The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies

by Walter Besant

The first five of the works on the country life were published by Messrs. Smith and Elder. These were the "Gamekeeper at Home," "Wild Life in a Southern County," "The Amateur Poacher," "Greene Ferne Farm," and "Round About a Great Estate." Then he did either a very foolish or a very unfortunate thing. He left Messrs. Smith and Elder, and for the rest of his life he went about continually changing his publisher, always in the hope of getting a better price for his volumes, and always chafing at the smallness of the pecuniary result. An author should never change his publisher, unless he is compelled to do so by the misfortune of starting with a shark, a thing which has happened unto many. The very fact of having all his works in the same hands greatly assists their sale. A reader who is delighted, for instance, with "Red Deer," and would wish to get other books by the same author, finds the name of Longmans on the back, but no list of those books published by Smith and Elder, Chatto and Windus, Cassell and Co., and Sampson Low and Co. I have myself found it very difficult to get a complete set of Jefferies' books. At the London Library, even, they do not possess a complete set. Then that reader lays down his book, and presently forgets his purpose. I suppose that there are very few, even of Jefferies' greatest admirers, who actually possess all his works.

He was, as I have already said, bitter against publishers for the small sums they offered him. He made the not uncommon mistake of supposing that, because the reviews spoke of his works in terms so laudatory, which, indeed, no reviewers could refrain from doing, the public were eagerly buying them. I have, myself, had perhaps an exceptional experience of authors, their grumblings, and their grievances, and I know that this confusion of thought—this unwarranted conclusion—is very widespread. An author, that is to say, reads a highly-complimentary review of his work, and looks for an immense and immediate demand in consequence for that work. Well, every good review helps a book, undoubtedly, but to a much smaller extent, from the pecuniary point of view, than is generally believed. The demand for a book is created in quite other ways; partly by the author's previous works, which, little by little, or, if he is lucky, at a single bound, create a clientèle of those who like his style; partly by the talk of people who tell each other what they have read, and recommend this or that book. Then, since most books are read from the circulating library, and that kind of personal recommendation, especially with a new writer, takes time, the libraries are able to get along with a comparatively small number of copies; in fact, an author may have a very considerable name, and yet make, even with the honourable houses, quite a small sum of money by any work. Again, this is not, one sorrowfully owns, a country which buys books. My compatriots will buy everything and anything, except books. They will lavish their money in every conceivable manner, except one—they never commit extravagances in buying books. For the greater part, the three-guinea subscription to the library is the whole of the family expenditure for the greatest, the only unfailing, delight that life has to offer them.

Again, in the case of Richard Jefferies, the demand for his books was confined to a comparatively small number of readers. I do not suppose that his work will ever be widely popular, and yet I am certain that his reputation will grow and increase. Of all modern writers, I know of none of whom one can predict with such absolute certainty that he will live. He will surely live. He draws, as no other writer has done, the actual life of rural England under Queen Victoria. For the very fidelity of these pictures alone he must live. No other writers, except Jefferies and Thomas Hardy, have been able to depict this life. And, what is even more, as the hills, and fields, and woods, and streams are ever with us, whether we are savages or civilized beings, whatever our manners, dress, fashions, laws or customs, the man who speaks with truth of these speaks for all time and for all mankind.

Yet he is not, and will never be, widely popular. There are many persons, presumably persons of culture, who cannot read Jefferies. A country parson—poor man!—observed to me in Swindon itself, that he hoped the biography of Richard Jefferies would not prove so dry as the works of Richard Jefferies. These, he said, with the cheerful dogmatism of his kind, were as dry as a stick, and impossible to read. Now, this good man was probably in some sort a scholar. He lives in the Jefferies county. All round him are the hills and downs described in these works. To us those hills and downs are now filled with life, beauty, and all kinds of delightful things, entirely through those very books. The good vicar finds them so dry that he cannot read them. Others there are who complain that Jefferies is always "cataloguing." One understands what is meant. To some of us the picture is always being improved by the addition of another blade of grass, another dead leaf, or the ear of a hare visible among the turnip-tops; others are fatigued by these little details. Jefferies is too full for them.

Another thing against him in the minds of the frivolous is that you cannot skip in reading Jefferies. To take up a volume is to read it right through from beginning to end. You can no more skip Jefferies than you can skip Emerson. Now, most readers like to rush a volume. You cannot rush Jefferies. I defy the most rapid reader to rush Jefferies. You might as well try to rush the Proof of the Binomial Theorem. Others there are who like to be made to laugh or to cry. This man never laughs. You may, perhaps, put down the book and smile at the incongruities of the rustic talk, but you do not laugh. Hardy's rustics will make you laugh a whole summer's day through, but Jefferies' rustics never. He is always in earnest. Hardy is a humorist; Jefferies is not. And, worst sin of all in him who courts popularity, he makes his readers think. Men who live alone, who walk about alone, who commune with Nature all day long, do not laugh, and do not make others laugh.

For these reasons, then, among others, Jefferies was never popular, despite the laudatory reviews and the readiness with which editors welcomed his work.

As to the remuneration which he received. With these considerations in our minds, let us next remember that publishing is a business undertaken, not for love of literature or of authors, but for profit, for a livelihood, for making money. It is, therefore, conducted upon "business principles." Now, in business of every kind, the first rule is that the business man must "make a profit on every transaction." You must pay your publisher, if you engage one, just as you must pay your solicitor. This is fair, just, and honest. You must pay him for his time and his trouble. He must be paid either by the author, or out of the books which he sells. The only question, therefore, not including certain awkward points into which we need not here enter—I am speaking only of honourable houses—is what proportion of a book's returns, or what sum, should be paid to a publisher for his trouble. Now, I have learned enough of the sale of Jefferies' books, and of the sums which he received for them, to be satisfied that his publishers' services were by no means exorbitantly paid by the sale of his books, and that no more, from a business point of view, could have been given. That is to say, if more had been given, it would have been as a free gift, or act of charity, which this author would have spurned. All these things, however, he could not understand, perhaps because they were never explained to him.

I have been told by one who knew Jefferies from boyhood that he was indolent, and would never have worked had it not been for necessity. His writings do not convey to me the idea of an indolent man. On the contrary, they are those of a man of an intellect so active that he must have been compelled to work. Yet one can understand that he could not work, after making the grand discovery of what his work should be, until his brain was overflowing with the subject. Generally it was a single and a simple subject round which he wove his tapestry. The subject once conceived, he could do nothing until his brain was charged and possessed with it.

His life has henceforth no incidents to record, except those of work and illness. He worked, he walked, he wrote, he walked again, he read, he watched and observed, he thought. That is his life, until illness fell upon him. Always a silent man, always a man of few friends, always a man of simple habits, in all weathers delighting to be out of doors, refusing to put on a great-coat or to carry an umbrella.

He changed his residence several times. From Surbiton, where he stayed for five years, he went to West Brighton, to a house called "Savernake." Did he himself christen it after the forest which he knew so well? Thence, in 1884, he went to Eltham, where he took a house in the Victoria Road. Then, I suppose, an irresistible yearning for some place far from men seized him, for he moved again, and went to live at a cottage two miles and a half from Crowborough Station, near Crowborough Hill, the highest spot in Sussex. Again he stayed for a few weeks on the Quantock Hills, Somerset. Lastly, he went to live at a house called Sea View, at Goring, where he died.