The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies

by Walter Besant

"The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon that wondrous world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had been, with these two, a clear gaze. They had been possessed of its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge; had been able to read its hieroglyphs as ordinary writing; to them the sights and sounds of night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense boughs, were simple occurrences whose origin, continuance, and laws they foreknew. They had planted together, and together they had felled; together they had, with the run of the years, mentally collected those remoter signs and symbols which seen in few were of runic obscurity, but all together made an alphabet. From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces when brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the species of the tree whence they stretched; from the quality of the wind's murmur through a bough they could in like manner name its sort afar off. They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were sound, or tainted with incipient decay; and by the state of its upper twigs the stratum that had been reached by its roots. The artifices of the seasons were seen by them from the conjuror's own point of view, and not from that of the spectator."

There are not in the whole of the English-speaking world, which now numbers close upon a hundred million, more, I suppose, than forty thousand who read Jefferies' works. Out of the forty thousand not one-half have read them all. For some are contented with the "Gamekeeper at Home," "Red Deer," and the "Amateur Poacher." Some have on their shelves "The Life in the Fields," or "The Open Air." Few, indeed, have read all those books which came from his brain in so full and clear a stream. This stream may be likened unto the river by whose banks Petrarch loved to wander; inasmuch as it springs full grown from the foot of a great bare precipice. All around is tumbled rock. So, among the heaped and broken rocks of disappointed hopes and baffled attempts, this full, strong, and clear stream leaped forth triumphant.

For the greater part of mankind Jefferies is too full. They cannot absorb so much; they are more at their ease with the last century poets who use to talk vaguely of the perfumed flowers, the rustling leaves, the finny tribe, and the warbling of the birds in the bosky grove. It fatigues them to read of so much that they can never see for themselves; it irritates them, perhaps, even to think that there is so much; they are more at home among their geraniums in the conservatory; they even call his style a cataloguing.

There is also another thing where Jefferies is outside the sympathies of the multitude. This solitary, who was never so happy as when he wandered alone upon the downs with no human creature in sight, is yet intensely human. All kinds of injustice, and especially social injustice, the grinding and robbery and oppression of the producer, the pride of caste and class, the pretensions of rank and the insolence of money—these things make him angry. Now, if there be one thing more lamentably sure and certain than another, it is that injustice does not make the average man angry. If money is to be made by injustice, he will be unjust. He will call his injustice, unless he covers and hides it up, the custom of the trade, and persuade himself that it is laudable and even Christian so to act. When another man speaks the truth about these injustices, he gets uncomfortable. Because, you see, he goes to church, and perhaps bears a character for eminent piety. There were doubtless churchwardens and sidesmen among those who, fifty years ago, used to send the little children of six to work for fourteen hours in the dark coal-pit. Jefferies had lived so little in towns and among men that he did not know any sophistry of trade custom, and when he heard of these customs his soul flamed up. It is not a side of his character which often comes into view; but it comes often enough to irritate many excellent people who live in great comfort by the exertions of other people, and plume themselves mightily upon their virtues, hereditary or otherwise. Jefferies could never have called himself a Socialist; but he sympathized with that part of Socialism which claims for every man the full profit of the labour of his hands.

"Dim woodlands made him wiser far
Than those who thresh their barren thought
With flails of knowledge dearly bought,
Till all his soul shone like a star
That flames at fringe of Heaven's bar,
There breaks the surf of space unseen
Against Hope's veil that lies between
Love's future and the woes that are.
His soul saw through the weary years—
Past war-bells' chimes and poor men's tears—
That day when Time shall bring to birth
(By many a heart whose hope seems vain,
And many a fight where Love slays Pain)
True Freedom, come to reign on earth."[1]

[1] These lines were communicated to me by the writer, Mr. H.H. von Sturmer, of Cambridge.

In thinking of Jefferies and the country life, one is continually tempted to compare him with Thoreau. There are some points of resemblance. Neither Thoreau nor Jefferies had a scientific training. I do not gather from any page in the works of the latter that he was a scientific botanist, entomologist, or ornithologist. Both were men of few wants and simple habits. Neither went to church, yet in the heart of each there was a profound sense of religion, which, in the case of Jefferies, took the form of a firm faith in the future destiny of the soul. Both men were impatient of authority and of imitation. Each desired to be self-sufficient. What Emerson says of Thoreau in respect of open air and exercise might have been written of Jefferies. "The length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. If shut up in the house he could not write at all."

In both men there was to be observed a great strength of common-sense. And again, there was this other point common to both, that no college—I here imitate Emerson on Thoreau—ever offered either of them a diploma or a professor's chair: no academy made either man its corresponding secretary, its founder, or even its member. And the following passage, written by Emerson of Thoreau, might be equally well written, mutatis mutandis, of Jefferies:

"Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields, hills and waters of his native town, that he made them known and interesting to all reading Americans, and to people over the sea. The river on whose banks he was born and died he knew from its springs to its confluence with the Merrimack. He had made summer and winter observations on it for many years, and at every hour of the day and night. Every fact which occurs in the bed, on the banks, or in the air over it; the fishes, and their spawning and nests, their manners, their food; the shad-flies which fill the air on a certain evening once a year, and which are snapped at by the fishes so ravenously that many of these die of repletion; the conical heaps of small stones on the river-shallows; the huge nests of small fishes, one of which will sometimes overfill a cart; the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, muskrat, otter, woodchuck and fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the banks vocal—were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen and fellow-creatures; so that he felt an absurdity or violence in any narrative of one of these by itself apart, and still more of its dimensions on an inch-rule, or in the exhibition of its skeleton, or the specimen of a squirrel or a bird in brandy. He liked to speak of the manners of the river, as itself a lawful creature, yet with exactness, and always to an observed fact. As he knew the river, so the ponds in this region."

Again, though Thoreau was short of stature and Jefferies tall, there is something similar in their faces: the lofty forehead; the full, serious eye; the large nose—these are features common to both. And to both was common—but Jefferies had, perhaps, the greater forbearance—a certain impatience with the common herd of mankind who know not, and care not for, Nature.