After too many years I found myself last week once again in the first
deer-park I ever saw; and the change was only in me. The same beautiful
creatures were there, of the dappled variety, feeding in little groups,
standing motionless as a stranger approached, and moving across the
open or amid the trees of the avenue with the silent, timid curiousness
of their kind. The sun was golden through cracks in the heavy clouds,
and the deer’s soft dapplings shone in its light, while when they moved
in any number they twinkled, glittered, almost smouldered.
Now and then an old stag, with antlers so broad and branching that
they seemed not his at all, but a borrowed head-dress assumed almost
as if for a charade, would pass with dignity and extreme deliberation
from one group to another; now and then a fawn would trot up to its
mother on legs of such slender delicacy that their serviceableness for
anything but the most exquisite decoration seemed impossible; and twice
there were royal battles between young stags, whose horns met in a
terrifying clash and clatter like spears on shields.
These contests were interesting not only for the attack and
counter-attack, but for the conduct of the older stags, two of which at
once approached very slowly, but full of purpose, to act as referees,
and, if necessary, to interfere. It was precisely the same in each
engagement, although they were half a mile apart. The second was the
more exciting, for once or twice the referee had to break in, and
once with a furious rush one of the fighters charged his opponent
clean into the river, down a steep bank, and then jumped in after
him and continued the battle. All this we saw as we sat under one of
the lime-trees in the beautiful avenue, and I remembered, as I sat
there, that just such sounds as these--the rattling of antlers in
concussion--we had been accustomed to hear years and years ago when we
were children and lodged in a cottage by the park gates. Certainly I
had not heard it since, but gradually it grew more and more familiar,
rising to the surface of consciousness after this so long submersion.
What the life of a park deer is I have no notion, nor was there anyone
to ask; but since that is thirty-five years ago at the least, it is
improbable that any of these lovely creatures, so rare and dainty and
fragile as to be almost unreal, are the same that used to thrill us at
that distant day; yet I repeat there was no visible change whatever,
save in me. Everything else was the same--the footpaths; the lime
avenue; the oak deer-fence, still often in need of repair; the large
house, once so awe-inspiring and now so ugly; the church by the Scotch
firs; the red sand of the road; the curious house with the bas-relief
of a hog on a plate of Sussex iron near the church--but most of all the
deer, just as fairylike, just as thrilling, as ever, and moving exactly
in their old mysterious ways. I was glad I had seen so few deer since,
and none dappled. I will not see these again for some time, just to
keep that emotion of surprise and delight green and sweet.
Considering how many deer-parks England has--though far from enough--it
is remarkable that the sight of deer should be such an epoch in the
life of the ordinary person. Yet the very word deer-park gives me
a quickening of the pulse, and, I hope, always will. I came away
wondering what Jamrach or Cross would want for a pair; but I have lost
the wish for them. They should be kept more extraordinary than that.
They must remain an event. I am even sorry for villagers who live near
deer-parks; while having so much, they miss so much.
The other creature from romance that I group with the deer as making a
red-letter day for a child, and indeed for some of us who are older,
is the peacock. Now and then, but how rarely, there would be an
excursion to some great mansion. The passage from room to room amid
gilt furniture and ancestral portraits was an excitement, no doubt;
but the most memorable sight of all was the blue breast of the peacock
on the terrace-wall, caught through one of the diamond panes. Until I
moved to London and contracted the Kew Gardens Sunday habit, I suppose
that I had not seen ten peacocks in my life, and now again I see them
ordinarily not once a year; but a little while ago I visited a poet
who lives in an old house in the very heart of the country, and there
I found many peacocks. They walked proudly and affectedly about the
garden, they sat on the walls and on the roofs of the out-buildings,
they screamed at each other and spread their tails. The complete skin
of one that had died burned blue in the hall.
I expressed the usual commonplace as to their destructiveness of
flowers.
“To me,” said the poet, “they _are_ flowers. One cannot have both, so I
have peacocks.”
From this, my first and latest deer-park, which has but a handful of
cottages near it, we walked to the market town, a mile and a half away,
and there I sought in vain for the little toy and sweet shop where all
those years ago my first bow and arrow was bought. I know just where
it stood, but new and imposing premises occupy its place. The bow was
given me by one of those bachelor visitors who have it in their power
at extraordinarily small cost to glorify the existence of small boys
and emparadise the world. It is among the deeper tragedies that one can
never receive one’s first bow and arrow again.