We are in the year 1874. Apparently, Jefferies has had his chance, and has thrown it away. He is six-and-twenty years of age—it is youth, but this young man has only twelve more years of life, and none of his work has yet been done. Why—why did no one tear him away from his vain and futile efforts? See, he toils day after day, with an energy which nothing can repress—a resolution to succeed which sustains him through all his disappointments. He covers acres of paper, and all to no purpose; for no one has told him the simplest law of all—that Art is imitation. One must not close the shutters, light the lamp, and then paint a flower one has never seen, as the painter thinks it ought to have been. Yet this is what Jefferies was doing. The young country lad, who knew no other society than that of the farm and the country town, was wasting and spoiling his life in writing about people and things whom he imagined. He was painting the flower he had never seen as he thought it ought to be.
Well, the great success of the Times letters seemed to have led to nothing. Yet it gave him a better position in his native place. His work was now so assured, and his income so much improved—though still slender enough—that in July, 1874, after a three years' engagement, he was married.
For the first six months of their marriage the young pair lived on at Coate. They then removed to a small house in Victoria Street, Swindon, where their first child was born. It is a happy thing to think that it was in the first year of his wedded life that Jefferies brushed away the cobwebs from his brain, left the old things behind him for ever, and stepped out upon the greensward, the hillside, the forest, and the meadows, where he was to walk henceforth until the end. It was time, indeed, to throw away his novels of society, to put away the unreal rubbish, to forget the foolish dreams, to let the puppets who could never have lived lie dust-covered in the limbo of false and conventional novels. Where is it, that limbo? Welcome, long-desired flowers of May! Welcome, fragrant breath of the breezy down!
CHAPTER V.
FIRST YEARS OF SUCCESS.
Jefferies made his way to the fields through the farmers first and the labourers next.
He wrote a paper for Fraser's Magazine (December, 1873) on the "Future of Farming," which attracted a considerable amount of attention. The Spectator had an article upon it. The paper is full of bold speculations and prophecies; as, for instance:
"We may, then, look to a time when farming will become a commercial speculation, and will be carried on by large joint-stock concerns, issuing shares of ten, fifteen, or fifty pounds each, and occupying from three to ten thousand acres. Such companies would, perhaps, purchase the entire sewage of an adjacent town. Their buildings, their streets of cattle-stalls, would be placed on a slope sheltered from the north-east, but near the highest spot on the estate, so as to distribute manure and water from their reservoirs by the power of gravitation. A stationary steam-engine would crush their cake, and pulp their roots, pump their water, perhaps even shear their sheep. They would employ butchers and others, a whole staff, to kill and cut up bullocks in pieces suitable for the London market, transmitting their meat straight to the salesman, without the intervention of the dealer. That salesman would himself be entirely in the employ of the company, and sell no other meat but what they supplied him with. This would at once give a larger profit to the producer, and a lower price (in comparison) to the public. In summer, meat might be cooled by the ice-house, or refrigerator, which must necessarily be attached to the company's bacon factory. Except in particular districts, it is hardly probable that the dairy would be united with the stock-farm; but if so, the ice-house would again come into requisition, and there would be a condensed-milk factory on the premises."