41. ON THE PILGRIMS’ WAY
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1902.
I was taken to task by Mrs. Allingham a while ago for saying that her affections were not so set upon the delineation of harvesting as were those of most landscapists, and she stated that she had painted the sheafed fields again and again. But I held to my assertion, and proof comes in this drawing just handed to me. Not one artist in ten would, I am certain, have sat down to his subject on this side of the hedge, but would have been over the stile, and made his foreground of the shorn field and stacked sheaves, breaking their monotony of form and colour by the waggon and its attendant labourers. But Mrs. Allingham could not pass the harvest of the hedge, and was satisfied with just a peep of the corn through the gap formed by the stile. It is not surprising, for who that is fond of flowers could pass such a gladsome sight as the display which Nature has so lavishly offered month after month the summer through to those who cared to notice it. In May the hedge was white with hawthorn, in June gay with dog-roses and white briar, in July with convolvuli and woodbine, and now again in August comes the clematis and the blackberry flower.
42. NIGHT-JAR LANE, WITLEY
From the Drawing in the possession of Mr. E. S. Curwen.
Painted 1887.
One of those steep self-made roads which the passage of the seasons rather than of man has furrowed and deepened in “the flow of the deep still wood,” a lodgment for the leaves from whose depths that charming lament of the dying may well have arisen,—
Said Fading Leaf to Fallen Leaf,
“I toss alone on a forsaken tree,
It rocks and cracks with every gust that rocks
Its straining bulk: say! how is it with thee?”
Said Fallen Leaf to Fading Leaf,
“A heavy foot went by, an hour ago;
Crush’d into clay, I stain the way;
The loud wind calls me, and I cannot go.”
The name “Night-Jar,” by which this lane is known, is unusual, and probably points to its having been a favourite hunting-ground for a seldom-seen visitant, for which it seems well-fitted. The name may well date back to White of Selborne’s time, who lived not far away, and termed the bird “a wonderful and curious creature,” which it must be if, as he records, it commences its jar, or note, every evening so exactly at the close of day that it coincided to a second with the report—which he could distinguish in summer—of the Portsmouth evening gun.
Night-jars are most deceptive in their flight, one or two giving an illusion of many by their extremely rapid movements and turns; and they may well have been very noticeable to persons in the confined space of this gully, especially as the observer in his evening stroll would probably stir up the moths, which are the bird’s favourite food, and which would attract it into his immediate vicinity. How much interest would be added to a countryside were the lanes all fitted with titles such as this.