Gilbert White is buried in the churchyard, among the tall grasses and waving wild-flowers, in a manner peculiarly fitting for that simple soul; and his grave—one of a row of five belonging to the White family—has a plain headstone, grey and lichened now, with the simple inscription, “G. W., 26th June, 1793.”
THE ‘NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE’
It seems strange that so simple and uneventful a chronicle of the lives and habits of familiar birds and “wee sma’ beasties,” together with the plain records of sunshine and storm, rains and frosts, the blossoming of flowers and the fall of the leaf, which the “Natural History of Selborne” presents, should have attained so great and lasting a popularity. This book is become as sure a classic as the “Pilgrim’s Progress” or the “Compleat Angler,” and no one would have been more surprised at this result of his patient labours, undertaken simply for the joy they gave him, than old Gilbert himself. You see, in every page, nay, in every line, that he wrote for himself and his friends alone, and not with an observant eye upon the booksellers and their clients. Nay, more! Had he written thus, we should have missed the better part of his book; the observation of years, which thought nothing of profit for labour and time expended; the just language, written without any cudgelling of the brain for effect, and the homely incidents that make him live more surely than aught else. You can claim Timothy the tortoise as a personal friend, and are thrilled with the curious annals of the idiot boy whose strange appetite for honey-bees excited the naturalist’s sympathies, both for the bees and the boy. Colonies might revolt and become the “United States”; French Revolutions and other dreadful portents shake thrones and set the world in arms, but Gilbert was a great deal more interested in the butcher birds, and in predatory rats, than in soldiers or blood-boltered human tyrants. The mid-day snoring of sleepy owls in the dusky rafters of some capacious barn, the hum of the bees, the scream of the peewits, and the clattering cabals of noisy starlings were more to him than instrumental music or the disputes of parliaments. And so he lived an uninterrupted round for forty years and died peacefully at last, happy and contented always, while dwellers in towns, then as now, beat their hearts out in unavailing ambitions and fruitless hatreds.
BADGE OF THE
SELBORNE SOCIETY.
Ornithology owes much to Gilbert White’s patient observations, and his “Natural History” bids fair to become a possession for all time. Numberless editions of it have been issued, annotated by men of science, who have found little of import to add to his work; and other editions are constantly in the making. But best monument of all is that association of friends to birds and beasts, the Selborne Society, that, taking its name from Gilbert White’s old home, owns him as master in many branches and local centres throughout England. When the centenary of the simple naturalist’s death was celebrated in 1893, the large attendance at Selborne of members of the Society showed that here lies one whose memory the lovers of nature and wild life will not willingly let die.
XXVII
TOLL-HOUSES
Returning from this sentimental excursion to Selborne to the road at Rake, the pedestrian will notice a singular old cottage with many angles, fronting the highway. This is one of the old toll-houses left after the abolition of turnpike trusts, and of the vexatious taxes upon road-travel that only finally disappeared within comparatively recent years. Sixty, nay fifty, years ago, there were six toll-houses and turnpike bars between London and Portsmouth. They commenced with one at Newington, followed closely by another at Vauxhall, and one more at the “Robin Hood,” in Kingston Vale. The next was situated at Cobham Street, and neither Cary nor Paterson, the two great rival road-guides of coaching days, mention another until just before Liphook. The next was at Rake, but, singularly enough, neither of those usually unimpeachable authorities mention this particular gate, which would appear to have been the last along this route.