—it remains simple; but by the use of far fewer words, and of fewer orator's phrases, its unadorned directness has almost a positive spiritual quality.
But these agricultural essays, good as they were, and absorbing as they did all of Jefferies' social thoughts to the end of his life, became less and less frequent as he grew less inclined and less able to adapt his mind and style to the affairs of the moment.
In the same year as 'The Story of Swindon' he published 'Village Churches' and 'Marlborough Forest' (Graphic, December 4 and October 23, 1875). These and his unsuccessful novels remain to show the direction of his more intimate thoughts in the third decade of his life. They are as imperfect in their class as 'The Story of Swindon' is perfect in its own. They are the earliest of their kind from Jefferies' pen which have survived. He is dealing already with another and a more individual kind of reality, and he is not yet at home with it in words. He approaches it with ceremony—with the ceremony of phrases like 'the great painter Autumn,' 'a very tiger to the rabbit,' 'the titles and pomp of belted earl and knight.' But here for the first time he is so bent upon himself and his object that he casts only an occasional glance upon his audience, whereas in his practical papers he has it continually in view, or even ready to jog his elbow if he dreams. The full English hedges, which he condemns as an agriculturist, he would now save from the modern Goths; he can even be sorry for the death of beautiful jays. Here, for the first time, it might occur to a student of the man that he is more than his words express. He does not see Nature as he sees the factory, and when he and Nature touch there is an emotional discharge which blurs the sight, though presently it is to enrich it. As yet we cannot be sure whether he is perfectly genuine or is striving for an effect based upon a recollection of someone else—probably it is both—when he writes:
'The heart has a yearning for the unknown, a longing to penetrate the deep shadow and the winding glade, where, as it seems, no human foot has been';
when he speaks of the 'visible silence' of the old church, or exclaims:
'To us, each hour is of consequence, especially in this modern day, which has invented the detestable creed that time is money. But time is not money to Nature. She never hastens....'
But already he is expressing a thought, which he was often to repeat in his maturity and in his best work, when he says of the church-bell that 'In the day when this bell was made, men put their souls into their works. Their one great object was not to turn out 100,000 all alike.'
It was in the next year, 1876, that he began to think of using his observation and feeling in a 'chatty style,' of setting down 'some of the glamour—the magic of sunshine, and green things, and clear waters.' But it was not until 1878 that he succeeded in doing so. In 'The Amateur Poacher' and its companions, there was not between Jefferies and Nature the colourless, clear light of the factory or the journalist's workshop, but the tender English atmosphere or, if you like, that of the happy and thoughtful mind which had grown up in that atmosphere.
'Choosing a Gun' and 'Skating' belong to the period, if not the year, of 'The Amateur Poacher.' In fact, the passage about the pleasure of having the freedom of the woods with a wheel-lock, is either a first draft of one of the best in that book, or it is an unconscious repetition. Here again is a characteristic complaint that 'the leading idea of the gunmaker nowadays is to turn out a hundred thousand guns of one particular pattern.' The suggestion that some clever workman should go and set himself up in some village is one that has been followed in other trades, and is not yet exhausted. The writing is now excellent of its kind, but for the word 'Metropolis' and the phrase 'no great distance from' Pall Mall. The negligent—but slowly acquired—conversational simplicity captures the open air as calmly and pleasantly as the humour of the city dialogue.