido; "you have never been
to our house, and you cannot see in from here because the fir copse
is in the way; how do you find out these things?"</p>
<p>"Oh!" said the Wheat, laughing, "we have lots of ways of finding
out things. Don't you remember the swallow that swooped down and
told you not to be frightened at the hare? The swallow has his nest
at your house, and he often flies by your windows and looks in, and
he told me. The birds tell us lots of things, and all about what is
over the sea."</p>
<p>"But that is not a story," said Guido.</p>
<p>"Once upon a time," said the Wheat, "when the oak the lightning
struck was alive, your papa's papa's papa, ever so much farther
back than that, had all the fields round here, all that you can see
from Acre Hill. And do you know it happened that in time every one
of them was lost or sold, and your family, Guido dear, were
homeless—no house, no garden or orchard, and no dogs or guns,
or anything jolly. One day the papa that was then came along the
road with <i>his</i> little Guido, and they were beggars, dear, and
had no place to sleep, and they slept all night in the wheat in
this very field close to where the hawthorn bush grows
now—where you picked the May flowers, you know, my love. They
slept there all the summer night, and the fern owls flew to and
fro, and the bats and crickets chirped, and the stars shone
faintly, as if they were made pale by the heat. The poor papa never
had a house, but that little Guido lived to grow up a great man,
and he worked so hard, and he was so clever, and every one loved
him, which was the best of all things. He bought this very field
and then another, and another, and got such a lot of the old fields
back again, and the goldfinches sang for joy, and so did the larks
and the thrushes, because they said what a kind man he was. Then
his son got some more of them, till at last your papa bought ever
so many more. But we often talk about the little boy who slept in
the wheat in this field, which was his father's father's field. If
only the wheat then could have helped him, and been kind to him,
you may be sure it would. We love you so much we like to see the
very crumbs left by the men who do the hoeing when they eat their
crusts; we wish they could have more to eat, but we like to see
their crumbs, which you know are made of wheat, so that we have
done them some good at least."</p>
<p>"That's not a story," said Guido.</p>
<p>"There's a gold coin here somewhere," said the Wheat, "such a
pretty one, it would make a capital button for your jacket, dear,
or for your mamma; that is all any sort of money is good for; I
wish all the coins were made into buttons for little Guido."</p>
<p>"Where is it?" said Guido.</p>
<p>"I can't exactly tell where it is," said the Wheat. "It was very
near me once, and I thought the next thunder's rain would wash it
down into the streamlet—it has been here ever so long, it
came here first just after the oak the lightning split died. And it
has been rolled about by the ploughs ever since, and no one has
ever seen it; I thought it must go into the ditch at last, but when
the men came to hoe one of them knocked it back, and then another
kicked it along—it was covered with earth—and then, one
day, a rook came and split the clod open with his bill, and pushed
the pieces first one side and then the other, and the coin went one
way, but I did not see; I must ask a humble-bee, or a mouse, or a
mole, or some one who knows more about it. It is very thin, so that
if the rook's bill had struck it, his strong bill would have made a
dint in it, and there is, I think, a ship marked on it."</p>
<p>"Oh, I must have it! A ship! Ask a humble-bee directly; be
quick!"</p>
<p>Bang! There was a loud report, a gun had gone off in the
copse.</p>
<p>"That's my papa," shouted Guido. "I'm sure that was my papa's
gun!" Up he jumped, and getting down the ditch, stepped across the
water, and, seizing a hazel-bough to help himself, climbed up the
bank. At the top he slipped through the fence by the oak and so
into the copse. He was in such a hurry he did not mind the thistles
or the boughs that whipped him as they sprang back, he scrambled
through, meeting the vapour of the gunpowder and the smell of
sulphur. In a minute he found a green path, and in the path was his
papa, who had just shot a cruel crow. The crow had been eating the
birds' eggs, and picking the little birds to pieces.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="2">GOLDEN-BROWN</a></h3>
<p>Three fruit-pickers—women—were the first people I
met near the village (in Kent). They were clad in "rags and jags,"
and the face of the eldest was in "jags" also. It was torn and
scarred by time and weather; wrinkled, and in a manner twisted like
the fantastic turns of a gnarled tree-trunk, hollow and decayed.
Through these jags and tearings of weather, wind, and work, the
nakedness of the countenance—the barren framework—was
visible; the cheekbones like knuckles, the chin of brown stoneware,
the upper-lip smooth, and without the short groove which should
appear between lip and nostrils. Black shadows dwelt in the hollows
of the cheeks and temples, and there was a blackness about the
eyes. This blackness gathers in the faces of the old who have been
much exposed to the sun, the fibres of the skin are scorched and
half-charred, like a stick thrust in the fire, and withdrawn before
the flames seize it. Beside her were two young women, both in the
freshness of youth and health. Their faces glowed 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 drank up by the surface of the
skin, and emanated from it.</p>
<p>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 cannot be supplied in any other form but the sun's rays. It
reddens the cherry, it gilds the apple, it colours the rose, it
ripens the wheat, it touches a woman's face with the golden-brown
of ripe life—ripe as a plum. There is no other hue so
beautiful as this human sunshine tint.</p>
<p>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 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 dawn 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.</p>
<p>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
browned by the work of caterpillars; they were in rags and jags,
their shoes had split, and their feet looked twice as wide in
consequence. Their hands were black; not grimy, but absolutely
black, and neither hands nor necks ever knew water, I am sure.
There was not the least shape to their garments; their dresses
simply hung down in straight ungraceful lines; there was no colour
of ribbon or flower, to light up the dinginess. But they had the
golden-brown in their faces, and they were beautiful.</p>
<p>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 could not purchase—a superb health in their carriage
princesses could not obtain. It came, then, from the air and
sunlight, and still more, from some alchemy unknown to the
physician or the physiologist, some faculty exercised by the body,
happily endowed with a special power of extracting the utmost
richness and benefit from the rudest elements. Thrice blessed and
fortunate, beautiful golden-brown in their cheeks, superb health in
their gait, they walked as the immortals on earth.</p>
<p>As they passed they regarded me with bitter envy, jealousy, and
hatred written in their eyes; they cursed me in their hearts. I
verily believe—so unmistakably hostile were their
glances—that had opportunity been given, in the dead of night
and far from help, they would gladly have taken me unawares with
some blow of stone or club, and, having rendered me senseless,
would have robbed me, and considered it a righteous act. Not that
there was any blood-thirstiness or exceptional evil in their nature
more than in that of the thousand-and-one toilers that are met on
the highway, but simply because they worked—such hard work of
hands and stooping backs, and I was idle, for all they knew.
Because they were going from one field of labour to another field
of labour, and I walked slowly and did no visible work. My dress
showed no stain, the weather had not battered it; there was no
rent, no rags and jags. At an hour when they were merely changing
one place of work for another place of work, to them it appeared
that I had found idleness indoors wearisome and had just come forth
to exchange it for another idleness. They saw no end to their
labour; they had worked from childhood, and could see no possible
end to labour until limbs failed or life closed. Why should they be
like this? Why should I do nothing? They were as good as I was, and
they hated me. Their indignant glances spoke it as plain as words,
and far more distinctly than I can write it. You cannot read it
with such feeling as I received their looks.</p>
<p>Beautiful golden-brown, superb health, what would I not give for
these? To be the thrice-blessed and chosen of nature, what
inestimable fortune! To be indifferent to any
circumstances—to be quite thoughtless as to draughts and
chills, careless of heat, indifferent to the character of dinners,
able to do well on hard, dry bread, capable of sleeping in the open
under a rick, or some slight structure of a hurdle, propped on a
few sticks and roughly thatched with straw, and to sleep sound as
an oak, and wake strong as an oak in the morning-gods, what a
glorious life! I envied them; they fancied I looked askance at
their rags and jags. I envied them, and considered their health and
hue ideal. I envied them that unwearied step, that firm
uprightness, and measured yet lazy gait, but most of all the power
which they possessed, though they did not exercise it
intentionally, of being always in the sunlight, the air, and abroad
upon the earth. If so they chose, and without stress or strain,
they could see the sunrise, they could be with him as it
were—unwearied and without distress—the livelong day;
they could stay on while the moon rose over the corn, and till the
silent stars at silent midnight shone in the cool summer night, and
on and on till the cock crew and the faint dawn appeared. The whole
time in the open air, resting at mid-day under the elms with the
ripple of heat flowing through the shadow; at midnight between the
ripe corn and the hawthorn hedge on the white wild camomile and the
poppy pale in the duskiness, with face upturned to the thoughtful
heaven.</p>
<p>Consider the glory of it, the life above this life to be
obtained from constant presence with the sunlight and the stars. I
thought of them all day, and envied them (as they envied me), and
in the evening I found them again. It was growing dark, and the
shadow took away something of the coarseness of the group outside
one of the village "pothouses." Green foliage overhung them and the
men with whom they were drinking; the white pipes, the blue smoke,
the flash of a match, the red sign which had so often swung to and
fro in the gales now still in the summer eve, the rude seats and
blocks, the reaping-hooks bound about the edge with hay, the white
dogs creeping from knee to knee, some such touches gave an interest
to the scene. But a quarrel had begun; the men swore, but the women
did worse. It is impossible to give a hint of the language they
used, especially the elder of the three whose hollow face was
blackened by time and exposure. The two golden-brown girls were so
heavily intoxicated they could but stagger to and fro and mouth and
gesticulate, and one held a quart from which, as she moved, she
spilled the ale.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="3">WILD FLOWERS</a></h3>
<p>A fir-tree is not a flower, and yet it is associated in my mind
with primroses. There was a narrow lane leading into a wood, where
I used to go almost every day in the early months of the year, and
at one corner it was overlooked by three spruce firs. The rugged
lane there began to ascend the hill, and I paused a moment to look
back. Immediately the high fir-trees guided the eye upwards, and
from their tops to the deep azure of the March sky over, but a step
from the tree to the heavens. So it has ever been to me, by day or
by night, summer or winter, beneath trees the heart feels nearer to
that depth of life the far sky means. The rest of spirit found only
in beauty, ideal and pure, comes there because the distance seems
within touch of thought. To the heaven thought can reach lifted by
the strong arms of the oak, carried up by the ascent of the
flame-shaped fir. Round the spruce top the blue was deepened,
concentrated by the fixed point; the memory of that spot, as it
were, of the sky is still fresh—I can see it
distinctly—still beautiful and full of meaning. It is painted
in bright colour in my mind, colour thrice laid, and indelible; as
one passes a shrine and bows the head to the Madonna, so I recall
the picture and stoop in spirit to the aspiration it yet arouses.
For there is no saint like the sky, sunlight shining from its
face.</p>
<p>The fir-tree flowered thus before the primroses—the first
of all to give me a bloom, beyond reach but visible, while even the
hawthorn buds hesitated to open. Primroses were late there, a high
district and thin soil; you could read of them as found elsewhere
in January; they rarely came much before March, and but sparingly
then. On the warm red sand (red, at least, to look at, but green by
geological courtesy, I think) of Sussex, round about Hurst of the
Pierre-points, primroses are seen soon after the year has turned.
In the lanes about that curious old mansion, with its windows
reaching from floor to roof, that stands at the base of Wolstanbury
Hill, they grow early, and ferns linger in sheltered overhung
banks. The South Down range, like a great wall, shuts off the sea,
and has a different climate on either hand; south by the
sea—hard, harsh, flowerless, almost grassless, bitter, and
cold; on the north side, just over the hill—warm, soft, with
primroses and fern, willows budding and birds already busy. It is a
double England there, two countries side by side.</p>
<p>On a summer's day Wolstanbury Hill is an island in sunshine; you
may lie on the grassy rampart, high up in the most delicate
air—Grecian air, pellucid—alone, among the butterflies
and humming bees at the thyme, alone and isolated; endless masses
of hills on three sides, endless weald or valley on the fourth; all
warmly lit with sunshine, deep under liquid sunshine like the sands
under the liquid sea, no harshness of man-made sound to break the
insulation amid nature, on an island in a far Pacific of sunshine.
Some people would hesitate to walk down the staircase cut in the
turf to the beech-trees beneath; the woods look so small beneath,
so far down and steep, and no handrail. Many go to the Dyke, but
none to Wolstanbury Hill. To come over the range reminds one of
what travellers say of coming over the Alps into Italy; from harsh
sea-slopes, made dry with salt as they sow salt on razed cities
that naught may grow, to warm plains rich in all things, and with
great hills as pictures hung on a wall to gaze at. Where there are
beech-trees the land is always beautiful; beech-trees at the foot
of this hill, beech-trees at Arundel in that lovely park which the
Duke of Norfolk, to his glory, leaves open to all the world, and
where the anemones flourish in unusual size and number; beech-trees
in Marlborough Forest; beech-trees at the summit to which the lane
leads that was spoken of just now. Beech and beautiful scenery go
together.</p>
<p>But the primroses by that lane did not appear till late; they
covered the banks under the thousand thousand ash-poles; foxes
slipped along there frequently, whose friends in scarlet coats
could not endure the pale flowers, for they might chink their spurs
homewards. In one meadow near primroses were thicker than the
grass, with gorse interspersed, and the rabbits that came out fed
among flowers. The primroses last on to the celandines and
cowslips, through the time of the bluebells, past the
violets—one dies but passes on the life to another, one sets
light to the next, till the ruddy oaks and singing cuckoos call up
the tall mowing grass to fringe summer.</p>
<p>Before I had any conscious thought it was a delight to me to
find wild flowers, just to see them. It was a pleasure to gather
them and to take them home; a pleasure to show them to
others—to keep them as long as they would live, to decorate
the room with them, to arrange them carelessly with grasses, green
sprays, tree-bloom—large branches of chestnut snapped off,
and set by a picture perhaps. Without conscious thought of seasons
and the advancing hours to light on the white wild violet, the
meadow orchis, the blue veronica, the blue meadow cranesbill;
feeling the warmth and delight of the increasing sun-rays, but not
recognising whence or why it was joy. All the world is young to a
boy, and thought has not entered into it; even the old men with
grey hair do not seem old; different but not aged, the idea of age
has not been mastered. A boy has to frown and study, and then does
not grasp what long years mean. The various hues of the petals
pleased without any knowledge of colour-contrasts, no note even of
colour except that it was bright, and the mind was made happy
without consideration of those ideals and hopes afterwards
associated with the azure sky above the fir-tree. A fresh footpath,
a fresh flower, a fresh delight. The reeds, the grasses, the
rushes—unknown and new things at every step—something
always to find; no barren spot anywhere, or sameness. Every day the
grass painted anew, and its green seen for the first time; not the
old green, but a novel hue and spectacle, like the first view of
the sea.</p>
<p>If we had never before looked upon the earth, but suddenly came
to it man or woman grown, set down in the midst of a summer mead,
would it not seem to us a radiant vision? The hues, the shapes, the
song and life of birds, above all the sunlight, the breath of
heaven, resting on it; the mind would be filled with its glory,
unable to grasp it, hardly believing that such things could be mere
matter and no more. Like a dream of some spirit-land it would
appear, scarce fit to be touched lest it should fall to pieces, too
beautiful to be long watched lest it should fade away. So it seemed
to me as a boy, sweet and new like this each morning; and even now,
after the years that have passed, and the lines they have worn in
the forehead, the summer mead shines as bright and fresh as when my
foot first touched the grass. It has another meaning now; the
sunshine and the flowers speak differently, for a heart that has
once known sorrow reads behind the page, and sees sadness in joy.
But the freshness is still there, the dew washes the colours before
dawn. Unconscious happiness in finding wild
flowers—unconscious and unquestioning, and therefore
unbounded.</p>
<p>I used to stand by the mower and follow the scythe sweeping down
thousands of the broad-flowered daisies, the knotted knapweeds, the
blue scabious, the yellow rattles, sweeping so close and true that
nothing escaped; and, yet although I had seen so many hundreds of
each, although I had lifted armfuls day after day, still they were
fresh. They never lost their newness, and even now each time I
gather a wild flower it feels a new thing. The greenfinches came to
the fallen swathe so near to us they seemed to have no fear; but I
remember the yellowhammers most, whose colour, like that of the
wild flowers and the sky, has never faded from my memory. The
greenfinches sank into the fallen swathe, the loose grass gave
under their weight and let them bathe in flowers.</p>
<p>One yellowhammer sat on a branch of ash the livelong morning,
still singing in the sun; his bright head, his clean bright yellow,
gaudy as Spain, was drawn like a brush charged heavily with colour
across the retina, painting it deeply, for there on the eye's
memory it endures, though that was boyhood and this is manhood,
still unchanged. The field— Stewart's Mash—the very
tree, young ash timber, the branch projecting over the sward, I
could make a map of them. Sometimes I think sun-painted colours are
brighter to me than to many, and more strongly affect the nerves of
the eye. Straw going by the road on a dusky winter's day seems so
pleasantly golden, the sheaves lying aslant at the top, and these
bundles of yellow tubes thrown up against the dark ivy on the
opposite wall. Tiles, red burned, or orange coated, the sea
sometimes cleanly definite, the shadows of trees in a thin wood
where there is room for shadows to form and fall; some such shadows
are sharper than light, and have a faint blue tint. Not only in
summer but in cold winter, and not only romantic things but plain
matter-of-fact things, as a waggon freshly painted red beside the
wright's shop, stand out as if wet with colour and delicately
pencilled at the edges. It must be out of doors; nothing indoors
looks like this.</p>
<p>Pictures are very dull and gloomy to it, and very contrasted
colours like those the French use are necessary to fix the
attention. Their dashes of pink and scarlet bring the faint shadow
of the sun into the room. As for our painters, their works are hung
behind a curtain, and we have to peer patiently through the dusk of
evening to see what they mean. Out-of-door colours do not need to
be gaudy—a mere dull stake of wood thrust in the ground often
stands out sharper than the pink flashes of the French studio; a
faggot; the outline of a leaf; low tints without reflecting power
strike the eye as a bell the ear. To me they are intensely clear,
and the clearer the greater the pleasure. It is often too great,
for it takes me away from solid pursuits merely to receive the
impression, as water is still to reflect the trees. To me it is
very painful when illness blots the definition of outdoor things,
so wearisome not to see them rightly, and more oppressive than
actual pain. I feel as if I was struggling to wake up with dim,
half-opened lids and heavy mind. This one yellowhammer still sits
on the ash branch in Stewart's Mash over the sward, singing in the
sun, his feathers freshly wet with colour, the same sun-song, and
will sing to me so long as the heart shall beat.</p>
<p>The first conscious thought about wild flowers was to find out
their names—the first conscious pleasure,—and then I
began to see so many that I had not previously noticed. Once you
wish to identify them there is nothing escapes, down to the little
white chickweed of the path and the moss of the wall. I put my hand
on the bridge across the brook to lean over and look down into the
water. Are there any fish? The bricks of the pier are covered with
green, like a wall-painting to the surface of the stream, mosses
along the lines of the mortar, and among the moss little
plants—what are these? In the dry sunlit lane I look up to
the top of the great wall about some domain, where the green figs
look over upright on their stalks; there are dry plants on the
coping—what are these? Some growing thus, high in the air, on
stone, and in the chinks of the tower, suspended in dry air and
sunshine; some low down under the arch of the bridge over the
brook, out of sight utterly, unless you stoop by the brink of the
water and project yourself forward to examine under. The kingfisher
sees them as he shoots through the barrel of the culvert. There the
sun direct never shines upon them, but the sunlight thrown up by
the ripples runs all day in bright bars along the vault of the
arch, playing on them. The stream arranges the sand in the shallow
in bars, minute fixed undulations; the stream arranges the sunshine
in successive flashes, undulating as if the sun, drowsy in the
heat, were idly closing and unclosing his eyelids for sleep.</p>
<p>Plants everywhere, hiding behind every tree, under the leaves,
in the shady places, behind the dry furrows of the field; they are
only just behind something, hidden openly. The instant you look for
them they multiply a hundredfold; if you sit on the beach and begin
to count the pebbles by you, their number instantly increases to
infinity by virtue of that conscious act.</p>
<p>The bird's-foot lotus was the first. The boy must have seen it,
must have trodden on it in the bare woodland pastures, certainly
run about on it, with wet naked feet from the bathing; but the boy
was not conscious of it. This was the first, when the desire came
to identify and to know, fixing upon it by means of a pale and
feeble picture. In the largest pasture there were different soils
and climates; it was so large it seemed a little country of itself
then—the more so because the ground rose and fell, making a
ridge to divide the view and enlarge by uncertainty. The high sandy
soil on the ridge where the rabbits had their warren; the rocky
soil of the quarry; the long grass by the elms where the rooks
built, under whose nests there were vast unpalatable
mushrooms—the true mushrooms with salmon gills grew nearer
the warren; the slope towards the nut-tree hedge and spring.
Several climates in one field: the wintry ridge over which leaves
were always driving in all four seasons of the year; the level
sunny plain and fallen cromlech still tall enough for a gnomon and
to cast its shadow in the treeless drought; the moist, warm, grassy
depression; the lotus-grown slope, warm and dry.</p>
<p>If you have been living in one house in the country for some
time, and then go on a visit to another, though hardly half a mile
distant, you will find a change in the air, the feeling, and tone
of the place. It is close by, but it is not the same. To discover
these minute differences, which make one locality healthy and home
happy, and the next adjoining unhealthy, the Chinese have invented
the science of Feng-shui, spying about with cabalistic mystery,
casting the horoscope of an acre. There is something in all
superstitions; they are often the foundation of science.
Superstition having made the discovery, science composes a lecture
on the reason why, and claims the credit. Bird's-foot lotus means a
fortunate spot, dry, warm—so far as soil is concerned. If you
were going to live out of doors, you might safely build your
kibitka where you found it. Wandering with the pictured
flower-book, just purchased, over the windy ridge where last year's
skeleton leaves, blown out from the alder copse below, came on with
grasshopper motion—lifted and laid down by the wind, lifted
and laid down—I sat on the sward of the sheltered slope, and
instantly recognised the orange-red claws of the flower beside me.
That was the first; and this very morning, I dread to consider how
many years afterwards, I found a plant on a wall which I do not
know. I shall have to trace out its genealogy and emblazon its
shield. So many years and still only at the beginning—the
beginning, too, of the beginning—for as yet I have not
thought of the garden or conservatory flowers (which are wild
flowers somewhere), or of the tropics, or the prairies.</p>
<p>The great stone of the fallen cromlech, crouching down afar off
in the plain behind me, cast its shadow in the sunny morn as it had
done, so many summers, for centuries—for thousands of years:
worn white by the endless sunbeams—the ceaseless flood of
light—the sunbeams of centuries, the impalpable beams
polishing and grinding like rushing water: silent, yet witnessing
of the Past; shadowing the Present on the dial of the field: a mere
dull stone; but what is it the mind will not employ to express to
itself its own thoughts?</p>
<p>There was a hollow near in which hundreds of skeleton leaves had
settled, a stage on their journey from the alder copse, so thick as
to cover the thin grass, and at the side of the hollow a wasp's
nest had been torn out by a badger. On the soft and spreading sand
thrown out from his burrow the print of his foot looked as large as
an elephant might make. The wild animals of our fields are so small
that the badger's foot seemed foreign in its size, calling up
thought of the great game of distant forests. He was a bold badger
to make his burrow there in the open warren, unprotected by park
walls or preserve laws, where every one might see who chose. I
never saw him by daylight: that they do get about in daytime is,
however, certain, for one was shot in Surrey recently by sportsmen;
they say he weighed forty pounds.</p>
<p>In the mind all things are written in pictures—there is no
alphabetical combination of letters and words; all things are
pictures and symbols. The bird's-foot lotus is the picture to me of
sunshine and summer, and of that summer in the heart which is known
only in youth, and then not alone. No words could write that
feeling: the bird's-foot lotus writes it.</p>
<p>When the efforts to photograph began, the difficulty was to fix
the scene thrown by the lens upon the plate. There the view
appeared perfect to the least of details, worked out by the sun,
and made as complete in miniature as that he shone upon in nature.
But it faded like the shadows as the summer sun declines. Have you
watched them in the fields among the flowers?—the deep strong
mark of the noonday shadow of a tree such as the pen makes drawn
heavily on the paper; gradually it loses its darkness and becomes
paler and thinner at the edge as it lengthens and spreads, till
shadow and grass mingle together. Image after image faded from the
plates, no more to be fixed than the reflection in water of the
trees by the shore. Memory, like the sun, paints to me bright
pictures of the golden summer time of lotus; I can see them, but
how shall I fix them for you? By no process can that be
accomplished. It is like a story that cannot be told because he who
knows it is tongue-tied and dumb. Motions of hands, wavings and
gestures, rudely convey the framework, but the finish is not
there.</p>
<p>To-day, and day after day, fresh pictures are coloured
instantaneously in the retina as bright and perfect in detail and
hue. This very power is often, I think, the cause of pain to me. To
see so clearly is to value so highly and to feel too deeply. The
smallest of the pencilled branches of the bare ash-tree drawn
distinctly against the winter sky, waving lines one within the
other, yet following and partly parallel, reproducing in the curve
of the twig the curve of the great trunk; is it not a pleasure to
trace each to its ending? The raindrops as they slide from leaf to
leaf in June, the balmy shower that reperfumes each wild flower and
green thing, drops lit with the sun, and falling to the chorus of
the refreshed birds; is not this beautiful to see? On the grasses
tall and heavy the purplish blue pollen, a shimmering dust, sown
broadcast over the ripening meadow from July's warm hand—the
bluish pollen, the lilac pollen of the grasses, a delicate mist of
blue floating on the surface, has always been an especial delight
to me. Finches shake it from the stalks as they rise. No day, no
hour of summer, no step but brings new mazes—there is no word
to express design without plan, and these designs of flower and
leaf and colours of the sun cannot be reduced to set order. The eye
is for ever drawn onward and finds no end. To see these always so
sharply, wet and fresh, is almost too much sometimes for the
wearied yet insatiate eye. I am obliged to turn away—to shut
my eyes and say I will not see, I will not observe; I will
concentrate my mind on my own little path of life, and steadily
gaze downwards. In vain. Who can do so? who can care alone for his
or her petty trifles of existence, that has once entered amongst
the wild flowers? How shall I shut out the sun? Shall I deny the
constellations of the night? They are there; the Mystery is for
ever about us—the question, the hope, the aspiration cannot
be put out. So that it is almost a pain not to be able to cease
observing and tracing the untraceable maze of beauty.</p>
<p>Blue veronica was the next identified, sometimes called
germander speedwell, sometimes bird's-eye, whose leaves are so
plain and petals so blue. Many names increase the trouble of
identification, and confusion is made certain by the use of various
systems of classification. The flower itself I knew, its name I
could not be sure of—not even from the illustration, which
was incorrectly coloured; the central white spot of the flower was
reddish in the plate. This incorrect colouring spoils much of the
flower-picturing done; pictures of flowers and birds are rarely
accurate unless hand-painted. Any one else, however, would have
been quite satisfied that the identification was right. I was too
desirous to be correct, too conscientious, and thus a summer went
by with little progress. If you really wish to identify with
certainty, and have no botanist friend and no <i>magnum opus</i> of
Sowerby to refer to, it is very difficult indeed to be quite sure.
There was no Sowerby, no Bentham, no botanist friend—no one
even to give the common country names; for it is a curious fact
that the country people of the time rarely know the names put down
as the vernacular for flowers in the books.</p>
<p>No one there could tell me the name of the marsh-marigold which
grew thickly in the water-meadows—"A sort of big buttercup,"
that was all they knew. Commonest of common plants is the "sauce
alone"—in every hedge, on every bank, the whitish-green leaf
is found—yet <i>I</i> could not make certain of it. If some
one tells you a plant, you know it at once and never forget it, but
to learn it from a book is another matter; it does not at once take
root in the mind, it has to be seen several times before you are
satisfied—you waver in your convictions. The leaves were
described as large and heart-shaped, and to remain green (at the
ground) through the winter; but the colour of the flower was
omitted, though it was stated that the petals of the hedge-mustard
were yellow. The plant that seemed to me to be probably "sauce
alone" had leaves somewhat heart-shaped, but so confusing is
<i>partial</i> description that I began to think I had hit on
"ramsons" instead of "sauce alone," especially as ramsons was said
to be a very common plant. So it is in some counties, but, as I
afterwards found, there was not a plant of ramsons, or garlic,
throughout the whole of that district. When, some years afterwards,
I saw a white-flowered plant with leaves like the lily of the
valley, smelling of garlic, in the woods of Somerset, I recognised
It immediately. The plants that are really common—common
everywhere—are not numerous, and if you are studying you must
be careful to understand that word locally. My "sauce alone"
identification was right; to be right and not certain is still
unsatisfactory.</p>
<p>There shone on the banks white stars among the grass. Petals
delicately white in a whorl of rays—light that had started
radiating from a centre and become fixed—shining among the
flowerless green. The slender stem had grown so fast it had drawn
its own root partly out of the ground, and when I tried to gather
it, flower, stem and root came away together. The wheat was
springing, the soft air full of the growth and moisture, blackbirds
whistling, wood-pigeons nesting, young oak-leaves out; a sense of
swelling, sunny fulness in the atmosphere. The plain road was made
beautiful by the advanced boughs that overhung and cast their
shadows on the dust—boughs of ash-green, shadows that lay
still, listening to the nightingale. A place of enchantment in the
mornings where was felt the power of some subtle influence working
behind bough and grass and bird-song. The orange-golden dandelion
in the sward was deeply laden with colour brought to it anew again
and again by the ships of the flowers, the humble-bees—to
their quays they come, unlading priceless essences of sweet odours
brought from the East over the green seas of wheat, unlading
priceless colours on the broad dandelion disks, bartering these
things for honey and pollen. Slowly tacking aslant, the pollen ship
hums in the south wind. The little brown wren finds her way through
the great thicket of hawthorn. How does she know her path, hidden
by a thousand thousand leaves? Tangled and crushed together by
their own growth, a crown of thorns hangs over the thrush's nest;
thorns for the mother, hope for the young. Is there a crown of
thorns over your heart? A spike has gone deep enough into mine. The
stile looks farther away because boughs have pushed forward and
made it smaller. The willow scarce holds the sap that tightens the
bark and would burst it if it did not enlarge to the pressure.</p>
<p>Two things can go through the solid oak; the lightning of the
clouds that rends the iron timber, the lightning of the
spring—the electricity of the sunbeams forcing him to stretch
forth and lengthen his arms with joy. Bathed in buttercups to the
dewlap, the roan cows standing in the golden lake watched the hours
with calm frontlet; watched the light descending, the meadows
filling, with knowledge of long months of succulent clover. On
their broad brows the year falls gently; their great, beautiful
eyes, which need but a tear or a smile to make them
human,—without these, such eyes, so large and full, seem
above human life, eyes of the immortals enduring without
passion,—in these eyes, as a mirror, nature is reflected.</p>
<p>I came every day to walk slowly up and down the plain road, by
the starry flowers under the ash-green boughs; ash is the coolest,
softest green. The bees went drifting over by my head; as they
cleared the hedges they passed by my ears, the wind singing in
their shrill wings. White tent-walls of cloud—a warm white,
being full to overflowing of sunshine—stretched across from
ash-top to ash-top, a cloud-canvas roof, a tent-palace of the
delicious air. For of all things there is none so sweet as sweet
air—one great flower it is, drawn round about, over, and
enclosing, like Aphrodite's arms; as if the dome of the sky were a
bell-flower drooping down over us, and the magical essence of it
filling all the room of the earth. Sweetest of all things is
wild-flower air. Full of their ideal the starry flowers strained
upwards on the bank, striving to keep above the rude grasses that
pushed by them; genius has ever had such a struggle. The plain road
was made beautiful by the many thoughts it gave. I came every
morning to stay by the starlit bank.</p>
<p>A friend said, "Why do you go the same road every day? Why not
have a change and walk somewhere else sometimes? Why keep on up and
down the same place?" I could not answer; till then it had not
occurred to me that I did always go one way; as for the reason of
it I could not tell; I continued in my old mind while the summers
went away. Not till years afterwards was I able to see why I went
the same round and did not care for change. I do not want change: I
want the same old and loved things, the same wild-flowers, the same
trees and soft ash-green; the turtle-doves, the blackbirds, the
coloured yellowhammer sing, sing, singing so long as there is light
to cast a shadow on the dial, for such is the measure of his song,
and I want them in the same place. Let me find them morning after
morning, the starry-white petals radiating, striving upwards to
their ideal. Let me see the idle shadows resting on the white dust;
let me hear the humble-bees, and stay to look down on the rich
dandelion disk. Let me see the very thistles opening their great
crowns—I should miss the thistles; the reed-grasses hiding
the moorhen; the bryony bine, at first crudely ambitious and lifted
by force of youthful sap straight above the hedgerow to sink of its
own weight presently and progress with crafty tendrils; swifts shot
through the air with outstretched wings like crescent-headed
shaftless arrows darted from the clouds; the chaffinch with a
feather in her bill; all the living staircase of the spring, step
by step, upwards to the great gallery of the summer—let me
watch the same succession year by year.</p>
<p>Why, I knew the very dates of them all—the reddening elm,
the arum, the hawthorn leaf, the celandine, the may; the yellow
iris of the waters, the heath of the hillside. The time of the
nightingale—the place to hear the first note; onwards to the
drooping fern and the time of the redwing—the place of his
first note, so welcome to the sportsman as the acorn ripens and the
pheasant, come to the age of manhood, feeds himself; onwards to the
shadowless days—the long shadowless winter, for in winter it
is the shadows we miss as much as the light. They lie over the
summer sward, design upon design, dark lace on green and gold; they
glorify the sunlight: they repose on the distant hills like gods
upon Olympus; without shadow, what even is the sun? At the foot of
the great cliffs by the sea you may know this, it is dry glare;
mighty ocean is dearer as the shadows of the clouds sweep over as
they sweep over the green corn. Past the shadowless winter, when it
is all shade, and therefore no shadow; onwards to the first
coltsfoot and on to the seed-time again; I knew the dates of all of
them. I did not want change; I wanted the same flowers to return on
the same day, the titlark to rise soaring from the same oak to
fetch down love with a song from heaven to his mate on the nest
beneath. No change, no new thing; if I found a fresh wild-flower in
a fresh place, still it wove at once into the old garland. In vain,
the very next year was different even in the same
place—<i>that</i> had been a year of rain, and the flag
flowers were wonderful to see; <i>this</i> was a dry year, and the
flags not half the height, the gold of the flower not so deep; next
year the fatal billhook came and swept away a slow-grown hedge that
had given me crab-blossom in cuckoo-time and hazelnuts in harvest.
Never again the same, even in the same place.</p>
<p>A little feather droops downwards to the ground—a
swallow's feather fuller of miracle than the Pentateuch—how
shall that feather be placed again in the breast where it grew?
Nothing twice. Time changes the places that knew us, and if we go
back in after years, still even then it is not the old spot; the
gate swings differently, new thatch has been put on the old gables,
the road has been widened, and the sward the driven sheep lingered
on is gone. Who dares to think then? For faces fade as flowers, and
there is no consolation. So now I am sure I was right in always
walking the same way by the starry flowers striving upwards on a
slender ancestry of stem; I would follow the plain old road to-day
if I could. Let change be far from me; that irresistible change
must come is bitter indeed. Give me the old road, the same
flowers—they were only stitchwort—the old succession of
days and garland, ever weaving into it fresh wild-flowers from far
and near. Fetch them from distant mountains, discover them on
decaying walls, in unsuspected corners; though never seen before,
still they are the same: there has been a place in the heart
waiting for them.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="4">SUNNY BRIGHTON</a></h3>
<p>Some of the old streets opening out of the King's Road look very
pleasant on a sunny day. They ran to the north, so that the sun
over the sea shines nearly straight up them, and at the farther
end, where the houses close in on higher ground, the deep blue sky
descends to the rooftrees. The old red tiles, the red chimneys, the
green jalousies, give some colour; and beneath there are shadowy
corners and archways. They are not too wide to whisper across, for
it is curious that to be interesting a street must be narrow, and
the pavements are but two or three bricks broad. These pavements
are not for the advantage of foot passengers; they are merely to
prevent cart-wheels from grating against the houses. There is
nothing ancient or carved in these streets, they are but moderately
old, yet turning from the illuminated sea it is pleasant to glance
up them as you pass, in their stillness and shadow, lying outside
the inconsiderate throng walking to and fro, and contrasting in
their irregularity with the set façades of the front.
Opposite, across the King's Road, the mastheads of the fishing
boats on the beach just rise above the rails of the cliff, tipped
with fluttering pennants, or fish-shaped vanes changing to the
wind. They have a pulley at the end of a curved piece of iron for
hauling up the lantern to the top of the mast when trawling; this
thin curve, with a dot at the extremity surmounting the straight
and rigid mast, suits the artist's pencil. The gold-plate
shop—there is a bust of Psyche in the doorway—often
attracts the eye in passing; gold and silver plate in large masses
is striking, and it is a very good place to stand a minute and
watch the passers-by.</p>
<p>It is a Piccadilly crowd by the sea-exactly the same style of
people you meet in Piccadilly, but freer in dress, and particularly
in hats. All fashionable Brighton parades the King's Road twice a
day, morning and afternoon, always on the side of the shops. The
route is up and down the King's Road as far as Preston Street, back
again and up East Street. Riding and driving Brighton extends its
Rotten Row sometimes to Third Avenue, Hove. These well-dressed and
leading people never look at the sea. Watching by the gold-plate
shop you will not observe a single glance in the direction of the
sea, beautiful as it is, gleaming under the sunlight. They do not
take the slightest interest in sea, or sun, or sky, or the fresh
breeze calling white horses from the deep. Their pursuits are
purely "social," and neither ladies nor gentlemen ever go on the
beach or lie where the surge comes to the feet. The beach is
ignored; it is almost, perhaps quite vulgar; or rather it is
entirely outside the pale. No one rows, very few sail; the sea is
not "the thing" in Brighton, which is the least nautical of seaside
places. There is more talk of horses.</p>
<p>The wind coming up the cliff seems to bring with it whole
armfuls of sunshine, and to throw the warmth and light against you
as you linger. The walls and glass reflect the light and push back
the wind in puffs and eddies; the awning flutters; light and wind
spring upwards from the pavement; the sky is richly blue against
the parapets overhead; there are houses on one side, but on the
other open space and sea, and dim clouds in the extreme distance.
The atmosphere is full of light, and gives a sense of liveliness!
every atom of it is in motion. How delicate are the fore legs of
these thoroughbred horses passing! Small and slender, the hoof, as
the limb rises, seems to hang by a thread, yet there is strength
and speed in those sinews. Strength is often associated with size,
with the mighty flank, the round barrel, the great shoulder. But I
marvel more at the manner in which that strength is conveyed
through these slender sinews; the huge brawn and breadth of flesh
all depend upon these little cords. It is at these junctions that
the wonder of life is most evident. The succession of well-shaped
horses, overtaking and passing, crossing, meeting, their
high-raised heads and action increase the impression of pleasant
movement. Quick wheels, sometimes a tandem, or a painted coach,
towering over the line,—so rolls the procession of busy
pleasure. There is colour in hat and bonnet, feathers, flowers, and
mantles, not brilliant but rapidly changing, and in that sense
bright. Faces on which the sun shines and the wind blows whether
cared for or not, and lit up thereby; faces seen for a moment and
immediately followed by others as interesting; a flowing gallery of
portraits; all life, life! Waiting unobserved under the awning,
occasionally, too, I hear voices as the throng goes by on the
pavement—pleasant tones of people chatting and the human
sunshine of laughter. The atmosphere is full of movement, full of
light, and life streams to and fro.</p>
<p>Yonder, over the road, a row of fishermen lean against the rails
of the cliff, some with their backs to the sea, some facing it.
"The cliff" is rather a misnomer, it is more like a sea-wall in
height. This row of stout men in blue jerseys, or copper-hued tan
frocks, seems to be always there, always waiting for the
tide—or nothing. Each has his particular position; one,
shorter than the rest, leans with his elbows backwards on the low
rail; another hangs over and looks down at the site of the fish
market; an older man stands upright, and from long habit looks
steadily out to sea. They have their hands in their pockets; they
appear fat and jolly, as round as the curves of their smacks drawn
up on the beach beneath them. They are of such that "sleep o'
nights;" no anxious ambition disturbs their placidity. No man in
this world knows how to absolutely do—nothing, like a
fisherman. Sometimes he turns round, sometimes he does not, that is
all. The sun shines, the breeze comes up the cliff, far away a
French fishing lugger is busy enough. The boats on the beach are
idle, and swarms of boys are climbing over them, swinging on a rope
from the bowsprit, or playing at marbles under the cliff. Bigger
boys collect under the lee of a smack, and do nothing cheerfully.
The fashionable throng hastens to and fro, but the row leaning
against the railings do not stir.</p>
<p>Doleful tales they have to tell any one who inquires about the
fishing. There have been "no herrings" these two years. One man
went out with his smack, and after working for hours returned with
<i>one sole</i>. I can never get this one sole out of my mind when
I see the row by the rails. While the fisherman was telling me this
woeful story, I fancied I heard voices from a crowd of the bigger
boys collected under a smack, voices that said, "Ho! ho! Go on!
you're kidding the man!" Is there much "kidding" in this business
of fish? Another man told me (but he was not a smack proprietor)
that L50, L70, or L80 was a common night's catch. Some people say
that the smacks never put to sea until the men have spent every
shilling they have got, and are obliged to sail. If truth lies at
the bottom of a well, it is the well of a fishing boat, for there
is nothing so hard to get at as the truth about fish. At the time
when society was pluming itself on the capital results attained by
the Fisheries Exhibition in London, and gentlemen described in the
papers how they had been to market and purchased cod at sixpence a
pound, one shilling and eightpence a pound was the price in the
Brighton fishmongers' shops, close to the sea. Not the least effect
was produced in Brighton; fish remains at precisely the same price
as before all this ridiculous trumpeting. But while the fishmongers
charge twopence each for fresh herrings, the old women bring them
to the door at sixteen a shilling. The poor who live in the old
part of Brighton, near the markets, use great quantities of the
smaller and cheaper fish, and their children weary of the taste to
such a degree that when the girls go out to service they ask to be
excused from eating it.</p>
<p>The fishermen say they can often find a better market by sending
their fish to Paris; much of the fish caught off Brighton goes
there. It is fifty miles to London, and 250 to Paris; how then can
this be? Fish somehow slip through ordinary rules, being slimy of
surface; the maxims of the writers on demand and supply are quite
ignored, and there is no groping to the bottom of this well of
truth.</p>
<p>Just at the corner of some of the old streets that come down to
the King's Road one or two old fishermen often stand. The front one
props himself against the very edge of the buildings, and peers
round into the broad sunlit thoroughfare; his brown copper frock
makes a distinct patch of colour at the edge of the house. There is
nothing in common between him and the moving throng: he is quite
separate and belongs to another race; he has come down from the
shadow of the old street, and his copper-hued frock might have come
out of the last century.</p>
<p>The fishing-boats and the fishing, the nets, and all the fishing
work are a great ornament to Brighton. They are real; there is
something about them that forms a link with the facts of the sea,
with the forces of the tides and winds, and the sunlight gleaming
on the white crests of the waves. They speak to thoughts lurking in
the mind; they float between life and death as with a billow on
either hand; their anchors go down to the roots of existence. This
is real work, real labour of man, to draw forth food from the deep
as the plough draws it from the earth. It is in utter contrast to
the artificial work—the feathers, the jewellery, the writing
at desks of the town. The writings of a thousand clerks, the busy
factory work, the trimmings and feathers, and counter attendance do
not touch the real. They are all artificial. For food you must
still go to the earth and to the sea, as in primeval days. Where
would your thousand clerks, your trimmers, and counter-salesmen be
without a loaf of bread, without meat, without fish? The old brown
sails and the nets, the anchors and tarry ropes, go straight to
nature. You do not care for nature now? Well! all I can say is, you
will have to go to nature one day—when you die: you will find
nature very real then. I rede you to recognise the sunlight and the
sea, the flowers and woods <i>now</i>.</p>
<p>I like to go down on the beach among the fishing-boats, and to
recline on the shingle by a smack when the wind comes gently from
the west, and the low wave breaks but a few yards from my feet. I
like the occasional passing scent of pitch: they are melting it
close by. I confess I like tar: one's hands smell nice after
touching ropes. It is more like home down on the beach here; the
men are doing something real, sometimes there is the clink of a
hammer; behind me there is a screen of brown net, in which rents
are being repaired; a big rope yonder stretches as the horse goes
round, and the heavy smack is drawn slowly up over the pebbles. The
full curves of the rounded bows beside me are pleasant to the eye,
as any curve is that recalls those of woman. Mastheads stand up
against the sky, and a loose rope swings as the breeze strikes it;
a veer of the wind brings a puff of smoke from the funnel of a
cabin, where some one is cooking, but it is not disagreeable, like
smoke from a house chimney-pot; another veer carries it away
again,—depend upon it the simplest thing cooked there is
nice. Shingle rattles as it is shovelled up for ballast—the
sound of labour makes me more comfortably lazy. They are not in a
hurry, nor "chivy" over their work either; the tides rise and fall
slowly, and they work in correspondence. No infernal fidget and
fuss. Wonder how long it would take me to pitch a pebble so as to
lodge on the top of that large brown pebble there? I try, once now
and then.</p>
<p>Far out over the sea there is a peculiar bank of clouds. I was
always fond of watching clouds; these do not move much. In my
pocket-book I see I have several notes about these peculiar
sea-clouds. They form a band not far above the horizon, not very
thick but elongated laterally. The upper edge is curled or wavy,
not so heavily as what is called mountainous, not in the least
threatening; this edge is white. The body of the vapour is a little
darker, either because thicker, or because the light is reflected
at a different angle. But it is the lower edge which is singular:
in direct contrast with the curled or wavy edge above, the under
edge is perfectly straight and parallel to the line of the horizon.
It looks as if the level of the sea made this under line. This bank
moves very slowly—scarcely perceptibly—but in course of
hours rises, and as it rises spreads, when the extremities break
off in detached pieces, and these gradually vanish. Sometimes when
travelling I have pointed out the direction of the sea, feeling
sure it was there, and not far off, though invisible, on account of
the appearance of the clouds, whose under edge was cut across so
straight. When this peculiar bank appears at Brighton it is an
almost certain sign of continued fine weather, and I have noticed
the same thing elsewhere; once particularly it remained fine after
this appearance despite every threat the sky could offer of a
storm. All the threats came to nothing for three weeks, not even
thunder and lightning could break it up,—"deceitful flashes,"
as the Arabs say; for, like the sons of the desert, just then the
farmers longed for rain on their parched fields. To me, while on
the beach among the boats, the value of these clouds lies in their
slowness of movement, and consequent effect in soothing the mind.
Outside the hurry and drive of life a rest comes through the calm
of nature. As the swell of the sea carries up the pebbles, and
arranges the largest farthest inland, where they accumulate and
stay unmoved, so the drifting of the clouds, and the touch of the
wind, the sound of the surge, arrange the molecules of the mind in
still layers. It is then that a dream fills it, and a dream is
sometimes better than the best reality. Laugh at the idea of
dreaming where there is an odour of tar if you like, but you see it
is outside intolerable civilisation. It is a hundred miles from the
King's Road, though but just under it.</p>
<p>There is a scheme on foot for planking over the ocean, beginning
at the bottom of West Street. An immense central pier is proposed,
which would occupy the only available site for beaching the smacks.
If carried out, the whole fishing industry must leave
Brighton,—to the fishermen the injury would be beyond
compensation, and the aspect of Brighton itself would be destroyed.
Brighton ought to rise in revolt against it.</p>
<p>All Brighton chimney-pots are put on with giant cement, in order
to bear the strain of the tremendous winds rushing up from the sea.
Heavy as the gales are, they seldom do much mischief to the roofs,
such as are recorded inland. On the King's Road a plate-glass
window is now and then blown in, so that on hurricane days the
shutters are generally half shut. It is said that the wind gets
between the iron shutters and the plate glass and shakes the
windows loose. The heaviest waves roll in by the West Pier, and at
the bottom of East Street. Both sides of the West Pier are washed
by larger waves than can be seen all along the coast from the
Quarter Deck. Great rollers come in at the concrete groyne at the
foot of East Street. Exposed as the coast is, the waves do not
convey so intense an idea of wildness, confusion, and power as they
do at Dover. To see waves in their full vigour go to the Admiralty
Pier and watch the seas broken by the granite wall. Windy Brighton
has not an inch of shelter anywhere in a gale, and the salt rain
driven by the wind penetrates the thickest coat. The windiest spot
is at the corner of Second Avenue, Hove; the wind just there is
almost enough to choke those who face it. Double
windows—Russian fashion—are common all along the
sea-front, and are needed.</p>
<p>After a gale, when the wind changes, as it usually does, it is
pleasant to see the ships work in to the verge of the shore. The
sea is turbid and yellow with sand beaten up by the recent
billows,—this yellowness extends outwards to a certain line,
and is there succeeded by the green of clearer water. Beyond this
again the surface looks dark, as if still half angry, and clouds
hang over it, both to retire from the strife. As bees come out of
their hives when the rain ceases and the sun shines, so the vessels
which have been lying-to in harbour, or under shelter of
promontories, are now eagerly making their way down Channel, and,
in order to get as long a tack and as much advantage as possible,
they are brought to the edge of the shallow water. Sometimes
fifteen or twenty or more stand in; all sizes from the ketch to the
three-master. The wind is not strong, but that peculiar drawing
breeze which seems to pull a ship along as if with a tow-rope. The
brig stands straight for the beach, with all sail set; she heels a
little, not much; she scarcely heaves to the swell, and is not
checked by meeting waves; she comes almost to the yellow line of
turbid water, when round she goes, and you can see the sails shiver
as the breeze touches them on both surfaces for a moment. Then
again she shows her stern and away she glides, while another
approaches: and all day long they pass. There is always something
shadowy, not exactly unreal, but shadowy about a ship; it seems to
carry a romance, and the imagination fashions a story to the
swelling sails.</p>
<p>The bright light of Brighton brings all things into clear
relief, giving them an edge and outline; as steel burns with a
flame like wood in oxygen, so the minute particles of iron in the
atmosphere seem to burn and glow in the sunbeams, and a twofold
illumination fills the air. Coming back to the place after a
journey this brilliant light is very striking, and most new
visitors notice it. Even a room with a northern aspect is full of
light, too strong for some eyes, till accustomed to it. I am a
great believer in light—sunlight—and of my free will
never let it be shut out with curtains. Light is essential to life,
like air; life is thought; light is as fresh air to the mind.
Brilliant sunshine is reflected from the houses and fills the
streets. The walls of the houses are clean and less discoloured by
the deposit of carbon than usual in most towns, so that the
reflection is stronger from these white surfaces. Shadow there is
none in summer, for the shadows are lit up by diffusion. Something
in the atmosphere throws light down into shaded places as if from a
mirror. Waves beat ceaselessly on the beach, and the undulations of
light flow continuously forwards into the remotest corners. Pure
air, free from suspended matter, lets the light pass freely, and
perhaps this absence of suspended material is the reason that the
heat is not so oppressive as would be supposed considering the
glare. Certainly it is not so hot as London; on going up to town on
a July or August day it seems much hotter there, so much so that
one pants for air. Conversely in winter, London appears much
colder, the thick dark atmosphere seems to increase the bitterness
of the easterly winds, and returning to Brighton is entering a
warmer because clearer air. Many complain of the brilliance of the
light; they say the glare is overpowering, but the eyes soon become
acclimatised. This glare is one of the great recommendations of
Brighton; the strong light is evidently one of the causes of its
healthfulness to those who need change. There is no such glowing
light elsewhere along the south coast; these things are very
local.</p>
<p>A demand has been made for trees, to plant the streets and turn
them into boulevards for shade, than which nothing could be more
foolish. It is the dryness of the place that gives it its
character. After a storm, after heavy rain for days, in an hour the
pavements are not only dry but clean; no dirt, sticky and greasy,
remains. The only dirt in Brighton, for three-fourths of the year,
is that made by the water-carts. Too much water is used, and a good
clean road covered with mud an inch thick in August; but this is
not the fault of Brighton—it is the lack of observation on
the part of the Cadi who ought to have noticed the wretched
condition of ladies' boots when compelled to cross these miry
promenades. Trees are not wanted in Brighton; it is the peculiar
glory of Brighton to be treeless. Trees are the cause of damp, they
suck down moisture, and fill a circle round them with humidity.
Places full of trees are very trying in spring and autumn even to
robust people, much more so to convalescents and delicate persons.
Have nothing to do with trees, if Brighton is to retain its value.
Glowing light, dry, clear, and clean air, general
dryness—these are the qualities that rendered Brighton a
sanatorium; light and glow without oppressive moist heat; in winter
a clear cold. Most terrible of all to bear is cold when the
atmosphere is saturated with water. If any reply that trees have no
leaves in winter and so do not condense moisture, I at once deny
the conclusion; they have no leaves, but they condense moisture
nevertheless. This is effected by the minute twigs, thousands of
twigs and little branches, on which the mists condense, and distil
in drops. Under a large tree, in winter, there is often a perfect
shower, enough to require an umbrella, and it lasts for hours.
Eastbourne is a pleasant place, but visit Eastbourne, which is
proud of its trees, in October, and feel the damp fallen leaves
under your feet, and you would prefer no trees.</p>
<p>Let nothing check the descent of those glorious beams of
sunlight which fall at Brighton. Watch the pebbles on the beach;
the foam runs up and wets them, almost before it can slip back the
sunshine has dried them again. So they are alternately wetted and
dried. Bitter sea and glowing light, bright clear air, dry as
dry,—that describes the place. Spain is the country of
sunlight, burning sunlight; Brighton is a Spanish town in England,
a Seville. Very bright colours can be worn in summer because of
this powerful light; the brightest are scarcely noticed, for they
seem to be in concert with the sunshine. Is it difficult to paint
in so strong a light? Pictures in summer look dull and out of tune
when this Seville sun is shining. Artificial colours of the palette
cannot live in it. As a race we do not seem to care much for colour
or art—I mean in the common things of daily life—else a
great deal of colour might be effectively used in Brighton in
decorating houses and woodwork. Much more colour might be put in
the windows, brighter flowers and curtains; more, too, inside the
rooms; the sober hues of London furniture and carpets are not in
accord with Brighton light. Gold and ruby and blue, the blue of
transparent glass, or purple, might be introduced, and the romance
of colour freely indulged. At high tide of summer Spanish
mantillas, Spanish fans, would not be out of place in the open air.
No tint is too bright—scarlet, cardinal, anything the
imagination fancies; the brightest parasol is a matter of course.
Stand, for instance, by the West Pier, on the Esplanade, looking
east on a full-lit August day. The sea is blue, streaked with
green, and is stilled with heat; the low undulations can scarcely
rise and fall for somnolence. The distant cliffs are white; the
houses yellowish-white; the sky blue, more blue than fabled Italy.
Light pours down, and the bitter salt sea wets the pebbles; to look
at them makes the mouth dry, in the unconscious recollection of the
saltness and bitterness. The flags droop, the sails of the
fishing-boats hang idle; the land and the sea are conquered by the
great light of the sun.</p>
<p>Some people become famous by being always in one attitude. Meet
them when you will, they have invariably got an arm—the same
arm—crossed over the breast, and the hand thrust in between
the buttons of the coat to support it. Morning, noon, or evening,
in the street, the carriage, sitting, reading the paper, always the
same attitude; thus they achieve social distinction; it takes the
place of a medal or the red ribbon. What is a general or a famous
orator compared to a man always in the same attitude? Simply
nobody, nobody knows him, everybody knows the mono-attitude man.
Some people make their mark by invariably wearing the same short
pilot coat. Doubtless it has been many times renewed, still it is
the same coat. In winter it is thick, in summer thin, but identical
in cut and colour. Some people sit at the same window of the
reading-room at the same hour every day, all the year round. This
is the way to become marked and famous; winning a battle is nothing
to it. When it was arranged that a military band should play on the
Brunswick Lawns, it became the fashion to stop carriages in the
road and listen to it. Frequently there were carriages four deep,
while the gale blew the music out to sea and no one heard a note.
Still they sat content.</p>
<p>There are more handsome women in Brighton than anywhere else in
the world. They are so common that gradually the standard of taste
in the mind rises, and good-looking women who would be admired in
other places pass by without notice. Where all the flowers are
roses, you do not see a rose. They are all plump, not to say fat,
which would be rude; very plump, and have the glow and bloom of
youth upon the cheeks. They do not suffer from "pernicious
anaemia," that evil bloodlessness which London physicians are not
unfrequently called upon to cure, when the cheeks are white as
paper and have to be rosied with minute doses of arsenic. They
extract their arsenic from the air. The way they step and the
carriage of the form show how full they are of life and spirits.
Sarah Bernhardt will not come to Brighton if she can help it, lest
she should lose that high art angularity and slipperiness of shape
which suits her <i>rôle</i>. Dresses seem always to fit well,
because people somehow expand to them. It is pleasant to see the
girls walk, because the limbs do not drag, the feet are lifted
gaily and with ease. Horse-exercise adds a deeper glow to the face;
they ride up on the Downs first, out of pure cunning, for the air
there is certain to impart a freshness to the features like dew on
a flower, and then return and walk their horses to and fro the
King's Road, certain of admiration. However often these tricks are
played, they are always successful. Those philanthropic folk who
want to reform women's dress, and call upon the world to observe
how the present style contracts the chest, and forces the organs of
the body out of place (what a queer expression it seems, "organs"!)
have not a chance in Brighton. Girls lace tight and "go in" for the
tip of the fashion, yet they bloom and flourish as green bay trees,
and do not find their skirts any obstacle in walking or tennis. The
horse-riding that goes on is a thing to be chronicled; they are
always on horseback, and you may depend upon it that it is better
for them than all the gymnastic exercises ever invented. The
liability to strain, and even serious internal injury, which is
incurred in gymnastic exercises, ought to induce sensible people to
be extremely careful how they permit their daughters to sacrifice
themselves on this scientific altar. Buy them horses to ride, if
you want them to enjoy good health and sound constitutions. Nothing
like horses for women. Send the professors to Suakim, and put the
girls on horseback. Whether Brighton grows handsome girls, or
whether they flock there drawn by instinct, or become lovely by
staying there, is an inquiry too difficult to pursue.</p>
<p>There they are, one at least in every group, and you have to
walk, as the Spaniards say, with your beard over your shoulder,
continually looking back at those who have passed. The only
antidote known is to get married before you visit the place, and
doubts have been expressed as to its efficacy. In the south-coast
Seville there is nothing done but heart-breaking; it is so common
it is like hammering flints for road mending; nobody cares if your
heart is in pieces. They break hearts on horseback, and while
walking, playing tennis, shopping—actually at shopping, not
to mention parties of every kind. No one knows where the next
danger will be encountered—at the very next corner perhaps.
Feminine garments have an irresistible flutter in the sea-breeze;
feathers have a beckoning motion. No one can be altogether good in
Brighton, and that is the great charm of it. The language of the
eyes is cultivated to a marvellous degree; as we say of dogs, they
quite talk with their eyes. Even when you do not chance to meet an
exceptional beauty, still the plainer women are not plain like the
plain women in other places. The average is higher among them, and
they are not so irredeemably uninteresting. The flash of an eye,
the shape of a shoulder, the colour of the hair—something or
other pleases. Women without a single good feature are often
good-looking in New Seville because of an indescribable style or
manner. They catch the charm of the good-looking by living among
them, so that if any young lady desires to acquire the art of
attraction she has only to take train and join them. Delighted with
our protectorate of Paphos, Venus has lately decided to reside on
these shores, Every morning the girls' schools go for their
constitutional walks; there seem no end of these schools—the
place has a garrison of girls, and the same thing is noticeable in
their ranks. Too young to have developed actual loveliness, some in
each band distinctly promise future success. After long residence
the people become accustomed to good looks, and do not see anything
especial around them, but on going away for a few days soon miss
these pleasant faces.</p>
<p>In reconstructing Brighton station, one thing was
omitted—a balcony from which to view the arrival and
departure of the trains in summer and autumn. The scene is as
lively and interesting as the stage when a good play is proceeding.
So many happy expectant faces, often very beautiful; such a
mingling of colours, and succession of different figures; now a
brunette, now golden hair: it is a stage, only it is real. The
bustle, which is not the careworn anxious haste of business; the
rushing to and fro; the greetings of friends; the smiles; the
shifting of the groups, some coming, and some going—plump and
rosy,—it is really charming. One has a fancy dog, another a
bright-bound novel; very many have cavaliers; and look at the piles
of luggage! What dresses, what changes and elegance concealed
therein!—conjurors' trunks out of which wonders will spring.
Can anything look jollier than a cab overgrown with luggage, like
huge barnacles, just starting away with its freight? One can
imagine such a fund of enjoyment on its way in that cab. This happy
throng seems to express something that delights the heart. I often
used to walk up to the station just to see it, and left feeling
better.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="5">THE PINE WOOD</a></h3>
<p>There was a humming in the tops of the young pines as if a swarm
of bees were busy at the green cones. They were not visible through
the thick needles, and on listening longer it seemed as if the
sound was not exactly the note of the bee—a slightly
different pitch, and the hum was different, while bees have a habit
of working close together. Where there is one bee there are usually
five or six, and the hum is that of a group; here there only
appeared one or two insects to a pine. Nor was the buzz like that
of the humble-bee, for every now and then one came along low down,
flying between the stems, and his note was much deeper. By-and-by,
crossing to the edge of the plantation, where the boughs could be
examined, being within reach, I found it was wasps. A yellow wasp
wandered over the blue-green needles till he found a pair with a
drop of liquid like dew between them. There he fastened himself and
sucked at it; you could see the drop gradually drying up till it
was gone. The largest of these drops were generally between two
needles—those of the Scotch fir or pine grow in
pairs—but there were smaller drops on the outside of other
needles. In searching for this exuding turpentine the wasps filled
the whole plantation with the sound of their wings. There must have
been many thousands of them. They caused no inconvenience to any
one walking in the copse, because they were high overhead.</p>
<p>Watching these wasps I found two cocoons of pale yellow silk on
a branch of larch, and by them a green spider. He was quite
green—two shades, lightest on the back, but little lighter
than the green larch bough. An ant had climbed up a pine and over
to the extreme end of a bough; she seemed slow and stupefied in her
motions, as if she had drunken of the turpentine and had lost her
intelligence. The soft cones of the larch could be easily cut down
the centre with a penknife, showing the structure of the cone and
the seeds inside each scale. It is for these seeds that birds
frequent the fir copses, shearing off the scales with their beaks.
One larch cone had still the tuft at the top—a pineapple in
miniature. The loudest sound in the wood was the humming in the
trees; there was no wind, no sunshine; a summer day, still and
shadowy, under large clouds high up. To this low humming the sense
of hearing soon became accustomed, and it served but to render the
silence deeper. In time, as I sat waiting and listening, there came
the faintest far-off song of a bird away in the trees; the merest
thin upstroke of sound, slight in structure, the echo of the strong
spring singing. This was the summer repetition, dying away. A
willow-wren still remembered his love, and whispered about it to
the silent fir tops, as in after days we turn over the pages of
letters, withered as leaves, and sigh. So gentle, so low, so tender
a song the willow-wren sang that it could scarce be known as the
voice of a bird, but was like that of some yet more delicate
creature with the heart of a woman.</p>
<p>A butterfly with folded wings clung to a stalk of grass; upon
the under side of his wing thus exposed there were buff spots, and
dark dots and streaks drawn on the finest ground of pearl-grey,
through which there came a tint of blue; there was a blue, too,
shut up between the wings, visible at the edges. The spots, and
dots, and streaks were not exactly the same on each wing; at first
sight they appeared similar, but, on comparing one with the other,
differences could be traced. The pattern was not mechanical; it was
hand-painted by Nature, and the painter's eye and fingers varied in
their work.</p>
<p>How fond Nature is of spot-markings!—the wings of
butterflies, the feathers of birds, the surface of eggs, the leaves
and petals of plants are constantly spotted; so, too, fish—as
trout. From the wing of the butterfly I looked involuntarily at the
foxglove I had just gathered; inside, the bells were thickly
spotted—dots and dustings that might have been transferred to
a butterfly's wing. The spotted meadow-orchis; the brown dots on
the cowslips; brown, black, greenish, reddish dots and spots and
dustings on the eggs of the finches, the whitethroats, and so many
others—some of the spots seem as if they had been splashed on
and had run into short streaks, some mottled, some gathered
together at the end; all spots, dots, dustings of minute specks,
mottlings, and irregular markings. The histories, the stories, the
library of knowledge contained in those signs! It was thought a
wonderful thing when at last the strange inscriptions of Assyria
were read, made of nail-headed characters whose sound was lost; it
was thought a triumph when the yet older hieroglyphics of Egypt
were compelled to give up their messages, and the world hoped that
we should know the secrets of life. That hope was disappointed;
there was nothing in the records but superstition and useless
ritual. But here we go back to the beginning; the antiquity of
Egypt is nothing to the age of these signs—they date from
unfathomable time. In them the sun has written his commands, and
the wind inscribed deep thought. They were before superstition
began; they were composed in the old, old world, when the Immortals
walked on earth. They have been handed down thousands upon
thousands of years to tell us that to-day we are still in the
presence of the heavenly visitants, if only we will give up the
soul to these pure influences. The language in which they are
written has no alphabet, and cannot be reduced to order. It can
only be understood by the heart and spirit. Look down into this
foxglove bell and you will know that; look long and lovingly at
this blue butterfly's underwing, and a feeling will rise to your
consciousness.</p>
<p>Some time passed, but the butterfly did not move; a touch
presently disturbed him, and flutter, flutter went his blue wings,
only for a few seconds, to another grass-stalk, and so on from
grass-stalk to grass-stalk as compelled, a yard flight at most. He
would not go farther; he settled as if it had been night. There was
no sunshine, and under the clouds he had no animation. A swallow
went by singing in the air, and as he flew his forked tail was
shut, and but one streak of feathers drawn past. Though but young
trees, there was a coating of fallen needles under the firs an inch
thick, and beneath it the dry earth touched warm. A fern here and
there came up through it, the palest of pale green, quite a
different colour to the same species growing in the hedges away
from the copse. A yellow fungus, streaked with scarlet as if blood
had soaked into it, stood at the foot of a tree occasionally. Black
fungi, dry, shrivelled, and dead, lay fallen about, detached from
the places where they had grown, and crumbling if handled. Still
more silent after sunset, the wood was utterly quiet; the swallows
no longer passed twittering, the willow-wren was gone, there was no
hum or rustle; the wood was as silent as a shadow.</p>
<p>But before the darkness a song and an answer arose in a tree,
one bird singing a few notes and another replying side by side. Two
goldfinches sat on the cross of a larch-fir and sang, looking
towards the west, where the light lingered. High up, the larch-fir
boughs with the top shoot form a cross; on this one goldfinch sat,
the other was immediately beneath. At even the birds often turn to
the west as they sing.</p>
<p>Next morning the August sun shone, and the wood was all a-hum
with insects. The wasps were working at the pine boughs high
overhead; the bees by dozens were crowding to the bramble flowers;
swarming on them, they seemed so delighted; humble-bees went
wandering among the ferns in the copse and in the
ditches—they sometimes alight on fern—and calling at
every purple heath-blossom, at the purple knapweeds, purple
thistles, and broad handfuls of yellow-weed flowers. Wasp-like
flies barred with yellow suspended themselves in the air between
the pine-trunks like hawks hovering, and suddenly shot themselves a
yard forward or to one side, as if the rapid vibration of their
wings while hovering had accumulated force which drove them as if
discharged from a cross-bow. The sun had set all things in
motion.</p>
<p>There was a hum under the oak by the hedge, a hum in the pine
wood, a humming among the heath and the dry grass which heat had
browned. The air was alive and merry with sound, so that the day
seemed quite different and twice as pleasant. Three blue
butterflies fluttered in one flowery corner, the warmth gave them
vigour; two had a silvery edging to their wings, one was brown and
blue. The nuts reddening at the tips appeared ripening like apples
in the sunshine. This corner is a favourite with wild bees and
butterflies; if the sun shines they are sure to be found there at
the heath-bloom and tall yellow-weed, and among the dry seeding
bennets or grass-stalks. All things, even butterflies, are local in
their habits. Far up on the hillside the blue green of the pines
beneath shone in the sun—a burnished colour; the high
hillside is covered with heath and heather. Where there are open
places a small species of gorse, scarcely six inches high, is in
bloom, the yellow blossom on the extremity of the stalk.</p>
<p>Some of these gorse plants seemed to have a different flower
growing at the side of the stem, instead of at the extremity. These
florets were cream-coloured, so that it looked like a new species
of gorse. On gathering it to examine the thick-set florets, if was
found that a slender runner or creeper had been torn up with it.
Like a thread the creeper had wound itself round and round the
furze, buried in and hidden by the prickles, and it was this
creeper that bore the white or cream-florets. It was tied round as
tightly as thread could be, so that the florets seemed to start
from the stem, deceiving the eye at first. In some places this
parasite plant had grown up the heath and strangled it, so that the
tips turned brown and died. The runners extended in every direction
across the ground, like those of strawberries. One creeper had
climbed up a bennet, or seeding grass-stalk, binding the stalk and
a blade of the grass together, and flowering there. On the ground
there were patches of grey lichen; many of the pillar-like stems
were crowned with a red top. Under a small boulder stone there was
an ants' nest. These boulders, or, as they are called locally,
"bowlers," were scattered about the heath. Many of the lesser
stones were spotted with dark dots of lichen, not unlike a
toad.</p>
<p>Thoughtlessly turning over a boulder about nine inches square,
lo! there was subject enough for thinking underneath it—a
subject that has been thought about many thousand years; for this
piece of rock had formed the roof of an ants' nest. The stone had
sunk three inches deep into the dry soil of sand and peaty mould,
and in the floor of the hole the ants had worked out their
excavations, which resembled an outline map. The largest excavation
was like England; at the top, or north, they had left a narrow
bridge, an eighth of an inch wide, under which to pass into
Scotland, and from Scotland again another narrow arch led to the
Orkney Islands; these last, however, were dug in the perpendicular
side of the hole. In the corners of these excavations tunnels ran
deeper into the ground, and the ants immediately began hurrying
their treasures, the eggs, down into these cellars. At one angle a
tunnel went beneath the heath into further excavations beneath a
second boulder stone. Without, a fern grew, and the dead dry stems
of heather crossed each other.</p>
<p>This discovery led to the turning over of another boulder stone
not far off, and under it there appeared a much more extensive and
complete series of galleries, bridges, cellars and tunnels. In
these the whole life-history of the ant was exposed at a single
glance, as if one had taken off the roofs of a city. One cell
contained a dust-like deposit, another a collection resembling the
dust, but now elongated and a little greenish; a third treasury,
much larger, was piled up with yellowish grains about the size of
wheat, each with a black dot on the top, and looking like minute
hop-pockets. Besides these, there was a pure white substance in a
corridor, which the irritated ants seemed particularly anxious to
remove out of sight, and quickly carried away. Among the ants
rushing about there were several with wings; one took flight; one
was seized by a wingless ant and dragged down into a cellar, as if
to prevent its taking wing. A helpless green fly was in the midst,
and round the outside galleries there crept a creature like a
spider, seeming to try to hide itself. If the nest had been formed
under glass, it could not have been more open to view. The stone
was carefully replaced.</p>
<p>Below the pine wood on the slope of the hill a plough was
already at work, the crop of peas having been harvested. The four
horses came up the slope, and at the ridge swept round in a fine
curve to go back and open a fresh furrow. As soon as they faced
down-hill they paused, well aware of what had to be done, and the
ploughman in a manner knocked his plough to pieces, putting it
together again the opposite way, that the earth he was about to cut
with the share might fall on what he had just turned. With a piece
of iron he hammered the edge of the share, to set it, for the hard
ground had bent the edge, and it did not cut properly. I said his
team looked light; they were not so heavily built as the
cart-horses used in many places. No, he said, they did not want
heavy horses. "Dese yer thick-boned hosses be more clutter-headed
over the clots," as he expressed it, <i>i.e.</i> more clumsy or
thick-headed over the clods. He preferred comparatively light
cart-horses to step well. In the heat of the sun the furze-pods
kept popping and bursting open; they are often as full of insects
as seeds, which come creeping out. A green and black
lady-bird—exactly like a tortoise—flew on to my hand.
Again on the heath, and the grasshoppers rose at every step,
sometimes three or four springing in as many directions. They were
winged, and as soon as they were up spread their vanes and floated
forwards. As the force of the original hop decreased, the wind took
their wings and turned them aside from the straight course before
they fell. Down the dusty road, inches deep in sand, comes a
sulphur butterfly, rushing as quick as if hastening to a
butterfly-fair. If only rare, how valued he would be! His colour is
so evident and visible; he fills the road, being brighter than all,
and for the moment is more than the trees and flowers.</p>
<p>Coming so suddenly over the hedge into the road close to me, he
startled me as if I had been awakened from a dream—I had been
thinking it was August, and woke to find it February—for the
sulphur butterfly is the February pleasure. Between the dark storms
and wintry rains there is a warm sunny interval of a week in
February. Away one goes for a walk, and presently there appears a
bright yellow spot among the furze, dancing along like a flower let
loose. It is a sulphur butterfly, who thus comes before the
earliest chiffchaff—before the watch begins for the first
swallow. I call it the February pleasure, as each month has its
delight. So associated as this butterfly is with early spring, to
see it again after months of leaf and flower—after June and
July—with the wheat in shock and the scent of harvest in the
land, is startling. The summer, then, is a dream! It is still
winter; but no, here are the trees in leaf, the nuts reddening, the
hum of bees, and dry summer dust on the high wiry grass. The
sulphur butterfly comes twice; there is a second brood; but there
are some facts that are always new and surprising, however well
known. I may say again, if only rare, how this butterfly would be
prized! Along the hedgerow there are several spiders' webs. In the
centre they are drawn inwards, forming a funnel, which goes back a
few inches into the hedge, and at the bottom of this the spider
waits. If you look down the funnel you see his claws at the bottom,
ready to run up and seize a fly.</p>
<p>Sitting in the garden after a walk, it is pleasant to watch the
eave-swallows feeding their young on the wing. The young bird
follows the old one; then they face each other and stay a moment in
the air, while the insect food is transferred from beak to beak;
with a loud note they part. There was a constant warfare between
the eave-swallows and the sparrows frequenting a house where I was
staying during the early part of the summer. The sparrows strove
their utmost to get possession of the nests the swallows built, and
there was no peace between them It is common enough for one or two
swallows' nests to be attacked in this way, but here every nest
along the eaves was fought for, and the sparrows succeeded in
conquering many of them. The driven-out swallows after a while
began to build again, and I noticed that more than a pair seemed to
work at the same nest. One nest was worked at by four swallows;
often all four came together and twittered at it.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="6">NATURE ON THE ROOF</a></h3>
<p>Increased activity on the housetop marks the approach of spring
and summer exactly as in the woods and hedges, for the roof has its
migrants, its semi-migrants, and its residents. When the first
dandelion is opening on a sheltered bank, and the pale-blue field
veronica flowers in the waste corner, the whistle of the starling
comes from his favourite ledge. Day by day it is heard more and
more, till, when the first green spray appears on the hawthorn, he
visits the roof continually. Besides the roof-tree and the
chimney-pot, he has his own special place, sometimes under an eave,
sometimes between two gables; and as I sit writing, I can see a
pair who have a ledge which slightly projects from the wall between
the eaves and the highest window. This was made by the builder for
an ornament; but my two starlings consider it their own particular
possession. They alight with a sort of half-scream half-whistle
just over the window, flap their wings, and whistle again, run
along the ledge to a spot where there is a gable, and with another
note, rise up and enter an aperture between the slates and the
wall. There their nest will be in a little time, and busy indeed
they will be when the young require to be fed, to and fro the
fields and the gable the whole day through; the busiest and the
most useful of birds, for they destroy thousands upon thousands of
insects, and if farmers were wise they would never have one shot,
no matter how the thatch was pulled about.</p>
<p>My pair of starlings were frequently at this ledge last autumn,
very late in autumn, and I suspect they had a winter brood there.
The starling does rear a brood sometimes in the midst of the
winter, contrary as that may seem to our general ideas of natural
history. They may be called roof-residents, as they visit it all
the year round; they nest in the roof, rearing two and sometimes
three broods; and use it as their club and place of meeting.
Towards July the young starlings and those that have for the time
at least finished nesting, flock together, and pass the day in the
fields, returning now and then to their old home. These flocks
gradually increase; the starling is so prolific that the flocks
become immense, till in the latter part of the autumn in southern
fields it is common to see a great elm-tree black with them, from
the highest bough downwards, and the noise of their chattering can
be heard a long distance. They roost in firs or in osier-beds. But
in the blackest days of winter, when frost binds the ground hard as
iron, the starlings return to the roof almost every day; they do
not whistle much, but have a peculiar chuckling whistle at the
instant of alighting. In very hard weather, especially snow, the
starlings find it difficult to obtain a living, and at such times
will come to the premises at the rear, and at farmhouses where
cattle are in the yards, search about among them for insects.</p>
<p>The whole history of the starling is interesting, but I must
here only mention it as a roof-bird. They are very handsome in
their full plumage, which gleams bronze and green among the darker
shades; quick in their motions, and full of spirit; loaded to the
muzzle with energy, and never still. I hope none of those who are
so good as to read what I have written will ever keep a starling in
a cage; the cruelty is extreme. As for shooting pigeons at a trap,
it is mercy in comparison.</p>
<p>Even before the starling whistles much, the sparrows begin to
chirp: in the dead of winter they are silent; but so soon as the
warmer winds blow, if only for a day, they begin to chirp. In
January this year I used to listen to the sparrows chirping, the
starlings whistling, and the chaffinches' "chink, chink" about
eight o'clock, or earlier, in the morning: the first two on the
roof; the latter, which is not a roof-bird, in some garden shrubs.
As the spring advances, the sparrows sing—it is a short song,
it is true, but still it is singing—perched at the edge of a
sunny wall. There is not a place about the house where they will
not build—under the eaves, on the roof, anywhere where there
is a projection or shelter, deep in the thatch, under the tiles, in
old eave-swallows' nest. The last place I noticed as a favourite
one in towns is on the half-bricks left projecting in perpendicular
rows at the sides of unfinished houses, Half a dozen nests may be
counted at the side of a house on these bricks; and like the
starlings, they rear several broods, and some are nesting late in
the autumn. By degrees as the summer advances they leave the houses
for the corn, and gather in vast flocks, rivalling those of the
starlings. At this time they desert the roofs, except those who
still have nesting duties. In winter and in the beginning of the
new year, they gradually return; migration thus goes on under the
eyes of those who care to notice it. In London, some who fed
sparrows on the roof found that rooks also came for the crumbs
placed out. I sometimes see a sparrow chasing a rook, as if angry,
and trying to drive it away over the roofs where I live, the thief
does not retaliate, but, like a thief, flees from the scene of his
guilt. This is not only in the breeding season, when the rook
steals eggs, but in winter. Town residents are apt to despise the
sparrow, seeing him always black; but in the country the sparrows
are as clean as a pink; and in themselves they are the most
animated, clever little creatures.</p>
<p>They are easily tamed. The Parisians are fond of taming them. At
a certain hour in the Tuilleries Gardens, you may see a man
perfectly surrounded with a crowd of sparrows—some perching
on his shoulder; some fluttering in the air immediately before his
face; some on the ground like a tribe of followers; and others on
the marble seats. He jerks a crumb of bread into the air—a
sparrow dexterously seizes it as he would a flying insect; he puts
a crumb between his lips—a sparrow takes it out and feeds
from his mouth. Meantime they keep up a constant chirping; those
that are satisfied still stay by and adjust their feathers. He
walks on, giving a little chirp with his mouth, and they follow him
along the path—a cloud about his shoulders, and the rest
flying from shrub to shrub, perching, and then following again.
They are all perfectly clean—a contrast to the London
Sparrow. I came across one of these sparrow-tamers by chance, and
was much amused at the scene, which, to any one not acquainted with
birds, appears marvellous; but it is really as simple as possible,
and you can repeat it for yourself if you have patience, for they
are so sharp they soon understand you. They seem to play at
nest-making before they really begin; taking up straws in their
beaks, and carrying them half-way to the roof, then letting the
straws float away; and the same with stray feathers, Neither of
these, starlings nor sparrows, seem to like the dark. Under the
roof, between it and the first ceiling, there is a large open
space; if the slates or tiles are kept in good order, very little
light enters, and this space is nearly dark in daylight. Even if
chinks admit a beam of light, it is not enough; they seldom enter
or fly about there, though quite accessible to them. But if the
roof is in bad order, and this space light, they enter freely.
Though nesting in holes, yet they like light. The swallows could
easily go in and make nests upon the beams, but they will not,
unless the place is well lit. They do not like darkness in the
daytime.</p>
<p>The swallows bring us the sunbeams on their wings from Africa to
fill the fields with flowers. From the time of the arrival of the
first swallow the flowers take heart; the few and scanty plants
that had braved the earlier cold are succeeded by a constantly
enlarging list, till the banks and lanes are full of them. The
chimney-swallow is usually the forerunner of the three
house-swallows; and perhaps no fact in natural history has been so
much studied as the migration of these tender birds. The commonest
things are always the most interesting. In summer there is no bird
so common everywhere as the swallow, and for that reason many
overlook it, though they rush to see a "white elephant." But the
deepest thinkers have spent hours and hours in considering the
problem of the swallow—its migrations, its flight, its
habits; great poets have loved it; great artists and art-writers
have curiously studied it. The idea that it is necessary to seek
the wilderness or the thickest woods for nature is a total mistake;
nature it, at home, on the roof, close to every one. Eave-swallows,
or house-martins (easily distinguished by the white bar across the
tail), build sometimes in the shelter of the porches of old
houses.</p>
<p>As you go in or out, the swallows visiting or leaving their
nests fly so closely as almost to brush the face. Swallow means
porch-bird, and for centuries and centuries their nests have been
placed in the closest proximity to man. They might be called man's
birds, so attached are they to the human race. I think the greatest
ornament a house can have is the nest of an eave-swallow under the
eaves—far superior to the most elaborate carving, colouring,
or arrangement the architect can devise. There is no ornament like
the swallow's nest; the home of a messenger between man and the
blue heavens, between us and the sunlight, and all the promise of
the sky. The joy of life, the highest and tenderest feelings,
thoughts that soar on the swallow's wings, come to the round nest
under the roof. Not only to-day, not only the hopes of future
years, but all the past dwells there. Year after year the
generations and descent of the swallow have been associated with
our homes, and all the events of successive lives have taken place
under their guardianship. The swallow is the genius of good to a
house. Let its nest, then, stay; to me it seems the extremity of
barbarism, or rather stupidity, to knock it down. I wish I could
induce them to build under the eaves of this house; I would if I
could discover some means of communicating with them.</p>
<p>It is a peculiarity of the swallow that you cannot make it
afraid of you; just the reverse of other birds. The swallow does
not understand being repulsed, but comes back again. Even knocking
the nest down will not drive it away, until the stupid process has
been repeated several years. The robin must be coaxed; the sparrow
is suspicious, and though easy to tame, quick to notice the least
alarming movement. The swallow will not be driven away. He has not
the slightest fear of man; he flies to his nest close to the
window, under the low eave, or on the beams in the out-houses, no
matter if you are looking on or not. Bold as the starlings are,
they will seldom do this. But in the swallow the instinct of
suspicion is reversed, an instinct of confidence occupies its
place. In addition to the eave-swallow, to which I have chiefly
alluded, and the chimney-swallow, there is the swift, also a
roof-bird, and making its nest in the slates of houses in the midst
of towns. These three are migrants in the fullest sense, and come
to our houses over thousands of miles of land and sea.</p>
<p>Robins frequently visit the roof for insects, especially when it
is thatched; so do wrens; and the latter, after they have peered
along, have a habit of perching at the extreme angle of a gable, or
the extreme edge of a corner, and uttering their song. Finches
occasionally fly up to the roofs of country-houses if shrubberies
are near, also in pursuit of insects; but they are not truly
roof-birds. Wagtails perch on roofs; they often have their nests in
the ivy, or creepers trained against walls; they are quite at
borne, and are frequently seen on the ridges of farmhouses. Tits of
several species, particularly the great titmouse and the blue tit,
come to thatch for insects, both in summer and winter. In some
districts where they are common, it is not unusual to see a
goatsucker or fern-owl hawk along close to the eaves in the dusk of
the evening for moths. The white owl is a roof-bird (though not
often of the house), building inside the roof, and sitting there
all day in some shaded corner. They do sometimes take up their
residence in the roofs of outhouses attached to dwellings, but not
often nowadays, though still residing in the roofs of old castles.
Jackdaws, again, are roof-birds, building in the roofs of towers.
Bats live in roofs, and hang there wrapped up in their membranous
wings till the evening calls them forth. They are residents in the
full sense, remaining all the year round, though principally seen
in the warmer months; but they are there in the colder, hidden
away, and if the temperature rises, will venture out and hawk to
and fro in the midst of the winter. Tame pigeons and doves hardly
come into this paper, but still it is their habit to use roofs as
tree-tops. Rats and mice creep through the crevices of roofs, and
in old country-houses hold a sort of nightly carnival, racing to
and fro under the roof. Weasels sometimes follow them indoors and
up to their roof strongholds.</p>
<p>When the first warm days of spring sunshine strike against the
southern side of the chimney, sparrows perch there and enjoy it;
and again in autumn, when the general warmth of the atmosphere is
declining, they still find a little pleasant heat there. They make
use of the radiation of heat, as the gardener does who trains his
fruit-trees to a wall. Before the autumn has thinned the leaves,
the swallows gather on the highest ridge of the roof in a row and
twitter to each other; they know the time is approaching when they
must depart for another climate. In winter, many birds seek the
thatched roofs to roost. Wrens, tits, and even blackbirds roost in
the holes left by sparrows or starlings.</p>
<p>Every crevice is the home of insects, or used by them for the
deposit of their eggs—under the tiles or slates, where mortar
has dropped out between the bricks, in the holes of thatch, and on
the straws. The number of insects that frequent a large roof must
be very great—all the robins, wrens, bats, and so on, can
scarcely affect them; nor the spiders, though these, too, are
numerous. Then there are the moths, and those creeping creatures
that work out of sight, boring their way through the rafters and
beams. Sometimes a sparrow may be seen clinging to the bare wall of
the house; tits do the same thing. It is surprising how they manage
to hold on. They are taking insects from the apertures of the
mortar. Where the slates slope to the south, the sunshine soon
heats them, and passing butterflies alight on the warm surface, and
spread out their wings, as if hovering over the heat. Flies are
attracted in crowds sometimes to heated slates and tiles, and wasps
will occasionally pause there. Wasps are addicted to haunting
houses, and, in the autumn, feed on the flies. Floating germs
carried by the air must necessarily lodge in numbers against roofs;
so do dust and invisible particles; and together, these make the
rain-water collected in water-butts after a storm turbid and dark;
and it soon becomes full of living organisms.</p>
<p>Lichen and moss grow on the mortar wherever it has become
slightly disintegrated; and if any mould, however minute, by any
means accumulates between the slates, there, too, they spring up,
and even on the slates themselves. Tiles are often coloured yellow
by such growths. On some old roofs, which have decayed, and upon
which detritus has accumulated, wallflowers may be found; and the
house-leek takes capricious root where it fancies. The stonecrop is
the finest of roof-plants, sometimes forming a broad patch of
brilliant yellow. Birds carry up seeds and grains, and these
germinate in moist thatch. Groundsel, for instance, and stray
stalks of wheat, thin and drooping for lack of soil, are sometimes
seen there, besides grasses. Ivy is familiar as a roof-creeper.
Some ferns and the pennywort will grow on the wall close to the
roof. A correspondent tells me that in Wales he found a cottage
perfectly roofed with fern—it grew so thickly as to conceal
the roof. Had a painter put this in a picture, many would have
exclaimed: "How fanciful! He must have made it up; it could never
have grown like that!" Not long after receiving my correspondent's
kind letter, I chanced to find a roof near London upon which the
same fern was growing in lines along the tiles. It grew
plentifully, but was not in so flourishing a condition as that
found in Wales. Painters are sometimes accused of calling upon
their imagination when they are really depicting fact, for the ways
of nature vary very much in different localities, and that which
may seem impossible in one place is common enough in another.</p>
<p>Where will not ferns grow? We saw one attached to the under-side
of a glass coal-hole cover; its green could be seen through the
thick glass on which people stepped daily.</p>
<p>Recently, much attention has been paid to the dust which is
found on roofs and ledges at great heights. This meteoric dust, as
it is called, consists of minute particles of iron, which are
thought to fall from the highest part of the atmosphere, or
possibly to be attracted to the earth from space. Lightning usually
strikes the roof. The whole subject of lightning-conductors has
been re-opened of late years, there being reason to think that
mistakes have been made in the manner of their erection. The reason
English roofs are high-pitched is not only because of the rain,
that it may shoot off quickly, but on account of snow. Once now and
then there comes a snow-year, and those who live in houses with
flat surfaces anywhere on the roof soon discover how inconvenient
they are. The snow is sure to find its way through, damaging
ceilings, and doing other mischief. Sometimes, in fine summer
weather, people remark how pleasant it would be if the roof were
flat, so that it could be used as a terrace, as it is in warmer
climates. But the fact is, the English roof, although now merely
copied and repeated without a thought of the reason of its shape,
grew up from experience of severe winters. Of old, great care and
ingenuity—what we should now call artistic skill—were
employed in contracting the roof. It was not only pleasant to the
eye with its gables, but the woodwork was wonderfully well done.
Such roofs may still be seen on ancient mansions, having endured
for centuries. They are splendid pieces of workmanship, and seen
from afar among foliage, are admired by every one who has the least
taste. Draughtsmen and painters value them highly. No matter
whether reproduced on a large canvas or in a little woodcut, their
proportions please. The roof is much neglected in modern houses; it
is either conventional, or it is full indeed of gables, but gables
that do not agree, as it were, with each other—that are
obviously put there on purpose to look artistic, and fail
altogether. Now, the ancient roofs were true works of art,
consistent, and yet each varied to its particular circumstances,
and each impressed with the individuality of the place and of the
designer. The finest old roofs were built of oak or chestnut; the
beams are black with age, and, in that condition, oak is scarcely
distinguishable from chestnut.</p>
<p>So the roof has its natural history, its science, and art; it
has its seasons, its migrants and residents, of whom a housetop
calendar might be made. The fine old roofs which have just been
mentioned are often associated with historic events and the rise of
families; and the roof-tree, like the hearth, has a range of
proverbs or sayings and ancient lore to itself. More than one great
monarch has been slain by a tile thrown from the housetop, and
numerous other incidents have occurred in connection with it. The
most interesting is the story of the Grecian mother who, with her
infant, was on the roof, when, in a moment of inattention, the
child crept to the edge, and was balanced on the very verge. To
call to it, to touch it, would have insured its destruction; but
the mother, without a second's thought, bared her breast, and the
child eagerly turning to it, was saved!</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="7">ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS</a></h3>
<h4 align="center">I</h4>
<p>If any one were to get up about half-past five on an August
morning and look out of an eastern window in the country, he would
see the distant trees almost hidden by a white mist. The tops of
the larger groups of elms would appear above it, and by these the
line of the hedgerows could be traced. Tier after tier they stretch
along, rising by degrees on a gentle slope, the space between
filled with haze. Whether there were corn-fields or meadows under
this white cloud he could not tell—a cloud that might have
come down from the sky, leaving it a clear azure. This morning haze
means intense heat in the day. It is hot already, very hot, for the
sun is shining with all his strength, and if you wish the house to
be cool it is time to set the sunblinds.</p>
<p>Roger, the reaper, had slept all night in the cowhouse, lying on
the raised platform of narrow planks put up for cleanliness when
the cattle were there. He had set the wooden window wide open and
left the door ajar when he came stumbling in overnight, long after
the late swallows had settled in their nests in the beams, and the
bats had wearied of moth catching. One of the swallows twittered a
little, as much as to say to his mate, "my love, it is only a
reaper, we need not be afraid," and all was silence and darkness.
Roger did not so much as take off his boots, but flung himself on
the boards crash, curled himself up hedgehog fashion with some old
sacks, and immediately began to breathe heavily. He had no
difficulty in sleeping, first because his muscles had been tried to
the utmost, and next because his skin was full to the brim, not of
jolly "good ale and old" but of the very smallest and poorest of
wish-washy beer. In his own words, it "blowed him up till he very
nigh bust." Now the great authorities on dyspepsia, so eagerly
studied by the wealthy folk whose stomachs are deranged, tell us
that a very little flatulence will make the heart beat irregularly
and cause the most distressing symptoms.</p>
<p>Roger had swallowed at least a gallon of a liquid chemically
designed, one might say, on purpose to utterly upset the internal
economy. Harvest beer is probably the vilest drink in the world.
The men say it is made by pouring muddy water into empty casks
returned sour from use, and then brushing them round and round
inside with a besom. This liquid leaves a stickiness on the tongue
and a harsh feeling at the back of the mouth which soon turns to
thirst, so that having once drunk a pint the drinker must go on
drinking. The peculiar dryness caused by this beer is not like any
other throat drought—worse than dust, or heat, or thirst from
work; there is no satisfying it. With it there go down the germs of
fermentation, a sour, yeasty, and, as it were, secondary
fermentation; not that kind which is necessary to make beer, but
the kind that unmakes and spoils beer. It is beer rotting and
decomposing in the stomach. Violent diarrhoea often follows, and
then the exhaustion thus caused induces the men to drink more in
order to regain the strength necessary to do their work. The great
heat of the sun and the heat of hard labour, the strain and
perspiration, of course try the body and weaken the digestion. To
distend the stomach with half a gallon of this liquor, expressly
compounded to ferment, is about the most murderous thing a man
could do—murderous because it exposes him to the risk of
sunstroke. So vile a drink there is not elsewhere in the world;
arrack, and potato-spirit, and all the other killing extracts of
the distiller are not equal to it. Upon this abominable mess the
golden harvest of English fields is gathered in.</p>
<p>Some people have in consequence endeavoured to induce the
harvesters to accept a money payment in place of beer, and to a
certain extent successfully. Even then, however, they must drink
something. Many manage on weak tea after a fashion, but not so well
as the abstainers would have us think. Others have brewed for their
men a miserable stuff in buckets, an infusion of oatmeal, and got a
few to drink it; but English labourers will never drink
oatmeal-water unless they are paid to do it. If they are paid extra
beer-money and oatmeal water is made for them gratis, some will, of
course, imbibe it, especially if they see that thereby they may
obtain little favours from their employer by yielding to his fad.
By drinking the crotchet perhaps they may get a present now and
then-food for themselves, cast-off clothes for their families, and
so on. For it is a remarkable feature of human natural history, the
desire to proselytise. The spectacle of John Bull—jovial John
Bull—offering his men a bucket of oatmeal liquor is not a
pleasant one. Such a John Bull ought to be ashamed of himself.</p>
<p>The truth is the English farmer's man was and is, and will be, a
drinker of beer. Neither tea, nor oatmeal, nor vinegar and water
(coolly recommended by indoor folk) will do for him. His natural
constitution rebels against such "peevish" drink. In winter he
wants beer against the cold and the frosty rime and the heavy raw
mist that hangs about the hollows; in spring and autumn against the
rain, and in summer to support him under the pressure of additional
work and prolonged hours. Those who really wish well to the
labourer cannot do better than see that he really has beer to
drink—real beer, genuine brew of malt and hops, a moderate
quantity of which will supply force to his thews and sinews, and
will not intoxicate or injure. If by giving him a small money
payment in lieu of such large quantities you can induce him to be
content with a little, so much the better. If an employer followed
that plan, and at the same time once or twice a day sent out a
moderate supply of genuine beer as a gift to his men, he would do
them all the good in the world, and at the same time obtain for
himself their goodwill and hearty assistance, that hearty work
which is worth so much.</p>
<p>Roger breathed heavily in his sleep in the cowhouse, because the
vile stuff he had taken puffed him up and obstructed nature. The
tongue in his open mouth became parched and cracked, swollen and
dry; he slept indeed, but he did not rest; he groaned heavily at
times and rolled aside. Once he awoke choking—he could not
swallow, his tongue was so dry and large; he sat up, swore, and
again lay down. The rats in the sties had already discovered that a
man slept in the cowhouse, a place they rarely visited, as there
was nothing there to eat; how they found it out no one knows. They
are clever creatures, the despised rats. They came across in the
night and looked under his bed, supposing that he might have eaten
his bread-and-cheese for supper there, and that fragments might
have dropped between the boards. There were none. They mounted the
boards and sniffed round him; they would have stolen the food from
his very pocket if it had been there. Nor could they find a bundle
in a handkerchief, which they would have gnawn through speedily.
Not a scrap of food was there to be smelt at, so they left him.
Roger had indeed gone supperless, as usual; his supper he had
swilled and not eaten. His own fault; he should have exercised
self-control. Well, I don't know; let us consider further before we
judge.</p>
<p>In houses the difficulty often is to get the servants up in the
morning; one cannot wake, and the rest sleep too sound—much
the same thing; yet they have clocks and alarums. The reapers are
never behind. Roger got off his planks, shook himself, went outside
the shed, and tightened his shoelaces in the bright light. His
rough hair he just pushed back from his forehead, and that was his
toilet. His dry throat sent him to the pump, but he did not swallow
much of the water—he washed his mouth out, and that was
enough; and so without breakfast he went to his work. Looking down
from the stile on the high ground there seemed to be a white cloud
resting on the valley, through which the tops of the high trees
penetrated; the hedgerows beneath were concealed, and their course
could only be traced by the upper branches of the elms. Under this
cloud the wheat-fields were blotted out; there seemed neither corn
nor grass, work for man nor food for animal; there could be nothing
doing there surely. In the stillness of the August morning, without
song of bird, the sun, shining brilliantly high above the mist,
seemed to be the only living thing, to possess the whole and reign
above absolute peace. It is a curious sight to see the early
harvest morn—all hushed under the burning sun, a morn that
you know is full of life and meaning, yet quiet as if man's foot
had never trodden the land. Only the sun is there, rolling on his
endless way.</p>
<p>Roger's head was bound with brass, but had it not been he would
not have observed anything in the aspect of the earth. Had a brazen
band been drawn firmly round his forehead it could not have felt
more stupefied. His eyes blinked in the sunlight; every now and
then he stopped to save himself from staggering; he was not in a
condition to think. It would have mattered not at all if his head
had been clear; earth, sky, and sun were nothing to him; he knew
the footpath, and saw that the day would be fine and hot, and that
was sufficient for him, because his eyes had never been opened.</p>
<p>The reaper had risen early to his labour, but the birds had
preceded him hours. Before the sun was up the swallows had left
their beams in the cowshed and twittered out into the air. The
rooks and wood-pigeons and doves had gone to the corn, the
blackbird to the stream, the finch to the hedgerow, the bees to the
heath on the hills, the humble-bees to the clover in the plain.
Butterflies rose from the flowers by the footpath, and fluttered
before him to and fro and round and back again to the place whence
they had been driven. Goldfinches tasting the first thistledown
rose from the corner where the thistles grew thickly. A hundred
sparrows came rushing up into the hedge, suddenly filling the
boughs with brown fruit; they chirped and quarrelled in their talk,
and rushed away again back to the corn as he stepped nearer. The
boughs were stripped of their winged brown berries as quickly as
they had grown. Starlings ran before the cows feeding in the
aftermath, so close to their mouths as to seem in danger of being
licked up by their broad tongues. All creatures, from the tiniest
insect upward, were in reality busy under that curtain of
white-heat haze. It looked so still, so quiet, from afar; entering
it and passing among the fields, all that lived was found busy at
its long day's work. Roger did not interest himself in these
things, in the wasps that left the gate as he approached—they
were making <i>papier-maché</i> from the wood of the top
bar,—in the bright poppies brushing against his drab
unpolished boots, in the hue of the wheat or the white convolvulus;
they were nothing to him.</p>
<p>Why should they be? His life was work without skill or thought,
the work of the horse, of the crane that lifts stones and timber.
His food was rough, his drink rougher, his lodging dry planks. His
books were—none; his picture-gallery a coloured print at the
alehouse—a dog, dead, by a barrel, "Trust is dead! Bad Pay
killed him." Of thought he thought nothing; of hope his idea was a
shilling a week more wages; of any future for himself of comfort
such as even a good cottage can give—of any future
whatever—he had no more conception than the horse in the
shafts of the waggon. A human animal simply in all this, yet if you
reckoned upon him as simply an animal—as has been done these
centuries—you would now be mistaken. But why should he note
the colour of the butterfly, the bright light of the sun, the hue
of the wheat? This loveliness gave him no cheese for breakfast; of
beauty in itself, for itself, he had no idea. How should he? To
many of us the harvest—the summer—is a time of joy in
light and colour; to him it was a time for adding yet another crust
of hardness to the thick skin of his hands.</p>
<p>Though the haze looked like a mist it was perfectly dry; the
wheat was as dry as noon; not a speck of dew, and pimpernels wide
open for a burning day. The reaping-machine began to rattle as he
came up, and work was ready for him. At breakfast-time his fellows
lent him a quarter of a loaf, some young onions, and a drink from
their tea. He ate little, and the tea slipped from his hot tongue
like water from the bars of a grate; his tongue was like the heated
iron the housemaid tries before using it on the linen. As the
reaping-machine went about the gradually decreasing square of corn,
narrowing it by a broad band each time, the wheat fell flat on the
short stubble. Roger stooped, and, gathering sufficient together,
took a few straws, knotted them to another handful as you might tie
two pieces of string, and twisted the band round the sheaf. He
worked stooping to gather the wheat, bending to tie it in sheaves;
stooping, bending—stooping, bending,—and so across the
field. Upon his head and back the fiery sun poured down the
ceaseless and increasing heat of the August day. His face grew red,
his neck black; the drought of the dry ground rose up and entered
his mouth and nostrils, a warm air seemed to rise from the earth
and fill his chest. His body ached from the ferment of the vile
beer, his back ached with stooping, his forehead was bound tight
with a brazen band. They brought some beer at last; it was like the
spring in the desert to him. The vicious liquor—"a hair of
the dog that bit him"—sank down his throat grateful and
refreshing to his disordered palate as if he had drunk the very
shadow of green boughs. Good ale would have seemed nauseous to him
at that moment, his taste and stomach destroyed by so many gallons
of this. He was "pulled together," and worked easier; the slow
hours went on, and it was luncheon. He could have borrowed more
food, but he was content instead with a screw of tobacco for his
pipe and his allowance of beer.</p>
<p>They sat in the corner of the field. There were no trees for
shade; they had been cut down as injurious to corn, but there were
a few maple bushes and thin ash sprays, which seemed better than
the open. The bushes cast no shade at all, the sun being so nearly
overhead, but they formed a kind of enclosure, an open-air home,
for men seldom sit down if they can help it on the bare and level
plain; they go to the bushes, to the corner, or even to some
hollow. It is not really any advantage; it is habit; or shall we
not rather say that it is nature? Brought back as it were in the
open field to the primitive conditions of life, they resumed the
same instincts that controlled man in the ages past. Ancient man
sought the shelter of trees and banks, of caves and hollows, and so
the labourers under somewhat the same conditions came to the corner
where the bushes grew. There they left their coats and slung up
their luncheon-bundles to the branches; there the children played
and took charge of the infants; there the women had their hearth
and hung their kettle over a fire of sticks.</p>
<h4 align="center">II</h4>
In August the unclouded sun, when there is no wind, shines as
fervently in the harvest-field as in Spain. It is doubtful if the
Spanish people feel the heat so much as our reapers; they have
their siesta; their habits have become attuned to the sun, and it
is no special strain upon them. In India our troops are carefully
looked after in the hot weather, and everything made as easy for
them as possible; without care and special clothing and coverings
for the head they could not long endure. The English simoon of heat
drops suddenly on the heads of the harvesters and finds them
entirely unprepared; they have not so much as a cooling drink
ready; they face it, as it were, unarmed. The sun spares not; It is
fire from morn till night. Afar in the town the sun-blinds are up,
there is a tent on the lawn in the shade, people drink claret-cup
and use ice; ice has never been seen in the harvest-field. Indoors
they say they are melting lying on a sofa in a darkened room, made
dusky to keep out the heat. The fire falls straight from the sky on
the heads of the harvesters—men, women, and
children—and the white-hot light beats up again from the dry
straw and the hard ground. <br>
<br>
<p>The tender flowers endure; the wide petal of the poppy, which
withers between the fingers, lies afloat on the air as the lilies
on water, afloat and open to the weight of the heat. The red
pimpernel looks straight up at the sky from the early morning till
its hour of closing in the afternoon. Pale blue speedwell does not
fade; the pale blue stands the warmth equally with the scarlet. Far
in the thick wheat the streaked convolvulus winds up the stalks,
and is not smothered for want of air though wrapped and circled
with corn. Beautiful though they are, they are bloodless, not
sensitive; we have given to them our feelings, they do not share
our pain or pleasure. Heat has gone into the hollow stalks of the
wheat and down the yellow tubes to the roots, drying them in the
earth. Heat has dried the leaves upon the hedge, and they touch
rough—dusty rough, as books touch that have been lying
unused; the plants on the bank are drying up and turning white.
Heat has gone down into the cracks of the ground; the bar of the
stile is so dry and powdery in the crevices that if a reaper
chanced to drop a match on it there would seem risk of fire. The
still atmosphere is laden with heat, and does not move in the
corner of the field between the bushes.</p>
<p>Roger the reaper smoked out his tobacco; the children played
round and watched for scraps of food; the women complained of the
heat; the men said nothing. It is seldom that a labourer grumbles
much at the weather, except as interfering with his work. Let the
heat increase, so it would only keep fine. The fire in the sky
meant money. Work went on again; Roger had now to go to another
field to pitch—that is, help to load the waggon; as a young
man, that was one of the jobs allotted to him. This was the
reverse. Instead of stooping he had now to strain himself upright
and lift sheaves over his head. His stomach empty of everything but
small ale did not like this any more than his back had liked the
other; but those who work for bare food must not question their
employment. Heavily the day drove on; there was more beer, and
again more beer, because it was desired to clear some fields that
evening. Monotonously pitching the sheaves, Roger laboured by the
waggon till the last had been loaded—till the moon was
shining. His brazen forehead was unbound now; in spite of the beer
the work and the perspiration had driven off the aching. He was
weary but well. Nor had he been dull during the day; he had talked
and joked—cumbrously in labourers' fashion—with his
fellows. His aches, his empty stomach, his labour, and the heat had
not overcome the vitality of his spirits. There was life enough
left for a little rough play as the group gathered together and
passed out through the gateway. Life enough left in him to go with
the rest to the alehouse; and what else, oh moralist, would you
have done in his place? This, remember, is not a fancy sketch of
rural poetry; this is the reaper's real existence.</p>
<p>He had been in the harvest-field fourteen hours, exposed to the
intense heat, not even shielded by a pith helmet; he had worked the
day through with thew and sinew; he had had for food a little dry
bread and a few onions, for drink a little weak tea and a great
deal of small beer. The moon was now shining in the sky, still
bright with sunset colours. Fourteen hours of sun and labour and
hard fare! Now tell him what to do. To go straight to his plank-bed
in the cowhouse; to eat a little more dry bread, borrow some cheese
or greasy bacon, munch it alone, and sit musing till sleep
came—he who had nothing to muse about. I think it would need
a very clever man indeed to invent something for him to do, some
way for him to spend his evening. Read! To recommend a man to read
after fourteen hours' burning sun is indeed a mockery; darn his
stockings would be better. There really is nothing whatsoever that
the cleverest and most benevolent person could suggest. Before any
benevolent or well-meaning suggestions could be effective the
preceding circumstances must be changed—the hours and
conditions of labour, everything; and can that be done? The world
has been working these thousands of years, and still it is the
same; with our engines, our electric light, our printing press,
still the coarse labour of the mine, the quarry, the field has to
be carried out by human hands. While that is so, it is useless to
recommend the weary reaper to read. For a man is not a horse: the
horse's day's work is over; taken to his stable he is content, his
mind goes no deeper than the bottom of his manger, and so long as
his nose does not feel the wood, so long as it is met by corn and
hay, he will endure happily. But Roger the reaper is not a
horse.</p>
<p>Just as his body needed food and drink, so did his mind require
recreation, and that chiefly consists of conversation. The drinking
and the smoking are in truth but the attributes of the labourer's
public-house evening. It is conversation that draws him thither,
just as it draws men with money in their pockets to the club and
the houses of their friends. Any one can drink or smoke alone; it
needs several for conversation, for company. You pass a
public-house—the reaper's house—in the summer evening.
You see a number of men grouped about trestle-tables out of doors,
and others sitting at the open window; there is an odour of
tobacco, a chink of glasses and mugs. You can smell the tobacco and
see the ale; you cannot see the indefinite power which holds men
there—the magnetism of company and conversation. <i>Their</i>
conversation, not <i>your</i> conversation; not the last book, the
last play; not saloon conversation; but theirs—talk in which
neither you nor any one of your condition could really join. To us
there would seem nothing at all in that conversation, vapid and
subjectless; to them it means much. We have not been through the
same circumstances: our day has been differently spent, and the
same words have therefore a varying value. Certain it is, that it
is conversation that takes men to the public-house. Had Roger been
a horse he would have hastened to borrow some food, and, having
eaten that, would have cast himself at once upon his rude bed. Not
being an animal, though his life and work were animal, he went with
his friends to talk. Let none unjustly condemn him as a blackguard
for that—no, not even though they had seen him at ten o'clock
unsteadily walking to his shed, and guiding himself occasionally
with his hands to save himself from stumbling. He blundered against
the door, and the noise set the swallows on the beams twittering.
He reached his bedstead, and sat down and tried to unlace his
boots, but could not. He threw himself upon the sacks and fell
asleep. Such was one twenty-four hours of harvest-time.</p>
<p>The next and the next, for weeks, were almost exactly similar;
now a little less beer, now a little more; now tying up, now
pitching, now cutting a small field or corner with a fagging-hook.
Once now and then there was a great supper at the farm. Once he
fell out with another fellow, and they had a fight; Roger, however,
had had so much ale, and his opponent so much whisky, that their
blows were soft and helpless. They both fell—that is, they
stumbled,—they were picked up, there was some more beer, and
it was settled. One afternoon Roger became suddenly giddy, and was
so ill that he did no more work that day, and very little on the
following. It was something like a sunstroke, but fortunately a
slight attack; on the third day he resumed his place. Continued
labour in the sun, little food and much drink, stomach derangement,
in short, accounted for his illness. Though he resumed his place
and worked on, he was not so well afterwards; the work was more of
an effort to him, and his face lost its fulness, and became drawn
and pointed. Still he laboured, and would not miss an hour, for
harvest was coming to an end, and the extra wages would soon cease.
For the first week or so of haymaking or reaping the men usually
get drunk, delighted with the prospect before them, they then
settle down fairly well. Towards the end they struggle hard to
recover lost time and the money spent in ale.</p>
<p>As the last week approached, Roger went up into the village and
ordered the shoemaker to make him a good pair of boots. He paid
partly for them then, and the rest next pay-day. This was a
tremendous effort. The labourer usually pays a shilling at a time,
but Roger mistrusted himself. Harvest was practically over, and
after all the labour and the long hours, the exposure to the sun
and the rude lodging, he found he should scarcely have thirty
shillings. With the utmost ordinary care he could have saved a good
lump of money. He was a single man, and his actual keep cost but
little. Many married labourers, who had been forced by hard
necessity to economy, contrived to put by enough to buy clothes for
their families. The single man, with every advantage, hardly had
thirty shillings, and even then it showed extraordinary prudence on
his part to go and purchase a pair of boots for the winter. Very
few in his place would have been as thoughtful as that; they would
have got boots somehow in the end, but not beforehand. This life of
animal labour does not grow the spirit of economy. Not only in
farming, but in navvy work, in the rougher work of factories and
mines, the same fact is evident. The man who labours with thew and
sinew at horse labour—crane labour—not for himself, but
for others, is not the man who saves. If he worked for his own hand
possibly he might, no matter how rough his labour and fare; not
while working for another. Roger reached his distant home among the
meadows at last, with one golden half-sovereign in his pocket. That
and his new pair of boots, not yet finished, represented the golden
harvest to him. He lodged with his parents when at home; he was so
far fortunate that he had a bed to go to; therefore in the
estimation of his class he was not badly off. But if we consider
his position as regards his own life we must recognise that he was
very badly off indeed, so much precious time and the strength of
his youth having been wasted.</p>
<p>Often it is stated that the harvest wages recoup the labourer
for the low weekly receipts of the year, and if the money be put
down in figures with pen and ink it is so. But in actual fact the
pen-and-ink figures do not represent the true case; these extra
figures have been paid for, and gold may be bought too dear. Roger
had paid heavily for his half-sovereign and his boots; his pinched
face did not look as if he had benefited greatly. His cautious old
father, rendered frugal by forty years of labour, had done fairly
well; the young man not at all. The old man, having a cottage, in a
measure worked for his own hand. The young man, with none but
himself to think of, scattered his money to the winds. Is money
earned with such expenditure of force worth the having? Look at the
arm of a woman labouring in the harvest-field—thin, muscular,
sinewy, black almost, it tells of continual strain. After much of
this she becomes pulled out of shape, the neck loses its roundness
and shows the sinews, the chest flattens. In time the women find
the strain of it tell severely. I am not trying to make out a case
of special hardship, being aware that both men, women, and children
work as hard and perhaps suffer more in cities; I am simply
describing the realities of rural life behind the scenes. The
golden harvest is the first scene: the golden wheat, glorious under
the summer sun. Bright poppies flower in its depths, and
convolvulus climbs the stalks. Butterflies float slowly over the
yellow surface as they might over a lake of colour. To linger by
it, to visit it day by day, at even to watch the sunset by it, and
see it pale under the changing light, is a delight to the
thoughtful mind. There is so much in the wheat, there are books of
meditation in it, it is dear to the heart. Behind these beautiful
aspects comes the reality of human labour—hours upon hours of
heat and strain; there comes the reality of a rude life, and in the
end little enough of gain. The wheat is beautiful, but human life
is labour.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="8">THE MODERN THAMES</a></h3>
<h4 align="center">I</h4>
<p>The wild red deer can never again come down to drink at the
Thames in the dusk of the evening as once they did. While modern
civilisation endures, the larger fauna must necessarily be confined
to parks or restrained to well-marked districts; but for that very
reason the lesser creatures of the wood, the field, and the river
should receive the more protection. If this applies to the secluded
country, far from the stir of cities, still more does it apply to
the neighbourhood of London. From a sportsman's point of view, or
from that of a naturalist, the state of the river is one of chaos.
There is no order. The Thames appears free even from the usual
rules which are in force upon every highway. A man may not fire a
gun within a certain distance of a road under a penalty—a law
enacted for the safety of passengers, who were formerly endangered
by persons shooting small birds along the hedges bordering roads.
Nor may he shoot at all, not so much as fire off a pistol (as
recently publicly proclaimed by the Metropolitan police to restrain
the use of revolvers), without a licence. But on the river people
do as they choose, and there does not seem to be any law at
all—or at least there is no authority to enforce it, if it
exists. Shooting from boats and from the towing-path is carried on
in utter defiance of the licensing law, of the game law (as
applicable to wild fowl), and of the safety of persons who may be
passing. The moorhens are shot, the kingfishers have been nearly
exterminated or driven away from some parts, the once common
black-headed bunting is comparatively scarce in the more frequented
reaches, and if there is nothing else to shoot at, then the
swallows are slaughtered. Some have even taken to shooting at the
rooks in the trees or fields by the river with small-bore
rifles—a most dangerous thing to do. The result is that the
osier-beds on the eyots and by the backwaters—the copses of
the river—are almost devoid of life. A few moorhens creep
under the aquatic grasses and conceal themselves beneath the
bushes, water-voles hide among the flags, but the once extensive
host of waterfowl and river life has been reduced to the smallest
limits. Water-fowl cannot breed because they are shot on the nest,
or their eggs taken. As for rarer birds, of course they have not
the slightest chance. The fish have fared better because they have
received the benefit of close seasons, enforced with more or less
vigilance all along the river. They are also protected by
regulations making it illegal to capture them except in a
sportsmanlike manner; snatching, for instance, is unlawful.
Riverside proprietors preserve some reaches, piscatorial societies
preserve others, and the complaint indeed is that the rights of the
public have been encroached upon. The too exclusive preservation of
fish is in a measure responsible for the destruction of water-fowl,
which are cleared off preserved places in order that they may not
help themselves to fry or spawn. On the other hand, the societies
may claim to have saved parts of the river from being entirely
deprived of fish, for it is not long since it appeared as if the
stream would be quite cleared out. Large quantities of fish have
also been placed in the river taken from ponds and bodily
transported to the Thames. So that upon the whole the fish have
been well looked after of recent years.</p>
<p>The more striking of the aquatic plants—such as white
water-lilies—have been much diminished in quantity by the
constant plucking, and injury is said to have been done by careless
navigation. In things of this kind a few persons can do a great
deal of damage. Two or three men with guns, and indifferent to the
interests of sport or natural history, at work every day, can clear
a long stretch of river of waterfowl, by scaring if not by actually
killing them. Imagine three or four such gentry allowed to wander
at will in a large game preserve—in a week they would totally
destroy it as a preserve. The river, after all, is but a narrow
band as it were, and is easily commanded by a gun. So, too, with
fish poachers; a very few men with nets can quickly empty a good
piece of water: and flowers like water-lilies, which grow only in
certain spots, are soon pulled or spoiled. This aspect of the
matter—the immense mischief which can be effected by a very
few persons—should be carefully borne in mind in framing any
regulations. For the mischief done on the river is really the work
of a small number, a mere fraction of the thousands of all classes
who frequent it. Not one in a thousand probably perpetrates any
intentional damage to fish, fowl, or flowers.</p>
<p>As the river above all things is, and ought to be, a place of
recreation, care must be particularly taken that in restraining
these practices the enjoyment of the many be not interfered with.
The rational pleasure of 999 people ought not to be checked because
the last of the thousand acts as a blackguard. This point, too,
bears upon the question of steam-launches. A launch can pass as
softly and quietly as a skiff floating with the stream. And there
is a good deal to be said on the other side, for the puntsmen stick
themselves very often in the way of every one else; and if you
analyse fishing for minnows from a punt you will not find it a
noble sport. A river like the Thames, belonging as it does—or
as it ought—to a city like London, should be managed from the
very broadest standpoint. There should be pleasure for all, and
there certainly is no real difficulty in arranging matters to that
end. The Thames should be like a great aquarium, in which a certain
balance of life has to be kept up. When aquaria first came into
favour such things as snails and weeds were excluded as eyesores
and injurious. But it was soon discovered that the despised snails
and weeds were absolutely necessary; an aquarium could not be
maintained in health without them, and now the most perfect
aquarium is the one in which the natural state is most completely
copied. On the same principle it is evident that too exclusive
preservation must be injurious to the true interests of the river.
Fish enthusiasts, for instance, desire the extinction of
water-fowl—there is not a single aquatic bird which they do
not accuse of damage to fry, spawn, or full-grown fish; no, not
one, from the heron down to the tiny grebe. They are nearly as
bitter against animals, the poor water-vole (or water-rat) even is
denounced and shot. Any one who chooses may watch the water-rat
feeding on aquatic vegetation; never mind, shoot him because he's
there. There is no other reason. Bitterest, harshest, most
envenomed of all is the outcry and hunt directed against the otter.
It is as if the otter were a wolf—as if he were as injurious
as the mighty boar whom Meleager and his companions chased in the
days of dim antiquity. What, then, has the otter done? Has he
ravaged the fields? does he threaten the homesteads? is he at
Temple Bar? are we to run, as the old song says, from the Dragon?
The fact is, the ravages attributed to the otter are of a local
character. They are chiefly committed in those places where fish
are more or less confined. If you keep sheep close together in a
pen the wolf who leaps the hurdles can kill the flock if he
chooses. In narrow waters, and where fish are maintained in
quantities out of proportion to extent, an otter can work doleful
woe. That is to say, those who want too many fish are those who
give the otter his opportunity.</p>
<p>In a great river like the Thames a few otters cannot do much or
lasting injury except in particular places. The truth is, that the
otter is an ornament to the river, and more worthy of preservation
than any other creature. He is the last and largest of the wild
creatures who once roamed so freely in the forests which enclosed
Londinium, that fort in the woods and marshes—marshes which
to this day, though drained and built over, enwrap the
nineteenth-century city in thick mists. The red deer are gone, the
boar is gone, the wolf necessarily destroyed—the red deer can
never again drink at the Thames in the dusk of the evening while
our civilisation endures. The otter alone remains—the
wildest, the most thoroughly self-supporting of all living things
left—a living link going back to the days of Cassivelaunus.
London ought to take the greatest interest in the otters of its
river. The shameless way in which every otter that dares to show
itself is shot, trapped, beaten to death, and literally battered
out of existence, should rouse the indignation of every sportsman
and every lover of nature. The late Rev. John Russell, who, it will
be admitted, was a true sportsman, walked three thousand miles to
see an otter. That was a different spirit, was it not?</p>
<p>That is the spirit in which the otter in the Thames should be
regarded. Those who offer money rewards for killing Thames otters
ought to be looked on as those who would offer rewards for
poisoning foxes in Leicestershire, I suppose we shall not see the
ospreys again; but I should like to. Again, on the other side of
the boundary, in the tidal waters, the same sort of ravenous
destruction is carried on against everything that ventures up. A
short time ago a porpoise came up to Mortlake; now, just think, a
porpoise up from the great sea—that sea to which Londoners
rush with such joy—past Gravesend, past Greenwich, past the
Tower, under London Bridge, past Westminster and the Houses of
Parliament, right up to Mortlake. It is really a wonderful thing
that a denizen of the sea, so large and interesting as a porpoise,
should come right through the vast City of London. In an aquarium,
people would go to see it and admire it, and take their children to
see it. What happened? Some one hastened out in a boat, armed with
a gun or a rifle, and occupied himself with shooting at it. He did
not succeed in killing it, but it was wounded. Some difference here
to the spirit of John Russell. If I may be permitted to express an
opinion, I think that there is not a single creature, from the
sand-marten and the black-headed bunting to the broad-winged heron,
from the water-vole to the otter, from the minnow on one side of
the tidal boundary to the porpoise on the other—big and
little, beasts and birds (of prey or not)—that should not be
encouraged and protected on this beautiful river, morally the
property of the greatest city in the world.</p>
<h4 align="center">II</h4>
<p>I looked forward to living by the river with delight,
anticipating the long rows I should have past the green eyots and
the old houses red-tiled among the trees. I should pause below the
weir and listen to the pleasant roar, and watch the fisherman cast
again and again with the "transcendent patience" of genius by which
alone the Thames trout is captured. Twisting the end of a willow
bough round my wrist I could moor myself and rest at ease, though
the current roared under the skiff, fresh from the waterfall. A
thousand thousand bubbles rising to the surface would whiten the
stream—a thousand thousand succeeded by another thousand
thousand—and still flowing, no multiple could express the
endless number. That which flows continually by some sympathy is
acceptable to the mind, as if thereby it realised its own existence
without an end. Swallows would skim the water to and fro as yachts
tack, the sandpiper would run along the strand, a black-headed
bunting would perch upon the willow; perhaps, as the man of genius
fishing and myself made no noise, a kingfisher might come, and we
might see him take his prey.</p>
<p>Or I might quit hold of the osier, and, entering a shallow
backwater, disturb shoals of roach playing where the water was
transparent to the bottom, after their wont. Winding in and out
like an Indian in his canoe, perhaps traces of an otter might be
found—his kitchen mödding—and in the sedges
moorhens and wildfowl would hide from me. From its banks I should
gather many a flower and notice many a plant, there would be, too,
the beautiful water-lily. Or I should row on up the great stream by
meadows full of golden buttercups, past fields crimson with
trifolium or green with young wheat. Handsome sailing craft would
come down spanking before the breeze, laden with bright
girls—laughter on board, and love the golden fleece of their
argosy.</p>
<p>I should converse with the ancient men of the ferries, and
listen to their river lore; they would show me the mark to which
the stream rose in the famous year of floods. On again to the cool
hostelry whose sign was reflected in the water, where there would
be a draught of fine ale for the heated and thirsty sculler. On
again till steeple or tower rising over the trees marked my
journey's end for the day, some old town where, after rest and
refreshment, there would be a ruin or a timbered house to look at,
where I should meet folk full of former days and quaint tales of
yore. Thus to journey on from place to place would be the great
charm of the river—travelling by water, not merely sculling
to and fro, but really travelling. Upon a lake I could but row
across and back again, and however lovely the scenery might be,
still it would always be the same. But the Thames, upon the river I
could really travel, day after day, from Teddington Lock upwards to
Windsor, to Oxford, on to quiet Lechlade, or even farther deep into
the meadows by Cricklade. Every hour there would be something
interesting, all the freshwater life to study, the very barges
would amuse me, and at last there would be the delicious ease of
floating home carried by the stream, repassing all that had pleased
before.</p>
<p>The time came. I lived by the river, not far from its widest
reaches, before the stream meets its tide. I went to the eyot for a
boat, and my difficulties began. The crowd of boats lashed to each
other in strings ready for the hirer disconcerted me. There were so
many I could not choose; the whole together looked like a broad
raft. Others were hauled on the shore. Over on the eyot, a little
island, there were more boats, boats launched, boats being
launched, boats being carried by gentlemen in coloured flannels as
carefully as mothers handle their youngest infants, boats covered
in canvas mummy-cases, and dim boats under roofs, their sharp prows
projecting like crocodiles' snouts. Tricksy outriggers, ready to
upset on narrow keel, were held firmly for the sculler to step
daintily into his place. A strong eight shot by up the stream, the
men all pulling together as if they had been one animal. A strong
sculler shot by down the stream, his giant arms bare and the
muscles visible as they rose, knotting and unknotting with the
stroke. Every one on the bank and eyot stopped to watch
him—they knew him, he was training. How could an amateur
venture out and make an exhibition of himself after such splendid
rowing! Still it was noticeable that plenty of amateurs did venture
out, till the waterway was almost concealed—boated over
instead of bridged—and how they managed to escape locking
their oars together, I could not understand.</p>
<p>I looked again at the boats. Some were outriggers. I could not
get into an outrigger after seeing the great sculler. The rest were
one and all after the same pattern, <i>i.e.</i> with the stern
cushioned and prepared for a lady. Some were larger, and could
carry three or four ladies, but they were all intended for the same
purpose. If the sculler went out in such a boat by himself he must
either sit too forward and so depress the stem and dig himself, as
it were, into the water at each stroke, or he must sit too much to
the rear and depress the stern, and row with the stem lifted up,
sniffing the air. The whole crowd of boats on hire were exactly the
same; in short, they were built for woman and not for man, for
lovely woman to recline, parasol in one hand and tiller ropes in
the other, while man—inferior man—pulled and pulled and
pulled as an ox yoked to the plough. They could only be balanced by
man and woman, that was the only way they could be trimmed on an
even keel; they were like scales, in which the weight on one side
must be counterpoised by a weight in the other. They were dead
against bachelors. They belonged to woman, and she was absolute
mistress of the river.</p>
<p>As I looked, the boats ground together a little, chafing,
laughing at me, making game of me, asking distinctly what business
a man had there without at least one companion in petticoats? My
courage ebbed, and it was in a feeble voice that I inquired whether
there was no such thing as a little skiff a fellow might paddle
about in? No, nothing of the kind; would a canoe do? Somehow a
canoe would not do. I never took kindly to canoes, excepting always
the Canadian birch-bark pattern; evidently there was no boat for
me. There was no place on the great river for an indolent, dreamy
particle like myself, apt to drift up into nooks, and to spend much
time absorbing those pleasures which enter by the exquisite
sensitiveness of the eye—colour, and shade, and form, and the
cadence of glittering ripple and moving leaf. You must be prepared
to pull and push, and struggle for your existence on the river, as
in the vast city hard by men push and crush for money. You must
assert yourself, and insist upon having your share of the waterway;
you must be perfectly convinced that yours is the very best style
of rowing to be seen; every one ought to get out of your way. You
must consult your own convenience only, and drive right into other
people's boats, forcing them up into the willows, or against the
islands. Never slip along the shore, or into quiet backwaters;
always select the more frequented parts, not because you want to go
there, but to make your presence known, and go amongst the crowd;
and if a few sculls get broken, it only proves how very inferior
and how very clumsy other people are. If you see another boat
coming down stream, in the centre of the river with a broad space
on either side for others to pass, at once head your own boat
straight at her, and take possession of the way. Or, better still,
never look ahead, but pull straight on, and let things happen as
they may. Annoy everybody, and you are sure to be right, and to be
respected; splash the ladies as you pass with a dexterous flip of
the scull, and soak their summer costumes; it is capital sport, and
they look so sulky—or is it contemptuous?</p>
<p>There was no such thing as a skiff in which one could quietly
paddle about, or gently make way—mile after mile—up the
beautiful stream. The boating throng grew thicker, and my courage
less and less, till I desperately resorted to the ferry—at
all events, I could be rowed over in the ferry-boat, that would be
something; I should be on the water, after a fashion—and the
ferryman would know a good deal. The burly ferryman cared nothing
at all about the river, and merely answered "Yes," or "No;" he was
full of the Derby and Sandown; didn't know about the fishing;
supposed there were fish; didn't see 'em, nor eat 'em; want a punt?
No. So he landed me, desolate and hopeless, on the opposite bank,
and I began to understand how the souls felt after Charon had got
them over. They could not have been more unhappy than I was on the
towing-path, as the ferryboat receded and left me watching the
continuous succession of boats passing up and down the river.</p>
<p>By-and-by an immense black hulk came drifting round the
bend—an empty barge—almost broadside across the stream,
for the current at the curve naturally carried it out from the
shore. This huge helpless monster occupied the whole river, and had
no idea where it was going, for it had no fins or sweeps to guide
its course, and the rudder could only induce it to submit itself
lengthways to the stream after the lapse of some time. The fairway
of the river was entirely taken up by this irresponsible
Frankenstein of the Thames, which some one had started, but which
now did as it liked. Some of the small craft got up into the
willows and waited; some seemed to narrowly escape being crushed
against a wall on the opposite bank. The bright white sails of a
yacht shook and quivered as its steersman tried all he knew to coax
his vessel an inch more into the wind out of the monster's path. In
vain! He had to drop down the stream, and lose what it had taken
him half an hour's skill to gain. What a pleasing monster to meet
in the narrow arches of a bridge! The man in charge leaned on the
tiller, and placidly gazed at the wild efforts of some unskilful
oarsmen to escape collision. In fact, the monster had charge of the
man, and did as it liked with him.</p>
<p>Down the river they drifted together, Frankenstein swinging
round and thrusting his blunt nose first this way and then that;
down the river, blocking up the narrow passage by the eyot;
stopping the traffic at the lock; out at last into the tidal
stream, there to begin a fresh life of annoyance, and finally to
endanger the good speed of many a fine three-master and ocean
steamer off the docks. The Thames barge knows no law. No judge, no
jury, no Palace of Justice, no Chancery, no appeal to the Lords has
any terror for the monster barge. It drifts by the Houses of
Parliament with no more respect than it shows for the lodge of the
lock-keeper. It drifts by Royal Windsor and cares not. The guns of
the Tower are of no account. There is nothing in the world so
utterly free as this monster.</p>
<p>Often have I asked myself if the bargee at the tiller, now
sucking at his short black pipe, now munching onions and cheese
(the little onions he pitches on the lawns by the river side, there
to take root and flourish)—if this amiable man has any notion
of his own incomparable position. Just some inkling of the irony of
the situation must, I fancy, now and then dimly dawn within his
grimy brow. To see all these gentlemen shoved on one side; to be
lying in the way of a splendid Australian clipper; to stop an
incoming vessel, impatient for her berth; to swing, and sway, and
roll as he goes; to bump the big ships, and force the little ones
aside; to slip, and slide, and glide with the tide, ripples dancing
under the prow, and be master of the world-famed Thames from source
to mouth, is not this a joy for ever? Liberty is beyond price; now
no one is really free unless he can crush his neighbour's interest
underfoot, like a horse-roller going over a daisy. Bargee is free,
and the ashes of his pipe are worth a king's ransom.</p>
<p>Imagine a great van loaded at the East-end of London with the
heaviest merchandise, with bags of iron nails, shot, leaden sheets
in rolls, and pig iron; imagine four strong
horses—dray-horses—harnessed thereto. Then let the
waggoner mount behind in a seat comfortably contrived for him
facing the rear, and settle himself down happily among his sacks,
light his pipe, and fold his hands untroubled with any worry of
reins. Away they go through the crowded city, by the Bank of
England, and across into Cheapside, cabs darting this way,
carriages that, omnibuses forced up into side-streets, foot traffic
suspended till the monster has passed; up Fleet-street, clearing
the road in front of them—right through the stream of lawyers
always rushing to and fro the Temple and the New Law Courts, along
the Strand, and finally in triumph into Rotten Row at five o'clock
on a June afternoon. See how they scatter! see how they run! The
Row is swept clear from end to end—beauty, fashion,
rank,—what are such trifles of an hour? The monster vans
grind them all to powder. What such a waggoner might do on land,
bargee does on the river.</p>
<p>Of olden time the silver Thames was the chosen mode of travel of
Royalty—the highest in the land were rowed from palace to
city, or city to palace, between its sunlit banks. Noblemen had
their special oarsmen, and were in like manner conveyed, and could
any other mode of journeying be equally pleasant? The coal-barge
has bumped them all out of the way.</p>
<p>No man dares send forth the commonest cart unless in proper
charge, and if the horse is not under control a fine is promptly
administered. The coal-barge rolls and turns and drifts as chance
and the varying current please. How huge must be the rent in the
meshes of the law to let so large a fish go through! But in truth
there is no law about it, and to this day no man can confidently
affirm that he knows to whom the river belongs. These curious
anomalies are part and parcel of our political system, and as I
watched the black monster slowly go by with the stream it occurred
to me that grimy bargee, with his short pipe and his onions, was
really the guardian of the British Constitution.</p>
<p>Hardly had he gone past than a loud Pant! pant! pant! began some
way down the river; it came from a tug, whose short puffs of steam
produced a giant echo against the walls and quays and houses on the
bank. These angry pants sounded high above the splash of oars and
laughter, and the chorus of singers in a boat; they conquered all
other sounds and noises, and domineered the place. It was
impossible to shut the ears to them, or to persuade the mind not to
heed. The swallows dipped their breasts; how gracefully they drank
on the wing! Pant! pant! pant! The sunlight gleamed on the wake of
a four-oar. Pant! pant! pant! The soft wind blew among the trees
and over the hawthorn hedge. Pant! pant! pant! Neither the eye nor
ear could attend to aught but this hideous uproar. The tug was
weak, the stream strong, the barges behind heavy, broad, and deeply
laden, so that each puff and pant and turn of the screw barely
advanced the mass a foot. There are many feet in a mile, and for
all that weary time—Pant! pant! pant! This dreadful uproar,
like that which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza heard proceeding from
the fulling mill, must be endured. Could not philosophy by stoic
firmness shut out the sound? Can philosophy shut out anything that
is real? A long black streak of smoke hung over the water, fouling
the gleaming surface. A noise of Dante—hideous,
uncompromising as the rusty hinge of the gate which forbids hope.
Pant! pant! pant!</p>
<p>Once upon a time a Queen of England was rowed down the silver
Thames to the sweet low sound of the flute.</p>
<p>At last the noise grew fainter in the distance, and the black
hulls disappeared round the bend. I walked on up the towing-path.
Accidentally lifting my hand to shade my eyes, I was hailed by a
ferryman on the watch. He conveyed me over without much volition on
my part, and set me ashore by the inn of my imagination. The rooms
almost overhung the water: so far my vision was fulfilled. Within
there was an odour of spirits and spilled ale, a rustle of sporting
papers, talk of racings, and the click of billiard-balls. Without
there were two or three loafers, half boatmen, half vagabonds,
waiting to pick up stray sixpences—a sort of leprosy of
rascal and sneak in their faces and the lounge of their bodies.
These Thames-side "beach-combers" are a sorry lot, a special Pariah
class of themselves. Some of them have been men once: perhaps one
retains his sculling skill, and is occasionally engaged by a
gentleman to give him lessons. They regarded me eagerly—they
"spotted" a Thames freshman who might be made to yield silver; but
I walked away down the road into the village. The spire of the
church interested me, being of shingles—<i>i.e.</i> of wooden
slates—as the houses are roofed in America, as houses were
roofed in Elizabethan England; for Young America reproduces Old
England even in roofs. Some of the houses so closely approached the
churchyard that the pantry windows on a level with the ground were
partly blocked up by the green mounds of graves. Borage grew
thickly all over the yard, dropping its blue flowers on the dead.
The sharp note of a bugle rang in the air: they were changing
guard, I suppose, in Wolsey's Palace.</p>
<h4 align="center">III</h4>
<p>In time I did discover a skiff moored in a little-visited creek,
which the boatman got out for me. The sculls were rough and
shapeless—it is a remarkable fact that sculls always are,
unless you have them made and keep them for your own use. I paddled
up the river; I paused by an osier-grown islet; I slipped past the
barges, and avoided an unskilful party; it was the morning, and
none of the uproarious as yet were about. Certainly, it was very
pleasant. The sunshine gleamed on the water, broad shadows of trees
fell across; swans floated in the by-channels. A peacefulness which
peculiarly belongs to water hovered above the river. A house-boat
was moored near the willow-grown shore, and it was evidently
inhabited, for there was a fire smouldering on the bank, and some
linen that had been washed spread on the bushes to bleach. All the
windows of this gipsy-van of the river were wide open, and the air
and light entered freely into every part of the dwelling-house
under which flowed the stream. A lady was dressing herself before
one of these open windows, twining up large braids of dark hair,
her large arms bare to the shoulder, and somewhat farther. I
immediately steered out into the channel to avoid intrusion; but I
felt that she was regarding me with all a matron's contempt for an
unknown man—a mere member of the opposite sex, not
introduced, or of her "set." I was merely a man—no more than
a horse on the bank,—and had she been in her smock she would
have been just as indifferent.</p>
<p>Certainly it was a lovely morning; the old red palace of the
Cardinal seemed to slumber amid its trees, as if the passage of the
centuries had stroked and soothed it into indolent peace. The
meadows rested; even the swallows, the restless swallows, glided in
an effortless way through the busy air. I could see this, and yet I
did not quite enjoy it; something drew me away from perfect
contentment, and gradually it dawned upon me that it was the
current causing an unsuspected amount of labour in sculling. The
forceless particles of water, so yielding to the touch, which
slipped aside at the motion of the oar, in their countless myriads
ceaselessly flowing grew to be almost a solid obstruction to the
boat. I had not noticed it for a mile or so; now the pressure of
the stream was becoming evident. I persuaded myself that it was
nothing. I held on by the boathook to a root and rested, and so
went on again. Another mile or more; another rest: decidedly
sculling against a swift current is work—downright work. You
have no energy to spare over and above that needed for the labour
of rowing, not enough even to look round and admire the green
loveliness of the shore. I began to think that I should not get as
far as Oxford after all.</p>
<p>By-and-by, I began to question if rowing on a river is as
pleasant as rowing on a lake, where you can rest on your oars
without losing ground, where no current opposes progress, and after
the stroke the boat slips ahead some distance of its own impetus.
On the river the boat only travels as far as you actually pull it
at each stroke; there is no life in it after the scull is lifted,
the impetus dies, and the craft first pauses and then drifts
backward. I crept along the shore, so near that one scull
occasionally grounded, to avoid the main force of the water, which
is in the middle of the river. I slipped behind eyots and tried all
I knew. In vain, the river was stronger than I, and my arms could
not for many hours contend with the Thames. So faded another part
of my dream. The idea of rowing from one town to another—of
expeditions and travelling across the country, so pleasant to think
of—in practice became impossible. An athlete bent on nothing
but athleticism—a canoeist thinking of nothing but his
canoe—could accomplish it, setting himself daily so much work
to do, and resolutely performing it. A dreamer, who wanted to enjoy
his passing moment, and not to keep regular time with his strokes,
who wanted to gather flowers, and indulge his luxurious eyes with
effects of light and shadow and colour, could not succeed. The
river is for the man of might.</p>
<p>With a weary back at last I gave up the struggle at the foot of
a weir, almost in the splash of the cascade. My best friend, the
boathook, kept me stationary without effort, and in time rest
restored the strained muscles to physical equanimity. The roar of
the river falling over the dam soothed the mind—the sense of
an immense power at hand, working with all its might while you are
at ease, has a strangely soothing influence. It makes me sleepy to
see the vast beam of an engine regularly rise and fall in ponderous
irresistible labour. Now at last some fragment of my fancy was
realised—a myriad myriad rushing bubbles whitening the stream
burst, and were instantly succeeded by myriads more; the boat
faintly vibrated as the wild waters shot beneath it; the green
cascade, smooth at its first curve, dashed itself into the depth
beneath, broken to a million million particles; the eddies whirled,
and sucked, and sent tiny whirlpools rotating along the surface;
the roar rose or lessened in intensity as the velocity of the wind
varied; sunlight sparkled—the warmth inclined the senses to a
drowsy idleness. Yonder was the trout fisherman, just as I had
imagined him, casting and casting again with that transcendental
patience which is genius; his line and the top of his rod formed
momentary curves pleasant to look at. The kingfisher did not
come—no doubt he had been shot—but a reed-sparrow did,
in velvet black cap and dainty brown, pottering about the willow
near me. This was really like the beautiful river I had dreamed of.
If only we could persuade ourselves to remain quiescent when we are
happy! If only we would remain still in the armchair as the last
curl of vapour rises from a cigar that has been enjoyed! If only we
would sit still in the shadow and not go indoors to write that
letter! Let happiness alone. Stir not an inch; speak not a word:
happiness is a coy maiden—hold her hand and be still.</p>
<p>In an evil moment I spied the corner of a newspaper projecting
from the pocket of my coat in the stern-sheets. Folly led me to
open that newspaper, and in it I saw and read a ghastly paragraph.
Two ladies and a gentleman while boating had been carried by the
current against the piles of a weir. The boat upset; the ladies
were rescued, but the unfortunate gentleman was borne over the fall
and drowned. His body had not been recovered; men were watching the
pool day and night till some chance eddy should bring it to the
surface. So perished my dream, and the coy-maiden happiness left me
because I could not be content to be silent and still. The accident
had not happened at this weir, but it made no difference; I could
see all as plainly. A white face, blurred and indistinct, seemed to
rise up from beneath the rushing bubbles till, just as it was about
to jump to the surface, as things do that come up, down it was
drawn again by that terrible underpull which has been fatal to so
many good swimmers.</p>
<p>Who can keep afloat with a force underneath dragging at the
feet? Who can swim when the water—all bubbles, that is
air—gives no resistance to the hands? Hands and feet slip
through the bubbles. You might as well spring from the parapet of a
house and think to float by striking out as to swim in such a
medium. Sinking under, a hundred tons of water drive the body to
the bottom; there it rotates, it rises, it is forced down again, a
hundred tons of water beat upon it; the foot, perhaps, catches
among stones or woodwork, and what was once a living being is
imprisoned in death. Enough of this. I unloosed the boathook, and
drifted down with the stream, anxious to get away from the horrible
weir.</p>
<p>These accidents, which are entirely preventable, happen year
after year with lamentable monotony. Each weir is a little Niagara,
and a boat once within its influence is certain to be driven to
destruction. The current carries it against the piles, where it is
either broken or upset, the natural and reasonable alarm of the
occupants increasing the risk. In descending the river every boat
must approach the weir, and must pass within a few yards of the
dangerous current. If there is a press of boats one is often forced
out of the proper course into the rapid part of the stream without
any negligence on the part of those in it. There is nothing to
prevent this—no fence, or boom; no mark, even, between what
is dangerous and what is not; no division whatever. Persons
ignorant of the river may just as likely as not row right into
danger. A vague caution on a notice-board may or may not be seen;
in either case it gives no directions, and is certainly no
protection. Let the matter be argued from whatever point of view,
the fact remains that these accidents occur from the want of an
efficient division between the dangerous and the safe part of the
approach to a weir. A boom or some kind of fence is required, and
how extraordinary it seems that nothing of the kind is done! It is
not done because there is no authority, no control, no one
responsible. Two or three gentlemen acquainted with aquatics could
manage the river from end to end, to the safety and satisfaction of
all, if they were entrusted with discretionary powers. Stiff rules
and rigid control are not needed; what is wanted is a rational
power freely using its discretion. I do not mean a Board with its
attendant follies; I mean a small committee, unfettered,
untrammelled by "legal advisers" and so forth, merely using their
own good sense.</p>
<p>I drifted away from the weir—now grown hideous—and
out of hearing of its wailing dirge for the unfortunate. I drifted
past more barges coming up, and more steam-tugs; past river lawns,
where gay parties were now sipping claret-cup or playing tennis.
By-and-by, I began to meet pleasure-boats and to admire their
manner of progress. First there came a gentleman in white flannels,
walking on the tow-path, with a rope round his waist, towing a boat
in which two ladies were comfortably seated. In a while came two
more gentlemen in striped flannels, one streaked with gold the
other with scarlet, striding side by side and towing a boat in
which sat one lady. They were very earnestly at work, pacing in
step, their bodies slightly leaning forwards, and every now and
then they mopped their faces with handkerchiefs which they carried
in their girdles. Something in their slightly-bowed attitude
reminded me of the captives depicted on Egyptian monuments, with
cords about their necks. How curious is that instinct which makes
each sex, in different ways, the willing slave of the other! These
human steam-tugs paced and pulled, and drew the varnished craft
swiftly against the stream, evidently determined to do a certain
distance by a certain hour. As I drifted by without labour, I
admired them very much. An interval, and still more gentlemen in
flannel, labouring like galley-slaves at the tow-rope, hot,
perspiring, and happy after their kind, and ladies under parasols,
comfortably seated, cool, and happy after their kind.</p>
<p>Considering upon these things, I began to discern the true and
only manner in which the modern Thames is to be enjoyed. Above all
things—nothing heroic. Don't scull—don't
row—don't haul at tow-ropes—don't swim—don't
flourish a fishing-rod. Set your mind at ease. Make friends with
two or more athletes, thorough good fellows, good-natured,
delighting in their thews and sinews. Explain to them that somehow,
don't you see, nature did not bless you with such superabundant
muscularity, although there is nothing under the sun you admire so
much. Forthwith these good fellows will pet you, and your Thames
fortune is made. You take your place in the stern-sheets, happily
protected on either side by feminine human nature, and the parasols
meeting above shield you from the sun. The tow-rope is adjusted,
and the tugs start. The gliding motion soothes the soul. Feminine
boating nature has no antipathy to the cigarette. A delicious
odour, soft as new-mown hay, a hint of spices and distant
flowers—sunshine dried and preserved, sunshine you can
handle—rises from the smouldering fibres. This is smoking
summer itself. Yonder in the fore part of the craft I espy certain
vessels of glass on which is the label of Epernay. And of such is
peace.</p>
<p>Drifting ever downwards, I approached the creek where my skiff
had to be left; but before I reached it a "beach-comber," with a
coil of cord over his shoulder, asked me if he should tow me "up to
'Ampton." I shook my head, whereupon he abused me in such choice
terms that I listened abashed at my ignorance. It had never
occurred to me that swearing could be done like that. It is true we
have been swearing now, generation after generation, these eight
thousand years for certain, and language expands with use. It is
also true that we are all educated now. Shakespeare is credited
with knowing everything, past or future, but I doubt if he knew how
a Thames "beach-comber" can curse in these days.</p>
<p>The Thames is swearing free. You must moderate your curses on
the Queen's highway; you must not be even profane in the streets,
lest you be taken before the magistrates; but on the Thames you may
swear as the wind blows—howsoever you list. You may begin at
the mouth, off the Nore, and curse your way up to Cricklade. A
hundred miles for swearing is a fine preserve. It is one of the
marvels of our civilisation.</p>
<p>Aided by scarce a touch of the sculls the stream drifted me up
into the creek, and the boatman took charge of his skiff. "Shall I
keep her handy for you, sir?" he said, thinking to get me down
every day as a newcomer. I begged him not to put himself to any
trouble, still he repeated that he would keep her ready. But in the
road I shook off the dust of my feet against the river, and
earnestly resolved never, never again to have anything to do with
it (in the heroic way) lower down than Henley.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="9">THE SINGLE-BARREL GUN</a></h3>
<p>The single-barrel gun has passed out of modern sport; but I
remember mine with regret, and think I shall some day buy another.
I still find that the best double-barrel seems top-heavy in
comparison; in poising it the barrels have a tendency to droop.
Guns, of course, are built to balance and lie level in the hand, so
as to almost aim themselves as they come to the shoulder; and those
who have always shot with a double-barrel are probably quite
satisfied with the gun on that score. To me there seems too much
weight in the left hand and towards the end of the gun. Quickness
of firing keeps the double-barrel to the front; but suppose a
repeater were to be invented, some day, capable of discharging two
cartridges in immediate succession? And if two cartridges, why not
three? An easy thought, but a very difficult one to realise.
Something in the <i>power</i> of the double-barrel—the
overwhelming odds it affords the sportsman over bird and
animal—pleases. A man feels master of the copse with a
double-barrel; and such a sense of power, though only over feeble
creatures, is fascinating. Besides, there is the delight of effect;
for a clever right and left is sure of applause and makes the
gunner feel "good" in himself. Doubtless, if three barrels could be
managed, three barrels would be more saleable than doubles. One
gun-maker has a four-barrel gun, quite a light weight too, which
would be a tremendous success if the creatures would obligingly run
and fly a little slower, so that all four cartridges could be got
in. But that they will not do. For the present, the double-barrel
is the gun of the time.</p>
<p>Still I mean some day to buy a single-barrel, and wander with it
as of old along the hedges, aware that if I am not skilful enough
to bring down with the first shot I shall lose my game. It is
surprising how confident of that one shot you may get after a
while. On the one hand, it is necessary to be extremely keen; on
the other, to be sure of your own self-control, not to fire
uselessly. The bramble-bushes on the shore of the ditch ahead might
cover a hare. Through the dank and dark-green aftermath a rabbit
might suddenly come bounding, disturbed from the furrow where he
had been feeding. On the sandy paths which the rabbits have made
aslant up the mound, and on their terraces, where they sit and look
out from under the boughs, acorns have dropped ripe from the tree.
Where there are acorns there may be pheasants; they may crouch in
the fern and dry grey grass of the hedge thinking you do not see
them, or else rush through and take wing on the opposite side. The
only chance of a shot is as the bird passes a gap—visible
while flying a yard—just time to pull the trigger. But I
would rather have that chance than have to fire between the bars of
a gate; for the horizontal lines cause an optical illusion, making
the object appear in a different position from what it really is
in, and half the pellets are sure to be buried in the rails.
Wood-pigeons, when eagerly stuffing their crops with acorns,
sometimes forget their usual caution; and, walking slowly, I have
often got right underneath one—as unconscious of his presence
as he was of mine, till a sudden dashing of wings against boughs
and leaves announced his departure. This he always makes on the
opposite side of the oak, so as to have the screen of the thick
branches between himself and the gunner. The wood-pigeon, starting
like this from a tree, usually descends in the first part of his
flight, a gentle downward curve followed by an upward rise, and
thus comes into view at the lower part of the curve. He still seems
within shot, and to afford a good mark; and yet experience has
taught me that it is generally in vain to fire. His stout quills
protect him at the full range of the gun. Besides, a wasted shot
alarms everything within several hundred yards; and in stalking
with a single-barrel it needs as much knowledge to choose when not
to fire as when you may.</p>
<p>The most exciting work with the single-barrel was woodcock
shooting; woodcock being by virtue of rarity a sort of royal game,
and a miss at a woodcock a terrible disappointment. They have a
trick of skimming along the very summit of a hedge, and looking so
easy to kill; but, as they fly, the tops of tall briers here,
willow-rods next, or an ash-pole often intervene, and the result is
apt to be a bough cut off and nothing more. Snipes, on the
contrary, I felt sure of with the single-barrel, and never could
hit them so well with a double. Either at starting, before the
snipe got into his twist, or waiting till he had finished that
uncertain movement, the single-barrel seemed to drop the shot with
certainty. This was probably because of its perfect natural
balance, so that it moved as if on a pivot. With the single I had
nothing to manage but my own arms; with the other I was conscious
that I had a gun also. With the single I could kill farther, no
matter what it was. The single was quicker at short
shots—snap-shots, as at rabbits darting across a narrow lane;
and surer at long shots, as at a hare put out a good way ahead by
the dog.</p>
<p>For everything but the multiplication of slaughter I liked the
single best; I had more of the sense of woodcraft with it. When we
consider how helpless a partridge is, for instance, before the
fierce blow of shot, it does seem fairer that the gunner should
have but one chance at the bird. Partridges at least might be kept
for single-barrels: great bags of partridges never seemed to be
quite right. Somehow it seems to me that to take so much advantage
as the double-barrel confers is not altogether in the spirit of
sport. The double-barrel gives no "law." At least to those who love
the fields, the streams, and woods for their own sake, the
single-barrel will fill the bag sufficiently, and will permit them
to enjoy something of the zest men knew before the invention of
weapons not only of precision but of repetition: inventions that
rendered them too absolute masters of the situation. A
single-barrel will soon make a sportsman the keenest of shots. The
gun itself can be built to an exquisite perfection—lightness,
handiness, workmanship, and performance of the very best. It is
said that you can change from a single-barrel shot-gun to a
sporting rifle and shoot with the rifle almost at once; while many
who have been used to the slap-dash double cannot do anything for
some time with a rifle. More than one African explorer has found
his single-barrel smooth-bore the most useful of all the pieces in
his battery; though, of course, of much larger calibre than
required in our fields.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="10">THE HAUNT OF THE HARE</a></h3>
<p>It is never so much winter in the country as it is in the town.
The trees are still there, and in and about them birds remain.
"Quip! whip!" sounds from the elms; "Whip! quip!" Redwing thrushes
threaten with the "whip" those who advance towards them; they spend
much of the day in the elm-tops. Thick tussocks of old grass are
conspicuous at the skirt of a hedge; half green, half grey, they
contrast with the bare thorn. From behind one of these tussocks a
hare starts, his black-tipped ears erect, his long hinder limbs
throwing him almost like a grasshopper over the sward—no
creature looks so handsome or startling, and it is always a
pleasant surprise to see him. Pheasant or partridge do not surprise
in the least—they are no more than any other bird; but a hare
causes quite a different feeling. He is perfectly wild, unfed,
untended, and then he is the largest animal to be shot in the
fields. A rabbit slips along the mound, under bushes and behind
stoles, but a hare bolts for the open, and hopes in his speed. He
leaves the straining spaniel behind, and the distance between them
increases as they go. The spaniel's broad hind paws are thrown wide
apart as he runs, striking outwards as well as backwards, and his
large ears are lifted by the wind of his progress. Overtaken by the
cartridge, still the hare, as he lies in the dewy grass, is
handsome; lift him up and his fur is full of colour, there are
layers of tint, shadings of brown within it, one under the other,
and the surface is exquisitely clean. The colours are not really
bright, at least not separately; but they are so clean and so clear
that they give an impression of warmth and brightness. Even in the
excitement of sport regret cannot but be felt at the sight of those
few drops of blood about the mouth which indicate that all this
beautiful workmanship must now cease to be. Had he escaped the
sportsman would not have been displeased.</p>
<p>The black bud-sheaths of the ash may furnish a comparison for
his ear-tips; the brown brake in October might give one hue for his
fur; the yellow or buff bryony leaf perhaps another; the clematis
is not whiter than the white part. His colours, as those of so many
of our native wild creatures, appear selected from the woods, as if
they had been gathered and skilfully mingled together. They can be
traced or paralleled in the trees, the bushes, grasses, or flowers,
as if extracted from them by a secret alchemy. In the plumage of
the partridge there are tints that may be compared with the brown
corn, the brown ripe grains rubbed from the ear; it is in the
corn-fields that the partridge delights. There the young brood are
sheltered, there they feed and grow plump. The red tips of other
feathers are reflections of the red sorrel of the meadows. The grey
fur of the rabbit resembles the grey ash hue of the underwood in
which he hides.</p>
<p>A common plant in moist places, the figwort, bears small velvety
flowers, much the colour of the red velvet topknot of the
goldfinch, the yellow on whose wings is like the yellow bloom of
the furze which he frequents in the winter, perching cleverly on
its prickly extremities. In the woods, in the bark of the trees,
the varied shades of the branches as their size diminishes, the
adhering lichens, the stems of the underwood, now grey, now green;
the dry stalks of plants, brown, white, or dark, all the
innumerable minor hues that cross and interlace, there is suggested
the woven texture of tints found on the wings of birds. For
brighter tones the autumn leaves can be resorted to, and in summer
the finches rising from the grass spring upwards from among flowers
that could supply them with all their colours. But it is not so
much the brighter as the undertones that seem to have been drawn
from the woodlands or fields. Although no such influence has really
been exerted by the trees and plants upon the living creatures, yet
it is pleasant to trace the analogy. Those who would convert it
into a scientific fact are met with a dilemma to which they are
usually oblivious, <i>i.e.</i> that most birds migrate, and the
very tints which in this country might perhaps, by a stretch of
argument, be supposed to conceal them, in a distant climate with a
different foliage, or none, would render them conspicuous. Yet it
is these analogies and imaginative comparisons which make the
country so delightful.</p>
<p>One day in autumn, after toiling with their guns, which are
heavy in the September heats, across the fields and over the hills,
the hospitable owner of the place suddenly asked his weary and
thirsty friend which he would have, champagne, ale, or spirits.
They were just then in the midst of a cover, the trees kept off the
wind, the afternoon sun was warm, and thirst very natural. They had
not been shooting in the cover, but had to pass through to other
cornfields. It seemed a sorry jest to ask which would be preferred
in that lonely and deserted spot, miles from home or any house
whence refreshment could be obtained—wine, spirits, or
ale?—an absurd question, and irritating under the
circumstances. As it was repeated persistently, however, the reply
was at length given, in no very good humour, and wine chosen.
Forthwith putting down his gun, the interrogator pushed in among
the underwood, and from a cavity concealed beneath some bushes drew
forth a bottle of champagne. He had several of these stores hidden
in various parts of the domain, ready whichever way the chance of
sport should direct their footsteps.</p>
<p>Now the dry wild parsnip, or "gicks," five feet high, stands
dead and dry, its jointed tube of dark stem surmounted with
circular frills or umbels; the teazle heads are brown, the great
burdocks leafless, and their burs, still adhering, are withered;
the ground, almost free of obstruction, is comparatively easy to
search over, but the old sportsman is too cunning to bury his wine
twice in the same place, and it is no use to look about. No birds
in last year's nests—the winds have torn and upset the mossy
structures in the bushes; no champagne in last year's cover. The
driest place is under the firs, where the needles have fallen and
strew the surface thickly. Outside the wood, in the waggon-track,
the beech leaves lie on the side of the mound, dry and shrivelled
at the top, but stir them, and under the top layer they still
retain the clear brown of autumn.</p>
<p>The ivy trailing on the bank is moist and freshly green. There
are two tints of moss; one light, the other deeper—both very
pleasant and restful to the eye. These beds of moss are the
greenest and brightest of the winter's colours. Besides these there
are ale-hoof, or ground-ivy leaves (not the ivy that climbs trees),
violet leaves, celandine mars, primrose mars, foxglove mars, teazle
mars, and barren strawberry leaves, all green in the midst of
winter. One tiny white flower of barren strawberry has ventured to
bloom. Round about the lower end of each maple stick, just at the
ground, is a green wrap of moss. Though leafless above, it is green
at the foot. At the verge of the ploughed field below, exposed as
it is, chickweed, groundsel, and shepherd's-purse are flowering.
About a little thorn there hang withered red berries of bryony, as
if the bare thorn bore fruit; the bine of the climbing plant clings
to it still; there are traces of "old man's beard," the white
fluffy relics of clematis bloom, stained brown by the weather;
green catkins droop thickly on the hazel. Every step presents some
item of interest, and thus it is that it is never so much winter in
the country. Where fodder has been thrown down in a pasture field
for horses, a black congregation of rooks has crowded together in a
ring. A solitary pole for trapping hawks stands on the sloping
ground outside the cover. These poles are visited every morning
when the trap is there, and the captured creature put out of pain.
Of the cruelty of the trap itself there can be no doubt; but it is
very unjust to assume that therefore those connected with sport are
personally cruel. In a farmhouse much frequented by rats, and from
which they cannot be driven out, these animals are said to have
discovered a means of defying the gin set for them. One such gin
was placed in the cheese-room, near a hole from which they issued,
but they dragged together pieces of straw, little fragments of
wood, and various odds and ends, and so covered the pan that the
trap could not spring. They formed, in fact, a bridge over it.</p>
<p>Red and yellow fungi mark decaying places on the trunks and
branches of the trees; their colour is brightest when the boughs
are bare. By a streamlet wandering into the osier beds the winter
gnats dance in the sunshine, round about an old post covered with
ivy, on which green berries are thick. The warm sunshine gladdens
the hearts of the moorhens floating on the water yonder by the
bushes, and their singular note, "coorg-coorg," is uttered at
intervals. In the plantation close to the house a fox resides as
safe as King Louis in "Quentin Durward," surrounded with his guards
and archers and fortified towers, though tokens of his midnight
rambles, in the shape of bones, strew the front of his castle. He
crosses the lawn in sight of the windows occasionally, as if he
really knew and understood that his life is absolutely safe at
ordinary times, and that he need beware of nothing but the
hounds.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="11">THE BATHING SEASON</a></h3>
<p>Most people who go on the West Pier at Brighton walk at once
straight to the farthest part. This is the order and custom of pier
promenading; you are to stalk along the deck till you reach the
end, and there go round and round the band in a circle like a horse
tethered to an iron pin, or else sit down and admire those who do
go round and round. No one looks back at the gradually extending
beach and the fine curve of the shore. No one lingers where the
surf breaks—immediately above it—listening to the
remorseful sigh of the dying wave as it sobs back to the sea.
There, looking downwards, the white edge of the surf recedes in
hollow crescents, curve after curve for a mile or more, one
succeeding before the first can disappear and be replaced by a
fresh wave. A faint mistiness hangs above the beach at some
distance, formed of the salt particles dashed into the air and
suspended. At night, if the tide chances to be up, the white surf
rushing in and returning immediately beneath has a strange effect,
especially in its pitiless regularity. If one wave seems to break a
little higher it is only in appearance, and because you have not
watched long enough. In a certain number of times another will
break there again; presently one will encroach the merest trifle;
after a while another encroaches again, and the apparent
irregularity is really sternly regular. The free wave has no
liberty—it does not act for itself,—no real generous
wildness. "Thus far and no farther," is not a merciful saying. Cold
and dread and pitiless, the wave claims its due—it stretches
its arms to the fullest length, and does not pause or hearken to
the desire of any human heart. Hopeless to appeal to is the unseen
force that sends the white surge underneath to darken the pebbles
to a certain line. The wetted pebbles are darker than the dry; even
in the dusk they are easily distinguished. Something merciless is
there not in this conjunction of restriction and impetus? Something
outside human hope and thought—indifferent—cold?</p>
<p>Considering in this way, I wandered about fifty yards along the
pier, and sat down in an abstracted way on the seat on the right
side. Beneath, the clear green sea rolled in crestless waves
towards the shore—they were moving "without the animation of
the wind," which had deserted them two days ago, and a hundred
miles out at sea. Slower and slower, with an indolent undulation,
rising and sinking of mere weight and devoid of impetus, the waves
passed on, scarcely seeming to break the smoothness of the surface.
At a little distance it seemed level; yet the boats every now and
then sank deeply into the trough, and even a large fishing-smack
rolled heavily. For it is the nature of a groundswell to be
exceedingly deceptive. Sometimes the waves are so far apart that
the sea actually is level—smooth as the surface of a polished
dining-table—till presently there appears a darker line
slowly approaching, and a wave of considerable size comes in,
advancing exactly like the crease in the cloth which the housemaid
spreads on the table—the air rolling along underneath it
forms a linen imitation of the groundswell. These unexpected
rollers are capital at upsetting boats just touching the beach; the
boat is broadside on and the occupants in the water in a second.
To-day the groundswell was more active, the waves closer together,
not having had time to forget the force of the extinct gale. Yet
the sea looked calm as a millpond—just the morning for a
bath.</p>
<p>Along the yellow line where sand and pebbles meet there stood a
gallant band, in gay uniforms, facing the water. Like the imperial
legions who were ordered to charge the ocean, and gather the shells
as spoils of war, the cohorts gleaming in purple and gold extended
their front rank—their fighting line one to a
yard—along the strand. Some tall and stately; some tall and
slender; some well developed and firm on their limbs; some gentle
in attitude, even in their war dress; some defiant; perhaps forty
or fifty, perhaps more, ladies; a splendid display of womanhood in
the bright sunlight. Blue dresses, pink dresses, purple dresses,
trimmings of every colour; a gallant show. The eye had but just
time to receive these impressions as it were with a blow of the
camera—instantaneous photography—when, boom! the
groundswell was on them, and, heavens, what a change! They
disappeared. An arm projected here, possibly a foot yonder, tresses
floated on the surface like seaweed, but bodily they were gone. The
whole rank from end to end was overthrown—more than that,
overwhelmed, buried, interred in water like Pharaoh's army in the
Red Sea. Crush! It had come on them like a mountain. The wave so
clear, so beautifully coloured, so cool and refreshing, had struck
their delicate bodies with the force of a ton weight. Crestless and
smooth to look at, in reality that treacherous roller weighed at
least a ton to a yard.</p>
<p>Down went each fair bather as if hit with shot from a Gatling
gun. Down she went, frantically, and vainly grasping at a useless
rope; down with water driven into her nostrils, with a fragment, a
tiny blade, of seaweed forced into her throat, choking her; crush
on the hard pebbles, no feather bed, with the pressure of a ton of
water overhead, and the strange rushing roar it makes in the ears.
Down she went, and at the same time was dragged head foremost,
sideways, anyhow, but dragged—<i>ground</i> along on the
bitter pebbles some yards higher up the beach, each pebble leaving
its own particular bruise, and the suspended sand filling the eyes.
Then the wave left her, and she awoke from the watery nightmare to
the bright sunlight, and the hissing foam as it subsided, prone at
full length, high and dry like a stranded wreck. Perhaps her head
had tapped the wheel of the machine in a friendly way—a sort
of genial battering ram. The defeat was a perfect rout; yet they
recovered position immediately. I fancy I did see one slip limply
to cover; but the main body rose manfully, and picked their way
with delicate feet on the hard, hard stones back again to the
water, again to meet their inevitable fate.</p>
<p>The white ankles of the blonde gleaming in the sunshine were
distinguishable, even at that distance, from the flesh tint of the
brunette beside her, and these again from the swarthiness of still
darker ankles, which did not gleam, but had a subdued colour like
dead gold. The foam of a lesser wave ran up and touched their feet
submissively. Three young girls in pink clustered together; one
crouched with her back to the sea and glanced over her timorous
shoulder. Another lesser wave ran up and left a fringe of foam
before them. I looked for a moment out to sea and saw the smack
roll heavily, the big wave was coming. By now the bathers had
gathered confidence, and stepped, a little way at a time, closer
and closer down to the water. Some even stood where each lesser
wave rose to their knees. Suddenly a few leant forwards, pulling
their ropes taut, and others turned sideways; these were the more
experienced or observant. Boom! The big roller broke near the pier
and then ran along the shore; it did not strike the whole length at
once, it came in aslant and rushed sideways. The three in pink went
first—they were not far enough from their machine to receive
its full force, it barely reached to the waist, and really I think
it was worse for them. They were lifted off their feet and shot
forward with their heads under water; one appeared to be under the
two others, a confused mass of pink. Their white feet emerged
behind the roller, and as it sank it drew them back, grinding them
over the pebbles: every one knows how pebbles grate and grind their
teeth as a wave subsides. Left lying on their faces, I guessed from
their attitudes that they had dug their finger-nails into the
pebbles in an effort to seize something that would hold. Somehow
they got on their knees and crept up the slope of the beach. Beyond
these three some had been standing about up to their knees; these
were simply buried as before—quite concealed and thrown like
beams of timber, head first, feet first, high up on shore. Group
after group went down as the roller reached them, and the sea was
dyed for a minute with blue dresses, purple dresses, pink dresses;
they coloured the wave which submerged them. From end to end the
whole rank was again overwhelmed, nor did any position prove of
advantage; those who sprang up as the wave came were simply turned
over and carried on their backs, those who tried to dive under were
swept back by the tremendous under-rush. Sitting on the beach,
lying at full length, on hands and knees, lying on this side or
that, doubled up—there they were, as the roller receded, in
every disconsolate attitude imaginable; the curtain rose and
disclosed the stage in disorder. Again I thought I saw one or two
limp to their machines, but the main body adjusted themselves and
faced the sea.</p>
<p>Was there ever such courage? National untaught
courage—inbred, and not built of gradual instruction as it
were in hardihood. Yet some people hesitate to give women the
franchise! actually, a miserable privilege which any poor fool of a
man may exercise.</p>
<p>I was philosophising admirably in this strain when first a
shadow came and then the substance, that is, a gentleman sat down
by me and wished me good morning, in a slightly different accent to
that we usually hear. I looked wistfully at the immense length of
empty seats; on both sides of the pier for two hundred yards or
more there extended an endless empty seat. Why could not he have
chosen a spot to himself? Why must he place himself just here, so
close as to touch me? Four hundred yards of vacant seats, and he
could not find room for himself.</p>
<p>It is a remarkable fact in natural history that one's elbow is
sure to be jogged. It does not matter what you do; suppose you
paint in the most secluded spot, and insert yourself, moreover, in
the most inconspicuous part of that spot, some vacant physiognomy
is certain to intrude, glaring at you with glassy eye. Suppose you
do nothing (like myself), no matter where you do it some inane
humanity obtrudes itself. I took out my note-book once in a great
open space at the Tower of London, a sort of court or place of
arms, quite open and a gunshot across; there was no one in sight,
and if there had been half a regiment they could have passed (and
would have passed) without interference. I had scarcely written
three lines when the pencil flew up the page, some hulking lout
having brushed against me. He could not find room for himself. A
hundred yards of width was not room enough for him to go by. He
meant no harm; it did not occur to him that he could be otherwise
than welcome. He was the sort of man who calmly sleeps on your
shoulder in a train, and merely replaces his head if you wake him
twenty times. The very same thing has happened to me in the parks,
and in country fields; particularly it happens at the British
Museum and the picture galleries, there is room sufficient in all
conscience; but if you try to make a note or a rough memorandum
sketch you get a jog. There is a jogger everywhere, just as there
is a buzzing fly everywhere in summer. The jogger travels, too.</p>
<p>One day, while studying in the Louvre, I am certain three or
four hundred French people went by me, mostly provincials I fancy,
country-folks, in short, from their dress, which was not Parisian,
and their accent, which was not of the Boulevards. Of all these not
one interfered with me; they did not approach within four or five
feet. How grateful I felt towards them! One man and his sweetheart,
a fine southern girl with dark eyes and sun-browned cheeks, sat
down near me on one of the scanty seats provided. The man put his
umbrella and his hat on the seat beside him. What could be more
natural? No one else was there, and there was room for three more
couples. Instantly an official—an authority!—stepped
hastily forward from the shadow of some sculpture (beasts of prey
abide in darkness), snatched up the umbrella and hat, and rudely
dashed them on the floor. In a flow of speech he explained that
nothing must be placed on the seats. The man, who had his
handkerchief in his hand, quietly dropped it into his hat on the
floor, and replied nothing. This was an official "jogger." I felt
indignant to see and hear people treated in this rough manner; but
the provincial was used to the jogger system and heeded it not. My
own jogger was coming. Three to four hundred country-folk had gone
by gently and in a gentlemanly way. Then came an English gentleman,
middle-aged, florid, not much tinctured with art or letters, but
garnished with huge gold watchchain and with wealth as it were
bulging out of his waistcoat pocket. This gentleman positively
walked into me, pushed me-literally pushed me aside and took my
place, a place valuable to me at that moment for one special
aspect, and having shoved me aside, gazed about him through his
eyeglass, I suppose to discover what it was interested me. He was a
genuine, thoroughbred jogger. The vast galleries of the Louvre had
not room enough for him. He was one of the most successful joggers
in the world, I feel sure; any family might be proud of him. While
I am thus digressing, the bathers have gone over thrice.</p>
<p>The individual who had sat himself down by me produced a little
box and offered me a lozenge. I did not accept it; he took one
himself in token that they were harmless. Then he took a second,
and a third, and began to tell me of their virtues; they cured this
and they alleviated that, they were the greatest discovery of the
age; this universal lozenge was health in the waistcoat pocket, a
medicine-chest between finger and thumb; the secret had been
extracted at last, and nature had given up the ghost as it were of
her hidden physic. His eloquence conjured up in my mind a vision of
the rocks beside the Hudson river papered over with acres of
advertising posters. But no; by his further conversation I found
that I had mentally slandered him; he was not a proprietor of
patent medicine; he was a man of education and private means; he
belonged to a much higher profession, in fact he was a "jogger"
travelling about from place to place—"globetrotting" from
capital city to watering-place—all over the world in the
exercise of his function. I had wondered if his accent was American
(petroleum-American), or German, or Italian, or Russian, or what.
Now I wondered no longer, for the jogger is cosmopolitan. When he
had exhausted his lozenge he told me how many times the screw of
the steamer revolved while carrying him across the Pacific from
Yokohama to San Francisco. I nearly suggested that it was about
equal to the number of times his tongue had vibrated in the last
ten minutes. The bathers went over twice more. I was anxious to
take note of their bravery, and turned aside, leaning over the iron
back of the seat. He went on just the same; a hint was no more to
him than a feather bed to an ironclad.</p>
<p>My rigid silence was of no avail; so long as my ears were open
he did not care. He was a very energetic jogger. However, it
occurred to me to try another plan: I turned towards him (he would
much rather have had my back) and began to talk in the most
strident tones I could command. I pointed out to him that the pier
was decked like a vessel, that the cliffs were white, that a lady
passing had a dark blue dress on, which did not suit with the green
sea, not because it was blue, but because it was the wrong tint of
blue. I informed him that the Pavilion was once the residence of
royalty, and similar novelties; all in a string without a
semicolon. His eyes opened; he fumbled with his lozenge-box, said
"Good morning," and went on up the pier. I watched him
go—English-Americano-
Germano-Franco-Prussian-Russian-Chinese-New Zealander that he was.
But he was not a man of genius; you could choke him off by talking.
Still he had effectually jogged me and spoiled my contemplative
enjoyment of the bathers' courage; upon the whole I thought I would
go down on the beach now and see them a little closer. The truth
is, I suppose, that it is people like myself who are in the wrong,
or are in the way. What business had I to make a note in the Tower
yard, or study in the Louvre? what business have I to think, or
indulge myself in an idea? What business has any man to paint, or
sketch, or do anything of the sort? I suppose the joggers are in
the right.</p>
<p>Dawdling down Whitehall one day a jogger nailed me—they
come to me like flies to honey—and got me to look at his
pamphlet. He went about, he said, all his time distributing them as
a duty for the safety of the nation. The pamphlet was printed in
the smallest type, and consisted of extracts from various
prophetical authors, pointing out the enormity of the Babylonian
Woman, of the City of Scarlet, or some such thing; the gist being
the bitterest—almost scurrilous—attack on the Church of
Rome. The jogger told me, with tears of pride in his eyes and a
glorified countenance, that only a few days before, in the
waiting-room of a railway station, he had the pleasure to present
his pamphlet to Cardinal Manning. And the Cardinal bowed and put it
in his pocket.</p>
<p>Just as everybody walks on the sunny side of Regent-street, so
there are certain spots on the beach where people crowd together.
This is one of them; just west of the West Pier there is a fair
between eleven and one every bright morning. Everybody goes because
everybody else does. Mamma goes down to bathe with her daughters
and the little ones; they take two machines at least; the pater
comes to smoke his cigar; the young fellows of the family-party
come to look at "the women," as they irreverently speak of the sex.
So the story runs on <i>ad infinitum</i>, down to the shoeless ones
that turn up everywhere. Every seat is occupied; the boats and
small yachts are filled; some of the children pour pebbles into the
boats, some carefully throw them out; wooden spades are busy;
sometimes they knock each other on the head with them, sometimes
they empty pails of sea-water on a sister's frock. There is a
squealing, squalling, screaming, shouting, singing, bawling,
howling, whistling, tin-trumpeting, and every luxury of noise. Two
or three bands work away; niggers clatter their bones; a conjurer
in red throws his heels in the air; several harps strum merrily
different strains; fruit-sellers push baskets into folks' faces;
sellers of wretched needlework and singular baskets coated with
shells thrust their rubbish into people's laps. These shell baskets
date from George IV. The gingerbeer men and the newsboys cease not
from troubling. Such a volume of uproar, such a complete organ of
discord I mean a whole organful cannot be found anywhere else on
the face of the earth in so comparatively small a space. It is a
sort of triangular plot of beach crammed with everything that
ordinarily annoys the ears and offends the sight.</p>
<p>Yet you hear nothing and see nothing; it is perfectly
comfortable, perfectly jolly and exhilarating, a preferable spot to
any other. A sparkle of sunshine on the breakers, a dazzling gleam
from the white foam, a warm sweet air, light and brightness and
champagniness; altogether lovely. The way in which people lie about
on the beach, their legs this way, and their arms that, their hats
over their eyes, their utter give-themselves-up expression of
attitude is enough in itself to make a reasonable being contented.
Nobody cares for anybody; they drowned Mrs. Grundy long ago. The
ancient philosopher (who had a mind to eat a fig) held that a nail
driven into wood could only support a certain weight. After that
weight was exceeded either the wood must break or the nail come
out. Yonder is a wooden seat put together with nails—a flimsy
contrivance, which defies all rules of gravity and adhesion. One
leg leans one way, the other in the opposite direction; very lame
legs indeed. Careful folk would warn you not to sit on it lest it
should come to pieces. The music, I suppose, charms it, for it
holds together in the most marvellous manner. Four people are
sitting on it, four big ones, middle-aged, careful people; every
moment the legs gape wide apart, the structure visibly stretches
and yields and sinks in the pebbles, yet it does not come down. The
stoutest of all sits actually over the lame legs, reading his paper
quite oblivious of the odd angle his plump person makes, quite
unconscious of the threatened crack—crash! It does not
happen. A sort of magnetism sticks it together; it is in the air;
it makes things go right that ought to go wrong. Awfully naughty
place; no sort of idea of rightness here. Humming and strumming,
and singing and smoking, splashing, and sparkling; a buzz of voices
and booming of sea! If they could only be happy like this
always!</p>
<p>Mamma has a tremendous fight over the bathing-dresses, her own,
of course; the bathing woman cannot find them, and denies that she
had them, and by-and-by, after half an hour's exploration, finds
them all right, and claims commendation for having put them away so
safely. Then there is the battle for a machine. The nurse has been
keeping guard on the steps, to seize it the instant the occupant
comes out. At last they get it, and the wonder is how they pack
themselves in it. Boom! The bathers have gone over again, I know.
The rope stretches as the men at the capstan go round, and heave up
the machines one by one before the devouring tide.</p>
<p>As it is not at all rude, but the proper thing to do, I thought
I would venture a little nearer (not too obtrusively near) and see
closer at hand how brave womanhood faced the rollers. There was a
young girl lying at full length at the edge of the foam. She
reclined parallel to the beach, not with her feet towards the sea,
but so that it came to her side. She was clad in some material of a
gauzy and yet opaque texture, permitting the full outline and the
least movement to be seen. The colour I do not exactly know how to
name; they could tell you at the Magasin du Louvre, where men
understand the hues of garments as well as women. I presume it was
one of the many tints that are called at large "creamy." It suited
her perfectly. Her complexion was in the faintest degree swarthy,
and yet not in the least like what a lady would associate with that
word. The difficulty in describing a colour is that different
people take different views of the terms employed; ladies have one
scale founded a good deal on dress, men another, and painters have
a special (and accurate) gamut which they use in the studio. This
was a clear swarthiness a translucent swarthiness clear as the most
delicate white. There was something in the hue of her neck as
freely shown by the loose bathing dress, of her bare arms and feet,
somewhat recalling to mind the kind of beauty attributed to the
Queen of Egypt. But it was more delicate. Her form was almost fully
developed, more so than usual at her age. Again and again the foam
rushed up deep enough to cover her limbs, but not sufficiently so
to hide her chest, as she was partly raised on one arm. Washed thus
with the purest whiteness of the sparkling foam, her beauty
gathered increase from the touch of the sea. She swayed slightly as
the water reached her, she was luxuriously recked to and fro. The
waves, toyed with her; they came and retired, happy in her
presence; the breeze and the sunshine were there.</p>
<p>Standing somewhat back, the machines hid the waves from me till
they reached the shore, so that I did not observe the heavy roller
till it came and broke. A ton of water fell on her, crush! The edge
of the wave curled and dropped over her, the arch bowed itself
above her, the keystone of the wave fell in. She was under the
surge while it rushed up and while it rushed back; it carried her
up to the steps of the machine and back again to her original
position. When it subsided she simply shook her head, raised
herself on one arm, and adjusted herself parallel to the beach as
before.</p>
<p>Let any one try this, let any one lie for a few minutes just
where the surge bursts, and he will understand what it means. Men
go out to the length of their ropes—past and outside the line
of the breakers, or they swim still farther out and ride at ease
where the wave, however large, merely lifts them pleasantly as it
rolls under. But the smashing force of the wave is where it curls
and breaks, and it is there that the ladies wait for it. It is
these breakers in a gale that tear to pieces and destroy the
best-built ships once they touch the shore, scattering their
timbers as the wind scatters leaves. The courage and the endurance
women must possess to face a groundswell like this! All the year
they live in luxury and ease, and are shielded from everything that
could hurt. A bruise—a lady to receive a bruise; it is not be
to thought of! If a ruffian struck a lady in Hyde Park the world
would rise from its armchair in a fury of indignation. These waves
and pebbles bruise them as they list. They do not even flinch.
There must, then, be a natural power of endurance in them.</p>
<p>It is unnecessary, and yet I was proud to see it. An English
lady could do it; but could any other?—unless, indeed, an
American of English descent. Still, it is a barbarous thing, for
bathing could be easily rendered pleasant. The cruel roller
receded, the soft breeze blew, the sunshine sparkled, the gleaming
foam rushed up and gently rocked her. The Infanta Cleopatra lifted
her arm gleaming wet with spray, and extended it indolently; the
sun had only given her a more seductive loveliness. How much more
enjoyable the sea and breeze and sunshine when one is gazing at
something so beautiful. That arm, rounded and
soft——</p>
<p>"Excuse me, sir, but your immortal soul"—a hand was placed
on my elbow. I turned, and saw a beaming face; a young lady,
elegantly dressed, placed a fly-sheet of good intentions in my
fingers. The fair jogger beamed yet more sweetly as I took it, and
went on among the crowd. When I looked back the Infanta Cleopatra
had ascended into her machine. I had lost the last few moments of
loveliness.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="12">UNDER THE ACORNS</a></h3>
<p>Coming along a woodland lane, a small round and glittering
object in the brushwood caught my attention. The ground was but
just hidden in that part of the wood with a thin growth of
brambles, low, and more like creepers than anything else. These
scarcely hid the surface, which was brown with the remnants of
oak-leaves; there seemed so little cover, indeed, that a mouse
might have been seen. But at that spot some great spurge-plants
hung this way and that, leaning aside, as if the sterns were too
weak to uphold the heads of dark-green leaves. Thin grasses,
perfectly white, bleached by the sun and dew, stood in a bunch by
the spurge; their seeds had fallen, the last dregs of sap had dried
within them, there was nothing left but the bare stalks. A creeper
of bramble fenced round one side of the spurge and white grass
bunch, and brown leaves were visible on the surface of the ground
through the interstices of the spray. It was in the midst of this
little thicket that a small, dark, and glittering object caught my
attention. I knew it was the eye of some creature at once, but,
supposing it nothing more than a young rabbit, was passing on,
thinking of other matters, when it occurred to me, before I could
finish the step I had taken, so quick is thought, that the eye was
not large enough to be that of a rabbit. I stopped; the black
glittering eye had gone—the creature had lowered its neck,
but immediately noticing that I was looking in that direction, it
cautiously raised itself a little, and I saw at once that the eye
was the eye of a bird. This I knew first by its size, and next by
its position in relation to the head, which was invisible—for
had it been a rabbit or hare, its ears would have projected. The
moment after, the eye itself confirmed this—the nictitating
membrane was rapidly drawn over it, and as rapidly removed. This
membrane is the distinguishing mark of a bird's eye. But what bird?
Although I was within two yards, I could not even see its head,
nothing but the glittering eyeball, on which the light of the sun
glinted. The sunbeams came over my shoulder straight into the
bird's face.</p>
<p>Without moving—which I did not wish to do, as it would
disturb the bird—I could not see its plumage; the bramble
spray in front, the spurge behind, and the bleached grasses at the
side, perfectly concealed it. Only two birds I considered would be
likely to squat and remain quiescent like this—partridge or
pheasant; but I could not contrive to view the least portion of the
neck. A moment afterwards the eye came up again, and the bird
slightly moved its head, when I saw its beak, and knew it was a
pheasant immediately. I then stepped forward—almost on the
bird—and a young pheasant rose, and flew between the
tree-trunks to a deep dry watercourse, where it disappeared under
some withering yellow-ferns.</p>
<p>Of course I could easily have solved the problem long before,
merely by startling the bird; but what would have been the pleasure
of that? Any plough-lad could have forced the bird to rise, and
would have recognised it as a pheasant; to me, the pleasure
consisted in discovering it under every difficulty. That was
woodcraft; to kick the bird up would have been simply nothing at
all. Now I found why I could not see the pheasant's neck or body;
it was not really concealed, but shaded out by the mingled hues of
white grasses, the brown leaves of the surface, and the general
grey-brown tints. Now it was gone, there was a vacant space its
plumage had filled up that vacant space with hues so similar, that,
at no farther distance than two yards, I did not recognise it by
colour. Had the bird fully carried out its instinct of concealment,
and kept its head down as well as its body, I should have passed
it. Nor should I have seen its head if it had looked the other way;
the eye betrayed its presence. The dark glittering eye, which the
sunlight touched, caught my attention instantly. There is nothing
like an eye in inanimate nature; no flower, no speck on a bough, no
gleaming stone wet with dew, nothing, indeed, to which it can be
compared. The eye betrayed it; I could not overlook an eye. Neither
nature nor inherited experience had taught the pheasant to hide its
eye; the bird not only wished to conceal itself, but to watch my
motions and, looking up from its cover, was immediately
observed.</p>
<p>At a turn of the lane there was a great heap of oak "chumps,"
crooked logs, sawn in lengths, and piled together. They were so
crooked, it was difficult to find a seat, till I hit on one larger
than the rest. The pile of "chunks" rose halfway up the stem of an
oak tree, and formed a wall of wood at my back; the oak-boughs
reached over and made a pleasant shade. The sun was warm enough, to
render resting in the open air delicious, the wind cool enough to
prevent the heat becoming too great; the pile of timber kept off
the draught, so that I could stay and listen to the gentle "hush,
rush" of the breeze in the oak above me; "hush" as it came slowly,
"rush" as it came fast, and a low undertone as it nearly ceased. So
thick were the haws on a bush of thorn opposite, that they tinted
the hedge a red colour among the yellowing hawthorn-leaves. To this
red hue the blackberries that were not ripe, the thick dry red
sorrel stalks, a bright canker on a brier almost as bright as a
rose, added their colours. Already the foliage of the bushes had
been thinned, and it was possible to see through the upper parts of
the boughs. The sunlight, therefore, not only touched their outer
surfaces, but passed through and lit up the branches within, and
the wild-fruit upon them. Though the sky was clear and blue between
the clouds, that is, without mist or haze, the sunbeams were
coloured the faintest yellow, as they always are on a ripe autumn
day. This yellow shone back from grass and leaves, from bough and
tree-trunk, and seemed to stain the ground. It is very pleasant to
the eyes, a soft, delicate light, that gives another beauty to the
atmosphere. Some roan cows were wandering down the lane, feeding on
the herbage at the side; their colour, too, was lit up by the
peculiar light, which gave a singular softness to the large shadows
of the trees upon the sward. In a meadow by the wood the oaks cast
broad shadows on the short velvety sward, not so sharp and definite
as those of summer, but tender, and, as it were, drawn with a
loving hand. They were large shadows, though it was mid-day—a
sign that the sun was no longer at his greatest height, but
declining. In July, they would scarcely have extended beyond the
rim of the boughs; the rays would have dropped perpendicularly, now
they slanted. Pleasant as it was, there was regret in the thought
that the summer was going fast. Another sign—the grass by the
gateway, an acre of it, was brightly yellow with hawkweeds, and
under these were the last faded brown heads of meadow clover; the
brown, the bright yellow disks, the green grass, the tinted
sunlight falling upon it, caused a wavering colour that fleeted
before the glance.</p>
<p>All things brown, and yellow, and red, are brought out by the
autumn sun; the brown furrows freshly turned where the stubble was
yesterday, the brown bark of trees, the brown fallen leaves, the
brown stalks of plants; the red haws, the red unripe blackberries,
red bryony berries, reddish-yellow fungi, yellow hawkweed, yellow
ragwort, yellow hazel-leaves, elms, spots in lime or beech; not a
speck of yellow, red, or brown the yellow sunlight does not find
out. And these make autumn, with the caw of rooks, the peculiar
autumn caw of laziness and full feeding, the sky blue as March
between the great masses of dry cloud floating over, the mist in
the distant valleys, the tinkle of traces as the plough turns and
the silence of the woodland birds. The lark calls as he rises from
the earth, the swallows still wheeling call as they go over, but
the woodland birds are mostly still and the restless sparrows gone
forth in a cloud to the stubble. Dry clouds, because they evidently
contain no moisture that will fall as rain here; thick mists,
condensed haze only, floating on before the wind. The oaks were not
yet yellow, their leaves were half green, half brown; Time had
begun to invade them, but had not yet indented his full mark.</p>
<p>Of the year there are two most pleasurable seasons: the spring,
when the oak-leaves come russet-brown on the great oaks; the
autumn, when the oak-leaves begin to turn. At the one, I enjoy the
summer that is coming; at the other, the summer that is going. At
either, there is a freshness in the atmosphere, a colour
everywhere, a depth of blue in the sky, a welcome in the woods. The
redwings had not yet come; the acorns were full, but still green;
the greedy rooks longed to see them riper. They were very numerous,
the oaks covered with them, a crop for the greedy rooks, the
greedier pigeons, the pheasants, and the jays.</p>
<p>One thing I missed—the corn. So quickly was the harvest
gathered, that those who delight in the colour of the wheat had no
time to enjoy it. If any painter had been looking forward to August
to enable him to paint the corn, he must have been disappointed.
There was no time; the sun came, saw, and conquered, and the
sheaves were swept from the field. Before yet the reapers had
entered one field of ripe wheat, I did indeed for a brief evening
obtain a glimpse of the richness and still beauty of an English
harvest. The sun was down, and in the west a pearly grey light
spread widely, with a little scarlet drawn along its lower border.
Heavy shadows hung in the foliage of the elms, the clover had
closed, and the quiet moths had taken the place of the humming
bees. Southwards, the full moon, a red-yellow disk, shone over the
wheat, which appeared the finest pale amber. A quiver of
colour—an undulation—seemed to stay in the air, left
from the heated day; the sunset hues and those of the red-tinted
moon fell as it were into the remnant of day, and filled the wheat;
they were poured into it, so that it grew in their colours. Still
heavier the shadows deepened in the elms; all was silence, save for
the sound of the reapers on the other side of the hedge,
slash—rustle, slash—rustle, and the drowsy night came
down as softly as an eyelid.</p>
<p>While I sat on the log under the oak, every now and then wasps
came to the crooked pieces of sawn timber, which had been barked.
They did not appear to be biting it—they can easily snip off
fragments of the hardest oak,—they merely alighted and
examined it, and went on again. Looking at them, I did not notice
the lane till something moved, and two young pheasants ran by along
the middle of the track and into the cover at the side. The grass
at the edge which they pushed through closed behind them, and
feeble as it was—grass only—it shut off the interior of
the cover as firmly as iron bars. The pheasant is a strong lock
upon the woods; like one of Chubb's patent locks, he closes the
woods as firmly as an iron safe can be shut. Wherever the pheasant
is artificially reared, and a great "head" kept up for
battue-shooting, there the woods are sealed. No matter if the
wanderer approach with the most harmless of intentions, it is
exactly the same as if he were a species of burglar. The botanist,
the painter, the student of nature, all are met with the
high-barred gate and the throat of law. Of course, the
pheasant-lock can be opened by the silver key; still, there is the
fact, that since pheasants have been bred on so large a scale, half
the beautiful woodlands of England have been fastened up. Where
there is no artificial rearing there is much more freedom; those
who love the forest can roam at their pleasure, for it is not the
fear of damage that locks the gate, but the pheasant. In every
sense, the so-called sport of battue-shooting is
injurious—injurious to the sportsman, to the poorer class, to
the community. Every true sportsman should discourage it, and
indeed does. I was talking with a thorough sportsman recently, who
told me, to my delight, that he never reared birds by hand; yet he
had a fair supply, and could always give a good day's sport, judged
as any reasonable man would judge sport. Nothing must enter the
domains of the hand-reared pheasant; even the nightingale is not
safe. A naturalist has recorded that in a district he visited, the
nightingales were always shot by the keepers and their eggs
smashed, because the singing of these birds at night disturbed the
repose of the pheasants! They also always stepped on the eggs of
the fern-owl, which are laid on the ground, and shot the bird if
they saw it, for the same reason, as it makes a jarring sound at
dusk. The fern-owl, or goatsucker, is one of the most harmless of
birds—a sort of evening swallow—living on moths,
chafers, and similar night-flying insects.</p>
<p>Continuing my walk, still under the oaks and green acorns, I
wondered why I did not meet any one. There was a man cutting fern
in the wood—a labourer—and another cutting up thistles
in a field; but with the exception of men actually employed and
paid, I did not meet a single person, though the lane I was
following is close to several well-to-do places. I call that a
well-to-do place where there are hundreds of large villas inhabited
by wealthy people. It is true that the great majority of persons
have to attend to business, even if they enjoy a good income;
still, making every allowance for such a necessity, it is singular
how few, how very few, seem to appreciate the quiet beauty of this
lovely country. Somehow, they do not seem to see it—to look
over it; there is no excitement in it, for one thing. They can see
a great deal in Paris, but nothing in an English meadow. I have
often wondered at the rarity of meeting any one in the fields, and
yet—curious anomaly—if you point out anything—or
describe it, the interest exhibited is marked. Every one takes an
interest, but no one goes to see for himself. For instance, since
the natural history collection was removed from the British Museum
to a separate building at South Kensington, it is stated that the
visitors to the Museum have fallen from an average of twenty-five
hundred a day to one thousand; the inference is, that out of every
twenty-five, fifteen came to see the natural history cases. Indeed,
it is difficult to find a person who does not take an interest in
some department of natural history, and yet I scarcely ever meet
any one in the fields. You may meet many in the autumn far away in
places famous for scenery, but almost none in the meadows at
home.</p>
<p>I stayed by a large pond to look at the shadows of the trees on
the green surface of duckweed. The soft green of the smooth weed
received the shadows as if specially prepared to show them to
advantage. The more the tree was divided—the more interlaced
its branches and less laden with foliage, the more it "came out" on
the green surface; each slender twig was reproduced, and sometimes
even the leaves. From an oak, and from a lime, leaves had fallen,
and remained on the green weed; the flags by the shore were turning
brown; a tint of yellow was creeping up the rashes, and the great
trunk of a fir shone reddish brown in the sunlight. There was
colour even about the still pool, where the weeds grew so thickly
that the moorhens could scarcely swim through them.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="13">DOWNS</a></h3>
<p>A good road is recognised as the groundwork of civilisation. So
long as there is a firm and artificial track under his feet the
traveller may be said to be in contact with city and town, no
matter how far they may be distant. A yard or two outside the
railway in America the primeval forest or prairie often remains
untouched, and much in the same way, though in a less striking
degree at first sight, some of our own highways winding through
Down districts are bounded by undisturbed soil. Such a road wears
for itself a hollow, and the bank at the top is fringed with long
rough grass hanging over the crumbling chalk. Broad discs of
greater knapweed with stalks like wire, and yellow toad-flax with
spotted lip grow among it. Grasping this tough grass as a handle to
climb up by, the explorer finds a rising slope of sward, and having
walked over the first ridge, shutting off the road behind him, is
at once out of civilisation. There is no noise. Wherever there are
men there is a hum, even in the harvest-field; and in the road
below, though lonely, there is sometimes the sharp clatter of hoofs
or the grating of wheels on flints. But here the long, long slopes,
the endless ridges, the gaps between, hazy and indistinct, are
absolutely without noise. In the sunny autumn day the peace of the
sky overhead is reflected in the silent earth. Looking out over the
steep hills, the first impression is of an immense void like the
sea; but there are sounds in detail, the twitter of passing
swallows, the restless buzz of bees at the thyme, the rush of the
air beaten by a ringdove's wings. These only increase the sense of
silent peace, for in themselves they soothe; and how minute the bee
beside this hill, and the dove to the breadth of the sky! A white
speck of thistledown comes upon a current too light to swing a
harebell or be felt by the cheek. The furze-bushes are lined with
thistledown, blown there by a breeze now still; it is glossy in the
sunbeams, and the yellow hawkweeds cluster beneath. The sweet,
clear air, though motionless at this height, cools the rays; but
the sun seems to pause and neither to rise higher nor decline. It
is the space open to the eye which apparently arrests his movement.
There is no noise, and there are no men.</p>
<p>Glance along the slope, up the ridge, across to the next,
endeavour to penetrate the hazy gap, but no one is visible. In
reality it is not quite so vacant; there may, perhaps, be four or
five men between this spot and the gap, which would be a pass if
the Downs were high enough. One is not far distant; he is digging
flints over the ridge, and, perhaps, at this moment rubbing the
earth from a corroded Roman coin which he has found in the pit.
Another is thatching, for there are three detached wheat-ricks
round a spur of the Down a mile away, where the plain is arable,
and there, too, a plough is at work. A shepherd is asleep on his
back behind the furze a mile in the other direction. The fifth is a
lad trudging with a message; he is in the nut-copse, over the next
hill, very happy. By walking a mile the explorer may, perhaps,
sight one of these, if they have not moved by then and disappeared
in another hollow. And when you have walked the mile—knowing
the distance by the time occupied in traversing it—if you
look back you will sigh at the hopelessness of getting over the
hills. The mile is such a little way, only just along one slope and
down into the narrow valley strewn with flints and small boulders.
If that is a mile, it must be another up to the white chalk quarry
yonder, another to the copse on the ridge; and how far is the hazy
horizon where the ridges crowd on and hide each other? Like rowing
at sea, you row and row and row, and seem where you
started—waves in front and waves behind; so you may walk and
walk and walk, and still there is the intrenchment on the summit,
at the foot of which, well in sight, you were resting some hours
ago.</p>
<p>Rest again by the furze, and some goldfinches come calling
shrilly and feasting undisturbed upon the seeds of thistles and
other plants. The bird-catcher does not venture so far; he would if
there was a rail near; but he is a lazy fellow, fortunately, and
likes not the weight of his own nets. When the stubbles are
ploughed there will be troops of finches and linnets up here,
leaving the hedgerows of the valley almost deserted. Shortly the
fieldfares will come, but not generally till the redwings have
appeared below in the valleys; while the fieldfares go upon the
hills, the green plovers, as autumn comes on, gather in flocks and
go down to the plains. Hawks regularly beat along the furze,
darting on a finch now and then, and owls pass by at night.
Nightjars, too, are down-land birds, staying in woods or fern by
day, and swooping on the moths which flutter about the furze in the
evening. Crows are too common, and work on late into the shadows.
Sometimes, in getting over the low hedges which divide the
uncultivated sward from the ploughed lands, you almost step on a
crow, and it is difficult to guess what he can have been about so
earnestly, for search reveals nothing—no dead lamb, hare, or
carrion, or anything else is visible. Rooks, of course, are seen,
and larks, and once or twice in a morning a magpie, seldom seen in
the cultivated and preserved valley. There are more partridges than
rigid game preservers would deem possible where the overlooking, if
done at all, is done so carelessly. Partridges will never cease out
of the land while there are untouched downs. Of all southern inland
game, they afford the finest sport; for spoil in its genuine sense
cannot be had without labour, and those who would get partridges on
the hills must work for them. Shot down, coursed, poached, killed
before maturity in the corn, still hares are fairly plentiful, and
couch in the furze and coarse grasses. Rabbits have much decreased;
still there are some. But the larger fir copses, when they are
enclosed, are the resort of all kinds of birds of prey yet left in
the south, and, perhaps, more rare visitors are found there than
anywhere else. Isolated on the open hills, such a copse to birds is
like an island in the sea. Only a very few pheasants frequent it,
and little effort is made to exterminate the wilder creatures,
while they are continually replenished by fresh arrivals. Even
ocean birds driven inland by stress of weather seem to prefer the
downs to rest on, and feel safer there.</p>
<p>The sward is the original sward, untouched, unploughed,
centuries old. It is that which was formed when the woods that
covered the hills were cleared, whether by British tribes whose
markings are still to be found, by Roman smiths working the
ironstone (slag is sometimes discovered), by Saxon settlers, or
however it came about in the process of the years. Probably the
trees would grow again were it not for sheep and horses, but these
preserve the sward. The plough has nibbled at it and gnawed away
great slices, but it extends mile after mile; these are mere
touches on its breadth. It is as wild as wild can be without deer
or savage beasts. The bees like it, and the finches come. It is
silent and peaceful like the sky above. By night the stars shine,
not only overhead and in a narrow circle round the zenith, but down
to the horizon; the walls of the sky are built up of them as well
as the roof. The sliding meteors go silently over the gleaming
surface; silently the planets rise; silently the earth moves to the
unfolding east. Sometimes a lunar rainbow appears; a strange scene
at midnight, arching over almost from the zenith down into the dark
hollow of the valley. At the first glance it seems white, but
presently faint prismatic colours are discerned.</p>
<p>Already as the summer changes into autumn there are orange
specks on the beeches in the copses, and the firs will presently be
leafless. Then those who live in the farmsteads placed at long
intervals begin to prepare for the possibilities of the winter.
There must be a good store of fuel and provisions, for it will be
difficult to go down to the villages. The ladies had best add as
many new volumes as they can to the bookshelf, for they may be
practically imprisoned for weeks together. Wind and rain are very
different here from what they are where the bulwark of the houses
shelters one side of the street, or the thick hedge protects half
the road. The fury of the storm is unchecked, and nothing can keep
out the raindrops which come with the velocity of shot. If snow
falls, as it does frequently, it does not need much to obscure the
path; at all times the path is merely a track, and the ruts worn
down to the white chalk and the white snow confuse the eyes. Flecks
of snow catch against the bunches of grass, against the
furze-bushes, and boulders; if there is a ploughed field, against
every clod, and the result is bewildering. There is nothing to
guide the steps, nothing to give the general direction, and once
off the track, unless well accustomed to the district, the
traveller may wander in vain. After a few inches have fallen the
roads are usually blocked, for all the flakes on miles of hills are
swept along and deposited into hollows where the highways run. To
be dug out now and then in the winter is a contingency the
mail-driver reckons as part of his daily life, and the waggons
going to and fro frequently pass between high walls of frozen snow.
In these wild places, which can scarcely be said to be populated at
all, a snow-storm, however, does not block the King's highways and
paralyse traffic as London permits itself to be paralysed under
similar circumstances. Men are set to work and cut a way through in
a very short time, and no one makes the least difficulty about it.
But with the tracks that lead to isolated farmsteads it is
different; there is not enough traffic to require the removal of
the obstruction, and the drifts occasionally accumulate to twenty
feet deep. The ladies are imprisoned, and must be thankful if they
have got down a box of new novels.</p>
<p>The dread snow-tempest of 1880-81 swept over these places with
tremendous fury, and the most experienced shepherds, whose whole
lives had been spent going to and fro on the downs, frequently lost
their way. There is a story of a waggoner and his lad going slowly
along the road after the thaw, and noticing an odd-looking
scarecrow in a field. They went to it, and found it was a man,
dead, and still standing as he had stiffened in the snow, the
clothes hanging on his withered body, and the eyes gone from the
sockets, picked out by the crows. It is only one of many similar
accounts, and it is thought between twenty and thirty unfortunate
persons perished. Such miserable events are of rare occurrence, but
show how open, wild, and succourless the country still remains. In
ordinary winters it is only strangers who need be cautious, and
strangers seldom appear. Even in summer time, however, a stranger,
if he stays till dusk, may easily wander for hours. Once off the
highway, all the ridges and slopes seem alike, and there is no end
to them.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="14">FOREST</a></h3>
<p>The beechnuts are already falling in the forest, and the swine
are beginning to search for them while yet the harvest lingers. The
nuts are formed by midsummer, and now, the husk opening, the brown
angular kernel drops out. Many of the husks fall, too; others
remain on the branches till next spring. Under the beeches the
ground is strewn with the mast as hard almost to walk on as
pebbles. Rude and uncouth as swine are in themselves, somehow they
look different under trees. The brown leaves amid which they rout,
and the brown-tinted fern behind lend something of their colour and
smooth away their ungainliness. Snorting as they work with very
eagerness of appetite, they are almost wild, approaching in a
measure to their ancestors, the savage boars. Under the trees the
imagination plays unchecked, and calls up the past as if yew bow
and broad arrow were still in the hunter's hands. So little is
changed since then. The deer are here still. Sit down on the root
of this oak (thinly covered with moss), and on that very spot it is
quite possible a knight fresh home from the Crusades may have
rested and feasted his eyes on the lovely green glades of his own
unsurpassed England. The oak was there then, young and strong; it
is here now, ancient, but sturdy. Rarely do you see an oak fall of
itself. It decays to the last stump; it does not fall. The sounds
are the same—the tap as a ripe acorn drops, the rustle of a
leaf which comes down slowly, the quick rushes of mice playing in
the fern. A movement at one side attracts the glance, and there is
a squirrel darting about. There is another at the very top of the
beech yonder out on the boughs, nibbling the nuts. A brown spot a
long distance down the glade suddenly moves, and thereby shows
itself to be a rabbit. The bellowing sound that comes now and then
is from the stags, which are preparing to fight. The swine snort,
and the mast and leaves rustle as they thrust them aside. So little
is changed: these are the same sounds and the same movements, just
as in the olden time.</p>
<p>The soft autumn sunshine, shorn of summer glare, lights up with
colour the fern, the fronds of which are yellow and brown, the
leaves, the grey grass, and hawthorn sprays already turned. It
seems as if the early morning's mists have the power of tinting
leaf and fern, for so soon as they commence the green hues begin to
disappear. There are swathes of fern yonder, cut down like grass or
corn, the harvest of the forest. It will be used for litter and for
thatching sheds. The yellow stalks—the stubble—will
turn brown and wither through the winter, till the strong spring
shoot conies up and the anemones flower. Though the sunbeams reach
the ground here, half the green glade is in shadow, and for one
step that you walk in sunlight ten are in shade. Thus, partly
concealed in full day, the forest always contains a mystery. The
idea that there may be something in the dim arches held up by the
round columns of the beeches lures the footsteps onwards. Something
must have been lately in the circle under the oak where the fern
and bushes remain at a distance and wall in a lawn of green. There
is nothing on the grass but the upheld leaves that have dropped, no
mark of any creature, but this is not decisive; if there are no
physical signs, there is a feeling that the shadow is not vacant.
In the thickets, perhaps—the shadowy thickets with front of
thorn—it has taken refuge and eluded us. Still onward the
shadows lead us in vain but pleasant chase.</p>
<p>These endless trees are a city to the tree-building birds. The
round knot-holes in the beeches, the holes in the elms and oaks;
they find them all out. From these issue the immense flocks of
starlings which, when they alight on an isolated elm in winter,
make it suddenly black. From these, too, come forth the tits, not
so welcome to the farmer, as he considers they reduce his fruit
crop; and in these the gaudy woodpeckers breed. With starlings,
wood-pigeons, and rooks the forest is crowded like a city in
spring, but now in autumn it is comparatively deserted. The birds
are away in the fields, some at the grain, others watching the
plough, and following it so soon as a furrow is opened. But the
stoats are busy—they have not left, nor the weasels; and so
eager are they that, though they hide in the fern at first, in a
minute or two they come out again, and so get shot.</p>
<p>Like the fields, which can only support a certain proportion of
cattle, the forest, wide as it seems, can only maintain a certain
number of deer. Carrying the same thought further, it will be
obvious that the forest, or England in a natural state, could only
support a limited human population. Is this why the inhabitants of
countries like France, where they cultivate every rood and try to
really keep a man to a rood, do not increase in number? Certainly
there is a limit in nature which can only be overcome by artificial
aid. After wandering for some time in a forest like this, the
impression arises that the fauna is not now large enough to be in
thorough keeping with the trees—their age and size and
number. The breadth of the arboreal landscape requires a longer
list of living creatures, and creatures of greater bulk. The stoat
and weasel are lost in bramble and fern, the squirrels in the
branches; the fox is concealed, and the badger; the rabbit, too, is
small. There are only the deer, and there is a wide gap between
them and the hares. Even the few cattle which are permitted to
graze are better than nothing; though not wild, yet standing in
fern to their shoulders and browsing on the lower branches, they
are, at all events, animals for the time in nearly a natural state.
By watching them it is apparent how well the original wild cattle
agreed with the original scenery of the island. One almost regrets
the marten and polecat, though both small creatures, and wishes
that the fox would come forth more by day. These acres of bracken
and impenetrable thickets need more inhabitants; how well they are
fitted for the wild boar! Such thoughts are, of course, only
thoughts, and we must be thankful that we have as many wild
creatures left as we have.</p>
<p>Looking at the soil as we walk, where it is exposed by the roots
of a fallen tree, or where there is an old gravel pit, the question
occurs whether forests, managed as they are in old countries, ever
really increase the fertility of the earth? That decaying
vegetation produces a fine mould cannot be disputed; but it seems
here that there is no more decaying vegetation than is required for
the support of the trees themselves. The leaves that fall—the
million million leaves—blown to and fro, at last disappear,
absorbed into the ground. So with quantities of the lesser twigs
and branches; but these together do not supply more material to the
soil than is annually abstracted by the extensive roots of trees,
of bushes, and by the fern. If timber is felled, it is removed, and
the bark and boughs with it; the stump, too, is grubbed and split
for firewood. If a tree dies it is presently sawn off and cut up
for some secondary use or other. The great branches which
occasionally fall are some one's perquisite. When the thickets are
thinned out, the fagots are carted away, and much of the fern is
also removed. How, then, can there be any accumulation of
fertilising material? Rather the reverse; it is, if anything, taken
away, and the soil must be less rich now than it was in bygone
centuries. Left to itself the process would be the reverse, every
tree as it fell slowly enriching the spot where it mouldered, and
all the bulk of the timber converted into fertile earth. It was in
this way that the American forests laid the foundation of the
inexhaustible wheat-lands there. But the modern management of a
forest tends in the opposite direction—too much is removed;
for if it is wished to improve a soil by the growth of timber,
something must be left in it besides the mere roots. The leaves,
even, are not all left; they have a value for gardening purposes:
though, of course, the few cartloads collected make no appreciable
difference. There is always something going on in the forest; and
more men are employed than would be supposed. In the winter the
selected elms are thrown and the ash poles cut; in the spring the
oak timber comes down and is barked; in the autumn the fern is cut.
Splitting up wood goes on nearly all the year round, so that you
may always hear the axe. No charcoal-burning is practised, but the
mere maintenance of the fences, as, for instance, round the
pheasant enclosures, gives much to do. Deer need attention in
winter, like cattle; the game has its watchers; and ferreting lasts
for months. So that the forest is not altogether useless from the
point of view of work. But in so many hundred acres of trees these
labourers are lost to sight, and do not in the least detract from
its wild appearance. Indeed, the occasional ring of the axe or the
smoke rising from the woodman's fire accentuates the fact that it
is a forest. The oaks keep a circle round their base and stand at a
majestic distance from each other, so that the wind and the
sunshine enter, and their precincts are sweet and pleasant. The
elms gather together, rubbing their branches in the gale till the
bark is worn off and the boughs die; the shadow is deep under them,
and moist, favourable to rank grass and coarse mushrooms. Beneath
the ashes, after the first frost, the air is full of the bitterness
of their blackened leaves, which have all come down at once. By the
beeches there is little underwood, and the hollows are filled
ankle-deep with their leaves. From the pines comes a fragrant
odour, and thus the character of each group dominates the
surrounding ground. The shade is too much for many flowers, which
prefer the nooks of hedgerows. If there is no scope for the use of
"express" rifles, this southern forest really is a forest and not
an open hillside. It is a forest of trees, and there are no
woodlands so beautiful and enjoyable as these, where it is possible
to be lost a while without fear of serious consequences; where you
can walk without stepping up to the waist in a decayed tree-trunk,
or floundering in a bog; where neither venomous snake not torturing
mosquito causes constant apprehensions and constant irritation. To
the eye there is nothing but beauty; to the imagination pleasant
pageants of old time; to the ear the soothing cadence of the leaves
as the gentle breeze goes over. The beeches rear their Gothic
architecture, the oaks are planted firm like castles, unassailable.
Quick squirrels climb and dart hither and thither, deer cross the
distant glade, and, occasionally, a hawk passes like thought.</p>
<p>The something that may be in the shadow or the thicket, the
vain, pleasant chase that beckons us on, still leads the footsteps
from tree to tree, till by-and-by a lark sings, and, going to look
for it, we find the stubble outside the forest—stubble still
bright with the blue and white flowers of grey speedwell. One of
the earliest to bloom in the spring, it continues till the plough
comes again in autumn. Now looking back from the open stubble on
the high wall of trees, the touch of autumn here and there is the
more visible—oaks dotted with brown, horse chestnuts yellow,
maples orange, and the bushes beneath red with haws.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="15">BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY</a></h3>
<h4 align="center">I—THE MAKING OF BEAUTY</h4>
<p>It takes a hundred and fifty years to make a beauty—a
hundred and fifty years out-of-doors. Open air, hard manual labour
or continuous exercise, good food, good clothing, some degree of
comfort, all of these, but most especially open air, must play
their part for five generations before a beautiful woman can
appear. These conditions can only be found in the country, and
consequently all beautiful women come from the country. Though the
accident of birth may cause their register to be signed in town,
they are always of country extraction.</p>
<p>Let us glance back a hundred and fifty years, say to 1735, and
suppose a yeoman to have a son about that time. That son would be
bred upon the hardest fare, but, though hard, it would be plentiful
and of honest sort. The bread would be home-baked, the beef salted
at home, the ale home-brewed. He would work all day in the fields
with the labourers, but he would have three great advantages over
them—in good and plentiful food, in good clothing, and in
home comforts. He would ride, and join all the athletic sports of
the time. Mere manual labour stiffens the limbs, gymnastic
exercises render them supple. Thus he would obtain immense strength
from simple hard work, and agility from exercise. Here, then, is a
sound constitution, a powerful frame, well knit, hardened—an
almost perfect physical existence.</p>
<p>He would marry, if fortunate, at thirty or thirty-five,
naturally choosing the most charming of his acquaintances. She
would be equally healthy and proportionally as strong, for the
ladies of those days were accustomed to work from childhood. By
custom soon after marriage she would work harder than before,
notwithstanding her husband's fair store of guineas in the
iron-bound box. The house, the dairy, the cheese-loft, would keep
her arms in training. Even since I recollect, the work done by
ladies in country houses was something astonishing, ladies by right
of well-to-do parents, by right of education and manners. Really,
it seems that there is no work a woman cannot do with the best
results for herself, always provided that it does not throw a
strain upon the loins. Healthy children sprung from such parents,
while continuing the general type, usually tend towards a
refinement of the features. Under such natural and healthy
conditions, if the mother have a good shape, the daughter is finer;
if the father be of good height, the son is taller. These children
in their turn go through the same open-air training. In course of
years, the family guineas increasing, home comforts increase, and
manners are polished. Another generation sees the cast of
countenance smoothed of its original ruggedness, while preserving
its good proportion. The hard chin becomes rounded and not too
prominent, the cheek-bones sink, the ears are smaller, a softness
spreads itself over the whole face. That which was only honest now
grows tender. Again another generation, and it is a settled axiom
that the family are handsome. The country-side, as it gossips,
agrees that the family are marked out as good-looking. Like seeks
like, as we know; the handsome intermarry with the handsome. Still,
the beauty has not arrived yet, nor is it possible to tell whether
she will appear from the female or male branches. But in the fifth
generation appear she does, with the original features so moulded
and softened by time, so worked and refined and sweetened, so
delicate and yet so rich in blood, that she seems like a new
creation that has suddenly started into being. No one has watched
and recorded the slow process which has thus finally resulted. No
one could do so, because it has spread over a century and a half.
If any one will consider, they will agree that the sentiment at the
sight of a perfect beauty is as much amazement as admiration. It is
so astounding, so outside ordinary experience, that it wears the
aspect of magic.</p>
<p>A stationary home preserves the family intact, so that the
influences already described have time to produce their effect.
There is nothing uncommon in a yeoman's family continuing a hundred
and fifty years in the same homestead. Instances are known of such
occupation extending for over two hundred years; cases of three
hundred years may be found: now and then one is known to exceed
that, and there is said to be one that has not moved for six
hundred. Granting the stock in its origin to have been fairly well
proportioned, and to have been subject for such a lapse of time to
favourable conditions, the rise of beauty becomes intelligible.</p>
<p>Cities labour under every disadvantage. First, families have no
stationary home, but constantly move, so that it is rare to find
one occupying a house fifty years, and will probably become much
rarer in the future. Secondly, the absence of fresh air, and that
volatile essence, as it were, of woods, and fields, and hills,
which can be felt but not fixed. Thirdly, the sedentary employment.
Let a family be never so robust, these must ultimately affect the
constitution. If beauty appears it is too often of the unhealthy
order; there is no physique, no vigour, no richness of blood.
Beauty of the highest order is inseparable from health; it is the
outcome of health—centuries of health—and a really
beautiful woman is, in proportion, stronger than a man. It is
astonishing with what persistence a type of beauty once established
in the country will struggle to perpetuate itself against all the
drawbacks of town life after the family has removed thither.</p>
<p>When such results are produced under favourable conditions at
the yeoman's homestead, no difficulty arises in explaining why
loveliness so frequently appears in the houses of landed
proprietors. Entailed estates fix the family in one spot, and tend,
by inter-marriage, to deepen any original physical excellence.
Constant out-of-door exercise, riding, hunting, shooting, takes the
place of manual labour. All the refinements that money can
purchase, travel, education, are here at work. That the culture of
the mind can alter the expression of the individual is certain; if
continued for many generations, possibly it may leave its mark upon
the actual bodily frame. Selection exerts a most powerful influence
in these cases. The rich and titled have so wide a range to choose
from. Consider these things working through centuries, perhaps in a
more or less direct manner, since the Norman Conquest. The fame of
some such families for handsome features and well-proportioned
frames is widely spread, so much so that a descendant not handsome
is hardly regarded by the outside world as legitimate. But even
with all these advantages beauty in the fullest sense does not
appear regularly. Few indeed are those families that can boast of
more than one. It is the best of all boasts; it is almost as if the
Immortals had especially favoured their house. Beauty has no
period; it comes at intervals, unexpected! it cannot be fixed. No
wonder the earth is at its feet.</p>
<p>The fisherman's daughter ere now has reached very high in the
scale of beauty. Hardihood is the fisherman's talent by which he
wins his living from the sea. Tribal in his ways, his settlements
are almost exclusive, and his descent pure. The wind washed by the
sea enriches his blood, and of labour he has enough. Here are the
same constant factors; the stationary home keeping the family
intact, the out-door life, the air, the sea, the sun. Refinement is
absent, but these alone are so powerful that now and then beauty
appears. The lovely Irish girls, again: their forefathers have
dwelt on the mountainside since the days of Fingal, and all the
hardships of their lot cannot destroy the natural tendency to shape
and enchanting feature. Without those constant factors beauty
cannot be, but yet they will not alone produce it. There must be
something in the blood which these influences gradually ripen. If
it is not there centuries are in vain; but if it is there then it
needs these conditions. Erratic, meteor-like beauty! for how many
thousand years has man been your slave! Let me repeat, the
sentiment at the sight of a perfect beauty is as much amazement as
admiration. It so draws the heart out of itself as to seem like
magic.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 growing 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 the beauty; all the broad hill's thyme and
freedom: thrice a hundred years repeated. A hundred years of
cowslips, blue-bells, violets; purple spring and golden autumn;
sunshine, shower, and dewy mornings; the night immortal; all the
rhythm of Time unrolling. A chronicle unwritten and past all power
of writing: who shall preserve a record of the petals that fell
from the roses a century ago? The swallows to the housetops 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?</p>
<h4 align="center">II—THE FORCE OF FORM</h4>
<p>Her shoulders were broad, but not too broad—just enough to
accentuate the waist, and to give a pleasant sense of ease and
power. She was strong, upright, self-reliant, finished in herself.
Her bust was full, but not too prominent—more after nature
than the dressmaker. There was something, though, of the
corset-maker in her waist, it appeared naturally fine, and had been
assisted to be finer. But it was in the hips that the woman was
perfect:—fulness without coarseness; large but not big: in a
word, nobly proportioned. Now imagine a black dress adhering to
this form. From the shoulders to the ankles it fitted "like a
glove." There was not a wrinkle, a fold, a crease, smooth as if
cast in a mould, and yet so managed that she moved without effort.
Every undulation of her figure, as she stepped lightly forward
flowed to the surface. The slight sway of the hip as the foot was
lifted, the upward and <i>inward</i> movement of the limb as the
knee was raised, the straightening as the instep felt her weight,
each change as the limb described the curves of walking was
repeated in her dress. At every change of position she was as
gracefully draped as before. All was revealed, yet all concealed.
As she passed there was the sense of a presence—the presence
of perfect form. She was lifted as she moved above the ground by
the curves of beauty as rapid revolution in a curve suspends the
down-dragging of gravity. A force went by—the force of
animated perfect form.</p>
<p>Merely as an animal, how grand and beautiful is a perfect woman!
Simply as a living, breathing creature, can anything imaginable
come near her?</p>
<p>There is such strength in shape—such force in form.
Without muscular development shape conveys the impression of the
greatest of all strength—that is, of completeness in itself.
The ancient philosophy regarded a globe as the most perfect of all
bodies, because it was the same—that is, it was perfect and
complete in itself—from whatever point it was contemplated.
Such is woman's form when nature's intent is fulfilled in beauty,
and that beauty gives the idea of self-contained power.</p>
<p>A full-grown woman is, too, physically stronger than a man. Her
physique excels man's. Look at her torso, at the size, the fulness,
the rounded firmness, the depth of the chest. There is a nobleness
about it. Shoulders, arms, limbs, all reach a breadth of make
seldom seen in man. There is more than merely
sufficient—there is a luxuriance indicating a surpassing
vigour. And this occurs without effort. She needs no long manual
labour, no exhaustive gymnastic exercise, nor any special care in
food or training. It is difficult not to envy the superb physique
and beautiful carriage of some women. They are so strong without
effort.</p>
<h4 align="center">III—AN ARM</h4>
<p>A large white arm, bare, in the sunshine, to the shoulder,
carelessly leant against a low red wall, lingers in my memory.
There was a house roofed with old grey stone slates in the
background, and peaches trained up by the window. The low garden
wall of red brick—ancient red brick, not the pale, dusty
blocks of these days—was streaked with dry mosses hiding the
mortar. Clear and brilliant, the gaudy sun of morning shone down
upon her as she stood in the gateway, resting her arm on the red
wall, and pressing on the mosses which the heat had dried. Her face
I do not remember, only the arm. She had come out from dairy work,
which needs bare arms, and stood facing the bold sun. It was very
large—some might have called it immense—and yet natural
and justly proportioned to the woman, her work, and her physique.
So immense an arm was like a revelation of the vast physical
proportions which our race is capable of attaining under favourable
conditions. Perfectly white—white as the milk in which it was
often plunged—smooth and pleasant in the texture of the skin,
it was entirely removed from coarseness. The might of its size was
chiefly by the shoulder; the wrist was not large, nor the hand.
Colossal, white, sunlit, bare—among the trees and the meads
around it was a living embodiment of the limbs we attribute to the
first dwellers on earth.</p>
<h4 align="center">IV—LIPS</h4>
<p>The mouth is the centre of woman's beauty. To the lips the
glance is attracted the moment she approaches, and their shape
remains in the memory longest. Curve, colour, and substance are the
three essentials of the lips, but these are nothing without
mobility, the soul of the mouth. If neither sculpture, nor the
palette with its varied resources, can convey the spell of perfect
lips, how can it be done in black letters of ink only? Nothing is
so difficult, nothing so beautiful. There are lips which have an
elongated curve (of the upper one), ending with a slight curl, like
a ringlet at the end of a tress, like those tiny wavelets on a
level sand which float in before the tide, or like a frond of fern
unrolling. In this curl there lurks a smile, so that she can
scarcely open her mouth without a laugh, or the look of one. These
upper lips are drawn with parallel lines, the verge is defined by
two lines near together, enclosing the narrowest space possible,
which is ever so faintly less coloured than the substance of the
lip. This makes the mouth appear larger than it really is; the bow,
too, is more flattened than in the pure Greek lip. It is beautiful,
but not perfect, tempting, mischievous, not retiring, and belongs
to a woman who is never long alone. To describe it first is
natural, because this mouth is itself the face, and the rest of the
features are grouped to it. If you think of her you think of her
mouth only—the face appears as memory acts, but the mouth is
distinct, the remainder uncertain. She laughs and the curl runs
upwards, so that you must laugh too, you cannot help it. Had the
curl gone downwards, as with habitually melancholy people, you
might have withstood her smile. The room is never dull where she
is, for there is a distinct character in it—a woman—and
not a mere living creature, and it is noticeable that if there are
five or six or more present, somehow the conversation centres round
her.</p>
<p>There was a lady I knew who had lips like these. Of the kind
they were perfect. Though she was barely fourteen she was
<i>the</i> woman of that circle by the magnetism of her mouth. When
we all met together in the evening all that went on in some way or
other centred about her. By consent the choice of what game should
be played was left to her to decide. She was asked if it was not
time for some one to sing, and the very mistress of the household
referred to her whether we should have another round or go in to
supper. Of course, she always decided as she supposed the hostess
wished. At supper, if there was a delicacy on the table it was
invariably offered to her. The eagerness of the elderly gentlemen,
who presumed on their grey locks and conventional harmlessness to
press their attentions upon her, showed who was the most attractive
person in the room. Younger men feel a certain reserve, and do not
reveal their inclinations before a crowd, but the harmless old
gentleman makes no secret of his admiration. She managed them all,
old and young, with unconscious tact, and never left the ranks of
the other ladies as a crude flirt would have done. This tact and
way of modestly holding back when so many would have pushed her too
much to the front retained for her the good word of her own sex. If
a dance was proposed it was left to her to say yes or no, and if it
was not too late the answer was usually in the affirmative. So in
the morning, should we make an excursion to some view or pleasant
wood, all eyes rested upon her, and if she thought it fine enough
away we went.</p>
<p>Her features were rather fine, but not especially so; her
complexion a little dusky, eyes grey, and dark hair; her figure
moderately tall, slender but shapely. She was always dressed well;
a certain taste marked her in everything. Upon introduction no one
would have thought anything of her; they would have said,
"insignificant—plain;" in half an hour, "different to most
girls;" in an hour, "extremely pleasant;" in a day, "a singularly
attractive girl;" and so on, till her empire was established. It
was not the features—it was the mouth, the curling lips, the
vivacity and life that sparkled in them. There is wine,
deep-coloured, strong, but smooth at the surface. There is
champagne with its richness continually rushing to the rim. Her
lips flowed with champagne. It requires a clever man indeed to
judge of men; now how could so young and inexperienced a creature
distinguish the best from so many suitors?</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="16">OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY</a></h3>
<p>The cawing of the rooks in February shows that the time is
coming when their nests will be re-occupied. They resort to the
trees, and perch above the old nests to indicate their rights; for
in the rookery possession is the law, and not nine-tenths of it
only. In the slow dull cold of winter even these noisy birds are
quiet, and as the vast flocks pass over, night and morning, to and
from the woods in which they roost, there is scarcely a sound.
Through the mist their black wings advance in silence, the jackdaws
with them are chilled into unwonted quiet, and unless you chance to
look up the crowd may go over unnoticed. But so soon as the waters
begin to make a sound in February, running in the ditches and
splashing over stones, the rooks commence the speeches and
conversations which will continue till late into the following
autumn.</p>
<p>The general idea is that they pair in February, but there are
some reasons for thinking that the rooks, in fact, choose their
males at the end of the preceding summer. They are then in large
flocks, and if only casually glanced at appear mixed together
without any order or arrangement. They move on the ground and fly
in the air so close, one beside the other, that at the first glance
or so you cannot distinguish them apart. Yet if you should be
lingering along the by-ways of the fields as the acorns fall, and
the leaves come rustling down in the warm sunny autumn afternoons,
and keep an observant eye upon the rooks in the trees, or on the
fresh-turned furrows, they will be seen to act in couples. On the
ground couples alight near each other, on the trees they perch near
each other, and in the air fly side by side. Like soldiers each has
his comrade. Wedged in the ranks every man looks like his fellow,
and there seems no tie between them but a common discipline.
Intimate acquaintance with barrack or camp life would show that
every one had his friend. There is also the mess, or companionship
of half a dozen, or dozen, or more, and something like this exists
part of the year in the armies of the rooks. After the nest time is
over they flock together, and each family of three or four flies in
concert. Later on they apparently choose their own particular
friends, that is the young birds do so. All through the winter
after, say October, these pairs keep together, though lost in the
general mass to the passing spectator. If you alarm them while
feeding on the ground in winter, supposing you have not got a gun,
they merely rise up to the nearest tree, and it may then be
observed that they do this in pairs. One perches on a branch and a
second comes to him. When February arrives, and they resort to the
nests to look after or seize on the property there, they are in
fact already paired, though the almanacs put down St. Valentine's
day as the date of courtship.</p>
<p>There is very often a warm interval in February, sometimes a few
days earlier and sometimes later, but as a rule it happens that a
week or so of mild sunny weather occurs about this time. Released
from the grip of the frost, the streams trickle forth from the
fields and pour into the ditches, so that while walking along the
footpath there is a murmur all around coming from the rush of
water. The murmur of the poets is indeed louder in February than in
the more pleasant days of summer, for then the growth of aquatic
grasses checks the flow and stills it, whilst in February every
stone, or flint, or lump of chalk divides the current and causes a
vibration, With this murmur of water, and mild time, the rooks caw
incessantly, and the birds at large essay to utter their welcome of
the sun. The wet furrows reflect the rays so that the dark earth
gleams, and in the slight mist that stays farther away the light
pauses and fills the vapour with radiance. Through this luminous
mist the larks race after each other twittering, and as they turn
aside, swerving in their swift flight, their white breasts appear
for a moment. As while standing by a pool the fishes came into
sight, emerging as they swim round from the shadow of the deeper
water, so the larks dart over the low edge, and through the mist,
and pass before you, and are gone again. All at once one checks his
pursuit, forgets the immediate object, and rises, singing as he
soars. The notes fall from the air over the dark wet earth, over
the dank grass, and broken withered fern of the hedge, and
listening to them it seems for a moment spring. There is sunshine
in the song; the lark and the light are one. He gives us a few
minutes of summer in February days. In May he rises before as yet
the dawn is come, and the sunrise flows down to us under through
his notes. On his breast, high above the earth, the first rays fall
as the rim of the sun edges up at the eastward hill. The lark and
the light are as one, and wherever he glides over the wet furrows
the glint of the sun goes with him. Anon alighting he runs between
the lines of the green corn. In hot summer, when the open hillside
is burned with bright light, the larks are then singing and
soaring. Stepping up the hill laboriously, suddenly a lark starts
into the light and pours forth a rain of unwearied notes overhead.
With bright light, and sunshine, and sunrise, and blue skies the
bird is so associated in the mind, that even to see him in the
frosty days of wjnter, at least assures us that summer will
certainly return.</p>
<p>Ought not winter, in allegorical designs, the rather to be
represented with such things that might suggest hope than such as
convey a cold and grim despair? The withered leaf, the snowflake,
the hedging bill that cuts and destroys, why these? Why not rather
the dear larks for one? They fly in flocks, and amid the white
expanse of snow (in the south) their pleasant twitter or call is
heard as they sweep along seeking some grassy spot cleared by the
wind. The lark, the bird of the light, is there in the bitter short
days. Put the lark then for winter, a sign of hope, a certainty of
summer. Put, too, the sheathed bud, for if you search the hedge you
will find the buds there, on tree and bush, carefully wrapped
around with the case which protects them as a cloak. Put, too, the
sharp needles of the green corn; let the wind clear it of snow a
little way, and show that under cold clod and colder snow the green
thing pushes up, knowing that summer must come. Nothing despairs
but man. Set the sharp curve of the white new moon in the sky: she
is white in true frost, and yellow a little if it is devising
change. Set the new moon as something that symbols an increase. Set
the shepherd's crook in a corner as a token that the flocks are
already enlarged in number. The shepherd is the symbolic man of the
hardest winter time. His work is never more important than then.
Those that only roam the fields when they are pleasant in May, see
the lambs at play in the meadow, and naturally think of lambs and
May flowers. But the lamb was born in the adversity of snow. Or you
might set the morning star, for it burns and burns and glitters in
the winter dawn, and throws forth beams like those of metal
consumed in oxygen. There is nought that I know by comparison with
which I might indicate the glory of the morning star, while yet the
dark night hides in the hollows. The lamb is born in the fold. The
morning star glitters in the sky. The bud is alive in its sheath;
the green corn under the snow; the lark twitters as he passes. Now
these to me are the allegory of winter.</p>
<p>These mild hours in February check the hold which winter has
been gaining, and as it were, tear his claws out of the earth,
their prey. If it has not been so bitter previously, when this Gulf
stream or current of warmer air enters the expanse it may bring
forth a butterfly and tenderly woo the first violet into flower.
But this depends on its having been only moderately cold before,
and also upon the stratum, whether it is backward clay, or forward
gravel and sand. Spring dates are quite different according to the
locality, and when violets may be found in one district, in another
there is hardly a woodbine-leaf out. The border line may be traced,
and is occasionally so narrow, one may cross over it almost at a
step. It would sometimes seem as if even the nut-tree bushes bore
larger and finer nuts on the warmer soil, and that they ripened
quicker. Any curious in the first of things, whether it be a leaf,
or flower, or a bird, should bear this in mind, and not be
discouraged because he hears some one else has already discovered
or heard something.</p>
<p>A little note taken now at this bare time of the kind of earth
may lead to an understanding of the district. It is plain where the
plough has turned it, where the rabbits have burrowed and thrown it
out, where a tree has been felled by the gales, by the brook where
the bank is worn away, or by the sediment at the shallow places.
Before the grass and weeds, and corn and flowers have hidden it,
the character of the soil is evident at these natural sections
without the aid of a spade. Going slowly along the
footpath—indeed you cannot go fast in moist February—it
is a good time to select the places and map them out where herbs
and flowers will most likely come first. All the autumn lies prone
on the ground. Dead dark leaves, some washed to their woody frames,
short grey stalks, some few decayed hulls of hedge fruit, and among
these the mars or stocks of the plants that do not die away, but
lie as it were on the surface waiting. Here the strong teazle will
presently stand high; here the ground-ivy will dot the mound with
bluish-purple. But it will be necessary to walk slowly to find the
ground-ivy flowers under the cover of the briers. These bushes will
be a likely place for a blackbird's nest; this thick close hawthorn
for a bullfinch; these bramble thickets with remnants of old nettle
stalks will be frequented by the whitethroat after a while. The
hedge is now but a lattice-work which will before long be hung with
green. Now it can be seen through, and now is the time to arrange
for future discovery. In May everything will be hidden, and unless
the most promising places are selected beforehand, it will not be
easy to search them out. The broad ditch will be arched over, the
plants rising on the mound will meet the green boughs drooping, and
all the vacancy will be filled. But having observed the spot in
winter you can almost make certain of success in spring.</p>
<p>It is this previous knowledge which invests those who are always
on the spot, those who work much in the fields or have the care of
woods, with their apparent prescience. They lead the new comer to a
hedge, or the corner of a copse, or a bend of the brook, announcing
beforehand that they feel assured something will be found there;
and so it is. This, too, is one reason why a fixed observer usually
sees more than one who rambles a great deal and covers ten times
the space. The fixed observer who hardly goes a mile from home is
like the man who sits still by the edge of a crowd, and by-and-by
his lost companion returns to him. To walk about in search of
persons in a crowd is well known to be the worst way of recovering
them. Sit still and they will often come by. In a far more certain
manner this is the case with birds and animals. They all come back.
During a twelvemonth probably every creature would pass over a
given locality: every creature that is not confined to certain
places. The whole army of the woods and hedges marches across a
single farm in twelve months. A single tree—especially an old
tree—is visited by four-fifths of the birds that ever perch
in the course of that period. Every year, too, brings something
fresh, and adds new visitors to the list. Even the wild sea birds
are found inland, and some that scarce seem able to fly at all are
cast far ashore by the gales. It is difficult to believe that one
would not see more by extending the journey, but, in fact,
experience proves that the longer a single locality is studied the
more is found in it. But you should know the places in winter as
well as in tempting summer, when song and shade and colour attract
every one to the field. You should face the mire and slippery path.
Nature yields nothing to the sybarite. The meadow glows with
buttercups in spring, the hedges are green, the woods lovely; but
these are not to be enjoyed in their full significance unless you
have traversed the same places when bare, and have watched the slow
fulfilment of the flowers.</p>
<p>The moist leaves that remain upon the mounds do not rustle, and
the thrush moves among them unheard. The sunshine may bring out a
rabbit, feeding along the slope of the mound, following the paths
or runs. He picks his way, he does not like wet. Though out at
night in the dewy grass of summer, in the rain-soaked grass of
winter, and living all his life in the earth, often damp nearly to
his burrows, no time, and no succession of generations can make him
like wet. He endures it, but he picks his way round the dead fern
and the decayed leaves. He sits in the bunches of long grass, but
he does not like the drops of dew on it to touch him. Water lays
his fur close, and mats it, instead of running off and leaving him
sleek. As he hops a little way at a time on the mound he chooses
his route almost as we pick ours in the mud and pools of February.
By the shore of the ditch there still stand a few dry, dead dock
stems, with some dry reddish-brown seed adhering. Some dry brown
nettle stalks remain; some grey and broken thistles; some teazles
leaning on the bushes. The power of winter has reached its utmost
now, and can go no farther. These bines which still hang in the
bushes are those of the greater bindweed, and will be used in a
month or so by many birds as conveniently curved to fit about their
nests. The stem of wild clematis, grey and bowed, could scarcely
look more dead. Fibres are peeling from it, they come off at the
touch of the fingers. The few brown feathers that perhaps still
adhere where the flowers once were are stained and discoloured by
the beating of the rain. It is not dead: it will flourish again ere
long. It is the sturdiest of creepers, facing the ferocious winds
of the hills, the tremendous rains that blow up from the sea, and
bitter frost, if only it can get its roots into soil that suits it.
In some places it takes the place of the hedge proper and becomes
itself the hedge. Many of the trunks of the elms are swathed in
minute green vegetation which has flourished in the winter, as the
clematis will in in the summer. Of all, the brambles bear the wild
works of winter best. Given only a little shelter, in the corner of
the hedges or under trees and copses they retain green leaves till
the buds burst again. The frosts tint them in autumn with crimson,
but not all turn colour or fall. The brambles are the bowers of the
birds; in these still leafy bowers they do the courting of the
spring, and under the brambles the earliest arum, and cleaver, or
avens, push up. Round about them the first white nettle flowers,
not long now; latest too, in the autumn. The white nettle sometimes
blooms so soon (always according to locality), and again so late,
that there seems but a brief interval between, as if it flowered
nearly all the year round. So the berries on the holly if let alone
often stay till summer is in, and new berries begin to appear
shortly afterwards. The ivy, too, bears its berries far into the
summer. Perhaps if the country be taken at large there is never a
time when there is not a flower of some kind out, in this or that
warm southern nook. The sun never sets, nor do the flowers ever
die. There is life always, even in the dry fir-cone that looks so
brown and sapless.</p>
<p>The path crosses the uplands where the lapwings stand on the
parallel ridges of the ploughed field like a drilled company; if
they rise they wheel as one, and in the twilight move across the
fields in bands invisible as they sweep near the ground, but seen
against the sky in rising over the trees and the hedges. There is a
plantation of fir and ash on the slope, and a narrow waggon-way
enters it, and seems to lose itself in the wood. Always approach
this spot quietly, for whatever is in the wood is sure at some time
or other to come to the open space of the track. Wood-pigeons,
pheasants, squirrels, magpies, hares, everything feathered or
furred, down to the mole, is sure to seek the open way. Butterflies
flutter through the copse by it in summer, just as you or I might
use the passage between the trees. Towards the evening the
partridges may run through to join their friends before roost-time
on the ground. Or you may see a covey there now and then, creeping
slowly with humped backs, and at a distance not unlike hedgehogs in
their motions. The spot therefore should be approached with care;
if it is only a thrush out it is a pleasure to see him at his ease
and, as he deems, unobserved. If a bird or animal thinks itself
noticed it seldom does much, some will cease singing immediately
they are looked at. The day is perceptibly longer already. As the
sun goes down, the western sky often takes a lovely green tint in
this month, and one stays to look at it, forgetting the dark and
miry way homewards. I think the moments when we forget the mire of
the world are the most precious. After a while the green corn rises
higher out of the rude earth.</p>
<p>Pure colour almost always gives the idea of fire, or rather it
is perhaps as if a light shone through as well as colour itself.
The fresh green blade of corn is like this, so pellucid, so clear
and pure in its green as to seem to shine with colour. It is not
brilliant—not a surface gleam or an enamel,—it is
stained through. Beside the moist clods the slender flags arise
filled with the sweetness of the earth. Out of the darkness
under—that darkness which knows no day save when the
ploughshare opens its chinks—they have come to the light. To
the light they have brought a colour which will attract the
sunbeams from now till harvest. They fall more pleasantly on the
corn, toned, as if they mingled with it. Seldom do we realise that
the world is practically no thicker to us than the print of our
footsteps on the path. Upon that surface we walk and act our comedy
of life, and what is beneath is nothing to us. But it is out from
that under-world, from the dead and the unknown, from the cold
moist ground, that these green blades have sprung. Yonder a
steam-plough pants up the hill, groaning with its own strength, yet
all that strength and might of wheels, and piston, and chains,
cannot drag from the earth one single blade like these. Force
cannot make it; it must grow—an easy word to speak or write,
in fact full of potency. It is this mystery of growth and life, of
beauty, and sweetness, and colour, starting forth from the clods
that gives the corn its power over me. Somehow I identify myself
with it; I live again as I see it. Year by year it is the same, and
when I see it I feel that I have once more entered on a new life.
And I think the spring, with its green corn, its violets, and
hawthorn-leaves, and increasing song, grows yearly dearer and more
dear to this our ancient earth. So many centuries have flown! Now
it is the manner with all natural things to gather as it were by
smallest particles. The merest grain of sand drifts unseen into a
crevice, and by-and-by another; after a while there is a heap; a
century and it is a mound, and then every one observes and comments
on it. Time itself has gone on like this; the years have
accumulated, first in drifts, then in heaps, and now a vast mound,
to which the mountains are knolls, rises up and overshadows us.
Time lies heavy on the world. The old, old earth is glad to turn
from the cark and care of drifted centuries to the first sweet
blades of green.</p>
<p>There is sunshine to-day after rain, and every lark is singing.
Across the vale a broad cloud-shadow descends the hillside, is lost
in the hollow, and presently, without warning, slips over the edge,
coming swiftly along the green tips. The sunshine follows—the
warmer for its momentary absence. Far, far down in a grassy coomb
stands a solitary cornrick, conical roofed, casting a lonely
shadow—marked because so solitary, and beyond it on the
rising slope is a brown copse. The leafless branches take a brown
tint in the sunlight; on the summit above there is furze; then more
hill lines drawn against the sky. In the tops of the dark pines at
the corner of the copse, could the glance sustain itself to see
them, there are finches warming themselves in the sunbeams. The
thick needles shelter them, from the current of air, and the sky is
bluer above the pines. Their hearts are full already of the happy
days to come, when the moss yonder by the beech, and the lichen on
the fir-trunk, and the loose fibres caught in the fork of an
unbending bough, shall furnish forth a sufficient mansion for their
young. Another broad cloud-shadow, and another warm embrace of
sunlight. All the serried ranks of the green corn bow at the word
of command as the wind rushes over them.</p>
<p>There is largeness and freedom here. Broad as the down and free
as the wind, the thought can roam high over the narrow roofs in the
vale. Nature has affixed no bounds to thought. All the palings, and
walls, and crooked fences deep down yonder are artificial. The
fetters and traditions, the routine, the dull roundabout which
deadens the spirit like the cold moist earth, are the merest
nothings. Here it is easy with the physical eye to look over the
highest roof. The moment the eye of the mind is filled with the
beauty of things natural an equal freedom and width of view come to
it. Step aside from the trodden footpath of personal experience,
throwing away the petty cynicism born of petty hopes disappointed.
Step out upon the broad down beside the green corn, and let its
freshness become part of life.</p>
<p>The wind passes, and it bends—let the wind, too, pass over
the spirit. From the cloud-shadow it emerges to the
sunshine—let the heart come out from the shadow of roofs to
the open glow of the sky. High above, the songs of the larks fall
as rain—receive it with open hands. Pure is the colour of the
green flags, the slender-pointed blades—let the thought be
pure as the light that shines through that colour. Broad are the
downs and open the aspect—gather the breadth and largeness of
view. Never can that view be wide enough and large enough, there
will always be room to aim higher. As the air of the hills enriches
the blood, so let the presence of these beautiful things enrich the
inner sense. One memory of the green corn, fresh beneath the sun
and wind, will lift up the heart from the clods.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="17">HAUNTS OF THE LAPWING</a></h3>
<h4 align="center">I—WINTER</h4>
<p>Coming like a white wall the rain reaches me, and in an instant
everything is gone from sight that is more than ten yards distant.
The narrow upland road is beaten to a darker hue, and two runnels
of water rush along at the sides, where, when the chalk-laden
streamlets dry, blue splinters of flint will be exposed in the
channels. For a moment the air seems driven away by the sudden
pressure, and I catch my breath and stand still with one shoulder
forward to receive the blow. Hiss, the land shudders under the cold
onslaught; hiss, and on the blast goes, and the sound with it, for
the very fury of the rain, after the first second, drowns its own
noise. There is not a single creature visible, the low and stunted
hedgerows, bare of leaf, could conceal nothing; the rain passes
straight through to the ground. Crooked and gnarled, the bushes are
locked together as if in no other way could they hold themselves
against the gales. Such little grass as there is on the mounds is
thin and short, and could not hide a mouse. There is no finch,
sparrow, thrush, blackbird. As the wave of rain passes over and
leaves a hollow between the waters, that which has gone and that to
come, the ploughed lands on either side are seen to be equally
bare. In furrows full of water, a hare would not sit, nor partridge
run; the larks, the patient larks which endure almost everything,
even they have gone. Furrow on furrow with flints dotted on their
slopes, and chalk lumps, that is all. The cold earth gives no sweet
petal of flower, nor can any bud of thought or bloom of imagination
start forth in the mind. But step by step, forcing a way through
the rain and over the ridge, I find a small and stunted copse down
in the next hollow. It is rather a wide hedge than a copse, and
stands by the road in the corner of a field. The boughs are bare;
still they break the storm, and it is a relief to wait a while
there and rest. After a minute or so the eye gets accustomed to the
branches and finds a line of sight through the narrow end of the
copse. Within twenty yards—just outside the copse—there
are a number of lapwings, dispersed about the furrows. One runs a
few feet forward and picks something from the ground; another runs
in the same manner to one side; a third rushes in still a third
direction. Their crests, their green-tinted wings, and white
breasts are not disarranged by the torrent. Something in the style
of the birds recalls the wagtail, though they are so much larger.
Beyond these are half a dozen more, and in a straggling line others
extend out into the field. They have found some slight shelter here
from the sweeping of the rain and wind, and are not obliged to face
it as in the open. Minutely searching every clod they gather their
food in imperceptible items from the surface.</p>
<p>Sodden leaves lie in the furrows along the side of the copse;
broken and decaying burdocks still uphold their jagged stems, but
will be soaked away by degrees; dank grasses droop outwards! the
red seed of a dock is all that remains of the berries and fruit,
the seeds and grain of autumn. Like the hedge, the copse is vacant.
Nothing moves within, watch as carefully as I may. The boughs are
blackened by wet and would touch cold. From the grasses to the
branches there is nothing any one would like to handle, and I stand
apart even from the bush that keeps away the rain. The green
plovers are the only things of life that save the earth from utter
loneliness. Heavily as the rain may fall, cold as the saturated
wind may blow, the plovers remind us of the beauty of shape,
colour, and animation. They seem too slender to withstand the
blast—they should have gone with the swallows—too
delicate for these rude hours; yet they alone face them.</p>
<p>Once more the wave of rain has passed, and yonder the hills
appear; these are but uplands. The nearest and highest has a green
rampart, visible for a moment against the dark sky, and then again
wrapped in a toga of misty cloud. So the chilled Roman drew his
toga around him in ancient days as from that spot he looked
wistfully southwards and thought of Italy. Wee-ah-wee! Some chance
movement has been noticed by the nearest bird, and away they go at
once as if with the same wings, sweeping overhead, then to the
right, then to the left, and then back again, till at last lost in
the coming shower. After they have thus vibrated to and fro long
enough, like a pendulum coming to rest, they will alight in the
open field on the ridge behind. There in drilled ranks, well closed
together, all facing the same way, they will stand for hours. Let
us go also and let the shower conceal them. Another time my path
leads over the hills.</p>
<p>It is afternoon, which in winter is evening. The sward of the
down is dry under foot, but hard, and does not lift the instep with
the springy feel of summer. The sky is gone, it is not clouded, it
is swathed in gloom. Upwards the still air thickens, and there is
no arch or vault of heaven. Formless and vague, it seems some vast
shadow descending. The sun has disappeared, and the light there
still is, is left in the atmosphere enclosed by the gloomy mist as
pools are left by a receding tide. Through the sand the water
slips, and through the mist the light glides away. Nearer comes the
formless shadow and the visible earth grows smaller. The path has
faded, and there are no means on the open downs of knowing whether
the direction pursued is right or wrong, till a boulder (which is a
landmark) is perceived. Thence the way is down the slope, the last
and limit of the hills there. It is a rough descent, the paths worn
by sheep may at any moment cause a stumble. At the foot is a
waggon-track beside a low hedge, enclosing the first arable field.
The hedge is a guide, but the ruts are deep, and it still needs
slow and careful walking. Wee-ah-wee! Up from the dusky surface of
the arable field springs a plover, and the notes are immediately
repeated by another. They can just be seen as darker bodies against
the shadow as they fly overhead. Wee-ah-wee! The sound grows
fainter as they fetch a longer circle in the gloom.</p>
<p>There is another winter resort of plovers in the valley where a
barren waste was ploughed some years ago. A few furze bushes still
stand in the hedges about it, and the corners are full of rushes.
Not all the grubbing of furze and bushes, the deep ploughing and
draining, has succeeded in rendering the place fertile like the
adjacent fields. The character of a marsh adheres to it still. So
long as there is a crop, the lapwings keep away, but as soon as the
ploughs turn up the ground in autumn they return. The place lies
low, and level with the waters in the ponds and streamlets. A mist
hangs about it in the evening, and even when there is none, there
is a distinct difference in the atmosphere while passing it. From
their hereditary home the lapwings cannot be entirely driven away.
Out of the mist comes their plaintive cry; they are hidden, and
their exact locality is not to be discovered. Where winter rules
most ruthlessly, where darkness is deepest in daylight, there the
slender plovers stay undaunted.</p>
<h4 align="center">II—SPRING</h4>
<p>A soft sound of water moving among thousands of
grass-blades—to the hearing it is as the sweetness of spring
air to the scent. It is so faint and so diffused that the exact
spot whence it issues cannot be discerned, yet it is distinct, and
my footsteps are slower as I listen. Yonder, in the corners of the
mead, the atmosphere is full of some ethereal vapour. The sunshine
stays in the air there, as if the green hedges held the wind from
brushing it away. Low and plaintive come the notes of a lapwing;
the same notes, but tender with love.</p>
<p>On this side, by the hedge, the ground is a little higher and
dry, hung over with the lengthy boughs of an oak, which give some
shade. I always feel a sense of regret when I see a seedling oak in
the grass. The two green leaves—the little stem so upright
and confident, and, though but a few inches high, already so
completely a tree—are in themselves beautiful. Power,
endurance, grandeur are there; you can grasp all with your hand,
and take a ship between the finger and thumb. Time, that sweeps
away everything, is for a while repelled; the oak will grow when
the time we know is forgotten, and when felled will be the mainstay
and safety of a generation in a future century. That the plant
should start among the grass, to be severed by the scythe or
crushed by cattle, is very pitiful; I cannot help wishing that it
could be transplanted and protected. Of the countless acorns that
drop in autumn not one in a million is permitted to become a
tree—a vast waste of strength and beauty. From the bushes by
the stile on the left hand, which I have just passed, follows the
long whistle of a nightingale. His nest is near; he sings night and
day. Had I waited on the stile, in a few minutes, becoming used to
my presence, he would have made the hawthorn vibrate, so powerful
in his voice when heard close at hand. There is not another
nightingale along this path for at least a mile, though it crosses
meadows and runs by hedges to all appearance equally suitable; but
nightingales will not pass their limits; they seem to have a
marked-out range as strictly defined as the lines of a geological
map. They will not go over to the next hedge—hardly into the
field on one side of a favourite spot, nor a yard farther along the
mound, Opposite the oak is a low fence of serrated green. Just
projecting above the edge of a brook, fast-growing flags have
thrust up their bayonet-tips. Beneath their stalks are so thick in
the shallow places that a pike can scarcely push a way between
them. Over the brook stand some high maple trees; to their thick
foliage wood-pigeons come. The entrance to a coomb, the widening
mouth of a valley, is beyond, with copses on the slopes.</p>
<p>Again the plover's notes; this time in the field immediately
behind; repeated, too, in the field on the right hand. One comes
over, and as he flies he jerks a wing upwards and partly turns on
his side in the air, rolling like a vessel in a swell. He seems to
beat the air sideways, as if against a wall, not downwards. This
habit makes his course appear so uncertain; he may go there, or
yonder, or in a third direction, more undecided than a startled
snipe. Is there a little vanity in that wanton flight? Is there a
little consciousness of the spring-freshened colours of his
plumage, and pride in the dainty touch of his wings on the sweet
wind? His love is watching his wayward course. He prolongs it. He
has but a few yards to fly to reach the well-known feeding-ground
by the brook where the grass is short; perhaps it has been eaten
off by sheep. It is a straight and easy line as a starling would
fly. The plover thinks nothing of a straight line; he winds first
with the course of the hedge, then rises aslant, uttering his cry,
wheels, and returns; now this way, direct at me, as if his object
was to display his snowy breast; suddenly rising aslant again, he
wheels once more, and goes right away from his object over above
the field whence he came. Another moment and he returns; and so to
and fro, and round and round, till with a sidelong, unexpected
sweep he alights by the brook. He stands a minute, then utters his
cry, and runs a yard or so forward. In a little while a second
plover arrives from the field behind. He too dances a maze in the
air before he settles. Soon a third joins them. They are visible at
that spot because the grass is short, elsewhere they would be
hidden. If one of these rises and flies to and fro almost instantly
another follows, and then it is, indeed, a dance before they
alight. The wheeling, maze-tracing, devious windings continue till
the eye wearies and rests with pleasure on a passing butterfly.
These birds have nests in the meadows adjoining; they meet here as
a common feeding-ground. Presently they will disperse, each
returning to his mate at the nest. Half an hour afterwards they
will meet once more, either here or on the wing.</p>
<p>In this manner they spend their time from dawn through the
flower-growing day till dusk. When the sun arises over the hill
into the sky already blue the plovers have been up a long while.
All the busy morning they go to and fro—the busy morning,
when the wood-pigeons cannot rest in the copses on the coomb-side,
but continually fly in and out; when the blackbirds whistle in the
oaks, when the bluebells gleam with purplish lustre. At noontide,
in the dry heat, it is pleasant to listen to the sound of water
moving among the thousand thousand grass-blades of the mead. The
flower-growing day lengthens out beyond the sunset, and till the
hedges are dim the lapwings do not cease.</p>
<p>Leaving now the shade of the oak, I follow the path into the
meadow on the right, stepping by the way over a streamlet, which
diffuses its rapid current broadcast over the sward till it
collects again and pours into the brook. This next meadow is
somewhat more raised, and not watered; the grass is high and full
of buttercups. Before I have gone twenty yards a lapwing rises out
in the field, rushes towards me through the air, and circles round
my head, making as if to dash at me, and uttering shrill cries.
Immediately another comes from the mead behind the oak; then a
third from over the hedge, and all those that have been feeding by
the brook, till I am encircled with them. They wheel round, dive,
rise aslant, cry, and wheel again, always close over me, till I
have walked some distance, when, one by one, they fall off, and,
still uttering threats, retire. There is a nest in this meadow,
and, although it is, no doubt, a long way from the path, my
presence even in the field, large as it is, is resented. The couple
who imagine their possessions threatened are quickly joined by
their friends, and there is no rest till I have left their
treasures far behind.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="18">OUTSIDE LONDON</a></h3>
<h4 align="center">I</h4>
<p>There was something dark on the grass under an elm in the field
by the barn. It rose and fell; and we saw that it was a
wing—a single black wing, striking the ground instead of the
air; indeed, it seemed to come out of the earth itself, the body of
the bird being hidden by the grass. This black wing flapped and
flapped, but could not lift itself—a single wing of course
could not fly. A rook had dropped out of the elm and was lying
helpless at the foot of the tree—it is a favourite tree with
rooks; they build in it, and at that moment there were twenty or
more perched aloft, cawing and conversing comfortably, without the
least thought of their dying comrade. Not one of all the number
descended to see what was the matter, nor even fluttered half-way
down. This elm is their clubhouse, where they meet every afternoon
as the sun gets low to discuss the scandals of the day, before
retiring to roost in the avenues and tree-groups of the park
adjacent. While we looked, a peacock came round the corner of the
barn; he had caught sight of the flapping wing, and approached with
long deliberate steps and outstretched neck. "Ee-aw! Ee-aw! What's
this? What's this?" he inquired in bird-language. "Ee-aw! Ee-aw! My
friends, see here!" Gravely, and step by step, he came nearer and
nearer, slowly, and not without some fear, till curiosity had
brought him within a yard. In a moment or two a peahen followed and
also stretched out her neck—the two long necks pointing at
the black flapping wing. A second peacock and peahen approached,
and the four great birds stretched out their necks towards the
dying rook—a "crowner's quest" upon the unfortunate
creature.</p>
<p>If any one had been at hand to sketch it, the scene would have
been very grotesque, and not without a ludicrous sadness. There was
the tall elm tinted with yellow, the black rooks high above flying
in and out, yellow leaves twirling down, the blue peacocks with
their crests, the red barn behind, the golden sun afar shining low
through the trees of the park, the brown autumn sward, a grey
horse, orange maple bushes. There was the quiet tone of the coming
evening—the early evening of October—such an evening as
the rook had seen many a time from the tops of the trees. A man
dies, and the crowd goes on passing under the window along the
street without a thought. The rook died, and his friends, who had
that day been with him in the oaks feasting on acorns, who had been
with him in the fresh-turned furrows, born perhaps in the same
nest, utterly forgot him before he was dead. With a great common
caw—a common shout—they suddenly left the tree in a
bevy and flew towards the park. The peacocks having brought in
their verdict, departed, and the dead bird was left alone.</p>
<p>In falling out of the elm, the rook had alighted partly on his
side and partly on his back, so that he could only flutter one
wing, the other being held down by his own weight. He had probably
died from picking up poisoned grain somewhere, or from a parasite.
The weather had been open, and he could not have been starved. At a
distance, the rook's plumage appears black; but close at hand it
will be found a fine blue-black, glossy, and handsome.</p>
<p>These peacocks are the best "rain-makers" in the place; whenever
they cry much, it is sure to rain; and if they persist day after
day, the rain is equally continuous. From the wall by the barn, or
the elm-branch above, their cry resounds like the wail of a
gigantic cat, and is audible half a mile or more. In the summer, I
found one of them, a peacock in the fall brilliance of his colours,
on a rail in the hedge under a spreading maple bush. His rich-hued
neck, the bright light and shadow, the tall green meadow grass,
brought together the finest colours. It is curious that a bird so
distinctly foreign, plumed for the Asiatic sun, should fit so well
with English meads. His splendid neck immediately pleases, pleases
the first time it is seen, and on the fiftieth occasion. I see
these every day, and always stop to look at them; the colour
excites the sense of beauty in the eye, and the shape satisfies the
idea of form. The undulating curve of the neck is at once approved
by the intuitive judgment of the mind, and it is a pleasure to the
mind to reiterate that judgment frequently. It needs no teaching to
see its beauty—the feeling comes of itself.</p>
<p>How different with the turkey-cock which struts round the same
barn! A fine big bird he is, no doubt; but there is no intrinsic
beauty about him; on the contrary, there is something fantastic in
his style and plumage. He has a way of drooping his wings as if
they were armour-plates to shield him from a shot. The ornaments
upon his head and beak are in the most awkward position. He was put
together in a dream, of uneven and odd pieces that live and move,
but do not fit. Ponderously gawky, he steps as if the world was
his, like a "motley" crowned in sport. He is good eating, but he is
not beautiful. After the eye has been accustomed to him for some
time—after you have fed him every day and come to take an
interest in him—after you have seen a hundred turkey-cocks,
then he may become passable, or, if you have the fancier's taste,
exquisite. Education is requisite first; you do not fall in love at
first sight. The same applies to fancy-pigeons, and indeed many pet
animals, as pugs, which come in time to be animated with a soul in
some people's eyes. Compare a pug with a greyhound straining at the
leash. Instantly he is slipped he is gone as a wave let loose. His
flexible back bends and undulates, arches and unarches, rises and
falls as a wave rises and rolls on. His pliant ribs open; his whole
frame "gives" and stretches, and closing again in a curve, springs
forward. Movement is as easy to him as to the wave, which melting,
is remoulded, and sways onward. The curve of the greyhound is not
only the line of beauty, but a line which suggests motion; and it
is the idea of motion, I think, which so strongly appeals to the
mind.</p>
<p>We are often scornfully treated as a nation by people who write
about art, because they say we have no taste; we cannot make art
jugs for the mantelpiece, crockery for the bracket, screens for the
fire; we cannot even decorate the wall of a room as it should be
done. If these are the standards by which a sense of art is to be
tried, their scorn is to a certain degree just. But suppose we try
another standard. Let us put aside the altogether false opinion
that art consists alone in something actually made, or painted, or
decorated, in carvings, colourings, touches of brush or chisel. Let
us look at our lives. I mean to say that there is no nation so
thoroughly and earnestly artistic as the English in their lives,
their joys, their thoughts, their hopes. Who loves nature like an
Englishman? Do Italians care for their pale skies? I never heard
so. We go all over the world in search of beauty—to the keen
north, to the cape whence the midnight sun is visible, to the
extreme south, to the interior of Africa, gazing at the vast
expanse of Tanganyika or the marvellous falls of the Zambesi. We
admire the temples and tombs and palaces of India; we speak of the
Alhambra of Spain almost in whispers, so deep is our reverent
admiration; we visit the Parthenon. There is not a picture or a
statue in Europe we have not sought. We climb the mountains for
their views and the sense of grandeur they inspire; we roam over
the wide ocean to the coral islands of the far Pacific; we go deep
into the woods of the West; and we stand dreamily under the
Pyramids of the East. What part is there of the English year which
has not been sung by the poets? all of whom are full of its
loveliness; and our greatest of all, Shakespeare, carries, as it
were, armfuls of violets, and scatters roses and golden wheat
across his pages, which are simply fields written with human
life.</p>
<p>This is art indeed—art in the mind and soul, infinitely
deeper, surely, than the construction of crockery, jugs for the
mantelpiece, dados, or even of paintings. The lover of nature has
the highest art in his soul. So, I think, the bluff English farmer
who takes such pride and delight in his dogs and horses, is a much
greater man of art than any Frenchman preparing with cynical
dexterity of hand some coloured presentment of flashy beauty for
the <i>salon</i>. The English girl who loves her horse—and
English girls <i>do</i> love their horses most intensely—is
infinitely more artistic in that fact than the cleverest painter on
enamel. They who love nature are the real artists; the "artists"
are copyists, St. John the naturalist, when exploring the recesses
of the Highlands, relates how he frequently came in contact with
men living in the rude Highland way—forty years since, no
education then—whom at first you would suppose to be morose,
unobservant, almost stupid. But when they found out that their
visitor would stay for hours gazing in admiration at their glens
and mountains, their demeanour changed. Then the truth appeared:
they were fonder than he was himself of the beauties of their hills
and lakes; they could see the art <i>there</i>, though perhaps they
had never seen a picture in their lives, certainly not any
blue-and-white crockery. The Frenchman flings his fingers
dexterously over the canvas, but he has never had that in his heart
which the rude Highlander had.</p>
<p>The path across the arable field was covered with a design of
bird's feet. The reversed broad arrow of the fore-claws, and the
straight line of the hinder claw, trailed all over it in curving
lines. In the dry dust, their feet were marked as clearly as a seal
on wax—their trails wound this way and that, and crossed as
their quick eyes had led them to turn to find something. For fifty
or sixty yards the path was worked with an inextricable design; it
was a pity to step on it and blot out the traces of those little
feet. Their hearts so happy, their eyes so observant, the earth so
bountiful to them with its supply of food, and the late warmth of
the autumn sun lighting up their life. They know and feel the
different loveliness of the seasons as much as we do. Every one
must have noticed their joyousness in spring; they are quiet, but
so very, very busy in the height of summer; as autumn comes on they
obviously delight in the occasional hours of warmth. The marks of
their little feet are almost sacred—a joyous life has been
there—do not obliterate it. It is so delightful to know that
something is happy.</p>
<p>The hawthorn hedge that goes down the slope is more coloured
than the hedges in the sheltered plain. Yonder, a low bush on the
brow is a deep crimson; the hedge as it descends varies from brown
to yellow, dotted with red haws, and by the gateway has another
spot of crimson. The lime trees turn yellow from top to bottom, all
the leaves together; the elms by one or two branches at a time. A
lime tree thus entirely coloured stands side by side with an elm,
their boughs intermingling; the elm is green except a line at the
outer extremity of its branches. A red light as of fire plays in
the beeches, so deep is their orange tint in which the sunlight is
caught. An oak is dotted with buff, while yet the main body of the
foliage is untouched. With these tints and sunlight, nature gives
us so much more than the tree gives. A tree is nothing but a tree
in itself: but with light and shadow, green leaves moving, a bird
singing, another moving to and fro—in autumn with
colour—the boughs are filled with imagination. There then
seems so much more than the mere tree; the timber of the trunk, the
mere sticks of the branches, the wooden framework is animated with
a life. High above, a lark sings, not for so long as in
spring—the October song is shorter—but still he sings.
If you love colour, plant maple; maple bushes colour a whole hedge.
Upon the bank of a pond, the brown oak-leaves which have fallen are
reflected in the still deep water.</p>
<p>It is from the hedges that taste must be learned. A garden abuts
on these fields, and being on slightly rising ground, the maple
bushes, the brown and yellow and crimson hawthorn, the limes and
elms, are all visible from it; yet it is surrounded by stiff,
straight iron railings, unconcealed even by the grasses, which are
carefully cut down with the docks and nettles, that do their best,
three or four times in the summer, to hide the blank iron. Within
these iron railings stands a row of <i>arbor vitæ</i>,
upright, and stiff likewise, and among them a few other evergreens;
and that is all the shelter the lawn and flower-beds have from the
east wind, blowing for miles over open country, or from the glowing
sun of August. This garden belongs to a gentleman who would
certainly spare no moderate expense to improve it, and yet there it
remains, the blankest, barest, most miserable-looking square of
ground the eye can find; the only piece of ground from which the
eye turns away; for even the potato-field close by, the common
potato-field, had its colour in bright poppies, and there were
partridges in it, and at the edges, fine growths of mallow and its
mauve flowers. Wild parsley, still green in the shelter of the
hazel stoles, is there now on the bank, a thousand times sweeter to
the eye than bare iron and cold evergreens. Along that hedge, the
white bryony wound itself in the most beautiful manner, completely
covering the upper part of the thick brambles, a robe thrown over
the bushes; its deep cut leaves, its countless tendrils, its
flowers, and presently the berries, giving pleasure every time one
passed it. Indeed, you could not pass without stopping to look at
it, and wondering if any one ever so skilful, even those
sure-handed Florentines Mr. Ruskin thinks so much of, could ever
draw that intertangled mass of lines. Nor could you easily draw the
leaves and head of the great parsley—commonest of
hedge-plants—the deep indented leaves, and the shadow by
which to express them. There was work enough in that short piece of
hedge by the potato-field for a good pencil every day the whole
summer. And when done, you would not have been satisfied with it,
but only have learned how complex and how thoughtful and far
reaching Nature is in the simplest of things. But with a
straight-edge or ruler, any one could draw the iron railings in
half an hour, and a surveyor's pupil could make them look as well
as Millais himself. Stupidity to stupidity, genius to genius; any
hard fist can manage iron railings; a hedge is a task for the
greatest.</p>
<p>Those, therefore, who really wish their gardens or grounds, or
any place, beautiful, must get that greatest of geniuses, Nature,
to help them, and give their artist freedom to paint to fancy, for
it is Nature's imagination which delights us—as I tried to
explain about the tree, the imagination, and not the fact of the
timber and sticks. For those white bryony leaves and slender
spirals and exquisitely defined flowers are full of imagination,
products of a sunny dream, and tinted so tastefully, that although
they are green, and all about them is green too, yet the plant is
quite distinct, and in no degree confused or lost in the mass of
leaves under and by it. It stands out, and yet without violent
contrast. All these beauties of form and colour surround the place,
and try, as it were, to march in and take possession, but are shut
out by straight iron railings. Wonderful it is that education
should make folk tasteless! Such, certainly, seems to be the case
in a great measure, and not in our own country only, for those who
know Italy tell us that the fine old gardens there, dating back to
the days of the Medici, are being despoiled of ilex and made formal
and straight. Is all the world to be Versaillised?</p>
<p>Scarcely two hundred yards from these cold iron railings, which
even nettles and docks would hide if they could, and thistles
strive to conceal, but are not permitted, there is an old cottage
by the roadside. The roof is of old tile, once red, now dull from
weather; the walls some tone of yellow; the folk are poor. Against
it there grows a vigorous plant of jessamine, a still finer rose, a
vine covers the lean-to at one end, and tea-plant the corner of the
wall; beside these, there is a yellow-flowering plant, the name of
which I forget at the moment, also trained to the walls; and ivy.
Altogether, six plants grow up the walls of the cottage; and over
the wicket-gate there is a rude arch—a framework of tall
sticks—from which droop thick bunches of hops. It is a very
commonplace sort of cottage; nothing artistically picturesque about
it, no effect of gable or timber-work; it stands by the roadside in
the most commonplace way, and yet it pleases. They have called in
Nature, that great genius, and let the artist have his own way. In
Italy, the art-country, they cut down the ilex trees, and get the
surveyor's pupil with straight-edge and ruler to put it right and
square for them. Our over-educated and well-to-do people set iron
railings round about their blank pleasure-grounds, which the
potato-field laughs at in bright poppies; and actually one who has
some fine park-grounds has lifted up on high a mast and
weather-vane! a thing useful on the sea-board at coastguard
stations for signalling, but oh! how repellent and straight and
stupid among clumps of graceful elms!</p>
<h4 align="center">II</h4>
<p>The dismal pits in a disused brickfield, unsightly square holes
in a waste, are full in the shallow places of an aquatic grass,
Reed Canary Grass, I think, which at this time of mists stretches
forth sharp-pointed tongues over the stagnant water. These
sharp-pointed leaf-tongues are all on one side of the stalks, so
that the most advanced project across the surface, as if the water
were the canvas, and the leaves drawn on it. For water seems always
to rise away from you—to slope slightly upwards; even a pool
has that appearance, and therefore anything standing in it is drawn
on it as you might sketch on this paper. You see the water beyond
and above the top of the plant, and the smooth surface gives the
leaf and stalk a sharp, clear definition. But the mass of the tall
grass crowds together, every leaf painted yellow by the autumn, a
thick cover at the pit-side. This tall grass always awakes my
fancy, its shape partly, partly its thickness, perhaps; and yet
these feelings are not to be analysed. I like to look at it; I like
to stand or move among it on the bank of a brook, to feel it touch
and rustle against me. A sense of wildness comes with its touch,
and I feel a little as I might feel if there was a vast forest
round about. As a few strokes from a loving hand will soothe a
weary forehead, so the gentle pressure of the wild grass soothes
and strokes away the nervous tension born of civilised life.</p>
<p>I could write a whole history of it; the time when the leaves
were fresh and green, and the sedge-birds frequented it; the time
when the moorhen's young crept after their mother through its
recesses; from the singing of the cuckoo by the river, till now
brown and yellow leaves strew the water. They strew, too, the dry
brown grass of the land, thick tuffets, and lie even among the
rushes, blown hither from the distant trees. The wind works its
full will over the exposed waste, and drives through the
reed-grass, scattering the stalks aside, and scarce giving them
time to spring together again, when the following blast a second
time divides them.</p>
<p>A cruder piece of ground, ruder and more dismal in its unsightly
holes, could not be found; and yet, because of the reed-grass, it
is made as it were full of thought. I wonder the painters, of whom
there are so many nowadays, armies of amateurs, do not sometimes
take these scraps of earth and render into them the idea which
fills a clod with beauty. In one such dismal pit—not
here—I remember there grew a great quantity of bulrushes.
Another was surrounded with such masses of swamp-foliage that it
reminded those who saw it of the creeks in semi-tropical countries.
But somehow they do not seem to see these things, but go on the old
mill-round of scenery, exhausted many a year since. They do not see
them, perhaps, because most of those who have educated themselves
in the technique of painting are city-bred, and can never have the
<i>feeling</i> of the country, however fond they may be of it.</p>
<p>In those fields of which I was writing the other day, I found an
artist at work at his easel; and a pleasant nook be had chosen. His
brush did its work with a steady and sure stroke that indicated
command of his materials. He could delineate whatever he selected
with technical skill at all events. He had pitched his easel where
two hedges formed an angle, and one of them was full of oak-trees.
The hedge was singularly full of "bits"—bryony, tangles of
grasses, berries, boughs half-tinted and boughs green, hung as it
were with pictures like the wall of a room. Standing as near as I
could without disturbing him, I found that the subject of his
canvas was none of these. It was that old stale and dull device of
a rustic bridge spanning a shallow stream crossing a lane. Some
figure stood on the bridge—the old, old trick. He was filling
up the hedge of the lane with trees from the hedge, and they were
cleverly executed. But why drag them into this fusty scheme, which
has appeared in every child's sketch-book for fifty years? Why not
have simply painted the beautiful hedge at hand, purely and simply,
a hedge hung with pictures for any one to copy? The field in which
he had pitched his easel is full of fine trees and good "effects."
But no; we must have the ancient and effete old story. This is not
all the artist's fault, because he must in many cases paint what he
can sell; and if his public will only buy effete old stories, he
cannot help it. Still, I think if a painter <i>did</i> paint that
hedge in its fulness of beauty, just simply as it stands in the
mellow autumn light, it would win approval of the best people, and
that ultimately, a succession of such work would pay.</p>
<p>The clover was dying down, and the plough would soon be among
it—the earth was visible in patches. Out in one of these bare
patches there was a young mouse, so chilled by the past night that
his dull senses did not appear conscious of my presence. He had
crept out on the bare earth evidently to feel the warmth of the
sun, almost the last hour he would enjoy. He looked about for food,
but found none; his short span of life was drawing to a close; even
when at last he saw me, he could only run a few inches under cover
of a dead clover-plant. Thousands upon thousands of mice perish
like this as the winter draws on, born too late in the year to grow
strong enough or clever enough to prepare a store. Other kinds of
mice perish like leaves at the first blast of cold air. Though but
a mouse, to me it was very wretched to see the chilled creature, so
benumbed as to have almost lost its sense of danger. There is
something so ghastly in birth that immediately leads to death; a
sentient creature born only to wither. The earth offered it no
help, nor the declining sun; all things organised seem to depend so
much on circumstances. Nothing but pity can be felt for thousands
upon thousands of such organisms. But thus, too, many a miserable
human being has perished in the great Metropolis, dying, chilled
and benumbed, of starvation, and finding the hearts of
fellow-creatures as bare and cold as the earth of the
clover-field.</p>
<p>In these fields outside London the flowers are peculiarly rich
in colour. The common mallow, whose flower is usually a light
mauve, has here a deep, almost purple bloom; the bird's-foot lotus
is a deep orange. The fig-wort, which is generally two or three
feet high, stands in one ditch fully eight feet, and the stem is
more than half an inch square. A fertile soil has doubtless
something to do with this colour and vigour. The red admiral
butterflies, too, seemed in the summer more brilliant than usual.
One very fine one, whose broad wings stretched out like fans,
looked simply splendid floating round and round the willows which
marked the margin of a dry pool. His blue markings were really
blue—blue velvet—his red, and the white stroke shone as
if sunbeams were in his wings. I wish there were more of these
butterflies; in summer, dry summer, when the flowers seem gone and
the grass is not so dear to us, and the leaves are dull with heat,
a little colour is so pleasant. To me, colour is a sort of food;
every spot of colour is a drop of wine to the spirit. I used to
take my folding-stool on those long, heated days, which made the
summer of 1884 so conspicuous among summers, down to the shadow of
a row of elms by a common cabbage-field. Their shadow was nearly as
hot as the open sunshine; the dry leaves did not absorb the heat
that entered them, and the dry hedge and dry earth poured heat up
as the sun poured it down. Dry, dead leaves—dead with heat,
as with frost—strewed the grass, dry, too, and withered at my
feet. But among the cabbages, which were very small, there grew
thousands of poppies, fifty times more poppies than cabbage, so
that the pale green of the cabbage-leaves was hidden by the scarlet
petals falling wide open to the dry air. There was a broad band of
scarlet colour all along the side of the field, and it was this
which brought me to the shade of those particular elms. The use of
the cabbages was in this way: they fetched for me all the white
butterflies of the neighbourhood, and they fluttered, hundreds and
hundreds of white butterflies, a constant stream and flow of them
over the broad band of scarlet. Humble-bees came too; bur-bur-bur;
and the buzz, and the flutter of the white wings over those fixed
red butterflies the poppies, the flutter and sound and colour
pleased me in the dry heat of the day. Sometimes I set my
camp-stool by a humble-bees' nest. I like to see and hear them go
in and out, so happy, busy, and wild; the humble-bee is a
favourite. That summer their nests were very plentiful; but
although the heat might have seemed so favourable to them, the
flies were not at all numerous, I mean out-of-doors. Wasps, on the
contrary, flourished to an extraordinary degree. One willow tree
particularly took their fancy; there was a swarm in the tree for
weeks, attracted by some secretion; the boughs and leaves were
yellow with wasps. But it seemed curious that flies should not be
more numerous than usual; they are dying now fast enough, except a
few of the large ones, that still find some sugar in the flowers of
the ivy. The finest show of ivy flower is among some yew trees; the
dark ivy has filled the dark yew tree, and brought out its pale
yellow-green flowers in the sombre boughs. Last night, a great fly,
the last in the house, buzzed into my candle. I detest flies, but I
was sorry for his scorched wings; the fly itself hateful, its wings
so beautifully made. I have sometimes picked a feather from the
dirt of the road and placed it on the grass. It is contrary to
one's feelings to see so beautiful a thing lying in the mud.
Towards my window now, as I write, there comes suddenly a shower of
yellow leaves, wrested out by main force from the high elms; the
blue sky behind them, they droop slowly, borne onward, twirling,
fluttering towards me—a cloud of autumn butterflies.</p>
<p>A spring rises on the summit of a green brow that overlooks the
meadows for miles. The spot is not really very high, still it is
the highest ground in that direction for a long distance, and it
seems singular to find water on the top of the hill, a thing common
enough, but still sufficiently opposed to general impressions to
appear remarkable. In this shallow water, says a faint
story—far off, faint and uncertain, like the murmur of a
distant cascade—two ladies and some soldiers lost their
lives. The brow is defended by thick bramble-bushes, which bore a
fine crop of blackberries that autumn, to the delight of the boys;
and these bushes partly conceal the sharpness of the short descent.
But once your attention is drawn to it, you see that it has all the
appearance of having been artificially sloped, like a rampart, or
rather a glacis. The grass is green and the sward soft, being
moistened by the spring, except in one spot, where the grass is
burnt up under the heat of the summer sun, indicating the existence
of foundations beneath.</p>
<p>There is a beautiful view from this spot; but leaving that now,
and wandering on among the fields, presently you may find a meadow
of peculiar shape, extremely long and narrow, half a mile long,
perhaps; and this the folk will tell you was the King's Drive, or
ride. Stories there are, too, of subterranean passages—there
are always such stories in the neighbourhood of ancient
buildings—I remember one, said to be three miles long; it led
to an abbey. The lane leads on, bordered with high hawthorn hedges,
and occasionally a stout hawthorn tree, hardy and twisted by the
strong hands of the passing years; thick now with red haws, and the
haunt of the redwings, whose "chuck-chuck" is heard every minute;
but the birds themselves always perch on the outer side of the
hedge. They are not far ahead, but they always keep on the safe
side, flying on twenty yards or so, but never coming to my
side.</p>
<p>The little pond, which in summer was green with weed, is now
yellow with the fallen hawthorn-leaves; the pond is choked with
them. The lane has been slowly descending; and now, on looking
through a gateway, an ancient building stands up on the hill,
sharply defined against the sky. It is the banqueting hall of a
palace of old times, in which kings and princes once sat at their
meat after the chase. This is the centre of those dim stories which
float like haze over the meadows around. Many a wild red stag has
been carried thither after the hunt, and many a wild boar slain in
the glades of the forest.</p>
<p>The acorns are dropping now as they dropped five centuries
since, in the days when the wild boars fed so greedily upon them;
the oaks are broadly touched with brown; the bramble thickets in
which the boars hid, green, but strewn with the leaves that have
fallen from the lofty trees. Though meadow, arable, and hop-fields
hold now the place of the forest, a goodly remnant remains, for
every hedge is full of oak and elm and ash; maple too, and the
lesser bushes. At a little distance, so thick are the trees, the
whole country appears a wood, and it is easy to see what a forest
it must have been centuries ago.</p>
<p>The Prince leaving the grim walls of the Tower of London by the
Water-gate, and dropping but a short way down with the tide, could
mount his horse on the opposite bank, and reach his palace here, in
the midst of the thickest woods and wildest country, in half an
hour. Thence every morning setting forth upon the chase, he could
pass the day in joyous labours, and the evening in feasting, still
within call—almost within sound of horn—of the Tower,
if any weighty matter demanded his presence.</p>
<p>In our time, the great city has widened out, and comes at this
day down to within three miles of the hunting-palace. There still
intervenes a narrow space between the last house of London and the
ancient Forest Hall, a space of corn-field and meadow; the last
house, for although not nominally London, there is no break of
continuity in the bricks and mortar thence to London Bridge. London
is within a stone's-throw, as it were, and yet, to this day the
forest lingers, and it is country. The very atmosphere is
different. That smoky thickness characteristic of the suburbs
ceases as you ascend the gradual rise, and leave the outpost of
bricks and mortar behind. The air becomes clear and strong, till on
the brow by the spring on a windy day it is almost like sea-air. It
comes over the trees, over the hills, and is sweet with the touch
of grass and leaf. There is no gas, no sulphurous acid in that. As
the Edwards and Henries breathed it centuries since, so it can be
inhaled now. The sun that shone on the red deer is as bright now as
then; the berries are thick on the bushes; there is colour in the
leaf. The forest is gone; but the spirit of nature stays, and can
be found by those who search for it. Dearly as I love the open air,
I cannot regret the mediaeval days. I do not wish them back again,
I would sooner fight in the foremost ranks of Time. Nor do we need
them, for the spirit of nature stays, and will always be here, no
matter to how high a pinnacle of thought the human mind may attain;
still the sweet air, and the hills, and the sea, and the sun, will
always be with us.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="19">ON THE LONDON ROAD</a></h3>
<p>The road comes straight from London, which is but a very short
distance off, within a walk, yet the village it passes is
thoroughly a village, and not suburban, not in the least like
Sydenham, or Croydon, or Balham, or Norwood, as perfect a village
in every sense as if it stood fifty miles in the country. There is
one long street, just as would be found in the far west, with
fields at each end. But through this long street, and on and out
into the open, is continually pouring the human living undergrowth
of that vast forest of life, London. The nondescript inhabitants of
the thousand and one nameless streets of the unknown east are great
travellers, and come forth into the country by this main desert
route. For what end? Why this tramping and ceaseless movement? what
do they buy, what do they sell, how do they live? They pass through
the village street and out into the country in an endless stream on
the shutter on wheels. This is the true London vehicle, the
characteristic conveyance, as characteristic as the Russian
droshky, the gondola at Venice, or the caique at Stamboul. It is
the camel of the London desert routes; routes which run right
through civilisation, but of which daily paper civilisation is
ignorant. People who can pay for a daily paper are so far above it;
a daily paper is the mark of the man who is in civilisation.</p>
<p>Take an old-fashioned shutter and balance it on the axle of a
pair of low wheels, and you have the London camel in principle. To
complete it add shafts in front, and at the rear run a low
free-board, as a sailor would say, along the edge, that the cargo
may not be shaken off. All the skill of the fashionable
brougham-builders in Long Acre could not contrive a vehicle which
would meet the requirements of the case so well as this. On the
desert routes of Palestine a donkey becomes romantic; in a
coster-monger's barrow he is only an ass; the donkey himself
doesn't see the distinction. He draws a good deal of human nature
about in these barrows, and perhaps finds it very much the same in
Surrey and Syria. For if any one thinks the familiar barrow is
merely a truck for the conveyance of cabbages and carrots, and for
the exposure of the same to the choice of housewives in Bermondsey,
he is mistaken. Far beyond that, it is the symbol, the solid
expression, of life itself to the owner, his family, and circle of
connections, more so than even the ship to the sailor, as the
sailor, no matter how he may love his ship, longs for port, and the
joys of the shore, but the barrow folk are always at sea on land,
Such care has to be taken of the miserable pony or the shamefaced
jackass; he has to be groomed, and fed, and looked to in his shed,
and this occupies three or four of the family at least, lads and
strapping young girls, night and morning. Besides which, the circle
of connections look in to see how he is going on, and to hear the
story of the day's adventures, and what is proposed for to-morrow.
Perhaps one is invited to join the next excursion, and thinks as
much of it as others might do of an invitation for a cruise in the
Mediterranean. Any one who watches the succession of barrows
driving along through the village out into the fields of Kent can
easily see how they bear upon their wheels the fortunes of whole
families and of their hangers-on. Sometimes there is a load of
pathos, of which the race of the ass has carried a good deal in all
ages. More often it is a heavy lump of dull, evil, and exceedingly
stupid cunning. The wild evil of the Spanish contrabandistas seems
atoned by that wildness; but this dull wickedness has no flush of
colour, no poppy on its dirt heaps.</p>
<p>Over one barrow the sailors had fixed up a tent—canvas
stretched from corner poles, two fellows sat almost on the shafts
outside; they were well. Under the canvas there lay a young fellow
white and emaciated, whose face was drawn down with severe
suffering of some kind, and his dark eyes, enlarged and
accentuated, looked as if touched with belladonna. The family
council at home in the close and fetid court had resolved
themselves into a medical board and ordered him to the sunny
Riviera. The ship having been fitted up for the invalid, away they
sailed for the south, out from the ends of the earth of London into
the ocean of green fields and trees, thence past many an island
village, and so to the shores where the Kentish hops were yellowing
fast for the pickers. There, in the vintage days, doubtless he
found solace, and possibly recovery. To catch a glimpse of that
dark and cavernous eye under the shade of the travelling tent
reminded me of the eyes of the wounded in the ambulance-waggons
that came pouring into Brussels after Sedan. In the dusk of the
lovely September evenings—it was a beautiful September, the
lime-leaves were just tinted with orange—the waggons came in
a long string, the wounded and maimed lying in them, packed
carefully, and rolled round, as it were, with wadding to save them
from the jolts of the ruts and stones. It is fifteen years ago, and
yet I can still distinctly see the eyes of one soldier looking at
me from his berth in the waggon. The glow of intense pain—the
glow of long-continued agony—lit them up as coals that
smouldering are suddenly fanned. Pain brightens the eyes as much as
joy, there is a fire in the brain behind it; it is the flame in the
mind you see, and not the eyeball. A thought that might easily be
rendered romantic, but consider how these poor fellows appeared
afterwards. Bevies of them hopped about Brussels in their
red-and-blue uniforms, some on crutches, some with two sticks, some
with sleeves pinned to their breasts, looking exactly like a
company of dolls a cruel child had mutilated, snapping a foot off
here, tearing out a leg here, and battering the face of a third.
Little men most of them—the bowl of a German pipe inverted
would have covered them all, within which, like bees in a hive,
they might hum "Te Deum Bismarckum Laudamus." But the romantic
flame in the eye is not always so beautiful to feel as to read
about.</p>
<p>Another shutter on wheels went by one day with one little pony
in the shafts, and a second harnessed in some way at the side, so
as to assist in pulling, but without bearing any share of the load.
On this shutter eight men and boys balanced themselves; enough for
the Olympian height of a four-in-hand. Eight fellows perched round
the edge like shipwrecked mariners, clinging to one plank. They
were so balanced as to weigh chiefly on the axle, yet in front of
such a mountain of men, such a vast bundle of ragged clothes, the
ponies appeared like rats.</p>
<p>On a Sunday morning two fellows came along on their shutter:
they overtook a girl who was walking on the pavement, and one of
them, more sallow and cheeky than his companion, began to talk to
her. "That's a nice nosegay, now—give us a rose. Come and
ride—there's plenty of room. Won't speak? Now, you'll tell us
if this is the road to London Bridge." She nodded. She was dressed
in full satin for Sunday; her class think much of satin. She was
leading two children, one in each hand, clean and well-dressed. She
walked more lightly than a servant does, and evidently lived at
home; she did not go to service. Tossing her head, she looked the
other way, for you see the fellow on the shutter was dirty, not
"dressed" at all, though it was Sunday, poor folks' ball-day; a
dirty, rough fellow, with a short clay pipe in his mouth, a
chalky-white face—apparently from low dissipation—a
disreputable rascal, a monstrously impudent "chap," a true London
mongrel. He "cheeked" her; she tossed her head, and looked the
other way. But by-and-by she could not help a sly glance at him,
not an angry glance—a look as much as to say, "You're a man,
anyway, and you've the good taste to admire me, and the courage to
speak to me; you're dirty, but you're a man. If you were
well-dressed, or if it wasn't Sunday, or if it was dark, or nobody
about, I wouldn't mind; I'd let you 'cheek' me, though I have got
satin on." The fellow "cheeked" her again, told her she had a
pretty face, "cheeked" her right and left. She looked away, but
half smiled; she had to keep up her dignity, she did not feel it.
She would have liked to have joined company with him. His leer grew
leerier—the low, cunning leer, so peculiar to the London
mongrel, that seems to say, "I am so intensely knowing; I am so
very much all there;" and yet the leerer always remains in a dirty
dress, always smokes the coarsest tobacco in the nastiest of pipes,
and rides on a barrow to the end of his life. For his leery cunning
is so intensely stupid that, in fact, he is as "green" as grass;
his leer and his foul mouth keep him in the gutter to his very last
day. How much more successful plain, simple straightforwardness
would be! The pony went on a little, but they drew rein, and waited
for the girl again; and again he "cheeked" her. Still, she looked
away, but she did not make any attempt to escape by the side-path,
nor show resentment. No; her face began to glow, and once or twice
she answered him, but still she would not quite join company. If
only it had not been Sunday—if it had been a lonely road, and
not so near the village, if she had not had the two tell-tale
children with her—she would have been very good friends with
the dirty, chalky, ill-favoured, and ill-savoured wretch. At the
parting of the roads each went different ways, but she could not
help looking back.</p>
<p>He was a thorough specimen of the leery London mongrel. That
hideous leer is so repulsive—one cannot endure it—but
it is so common; you see it on the faces of four-fifths of the
ceaseless stream that runs out from the ends of the earth of London
into the green sea of the country. It disfigures the faces of the
carters who go with the waggons and other vehicles—not
nomads, but men in steady employ; it defaces—absolutely
defaces—the workmen who go forth with vans, with timber, with
carpenters' work, and the policeman standing at the corners, in
London itself particularly. The London leer hangs on their faces.
The Mosaic account of the Creation is discredited in these days,
the last revelation took place at Beckenham; the Beckenham
revelation is superior to Mount Sinai, yet the consideration of
that leer might suggest the idea of a fall of man even to an
Amoebist. The horribleness of it is in this way, it hints—it
does more than hint, it conveys the leerer's decided
opinion—that you, whether you may be man or woman, must
necessarily be as coarse as himself. Especially he wants to impress
that view upon every woman who chances to cross his glance. The
fist of Hercules is needed to dash it out of his face.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="20">RED ROOFS OF LONDON</a></h3>
<p>Tiles and tile roofs have a curious way of tumbling to pieces in
an irregular and eye-pleasing manner. The roof-tree bends, bows a
little under the weight, curves in, and yet preserves a sharpness
at each end. The Chinese exaggerate this curve of set purpose. Our
English curve is softer, being the product of time, which always
works in true taste. The mystery of tile-laying is not known to
every one; for to all appearance tiles seem to be put on over a
thin bed of hay or hay-like stuff. Lately they have begun to use
some sort of tarpaulin or a coarse material of that kind; but the
old tiles, I fancy, were comfortably placed on a shake-down of hay.
When one slips off, little bits of hay stick up; and to these the
sparrows come, removing it bit by bit to line their nests. If they
can find a gap they get in, and a fresh couple is started in life.
By-and-by a chimney is overthrown during a twist of the wind, and
half a dozen tiles are shattered. Time passes; and at last the
tiler arrives to mend the mischief. His labour leaves a light red
patch on the dark dull red of the breadth about it. After another
while the leaks along the ridge need plastering: mortar is laid on
to stay the inroad of wet, adding a dull white and forming a rough,
uncertain undulation along the general drooping curve. Yellow
edgings of straw project under the eaves—the work of the
sparrows. A cluster of blue-tinted pigeons gathers about the
chimney-side; the smoke that comes out of the stack droops and
floats sideways, downwards, as if the chimney enjoyed the smother
as a man enjoys his pipe. Shattered here and cracked yonder, some
missing, some overlapping in curves, the tiles have an aspect of
irregular existence. They are not fixed, like slates, as it were
for ever: they have a newness, and then a middle-age, and a time of
decay like human beings.</p>
<p>One roof is not much; but it is often a study. Put a thousand
roofs, say rather thousands of red-tiled roofs, and overlook
them—not at a great altitude but at a pleasant easy
angle—and then you have the groundwork of the first view of
London over Bermondsey from the railway. I say groundwork, because
the roofs seem the level and surface of the earth, while the
glimpses of streets are glimpses of catacombs. A city—as
something to look at—depends very much on its roofs. If a
city have no character in its roofs it stirs neither heart nor
thought. These red-tiled roofs of Bermondsey, stretching away mile
upon mile, and brought up at the extremity with thin masts rising
above the mist—these red-tiled roofs have a distinctiveness,
a character; they are something to think about. Nowhere else is
there an entrance to a city like this. The roads by which you
approach them give you distant aspects—minarets, perhaps, in
the East, domes in Italy; but, coming nearer, the highway somehow
plunges into houses, confounding you with façades, and the
real place is hidden. Here from the railway you see at once the
vastness of London. Roof-tree behind roof-tree, ridge behind ridge,
is drawn along in succession, line behind line till they become as
close together as the test-lines used for microscopes. Under this
surface of roofs what a profundity of life there is! Just as the
great horses in the waggons of London streets convey the idea of
strength, so the endlessness of the view conveys the idea of a mass
of life. Life converges from every quarter. The iron way has many
ruts: the rails are its ruts; and by each of these a ceaseless
stream of men and women pours over the tiled roofs into London.
They come from the populous suburbs, from far-away towns and quiet
villages, and from over sea.</p>
<p>Glance down as you pass into the excavations, the streets,
beneath the red surface: you catch a glimpse of men and women
hastening to and fro, of vehicles, of horses struggling with mighty
loads, of groups at the corners, and fragments, as it were, of
crowds. Busy life everywhere: no stillness, no quiet, no repose.
Life crowded and crushed together; life that has hardly room to
live. If the train slackens, look in at the open windows of the
houses level with the line—they are always open for air,
smoke-laden as it is—and see women and children with scarce
room to move, the bed and the dining-table in the same apartment.
For they dine and sleep and work and play all at the same time. A
man works at night and sleeps by day: he lies yonder as calmly as
if in a quiet country cottage. The children have no place to play
in but the living-room or the street. It is not squalor—it is
crowded life. The people are pushed together by the necessities of
existence. These people have no dislike to it at all: it is right
enough to them, and so long as business is brisk they are happy.
The man who lies sleeping so calmly seems to me to indicate the
immensity of the life around more than all the rest. He is
oblivious of it all; it does not make him nervous or wakeful; he is
so used to it, and bred to it, that it seems to him nothing. When
he is awake lie does not see it; now he sleeps he does not hear it.
It is only in great woods that you cannot see the trees. He is like
a leaf in a forest—he is not conscious of it. Long hours of
work have given him slumber; and as he sleeps he seems to express
by contrast the immensity and endlessness of the life around
him.</p>
<p>Sometimes a floating haze, now thicker here, and now lit up
yonder by the sunshine, brings out objects more distinctly than a
clear atmosphere. Away there tall thin masts stand out, rising
straight up above the red roofs. There is a faint colour on them;
the yards are dark—being inclined, they do not reflect the
light at an angle to reach us. Half-furled canvas droops in folds,
now swelling a little as the wind blows, now heavily sinking. One
white sail is set and gleams alone among the dusky folds; for the
canvas at large is dark with coal-dust, with smoke, with the grime
that settles everywhere where men labour with bare arms and chests.
Still and quiet as trees the masts rise into the hazy air; who
would think, merely to look at them, of the endless labour they
mean? The labour to load, and the labour to unload; the labour at
sea, and the long hours of ploughing the waves by night; the labour
at the warehouses; the labour in the fields, the mines, the
mountains; the labour in the factories. Ever and again the sunshine
gleams now on this group of masts, now on that; for they stand in
groups as trees often grow, a thicket here and a thicket yonder.
Labour to obtain the material, labour to bring it hither, labour to
force it into shape—work without end. Masts are always dreamy
to look at: they speak a romance of the sea; of unknown lands; of
distant forests aglow with tropical colours and abounding with
strange forms of life. In the hearts of most of us there is always
a desire for something beyond experience. Hardly any of us but have
thought, Some day I will go on a long voyage; but the years go by,
and still we have not sailed.</p>
<hr>
<h3 align="center"><a name="21">A WET NIGHT IN LONDON</a></h3>
<p>Opaque from rain drawn in slant streaks by wind and speed across
the pane, the window of the railway carriage lets nothing be seen
but stray flashes of red lights—the signals rapidly passed.
Wrapped in thick overcoat, collar turned up to his ears, warm
gloves on his hands, and a rug across his knees, the traveller may
well wonder how those red signals and the points are worked out in
the storms of wintry London, Rain blown in gusts through the misty
atmosphere, gas and smoke-laden, deepens the darkness; the howl of
the blast humming in the telegraph wires, hurtling round the
chimney-pots on a level with the line, rushing up from the
archways; steam from the engines, roar, and whistle, shrieking
brakes, and grinding wheels—how is the traffic worked at
night in safety over the inextricable windings of the iron roads
into the City? At London Bridge the door is opened by some one who
gets out, and the cold air comes in; there is a rush of people in
damp coats, with dripping umbrellas, and time enough to notice the
archaeologically interesting wooden beams which support the roof of
the South-Eastern station. Antique beams they are, good old Norman
oak, such as you may sometimes find in very old country churches
that have not been restored, such as yet exist in Westminster Hall,
temp. Rufus or Stephen, or so. Genuine old woodwork, worth your
while to go and see. Take a sketch-book and make much of the ties
and angles and bolts; ask Whistler or Macbeth, or some one to etch
them, get the Royal Antiquarian Society to pay a visit and issue a
pamphlet; gaze at them reverently and earnestly, for they are not
easily to be matched in London. Iron girders and spacious roofs are
the modern fashion; here we have the Middle Ages
well-preserved—slam! the door is banged-to, onwards, over the
invisible river, more red signals and rain, and finally the
terminus. Five hundred well-dressed and civilised savages, wet,
cross, weary, all anxious to get in—eager for home and
dinner; five hundred stiffened and cramped folk equally eager to
get out—mix on a narrow platform, with a train running off
one side, and a detached engine gliding gently after it. Push,
wriggle, wind in and out, bumps from portmanteaus, and so at last
out into the street.</p>
<p>Now, how are you going to get into an omnibus? The street is
"up," the traffic confined to half a narrow thoroughfare, the
little space available at the side crowded with newsvendors whose
contents bills are spotted and blotted with wet, crowded, too, with
young girls, bonnetless, with aprons over their heads, whose object
is simply to do nothing—just to stand in the rain and chaff;
the newsvendors yell their news in your ears, then, finding you
don't purchase, they "Yah!" at you; an aged crone begs you to buy
"lights"; a miserable young crone, with pinched face, offers
artificial flowers—oh, Naples! Rush comes the rain, and the
gas-lamps are dimmed; whoo-oo comes the wind like a smack; cold
drops get in the ears and eyes; clean wristbands are splotched;
greasy mud splashed over shining boots; some one knocks the
umbrella round, and the blast all but turns it. "Wake
up!"—"Now then—stop here all night?"—"Gone to
sleep?" They shout, they curse, they put their hands to their
mouths trumpet wise and bellow at each other, these cabbies,
vanmen, busmen, all angry at the block in the narrow way. The
'bus-driver, with London stout, and plenty of it, polishing his
round cheeks like the brasswork of a locomotive, his neck well
wound and buttressed with thick comforter and collar, heedeth not,
but goes on his round, now fast, now slow, always stolid and
rubicund, the rain running harmlessly from him as if he were oiled.
The conductor, perched like the showman's monkey behind, hops and
twists, and turns now on one foot and now on the other as if the
plate were red-hot; now holds on with one hand, and now dexterously
shifts his grasp; now shouts to the crowd and waves his hands
towards the pavement, and again looks round the edge of the 'bus
forwards and curses somebody vehemently. "Near side up! Look alive!
Full inside"—curses, curses, curses; rain, rain, rain, and no
one can tell which is most plentiful.</p>
<p>The cab-horse's head comes nearly inside the 'bus, the 'bus-pole
threatens to poke the hansom in front; the brougham would be
careful, for varnish sake, but is wedged and must take its chance;
van-wheels catch omnibus hubs; hurry, scurry, whip, and drive;
slip, slide, bump, rattle, jar, jostle, an endless stream
clattering on, in, out, and round. On, on—"Stanley,
on"—the first and last words of cabby's life; on, on, the one
law of existence in a London street—drive on, stumble or
stand, drive on—strain sinews, crack, splinter—drive
on; what a sight to watch as you wait amid the newsvendors and
bonnetless girls for the 'bus that will not come! Is it real? It
seems like a dream, those nightmare dreams in which you know that
you must run, and do run, and yet cannot lift the legs that are
heavy as lead, with the demon behind pursuing, the demon of
Drive-on. Move, or cease to be—pass out of Time or be
stirring quickly; if you stand you must suffer even here on the
pavement, splashed with greasy mud, shoved by coarse ruffianism,
however good your intentions—just dare to stand still! Ideas
here for moralising, but I can't preach with the roar and the din
and the wet in my ears, and the flickering street lamps flaring.
That's the 'bus—no; the tarpaulin hangs down and obscures the
inscription; yes. Hi! No heed; how could you be so confiding as to
imagine conductor or driver would deign to see a signalling
passenger; the game is to drive on.</p>
<p>A gentleman makes a desperate rush and grabs the handrail; his
foot slips on the asphalt or wood, which is like oil, he slides,
his hat totters; happily he recovers himself and gets in. In the
block the 'bus is stayed a moment, and somehow we follow, and are
landed—"somehow" advisedly. For how do we get into a 'bus?
After the pavement, even this hard seat would be nearly an
easy-chair, were it not for the damp smell of soaked overcoats, the
ceaseless rumble, and the knockings overhead outside. The noise is
immensely worse than the shaking or the steamy atmosphere, the
noise ground into the ears, and wearying the mind to a state of
drowsy narcotism—you become chloroformed through the sense of
hearing, a condition of dreary resignation and uncomfortable ease.
The illuminated shops seem to pass like an endless window without
division of doors; there are groups of people staring in at them in
spite of the rain; ill-clad, half-starving people for the most
part; the well-dressed hurry onwards; they have homes. A dull
feeling of satisfaction creeps over you that you are at least in
shelter; the rumble is a little better than the wind and the rain
and the puddles. If the Greek sculptors were to come to life again
and cut us out in bas-relief for another Parthenon, they would have
to represent us shuffling along, heads down and coat-tails flying,
splash-splosh—a nation of umbrellas.</p>
<p>Under a broad archway, gaily lighted, the broad and happy way to
a theatre, there is a small crowd waiting, and among them two
ladies, with their backs to the photographs and bills, looking out
into the street. They stand side by side, evidently quite oblivious
and indifferent to the motley folk about them, chatting and
laughing, taking the wet and windy wretchedness of the night as a
joke. They are both plump and rosy-cheeked, dark eyes gleaming and
red lips parted; both decidedly good-looking, much too rosy and
full-faced, too well fed and comfortable to take a prize from
Burne-Jones, very worldly people in the roast-beef sense. Their
faces glow in the bright light—merry sea coal-fire faces;
they have never turned their backs on the good things of this life.
"Never shut the door on good fortune," as Queen Isabella of Spain
says. Wind and rain may howl and splash, but here are two faces
they never have touched—rags and battered shoes drift along
the pavement—no wet feet or cold necks here. Best of all they
glow with good spirits, they laugh, they chat; they are full of
enjoyment, clothed thickly with health and happiness, as their
shoulders—good wide shoulders—are thickly wrapped in
warmest furs. The 'bus goes on, and they are lost to view; if you
came back in an hour you would find them still there without
doubt—still jolly, chatting, smiling, waiting perhaps for the
stage, but anyhow far removed, like the goddesses on Olympus, from
the splash and misery of London. Drive on.</p>
<p>The head of a great grey horse in a van drawn up by the
pavement, the head and neck stand out and conquer the rain and
misty dinginess by sheer force of beauty, sheer strength of
character. He turns his head—his neck forms a fine curve, his
face is full of intelligence, in spite of the half dim light and
the driving rain, of the thick atmosphere, and the black hollow of
the covered van behind, his head and neck stand out, just as in old
portraits the face is still bright, though surrounded with crusted
varnish. It would be a glory to any man to paint him. Drive on.</p>
<p>How strange the dim, uncertain faces of the crowd, half-seen,
seem in the hurry and rain; faces held downwards and muffled by the
darkness—not quite human in their eager and intensely
concentrated haste. No one thinks of or notices another—on,
on—splash, shove, and scramble; an intense selfishness, so
selfish as not to be selfish, if that can be understood, so
absorbed as to be past observing that any one lives but themselves.
Human beings reduced to mere hurrying machines, worked by wind and
rain, and stern necessities of life; driven on; something very hard
and unhappy in the thought of this. They seem reduced to the
condition of the wooden cabs—the mere vehicles—pulled
along by the irresistible horse Circumstance. They shut their eyes
mentally, wrap themselves in the overcoat of indifference, and
drive on, drive on. It is time to get out at last. The 'bus stops
on one side of the street, and you have to cross to the other. Look
up and down—lights are rushing each way, but for the moment
none are close. The gas-lamps shine in the puddles of thick greasy
water, and by their gleam you can guide yourself round them. Cab
coming! Surely he will give way a little and not force you into
that great puddle; no, he neither sees, nor cares, Drive on, drive
on. Quick! the shafts! Step in the puddle and save your life!</p>
<hr>
<h4 align="center">End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Open
Air</h4>
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