Richard Jefferies

“ The busy hand which has written so much will write no more. He can no longer dictate. His very feebleness will soon be past, and he will be at rest, whether in the unconscious clay-cold rest of the dark grave, or in that better life of the Fuller Soul of which he had so great and glorious a Vision—who knoweth?
You have read the life of Richard Jefferies. You have seen how the country lad, ill-educated, slenderly provided with books or friends, formed in early life a resolution to succeed in letters. ”

“ The tall buttercups brushed his knees, and bent on either side as if a wind was rushing through them. A bennet slipped up his knickerbockers and tickled his leg. His toes only touched the ground, neither his heels nor the hollow of his foot; and from so light a pressure the grass, bowed but not crushed, rose up, leaving no more mark of his passage than if a grasshopper had gone by.
Daintily fanning himself with his wings, the butterfly went before Bevis, not yet knowing that he was chased, but sauntering along just above the buttercups. ”

“ I mean, they cannot help their faces, their sentiments and actions are another matter; therefore I will leave Father Iden's face as a dim blot on the mirror; you look in it and it reflects everywhere, except one spot.
Amaryllis followed him jauntily,—little did she care, reckless girl, for the twenty thousand guineas in the iron box under his bed.
The cottage folk, who always know so much, had endless tales of Iden's wealth; how years ago bushels upon bushels of pennies, done up in five-shilling packets, had been literally carted like potatoes away from the bakehouse to go to London ”

“ The sedges on the sandbanks appeared brown and withered, as if it had been autumn instead of early summer. The flags were brown at the tip, and the aquatic grasses had dwindled. They looked as if they could not grow, and had reached but half their natural height. From the low willows the leaves were dropping, faded and yellow, and the thorn bushes were shrivelled and covered with the white cocoons of caterpillars. The farther he sailed the more desolate the banks seemed, and trees ceased altogether. Even the willows were fewer and stunted, and the highest thorn bush was not above his chest. ”

“ Felix cut one of hazel, twice as long as himself; Valentine another of ash; Geoffrey carelessly slashed off the first willow-bough he came to, and trimmed it.
“Yours will not do,” said Margaret to him. “The willow is too weak—it will split.”
“Will mine answer?” asked Valentine, showing a stout piece of ash.
“Yes, that is tougher. Why don’t you get an ash, Geoffrey?”
“I shall trust in my first choice,” said Geoffrey, just a trifle annoyed even by so slight a matter; for when men’s minds are strung with love and jealousy the least thing nettles them. ”

“ At each long sweep Bevis felt a stronger hold, his head shot farther through above the surface like the stem of the Pinta when the freshening breeze drove her. He did not see where he was going, his vision was lost in the ecstasy of motion; all his mind was concentrated in the full use of his limbs. The delicious delirium of strength—unconsciousness of reason, unlimited consciousness of force—the joy of life itself filled him. ”

“ Timid Wat—the hare—came ambling along the lane, and almost ran against two lovers in a recess of the bushes by an elm. Andrew, Andrew! these lips are too sweet for you; get you to your desk—that smiling shape, those shaded, soft brown eyes, let them alone. Be generous—do not awaken hopes you can never, never fulfil. The new-mown hay is scented yet more sweetly in the evening—of a summer's eve it is always too soon to go home.
The blackbirds whistled again, big Mat slew the grass from the rising to the going down of the sun—moon-daisies, sorrel, and buttercups lay in rows of swathe as he mowed. ”

“ During the frost a blackbird had roosted in a corner of the hut under the rafters, sparrows too had sought its shelter, and wrens and blue-tits had crept into the crevices of the eaves. Next they went up on the cliff, the sun-dial stood as they had left it, but the sun was now down.
From the height, where they could hardly stand against the wind, they saw a figure afar on the green hill by the sycamores, which they knew must be Big Jack waiting for them to return. Walking back to the Pinta they passed under the now leafless teak-tree marked and scored by the bullets they had fired at it. ”

“ Once on the island, as the perch were cooking, the game was spread out on the table—three moorhens, a coot, a dab-chick, a wood-pigeon, a hare, and the jack Mark had caught.
Of all the hare, or rather leveret, for it was a young one, was the finest. His black-tipped ears, his clean pads, his fur—every separate hair with three shades of colour—it was a pleasure to smooth his fur down with the hand.
“This is the jolliest day we’ve had,” said Mark. “All shooting and killing and real hunting—real island—and no work and no cooking, except just what we like. It’s splendid.” ”

“ The vague crowd were so immensely eager to pay their despicable court to the Spade-Guinea Man, not one of them stopped away; the old, the young, the lame, the paralytic, all found means to creep in to Grandfather Iden's annual dinner. His only son and natural heir was alone absent. How eagerly poor Amaryllis glanced from time to time at that empty chair, hoping against hope that her dear father would come in at the Psalms, or even at the sermon, and disappoint the venomous, avaricious hearts of the enemies around her. ”

“ Without a word Felix left the old place.
He rode forth from the North Barrier, and did not even so much as look behind him. Neither he nor Oliver thought of the events that might happen before they should again meet in the old familiar house! When the circle is once broken up it is often years before it is reformed. Often, indeed, the members of it never meet again, at least, not in the same manner, which, perhaps, they detested then, and ever afterwards regretted. Without one word of farewell, without a glance, Felix rode out into the forest. ”

“ Their hearts are full already of the happy days to come, when the moss yonder by the beech, and the lichen on the fir-trunk, and the loose fibres caught in the fork of an unbending bough, shall furnish forth a sufficient mansion for their young. Another broad cloud-shadow, and another warm embrace of sunlight. All the serried ranks of the green corn bow at the word of command as the wind rushes over them.
There is largeness and freedom here. Broad as the down and free as the wind, the thought can roam high over the narrow roofs in the vale. Nature has affixed no bounds to thought. ”

“ Bevis could hear her wings go plainly. "Whatever is it? Do tell me."
"Look all round first," he said, "and see that no one is about."
"No one is near, dear; the sparrows are out in the corn, and the swallows are very high up; the blackbird is busy in the orchard, and the robin is down at the red currants; there's no one near. Is it a very great secret?"
"It is a very great secret indeed, and you must be very careful not to whistle it out by accident; now if I tell you will you keep your beak quite shut, darling?"
"Quite."
"Then, listen—Kapchack is in love." ”

“ Richard Jefferies is pleasing, but not so pleasing as the beauties to be found in a garden. Goldsmith brings a warm glow, but see! the sun shines in the heavens. Lamb puts me in playful vein, but his tune is not so gay as the song of the birds in yonder bushes. The light touch of Leigh Hunt is delightful, but not so pleasing as the quickly shifting lights upon the tree-tops. ”

“ They need not have troubled to conceal themselves from this stranger savage; he would not have seen them if they had stood close by him. A narrow life narrows the sweep of the eye. Miserable being, he could see no farther than one of the mussels of the lake which travel in a groove. His groove led to the sanded inn-kitchen, and his shell was shut to all else. But they crept like skirmishers, dragging the catamaran laboriously behind them, using every undulation of the ground to hide themselves, till they had got it into the hollow, where they left it beside a heap of stones. ”

“ Mark sat down at the edge of the shadow of the oak. “Don’t you see you can look into the channel; if there are any savages they are sure to creep up that channel. Do you see?”
“Yes, I see,” said Mark.
“And mind nothing comes behind that woodbine,” pointing to a mass of woodbine which hung from some ash-poles, and stretched like a curtain across the view there. “That’s a very likely place for a tiger: and keep your eye sharp on those nut-tree bushes across the brook—most likely you’ll see the barrel of a matchlock pushed through there.” ”

“ The flies would run over his face, though Mark handed him a frond of fern to swish them with, so he partly covered himself with his handkerchief. The handkerchief was stretched across his ear like the top of a drum, and while he was lying so quiet a fly ran across the handkerchief there, and he distinctly heard the sound of its feet. It was a slight rustle, as if its feet caught a little of the surface of the handkerchief. This happened several times. ”

“ Another hour, and at last Felix, awakening from his slumberous condition, looked round and saw nothing but the waves. The shore he had left had entirely disappeared, gone down; if there were land more lofty on either hand, the haze concealed it. He looked again; he could scarcely comprehend it. He knew the Lake was very wide, but it had never occurred to him that he might possibly sail out of sight of land. This, then was why the mariners would not quit the islands; they feared the open water. ”

“ The men who drifted along the road towards the Fair were no "mashers, by Jove!" Some of them, though young, were clad antiquely enough in breeches and gaiters—not sportsmen's breeches and gaiters, but old-fashioned "granfer" things; the most of them were stout and sturdy, in drab and brown suits of good cloth, cut awry. Hundreds of them on foot, in traps, gigs, fourwheels, and on horseback, went under Amaryllis: but, though they were all Christians, there was not one "worth a Jewess' eye." ”

“ Even habit could not enable Felix to entirely withstand so piercing a noise when almost in his ears. He sat up a minute, and glanced at the square of light on the wall to guess the time by its position.
In another minute or two the squeaking of the axle ceased, as the waggon reached the storehouses, and he immediately returned to the pillow. Without, and just beneath the window, there ran a road or way, which in part divided the enclosure into two portions; the dwelling-house and its offices being on one side, the granaries and storehouses on the other. ”

“ Panting, he reached the summit; it was but a narrow ridge, and over it another coombe. Instead of a sea of mist here, one long streak, like a cloud, hung midway. No horse visible. Again he dashed forward, and passed through the stratum of mist-cloud as he went down, and the second time as he climbed the opposite rise—more slowly, for these Downs pull hard against the strongest chest. Then there was a gradually rising plateau—dusky, dotted with ghostly hawthorn bushes, but nothing moving that his straining eyes could discern. ”

“ The earth is right and the tree is right: trim either and all is wrong. The deer will not fit to them then.
The squire came near enough to the corn-field to see that the wheat-ears were beginning to turn yellow and that the barley had the silky appearance caused by the beard, the delicate lines of which divide the light and reflect it like gossamer. At some distance a man was approaching; he saw him, and sat down on the grass under an oak to await the coming of Ettles the keeper. Ettles had been his rounds and had visited the outlying copses, which are the especial haunts of pheasants. ”

“ Crashing through the new bamboos they at last reached the southern extremity of the island, where the shallow sea was covered with the floating leaves of weeds, over which blue dragon-flies flew to and fro.
“Everything’s gone to the river again,” said Mark; “and where’s Pan? He’s gone too, I dare say.”
A short bark in that direction in a few minutes made them look at an islet round which reed-mace rose in a tall fringe, and there was Pan creeping up out of the weeds, dragging his body after him on to the firm ground. ”

“ Something seemed to come to him out of the sunshine and the grass.
"There never was a yesterday," whispered the wind presently, "and there never will be to-morrow. It is all one long to-day. When the man in the hill was you were too, and he still is now you are here; but of these things you will know when you are older, that is if you will only continue to drink me. Come, dear, let us race on again." So the two went on and came to a hawthorn-bush, and Bevis, full of mischief always, tried to slip away from the wind round the bush, but the wind laughed and caught him. ”

“ The million million blades of grass spoke to Jefferies as the Oak of Dodona spoke through its thousand leaves. When he went home he sat down and was inspired to translate that language, and to tell the world what the grass says and sings to him who can hear.
He who met the great God Pan face to face fell down dead. Still, even in these days, he who communes with the Sylvan Spirit presently dies to the ways of men, while his senses are opened to see the hidden things of hedge and meadow; while his soul is uplifted by the beauty and the variety and the order of the world ”