The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies

by Walter Besant

It came to this pair, thus waiting and hoping, in November, 1872, in this wise:

In the autumn of that year, the mind of the nation was beginning to be exercised with the subject of the relations of the farmer with the agricultural labourer. Richard Jefferies, inspired, if any man ever was, with the thought that he knew all about the subject, sat down and wrote a long letter about "The Wiltshire Labourer." This letter he sent first to a certain London editor (name of the paper not stated), who refused it. He then sent it to the editor of the Times, who not only accepted it and printed it, but had a leader written upon it. Nor was this all. The letter called forth many answers; to these Jefferies replied in two more letters. The subject was noticed in the Pall Mall Gazette, in the Spectator, and in other journals. We are not here concerned with the results of the case—Jefferies wrote on the side of the tenant farmer. It is sufficient to note the fact of the letters and their immediate result—namely, that Jefferies sprang at one bound into the position of an authority on things agricultural. He dated the letters from Coate Farm, Swindon; so that he probably appeared to the editor and to the general public as a farmer, rather than as a newspaper reporter. To the whole of his after-life these letters were most important. They denoted, though as yet he knew it not, an entirely new departure. He was to experience many a bitter disappointment over novels which he ought never to have written. There were plenty of snubs and rubs in store for him, as there are for every literary man at every stage of his career. Snubs and rubs are part of a profession which has an advantage quite peculiar to itself, that everything a man does is publicly commented upon by his brother professors writing anonymously. It is as if a clergyman's sermons should be publicly and every week handled by brother clergymen, or a doctor's cases by brothers of the calling; or as if a barrister's speeches should be anonymously criticised by other barristers. A man cannot make an ass of himself in the profession, and expect that nobody will notice it. Not at all; the greater the mess he makes, the more he will hear of it. Now Jefferies—poor man—was going to make a big mess of two or three jobs before he really found himself.

To be an authority on things agricultural is to speak on behalf of what was then, and is still, the most important interest of the whole country; to speak of agricultural labourers and of tenant farmers is to speak of the best blood of the country, the hope and stay of Great Britain. Here was opened a chance such as comes to few. If it had been properly followed up, if it had fallen to a practical man, there would have been perceived here an open door leading to an honourable career, a safe line, with a sufficient income. I mean that any of our great newspapers would have been glad to number on its staff, and to retain, one who could write with knowledge on things agricultural. Always, throughout the whole of his life, Richard Jefferies wanted someone to advise him, but never so much as at this moment. He had this splendid chance, and he threw it away, not deliberately, but from ignorance and want of aptitude in business.

Yet the letters mark a new departure, for they made him write about the country. Success was before him at last, though not in the way he hoped.

The first letter to the Times was, for a young man of twenty-four, a most remarkable production. It was crammed with facts and information. In point of style it was clear and strong, without any faults of fine writing. It would be taken—I have no doubt at all that the editor so received it—as the letter of a clear-headed, well-informed, middle-aged Wiltshire farmer. He writes at full length, covering two columns and a quarter of the Times, in small print. The letter itself is so curious, as giving an account of a condition of things which has already greatly changed in the sixteen years since it was written, that I have placed it for preservation in an appendix to this volume. The leader on the subject in the Times of the same day thus sums up the case:

"When so much is done for labourers by an improved class of landlords and tenants, and when it is evident that they cannot but share the general advance of wages, what is it that remains to be done? There can be no doubt about it, and we commend it to the attention of the talkative gentlemen who are making fine speeches and backing up the labourer to a stand-up fight with his employer. It is the labourer himself who wants improvement. He will do everything for himself so very badly. He will not show common-sense in his cottage—if it is his own choice—or his clothing, or his food, or in his general arrangements. He will insist on poisoning the air of his cottage, his well, or the stream that runs past his door. He will not bestow half an hour on some needful repair which he thinks a landlord ought to do for him. He goes to the worst market for his provisions, buying everything on credit and in the smallest quantities. He allows a waste that would not be tolerated in wealthier households. He will not second with home discipline the efforts made to instruct his children at the school. He will still permit it to be almost impossible that his children shall be taught in the same room or play in the same ground with the children of his employer. In a word, he will not do his part—no easy one, it is true, yet not impossible. He escapes from thought, effort, and responsibility at the village 'public,' and lets his household go its way. Of course, he is only doing what many of his betters are doing in his own class and condition. But there is the same to be said of all. If men are to rise, it must be done by themselves, for the whole world will never raise, or better appreciably, those who will not raise themselves."

You have already seen the letter written in May, 1873, in which he speaks despairingly of his efforts and his ill-success; in fact, he allowed a whole year to elapse without following up the advantage and experience acquired by these letters. It seems incredible. Meanwhile he was muddling his time, and perhaps his money, in bringing out things from which neither money nor honour could be expected. The first of these was the little book I have already noticed, on reporting and journalism. It would be curious to learn the pecuniary result of this volume.

The next volume was a "Family History of the Goddards of North Wilts." Now, if the Goddards were anxious to have their history written, they might have paid for it. Perhaps they did pay for the work, but I find no record of their doing so. Perhaps they thought that Swindon would rally round the Goddard flag, and eagerly buy the book. I have not read the work; but it had the honour of getting a notice from the Athenæum, which the author heroically cut out and preserved. The plain truth was spoken in that notice, and the most was made of a very unfortunate mistake of a place, a date, and a poet, concerning which the curious may consult the Athenæum for the year 1873.

The results of publishing at his own expense were, we suppose, so satisfactory that Jefferies in 1874 brought out his first novel—"The Scarlet Shawl"—on that delightful method. It is always in vain that one assures a young writer that works which publishers with one consent refuse must be commercially worthless; it is always in vain that one preaches, exhorts, and implores the inexperienced not to throw away their money in the vain hope of getting it back with profit of gold and glory. They will do it. There are always publishing houses of a kind which are ready to print young writers' crude and foolish works at their own risk, and to talk vaguely beforehand of enormous profits to be shared. Poor wretches! they never get any profits. Nobody ever buys any copies. There is never for the unfortunate writer any gold or any glory, but only sure, certain, and bitter disappointment.

As yet, Jefferies still clung to his old ideas, and had learned none of the lessons which the Times letters should have taught him. Therefore he brought out three novels in succession (see Chapter VI.), never getting any single advantage or profit out of them except the pain of shattered hopes, the loss of money, and the most contemptuous notices in the reviews.