CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION

I think that I have never read, in all the sad chronicles of hapless

authors, anything more pitiful than the history of the last years of

this life so short, yet so rich in its sheaves of golden grain and piles

of purple fruit. Everything possible of long-continued torture,

necessity of work, poverty, anxiety, and hope of recovery continually

deferred, are crammed into the miserable record which closes this

volume.

Jefferies fell ill in December, 1881, five years and a half before the

end. He was attacked by a disease for which an operation of a very

severe and painful nature is the only cure. It is, however, one which,

in the hands of a skilful surgeon, is generally successful. Horrible to

relate, in his case, the operation proved unsuccessful, and had to be

repeated again and again. Four times in twelve months the dreadful

surgeon's knife was used upon this poor sufferer. For a whole year he

could do no work at all. The modest savings of the preceding years were

spent upon the physicians and the surgeons, and in the maintenance of

his household, while the pen of the breadwinner was perforce resting.

Before he was able to take pen in hand again, he was reduced to

something approaching destitution. You shall read directly how, when he

recovered, hope immediately returned, and he was once more happy in the

thought that now he could again work, though it was to begin the world

once more. Alas! the interval of hope was brief indeed. Another, and a

more mysterious disease attacked him. He felt an internal pain

constantly gnawing him; he could not eat without pain; he grew daily

weaker; he was at last no longer able to walk; he could only crawl.

Henceforth his days and nights were a long struggle against suffering,

with a determination, however, to go on with his work. Nothing more

wonderful than the courage and resolution of this man. As in youth he

had resolved to succeed somehow, though as yet ignorant of the better

way, so now he _would_ not be beaten by pain. His very best work, the

work which will cause him to live, the work which places him among the

writers of his country, to be remembered and to be read long after the

men of his generation are dead and forgotten, was actually done while he

was in this suffering. The "Pageant of Summer," for example: well, the

"Pageant of Summer" reads as if it were the work of a man revelling in

the warmth of the quivering air; of a man in perfect health and

strength, body and mind at ease, surrendered wholly to the influence of

the flowers and the sunshine, at peace, save for the natural sadness of

one who communes much with himself on change, decay, and death. And yet

the "Pageant of Summer" was written while he was in deadly pain and

torture. Again, between 1883 and 1886 he published those collections of

papers called "Life in the Fields" and "The Open Air." He also wrote

"Red Deer," "Amaryllis," and a quantity of papers which have yet to be

collected and published. If, even for a moment, he had an interval of

strength, his busy pen began again to race over the paper, hasting to

set down the thoughts that filled his brain.

His disease was discovered, after a period of intense suffering, to be

an ulceration of the small intestine. It was weakness induced by this

disease, which caused other complications, under which he gradually

sank.

I suppose that Jefferies could never be considered a strong man. As a

boy, tall, active, nervous, he was muscularly weaker than his younger

brother. At the age of eighteen he showed symptoms which caused fear of

a decline. Perhaps his intense love of the open air indicated the kind

of medicine which he most needed. When he could no longer go into the

open air he died. Perhaps, too, the consciousness of physical weakness,

the sense of impending early death, caused him to yearn with so much

longing after physical perfection and the fuller life which he clearly

saw was possible. Those who are doomed to die young--as has been often

observed--have the deepest sense and the keenest enjoyment of life.

Still, though not a strong man, he was apparently a healthy man. He

lived at all times a simple and a healthy life; there was nothing to

show that he was going to be struck down by so cruel an illness.

The period of greatest suffering seems to have been in the year 1884.

The weakness following it set in some time during the year 1885.

He writes to Mr. Charles Longman in May of the latter year:

"Your suggestion"--that he should write a year-book of Nature--"of

a diary out of doors would no doubt make a good book, and I shall

give serious thought to it. My great difficulty is the physical

difficulty of writing. Since the spine gave way, there is no

position in which I can lie or sit so as to use a pen without

distress. Even a short letter like this is painful. Consequently, a

vast mass of ideas go into space, for I cannot write them down."

In August he returns to the subject:

"Many thanks for your kind letter and interest in my weakness. I

sometimes rather need moral support of this sort, for after so long

the spirits show signs of flagging, and the way seems endless. Such

sympathy, therefore, helps me very much.... I should have liked to

have written the book you proposed. I made several attempts, but it

never satisfied me. I am glad, at all events, that you have

forgiven my unintentional nonfulfilment of the promise. Even yet,

perhaps, I may do something in that direction. Professor Gamgee,

under whom I have been lately, says that complete recovery would

follow a few weeks' basking in South Africa, or, failing that,

Southern Europe. There is plenty of energy in me still. I sometimes

dream of using the rifle--a dream, indeed, to a man who can with

difficulty drag himself across a field."

In June he writes to his friend, Mr. C.P. Scott, of the _Manchester

Guardian_:

"Since I last wrote to you I have been very seriously ill. The

starvation went on and on, and no one could relieve it, till I had

to stay in the bedroom, and finally went to bed, fainting nearly

all day and night, and yet craving for food, half delirious, and in

the most dreadful state. How I endured I cannot tell. At last I had

Dr. Kidd down from London, and in forty-eight hours his treatment

checked the disease. I got downstairs, next, out of doors in a

Bath-chair, and now I can walk two hundred yards. But I am still

the veriest shadow of a man--my nerves are gone to pieces--and he

warns me that it will take months to effect a cure. Of that,

however, he is certain. Under his advice I have left Eltham, and am

staying here (Rotherfield, Sussex) till a cottage can be found for

me near Tunbridge Wells.... My last piece of MS. appears in

_Longman_ this month, and I have now no more left, having exhausted

all I wrote when able. At least, there remains but one

piece--'Nature in the Louvre.' It is about a beautiful statue that

interested me greatly, and which seems to have escaped notice in

England. I think you would like the ideas expressed in it."

At this time it was suggested that he should make an application to the

Royal Literary Fund. He writes both to Mr. Longman and to Mr. Scott in

the strongest terms upon the subject. I do not, for my own part, in the

least agree with Jefferies in his wholesale condemnation of that useful

society, and therefore have the less hesitation in printing what he says

of it:

'August 18, 1885.

"You have put before me a very great temptation. It is impossible

for you to know how great, for there can be no doubt that it is the

winter that is my enemy. Last winter I was indoors six months--in

fact, it was eight before I really got out of doors, most of this

time helpless, sitting in an easy chair before the fire, my feet on

a pillow, and legs wrapped up in a railway-rug, up and down stairs

on hands and knees, and unable even to dress myself. Even now it

tears me to pieces even to walk a short distance. So that to pass

next winter in warmth seems almost like life, besides the great

possibility of complete recovery. There would be also the pleasure

of the sights and scenes of Algiers or South Africa. In short, it

has been a very great temptation, and I am sure it was most kind of

you to think of me. But the Royal Literary Fund is a thing to

accept aid from which humiliates the recipient past all bounds; it

is worse than the workhouse. If long illness ultimately drove me to

the workhouse, I should feel no disgrace, having done my utmost to

fight with difficulties. Everyone has a right to that last relief.

If this fund were maintained by pressmen, authors, journalists,

editors, publishers, newspaper proprietors, and so on, that would

be quite another matter. There would be no humiliation--rather the

contrary--and in time one might subscribe some day and help someone

else. It is no such thing. It is kept up by dukes and marquises,

lords and titled people, with a Prince at their head, and a vast

quantity of trumpet-blowing, in order that these people may say

they are patrons of literature! Patrons of literature! Was there

ever such a disgrace in the nineteenth century? Patrons of

literature! The thing is simply abominable! I dare say if I were a

town-born man I should not think so, but to me it wears an aspect

of standing insult.

"No doubt we ought to combine--all who have ever touched a

pen--then we could assist each other in a straightforward and manly

way.

"The temptation to me is very great indeed, because there is no

question that I have been slowly sinking for years for want of some

such travel or stimulus working through the nervous system. But I

have made up my mind to say no. I would rather run the risk of

quitting this world altogether next winter than degrade myself in

that way.

"I am trying all I can to move altogether to the neighbourhood of

the sea. Possibly, even Dorset or Devon might answer; or, failing

that, I may try to pay a short visit to Schwalbach, and see if the

natural iron medicine of a mineral spring may do what compound

physic cannot. But I fancy the sea residence would be preferable.

"Change is the only thing that as yet has affected me, which seems

to point conclusively to an exhausted system rather than to

disease."

To Mr. Scott he writes in a similar strain. It galls him to think of

being "patronized," and, indeed, if that were the view taken by the

council of the Royal Literary Fund, I, for one, should be the first to

agree with him. But it is not. Jefferies was wrong about the supporters

of the Fund which is, in fact, assisted by everybody who ever makes any

success in literature, and by every writer of any distinction either in

letters or in other fields. He adds, however, a paragraph in which I

cordially agree, and to the carrying out of the suggestion contained in

it some of us have, during the last three years, devoted a great deal of

time and effort.

"We ought, of course, to have a real Literary Association, to which

subscription should be almost semi-compulsory. We ought to have

some organization. Literature is young yet--scarce fifty years

old. The legal and medical professions have had a start of a

thousand years. Our profession is young yet, but will be the first

of all in the time to come."

He goes on to speak of his health:

"Ever since Christmas I have been trying to move to the sea-coast,

but I cannot effect it. I cannot stick to work long enough to

produce any result, the extreme weakness will not let me, so that I

cannot do anything. Whatever I wish to do, it seems as if a voice

said, 'No, you shall not do it. Feebleness forbids.' I think I

should like a good walk. No. I think I should like to write. No. I

think I should like to rest. No. Always No to everything. Even

writing this letter has made the spine ache almost past endurance.

I cannot convey to you how miserable it is to be impotent; to feel

yourself full of ideas and work, and to be unable to effect

anything; to sit and waste the hours. It is absolutely maddening."

In November he writes again. He is at Crowborough, where the fine air at

first seemed to be restoring him. He could walk about in the field at

the back of the house.

"Suddenly I went down as if I had been shot. All the improvement

was lost, and now I have been indoors three months, steadily

becoming weaker and more emaciated every day. It is, in fact,

starvation. They cannot feed me, try what they will. No one would

believe what misery it is, and what extreme debility it produces.

The worst of all is the helplessness. Often I am compelled to sit

or lie for days and think, think, till I feel as if I should become

insane, for my mind seems as clear as ever, and the anxiety and

eager desire to do something is as strong as in my best days. There

is an ancient story of a living man tied to a dead one, and that is

like me; mind alive and body dead. I fear that my old friends will

give me up in time, because I cannot travel the path of friendship

now, and the Cymric proverb says that it soon grows covered with

briars."

A letter, dated June 19, 1886, is too sad to be quoted. His dependence

on others, even for the putting on of his clothes, his longing for the

sea-coast, which he thinks is certain to do him good, his lament over

the poverty which, through no fault of his own, has fallen upon him,

fill up this melancholy letter. Day and night there is no cessation of

pain.

Help of all kinds was forthcoming from friends whom one must not name:

money, the offer of a house on the sea-coast; but there was the

difficulty of travelling. How was he to be moved? This difficulty was

got over, and he went to Bexhill for a time, returning to Crowborough in

September. The sea had done him good. On the night of his return, he

enjoyed a tranquil sleep for some hours, and awoke without pain.

Among the letters sent to me by Mr. Scott is one from a well-known

physician who had been consulted on the case.

"There is no doubt," he says, "that there is some tuberculous

affection of his lungs, though, so far as I have been able to make

out, this does not seem to be at all in an active state.

"The serious complaints which make his life a misery to him I

believe to be purely functional. He strikes me as being a very

marked example of hysteria in man, though in his case, as in many

among women, the commoner phenomena of hysteria are absent. I am

surprised to hear that he spoke warmly of my treatment, for he

would not admit to his ordinary attendant, nor to me, that his

symptoms had undergone any palliation whatever. He is prejudiced

against any treatment, and the result, according to him, always

agrees with his prediction."

Evidently an extremely difficult and nervous patient to treat. But that

might be expected. In October of 1886, Mr. Scott proposed to raise a

fund among the friends and admirers of his works which should be devoted

to sending him to a warmer climate. He consented, though with pain and

bitterness of soul. "I have written," he says, "fourteen books." He

enumerates them. "Scarcely anyone living has done so much." Yet he

forgets to consider for how small and select an audience he has written.

"All of them have been praised by the reviews. I cannot help feeling it

hard, after so much work, to come to such disgrace." It was hard, it was

cruelly hard. While the pensions of the Civil List--a breach of trust if

ever there was one--are bestowed upon daughters of distinguished

officers and widows of civil servants, such a man as Jefferies, for

whose assistance the grant is yearly asked and voted, is left to starve.

It is indeed cruelly hard on literature that the rulers of the country

should be so blind, so deaf, so pitiless--so dishonest. They made Burns

a gauger. Well: that was something. Could they not have made Jefferies a

police-constable, for instance? They gave him nothing: it would have

been useless to ask any Government to give anything: they wanted all the

money for persons for whom it was never intended. There never has

been--there is not now--not even at a time when Prime Ministers and

ex-Cabinet Ministers write articles for monthly magazines, any

Government which has had the least concern for, knowledge of, or touch

with, literature, or its makers. Authors must develop and increase their

own Society, and then they will not have to ask the Government for any

Civil Pension list at all, and ministers may go on asking for the grant

for the support of science and letters, and giving it all to their own

creatures, and to the daughters, widows, and sisters of officers. It is

hard, it is cruelly hard, as Jefferies said: it is a hardship and a

disgrace to all of us that such a man as Jefferies should "come to such

disgrace."

Well, the fund was raised, quietly, among the private friends of its

promoters. But it came too late for the Algerian or South African

expedition. The sick man was sent, however, to the seaside; to a house

at Goring, on the Sussex coast. From this place he wrote to Mr. Scott a

little history of his illness, the nature of which I have already

sketched. The description by a highly-sensitive man, then in a most

nervous condition, of the horrible pain which he had been enduring is

most terrible to read, and is altogether too terrible to be quoted. I

dare not quote the whole of this dreadful story of long-continued

agony. Take, however, the end of it. At last his wounds were somehow

made to heal.

"Now imagine my joy. The wounds were well at last. I was free. I

could walk and sit--actually sit down. I could work. I was very

faint and ill, but fresh air would soon set that right. All these

expenses had swallowed up a large share of my savings, and I had

practically to begin life again. But I did not mind that. I went to

work joyously.

"Now judge again of my disappointment. Within two months--in

February--I was seized with a mysterious wasting disease,

accompanied by much pain. I gradually wasted away to mere bones. By

degrees this pain increased till it became almost insupportable. I

can compare it to nothing but the flame of a small spirit lamp

continually burning within me. Sometimes it seemed like a rat

always gnaw, gnaw, night and day. I had no sleep. Everything I ate

or drank seemed to add fuel to the flame. The local doctors could

do nothing, so I went to London again, and in the course of the

two years and more that it lasted I was under five of the leading

London physicians. Altogether I had some forty prescriptions, and

took something like sixty drugs, besides being put on diet. It was

not the slightest use, and it became evident that they had no idea

what was really the matter with me. The pain went on, burn, burn,

burn. If I wrote a volume I could not describe it to you, this

terrible scorching pain, night and day. There is nothing in medical

books like it, except the pain that follows corrosive sublimate

which burns the tissues. It was at times so maddening that I

dreaded to go a few miles alone by rail lest I should throw myself

out of the window of the carriage. I worked and wrote all this

time, and some of my best work was done in this intense agony. I

received letters from New Zealand, from the United States, even

from the islands of the Pacific, from people who had read my

writings. It seemed so strange that I should read these letters,

and yet all the time, to be writhing in agony.

"At last, in April, 1885, nature gave way, and I broke down

utterly, and could only lie on the sofa in a fainting condition. In

a few days I became so helpless and weak that there appeared little

chance of my living. Someone suggested that Dr. Kidd should be sent

for. He came on Sunday morning, and found me nearly ended. I was

fainting during the examination. He discovered that it was

ulceration of the intestines. You know how painful an ulcer is

anywhere--say on your lip--now for over two years this ulceration

had been burning its way in the intestines.

"He put me on milk diet, malt bread, malt extract, malted food,

meat shredded and pounded in a mortar, raw beef, and so on. In

forty-eight hours the pain was better. For three weeks I improved

and hoped. I think that had the diet been then altered to the

ordinary food, I might have made a recovery; instead of which it

was kept up for nine weeks, at the end of which I had lost all the

improvement, and was so weak that I could but just crawl up and

down stairs. I attribute my subsequent exhaustion to the continued

use of milk, which has the effect of destroying nervous energy."

* * * * *

'Oct. 22, 1886.

"I have been obliged to set all aside from extreme feebleness.

During the last four weeks, indeed, the weakness and emaciation

have become very great, so much so that I almost fancy the bones

waste. But what I feel most is the loss of fresh air from inability

to go out. The last two days have been dry, so that I have been

able to get up and down by the house a little.

"Still, I should have managed somehow to write to you were it not

for the great dislike I feel to this begging business. You must not

take offence at this, though you may think me very foolish. I keep

putting it off and putting it off, till now I suppose I must do it,

or stay the winter indoors in helplessness. To-day I have written

to obtain the information necessary to fill up the form you sent.

"In September, 1885, my spine seemed suddenly to snap. It happened

in ten minutes--quite suddenly. It felt as if one of the vertebrae

had been taken away. It was no doubt a form of paralysis. I had to

take to the sofa again, and was confined to the house for over

seven months, quite helpless. I could not undress myself. At

Christmas, other troubles set in; the local doctor gave me up. He

told my wife that nothing could be done for me, and that the only

hope was in my keeping in good spirits. The misery of that dreadful

winter will never be forgotten. At length nature seemed to revive a

little, and I got downstairs, and soon after Miss Scott came to see

me, and you sent me to the sea. On returning from the sea I slowly

lost ground again. In the summer I had an attack of vomiting

blood--of itself enough to alarm most people. By October I was

confined indoors again. At last I got down here.

"Besides all these sufferings I had another trial--a loss by

death--one that I cannot dwell upon;"--it was the death of his

youngest child--"but it broke me down very much.

"Of the loss of all my savings I need not say much. But it is

difficult to begin the world afresh"--alas! he was just about to

end the world--"even with good health.

"With truth I think I may say that there are few, very few, perhaps

none, living who have gone through such a series of diseases. There

are many dead--many who have killed themselves for a tenth part of

the pain--there are few living.

"My wearied and exhausted system constantly craves rest. My brain

is always asking for rest. I never sleep. I have not slept now for

five years properly, always waking, with broken bits of sleep, and

restlessness, and in the morning I get up more weary than I went to

bed. Rest, that is what I need. You thought naturally that it was

work I needed; but I have been at work, and next time I will tell

you all of it. It is not work, it is _rest_ for the brain and the

nervous system. I have always had a suspicion that it was the

ceaseless work that caused me to go wrong at first.

"It has taken me a long time to write this letter; it will take you

but a few minutes to read it. Had you not sent me to the sea in

the spring I do not think that I should have been alive to write

it."

Was there ever a more miserable tale of slow torture? Parts of it--the

parts relating to his operations--I have omitted. Enough remains.

Picture to yourself this tall, gaunt man reduced to a skeleton, not able

to use his pen for more than a few minutes at a time, his spine broken

down, spitting blood, lying back on the sofa, his mind full of splendid

thoughts which he _cannot_ put upon paper, dictating sometimes when he

was strong enough, resolved on making money so as to save himself the

"disgrace" of applying to the Literary Fund, full of pain by day and

night, growing daily weaker, but never losing heart or hope--is there in

the whole calamitous history of authors a picture more full of sadness

and of pity than this?

He writes again on January 10, 1887. He is no worse. The letter is about

money matters--that is to say, he has no money.

On February 2 he writes again. He has been able to dictate a little.

"I hope to be able to do more work after a time; when the weather

becomes sufficiently warm for me to sit out of doors. With me the

power to write is almost entirely dependent upon being out of

doors. Confined indoors, I have nothing to write, and I cannot

express my ideas if they do occur to me so boldly. You have no idea

what a difference it makes. A little air and movement seem to

brighten up the mind and give it play. I am in hope, too, that as

the warmth comes on the sea will help me more. Up to the present

the winter has gone well."

The last letter to Mr. Scott was written on March 23. He is pleased and

surprised to hear that the fund raised for him amounts to so much.

Perhaps it will enable him to go abroad presently. Meantime, he has had

a relapse--an attack of haemorrhage--"and then so feeble that I have not

been able to dictate. This loss of time worries me more than I can tell

you."

And so with thanks to this good friend, Richard Jefferies lays down his

pen for the last time. The busy hand which has written so much will

write no more. He can no longer dictate. His very feebleness will soon

be past, and he will be at rest, whether in the unconscious clay-cold

rest of the dark grave, or in that better life of the Fuller Soul of

which he had so great and glorious a Vision--who knoweth?

* * * * *

You have read the life of Richard Jefferies. You have seen how the

country lad, ill-educated, slenderly provided with books or friends,

formed in early life a resolution to succeed in letters. The resolution

was formed when as yet he had no knowledge or thought of style. You have

read how he fought long years against ill-success, against the ridicule

and coldness of his friends, but still kept up his courage; how he did

succeed at length, yet not at all in the way that at first he hoped.

That way would have taken him along the paths trodden by those who write

romances and stories to beguile their brothers and sisters, and to cheat

them into forgetfulness of their disappointments and anxieties; that

way, by which he wished to go, would have led him quickly to the ease

of fortune which at all times he ardently desired. It is foolish, and

worse than foolish, to pretend that any man--even the best of men, even

the most philosophic of men--desires poverty, which is dependence;

therefore one does not blame this man for desiring fortune. The way,

however, by which he succeeded was a far higher and a nobler way, though

he understood not that at first.

You have seen, also, not only that his early life was that of an obscure

reporter for a little country paper, but that his first ambition was

altogether for the making of money rather than for the production of

good work. The love of good work, as such, grew gradually in him. At

first it is not apparent at all. At first we have nothing but a

commonplace lad, poor, and therefore eager to make money, and fondly

thinking that it can be made by writing worthless and commonplace

stories. Nothing in his early life has been concealed. You have read his

very words, where they could be recovered. They are in no way remarkable

words; they are generally, in fact, commonplace. Nothing, except a

steady and consistent belief in his own future, the nature of which he

does not even suspect, reveals the power latent in his mind. There is

nothing at all in these early utterances to show the depths of poetry in

his soul. Nay, I think there were none of these depths in him at first.

So long as he worked among men, and contemplated their ways, he felt no

touch of poetry, he saw no gleam of light. Mankind seemed to him sordid

and creeping; either oppressor or oppressed. Away from men, upon the

breezy down and among the woods, he is filled with thoughts which, at

first, vanish like the photographs of scenery upon the eye. Presently he

finds out the way to fix those photographs. Then he is transformed, but

not suddenly; no, not suddenly. When he discovers the Gamekeeper at

Home, he begins to be articulate; with every page that follows he

becomes more articulate. At first he draws a faithful picture of the

cottager, the farmer, the gamekeeper, the poacher; the pictures are set

in appropriate scenery; by degrees the figures vanish and the setting

remains. But it is no longer the same; it is now infused with the very

soul of the painter. The woods speak to us, through him; the very

flowers speak and touch our hearts, through him. The last seven years of

his life were full, indeed, of pain and bodily torture; but they were

glorified and hallowed by the work which he was enabled to do. Nay, they

even glorify and hallow all the life that went before. We no longer see

the commonplace young country reporter who tries to write commonplace

and impossible stories--we watch the future poet of the "Pageant of

Summer" whose early struggles we witness while he is seeking to find

himself. Presently he speaks. HE HAS FOUND HIMSELF; he has obtained the

prayer of his heart; he has been blessed with the FULLER SOUL.

* * * * *

At the last, during the long communings of the night when he lay

sleepless, happy to be free, if only for a few moments, from pain, the

simple old faith came back to him. He had arrived long before, as we

have seen, at the grand discovery: that the perfect soul wants the

perfect body, and that the perfect body must be inhabited by the

perfect soul. To this conclusion, you have seen, he was led by Nature

herself. Now he beheld clearly--perhaps more clearly than ever--the way

from this imperfect and fragmentary life to a fuller, happier life

beyond the grave. He had no need of priest; he wanted no other assurance

than the voice and words of Him who swept away all priests. The man who

wrote the "Story of My Heart;" the man who was filled to overflowing

with the beauty and order of God's handiwork; the man who felt so deeply

the shortness, and imperfections, and disappointments of life that he

was fain to cry aloud that all happens by chance; the man who had the

vision of the Fuller Soul, died listening with faith and love to the

words contained in the Old Book.

* * * * *

What follows is written by his friend, Mr. J.W. North, who was with him

during the last days.

"It was in the early summer, two or three months before his death,

that I saw Jefferies for the last time alive. He had then been

living at Goring for some short time, and this was my first visit

to him there. I was pleased to find that his house was far

pleasanter than the dreary and bleak cottage which he had rented at

Crowborough. It had a view of the sea, a warm southern exposure,

and a good and interesting garden: in one corner a quaint little

arbour, with a pole and vane, and near the centre a genuine

old-fashioned draw-well. Poor fellow! Painfully, with short

breathing, and supported on one side by Mrs. Jefferies and on the

other by myself, he walked round this enclosure, noticing and

drawing our attention to all kinds of queer little natural objects

and facts. Between the well and the arbour was a heap of rough,

loose stones, overgrown by various creeping flowers. This was the

home of a common snake, discovered there by Harold, and poor

Jefferies stood, supported by us, a yard or so away and peered into

every little cranny and under every leaf with eyes well used to

such a search until some tiny gleam, some minute cold glint of

light, betrayed the snake. Weakness and pain seemed forgotten for

the moment--alas! only for the moment. Uneasily he sat in the

little arbour telling me how his disease seemed still to puzzle the

doctors; how he felt well able in mind to work, plenty of mental

energy, but so weak, _so fearfully weak_, that he could no longer

write with his own hand; that his wife was patient and good to help

him. He had nobody to come and talk with him of the world of

literature and art. Why couldn't I come and settle by? There was

plenty to paint. Though Goring itself was one of the ugliest places

in the world, there was Arundel, and its noble park, and river, and

castle close by. I must go and see it the very next day, and see

whether I could not work there, and come back every day and cheer

him. I was the best doctor, after all.

"Poor fellow! I did not then know or believe that he was so utterly

without sympathetic society except his devoted wife. It was so. I

am one of the dullest companions in the world; but I had sympathy

with his work, and knowledge, too, of his subjects. Well, nothing

would do but that I must go to Arundel the next day, and Mrs.

Jefferies must show me the town. 'He would do well enough for one

day. A good neighbour would come in, and with little Phyllis and

the maid he would be safe.'

"Therefore we went to Arundel (a short journey by train), and on

coming back found him standing against the door-post to welcome us.

"I have seldom been more touched than by my experience of that

evening, finding, amongst other things, that he had partly planned

and insisted on this Arundel trip to get us away so that he might,

unrebuked, spend some of his latest hard earnings in a pint of

'Perrier Jouet' for my supper.

"Do you know Goring churchyard? It is one of those dreary,

over-crowded, dark spots where the once-gravelled paths are green

with slimy moss, and it was a horror to poor Jefferies. More than

once he repeated the hope that he might not be laid there, and he

chose the place where his widow at last left him--amongst the

brighter grass and flowers at Broadwater.

"He died at Goring at half-past two on Sunday morning, August 14,

1887. His soul was released from a body wasted to a skeleton by six

long weary years of illness. For nearly two years he had been too

weak to write, and all his delightful work, during that period, was

written by his wife from his dictation. Who can picture the torture

of these long years to him, denied as he was the strength to walk

so much as one hundred yards in the world he loved so well? What

hero like this, fighting with Death face to face so long, fearing

and knowing, alas! too well, that no struggles could avail, and,

worse than all, that his dear ones would be left friendless and

penniless. Thus died a man whose name will be first, perhaps for

ever, in his own special work."

* * * * *

'Monday, Aug. 15,

"... I went yesterday, expecting once more to speak with him. I

found him lying _dead, twelve hours dead_. I saw him with Mrs.

Jefferies and their little Phyllis. A pitiful sight to see them

kiss the poor cold face! God help them! All through his last days

his wife was with him _day and night_; a young country girl, who

behaved nobly all through, was her only help.... His long, long

illness of six years (four years before at Eltham he looked near

death)--this long, wearisome time had almost persuaded many who

knew him not intimately that his illness was partly imaginary. He

proved it otherwise. A soldier who in health, high spirits, and

excitement, rides to what appears certain death is called a hero:

glory and honours are heaped upon him; but what is that compared

with years of fighting without cessation, and the _absolute

certainty_ of defeat always present to the mind? I asked Mrs.

Jefferies if he had made a will. She said: 'No; surely it would

have been useless, we have nothing. A woman singly, strong as I am,

could rough it; but if something can be done for the children--.'

Something shall be done. I had to call at my framemaker's to put

off an appointment. I told him roughly what had happened to me

yesterday. He had never heard of Jefferies, and knew nothing of his

work; but he said, 'I shall be glad if anything can be done if you

will put us down for two guineas.' All those who are country born

and bred, and have a heart inside their body, have always

recognised and admired poor Jefferies' writing. Shall I say what I

think and _know_, that in all our literature until now he has never

had a rival, and that it is most likely he will never be equalled?

In a hundred years he will be only more truly appreciated than at

present. The number of men who combine the love and the knowledge

of literary work is more limited, perhaps, in this age than in any

previous one. Few people, again, of intelligence and refinement of

heart and mind live completely in the country, and much, very much

of his work, will be always unintelligible to those who cannot

exist in a country-house unless it is full of frequently-changing

guests. I have been trying by a different art for thirty

years--equal to almost the whole of his life on earth--to convey an

idea to others of some such subjects, and I feel with shame that in

the work of half a year I do not get so near the heart and truth of

Nature as he in one paragraph. With strict charge that it should

not leave my hands, Mrs. Jefferies lent me the proof of an article

which appeared in _Longman's Magazine_ in spring, 1886. It was the

very last copy he wrote with his own hand. Since then his wife

wrote from his dictation. Read this quotation from it, which

touched me greatly yesterday:

"'I wonder to myself how they can all get on without me; how they

manage, bird and flower, without ME, to keep the calendar for them.

For I noted it so carefully and lovingly day by day.'

"And this:

"'They go on without me, orchis-flower and cowslip. I cannot number

them all. I hear, as it were, the patter of their feet--flower and

buds, and the beautiful clouds that go over, with the sweet rush of

rain and burst of sun glory among the leafy trees. They go on, and

I am no more than the least of the empty shells that strew the

sward of the hill.'

"One thing I saw in one of his last note-books: 'Three great giants

are against me--disease, despair, and poverty.'

"One thing more. His wife said that their time had been for long

spent in prayer together and reading St. Luke.

"Almost his last intelligible words were, 'Yes, yes; that is so.

Help, Lord, for Jesus' sake. Darling, good-bye. God bless you and

the children, and save you all from such great pain.'

* * * * *

"He was buried at Broadwater, by Worthing, Sussex.

"In the gentlest, sweet, soft, sunny rain he was borne along the

path to his grave in the grass, and when the last part of the

service for the dead had been read, well and solemnly, and we

turned away leaving him for ever on earth, the large tears from

heaven fell thick and fast, and over and over again came to me the

saying, 'Happy are the dead that the rain rains on.' The modest

home-made wreath of wild wood-clematis and myrtle my wife had sent

pleased me by happy symbolism--for as the myrtle is, so will his

memory be, 'for ever green.'

"Mourn, little harebells, o'er the lea;

Ye stately foxgloves fair to see;

Ye woodbines hanging bonnilie

In scented bowers;

Ye roses on your thorny tree,

The first o' flowers.

"Mourn, Spring, thou darling of the year;

Ilk cowslip-cup shall kep a tear;

Thou Summer, while each corny spear

Shoots up its head,

Thy gay, green, flowery tresses shear

For him that's dead."

"J.W.N."

APPENDIX I.

LIST OF JEFFERIES' WORKS.

(_The Dates of the First Editions only are given._)

REPORTING, EDITING AND AUTHORSHIP. John Snow and Co., Ivy Lane;

Alfred Bull, Victoria Street, Swindon, 1873. Handbook.

A MEMOIR OF THE GODDARDS OF NORTH WILTS. Published by the author,

Coate, Swindon, 1873.

JACK BRASS, EMPEROR OF ENGLAND. T. Pettit, and Co., 23, Frith

Street, Soho, 1873. Pamphlet.

THE SCARLET SHAWL. Tinsley Bros., 1874. 1 vol. novel.

RESTLESS HUMAN HEARTS. Tinsley Bros., 1875. 3 vols.

SUEZ-CIDE. John Snow and Co., Ivy Lane, 1876. Pamphlet.

WORLD'S END. Tinsley Bros., 1877. 3 vols.

GAME-KEEPER AT HOME. Smith and Elder, 1878. 1 vol.

AMATEUR POACHER. Smith and Elder, 1881.

WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. Smith and Elder, 1879. 1 vol.

GREENE FERNE FARM. Smith and Elder, 1880. 1 vol.

HODGE AND HIS MASTERS. Smith and Elder, 1880. 2 vols.

ROUND ABOUT A GREAT ESTATE. Smith and Elder, 1880. 1 vol.

WOOD MAGIC. Cassell, 1881. 1 vol.

BEVIS. Sampson Low and Co., 1882. 3 vols.

NATURE NEAR LONDON. Chatto and Windus, 1883. 1 vol.

STORY OF MY HEART. Longmans, 1883. 1 vol.

THE DEWY MORN. Chapman and Hall, 1884. 2 vol. novel.

LIFE OF THE FIELDS. Chatto and Windus, 1884. 1 vol.

RED-DEER. Longmans, 1884. 1 vol.

AFTER LONDON. Cassell, 1885. 1 vol.

THE OPEN AIR. Chatto and Windus, 1885. 1 vol.

AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR. Sampson Low and Co., 1887. 1 vol.

APPENDIX II.

LIST OF PAPERS STILL UNPUBLISHED.

MY OLD VILLAGE. _Longman's Magazine_, October, 1887.

HOURS OF SPRING. _Longman's Magazine_, 1885.

APRIL GOSSIP. _St. James's Gazette._

SOME APRIL SWEETS. _Pall Mall Gazette._

THE MAKERS OF SUMMER. _Pall Mall Gazette._

WALKS IN THE WHEATFIELDS. _English Illustrated Magazine._

SOMERSET IN JUNE. _English Illustrated Magazine_, October, 1887.

BIRDS' NESTS. _St. James's Gazette._

FIELD SPORTS IN ART. _Art Journal._

NATURE IN THE LOUVRE. _Magazine of Art._

NATURE AND BOOKS. _Fortnightly Review._

BUCKHURST PARK. _Standard._

COUNTRY PLACES. _Manchester Guardian._

THE JULY GRASS. _Pall Mall Gazette._

THE COUNTRY-SIDE. _Manchester Guardian._

WINDS OF HEAVEN. _Chambers' Journal._

THE COUNTRY SUNDAY. _Longman's Magazine_, June, 1887.

SWALLOW-TIME. _Standard._

HOUSE-MARTINS. _Standard._

AMONG THE NUTS. _Standard._

LOCALITY AND NATURE. _Pall Mall Gazette._

FIELD WORDS AND WAYS. _Chambers' Journal._

COTTAGE IDEAS. _Chambers' Journal._

STEAM ON COUNTRY ROADS. _Standard._

THE TIME OF YEAR. _Pall Mall Gazette._

MIXED DAYS OF MAY AND DECEMBER. _Pall Mall Gazette._

JUST BEFORE WINTER. _Chambers' Journal._

MY CHAFFINCH. _Pall Mall Gazette._

APPENDIX III.

LETTER TO THE _TIMES_, NOVEMBER, 1872.

SIR,--The Wiltshire agricultural labourer is not so highly paid as those

of Northumberland, nor so low as those of Dorset; but in the amount of

his wages, as in intelligence and general position, he may fairly be

taken as an average specimen of his class throughout a large portion of

the kingdom.

As a man, he is usually strongly built, broad-shouldered, and massive in

frame, but his appearance is spoilt by the clumsiness of his walk and

the want of grace in his movements. Though quite as large in muscle, it

is very doubtful if he possesses the strength of the seamen who may be

seen lounging about the ports. There is a want of firmness, a certain

disjointed style, about his limbs, and the muscles themselves have not

the hardness and tension of the sailor's. The labourer's muscle is that

of a cart-horse, his motions lumbering and slow. His style of walk is

caused by following the plough in early childhood, when the weak limbs

find it a hard labour to pull the heavy-nailed boots from the thick clay

soil. Ever afterwards he walks as if it were an exertion to lift his

legs. His food may, perhaps, have something to do with the deadened

slowness which seems to pervade everything he does--there seems a lack

of vitality about him. It consists chiefly of bread and cheese, with

bacon twice or thrice a week, varied with onions, and if he be a milker

(on some farms) with a good "tuck-out" at his employer's expense on

Sundays. On ordinary days he dines at the fashionable hour of six or

seven in the evening--that is, about that time his cottage scents the

road with a powerful odour of boiled cabbage, of which he eats an

immense quantity. Vegetables are his luxuries, and a large garden,

therefore, is the greatest blessing he can have. He eats huge onions

raw; he has no idea of flavouring his food with them, nor of making

those savoury and inviting messes or vegetable soups at which the French

peasantry are so clever. In Picardy I have often dined in a peasant's

cottage, and thoroughly enjoyed the excellent soup he puts upon the

table for his ordinary meal. To dine in an English labourer's cottage

would be impossible. His bread is generally good, certainly; but his

bacon is the cheapest he can buy at small second-class shops--oily,

soft, wretched stuff; his vegetables are cooked in detestable style, and

eaten saturated with the pot-liquor. Pot-liquor is a favourite soup. I

have known cottagers actually apply at farmers' kitchens, not only for

the pot-liquor in which meat has been soddened, but for the water in

which potatoes have been boiled--potato-liquor--and sup it up with

avidity. And this not in times of dearth or scarcity, but rather as a

relish. They never buy anything but bacon; never butcher's meat.

Philanthropic ladies, to my knowledge, have demonstrated over and over

again even to their limited capacities that certain parts of butchers'

meat can be bought just as cheap, and will make more savoury and

nutritive food; and even now, with the present high price of meat, a

certain portion would be advantageous. In vain; the labourers

obstinately adhere to the pig, and the pig only. When, however, an

opportunity does occur, the amount of food they will eat is something

astonishing. Once a year, at the village club dinner, they gormandize to

repletion. In one instance I knew of a man eating a plate of roast beef

(and the slices are cut enormously thick at these dinners), a plate of

boiled beef, then another of boiled mutton, and then a fourth of roast

mutton, and a fifth of ham. He said he could not do much to the bread

and cheese; but didn't he go into the pudding! I have even heard of men

stuffing to the fullest extent of their powers, and then retiring from

the table to take an emetic of mustard and return to a second gorging.

There is scarcely any limit to their power of absorbing beer. I have

known reapers and mowers make it their boast that they could lie on

their backs and never take the wooden bottle (in the shape of a small

barrel) from their lips till they had drunk a gallon, and from the feats

I have seen I verily believe it a fact. The beer they get is usually

poor and thin, though sometimes in harvest the farmers bring out a taste

of strong liquor, but not till the work is nearly over; for from this

very practice of drinking enormous quantities of small beer the labourer

cannot drink more than a very limited amount of good liquor without

getting tipsy. This is why he so speedily gets inebriated at the

alehouse. While mowing and reaping many of them lay in a small cask.

They are much better clothed now than formerly. Corduroy trousers and

slops are the usual style. Smock-frocks are going out of use, except for

milkers and faggers. Almost every labourer has his Sunday suit, very

often really good clothes, sometimes glossy black, with the regulation

"chimney-pot." His unfortunate walk betrays him, dress how he will.

Since labour has become so expensive it has become a common remark among

the farmers that the labourer will go to church in broadcloth and the

masters in smock-frocks. The labourer never wears gloves--that has to

come with the march of the times; but he is particularly choice over his

necktie. The women must dress in the fashion. A very respectable draper

in an agricultural district was complaining to me the other day that the

poorest class of women would have everything in the fashionable style,

let it change as often as it would. In former times, if he laid in a

stock of goods suited to tradesmen, and farmers' wives and daughters, if

the fashion changed, or they got out of date, he could dispose of them

easily to the servants. Now no such thing. The quality did not matter so

much, but the style must be the style of the day--no sale for remnants.

The poorest girl, who had not got two yards of flannel on her back, must

have the same style of dress as the squire's daughter--Dolly Vardens,

chignons, and parasols for ladies who can work all day reaping in the

broiling sun of August! Gloves, kid, for hands that milk the cows!

The cottages now are infinitely better than they were. There is scarcely

room for further improvement in the cottages now erected upon estates.

They have three bedrooms, and every appliance and comfort compatible

with their necessarily small size. It is only the cottages erected by

the labourers themselves on waste plots of ground which are open to

objection. Those he builds himself are indeed, as a rule, miserable

huts, disgraceful to a Christian country. I have an instance before me

at this moment where a man built a cottage with two rooms and no

staircase or upper apartments, and in those two rooms eight persons

lived and slept--himself and wife, grown-up daughters, and children.

There was not a scrap of garden attached, not enough to grow half a

dozen onions. The refuse and sewage was flung into the road, or filtered

down a ditch into the brook which supplied that part of the village with

water. In another case at one time there was a cottage in which twelve

persons lived. This had upper apartments, but so low was the ceiling

that a tall man could stand on the floor, with his head right through

the opening for the staircase, and see along the upper floor under the

beds! These squatters are the curse of the community. It is among them

that fever and kindred infectious diseases break out; it is among them

that wretched couples are seen bent double with rheumatism and

affections of the joints caused by damp. They have often been known to

remain so long, generation after generation, in these wretched hovels

that at last the lord of the manor having neglected to claim quit-rent,

they can defy him, and claim them as their own property, and there they

stick, eyesores and blots, the fungi of the land. The cottages erected

by farmers or by landlords are now, one and all, fit and proper

habitations for human beings; and I verily believe it would be

impossible throughout the length and breadth of Wiltshire to find a

single bad cottage on any large estate, so well and so thoroughly have

the landed proprietors done their work. On all farms gardens are

attached to the cottages, in many instances very large, and always

sufficient to produce enough vegetables for the resident. In villages

the allotment system has been greatly extended of late years, and has

been found most beneficial, both to owners and tenants. As a rule the

allotments are let at a rate which may be taken as L4 per annum--a sum

which pays the landlord very well, and enables the labourer to

remunerate himself. In one village which came under my observation the

clergyman of the parish has turned a portion of his glebe-land into

allotments--a most excellent and noble example, which cannot be too

widely followed or too much extolled. He is thus enabled to benefit

almost every one of his poor parishioners, and yet without destroying

that sense of independence which is the great characteristic of a true

Englishman. He has issued a book of rules and conditions under which

these allotments are held, and he thus places a strong check upon

drunkenness and dissolute habits, indulgence in which is a sure way to

lose the portions of ground. There is scarcely an end to the benefits of

the allotment system. In villages there cannot be extensive gardens, and

the allotments supply their place. The extra produce above that which

supplies the table and pays the rent is easily disposed of in the next

town, and places many additional comforts in the labourer's reach. The

refuse goes to help support and fatten the labourer's pig, which brings

him in profit enough to pay the rent of his cottage, and the pig, in

turn, manures the allotment. Some towns have large common lands, held

under certain conditions; such are Malmesbury, with 500 acres, and

Tetbury (the common land of which extends two miles): both these being

arable, etc. These are not exactly in the use of labourers, but they are

in the hands of a class to which the labourer often rises. Many

labourers have fruit trees in their gardens which, in some seasons,

prove very profitable. In the present year, to my knowledge, a labourer

sold L4 worth of apples; and another made L3 10s. of the produce of one

pear-tree, pears being scarce.

To come at last to the difficult question of wages. In Wiltshire there

has been no extended strike, and very few meetings upon the subject, for

the simple reason that the agitators can gain no hold upon a county

where, as a mass, the labourers are well paid. The common day-labourer

receives 10s., 11s., and 12s. a week, according to the state of supply

and demand for labour in various districts, and, if he milks, 1s. more,

making 13s. a week, now common wages. These figures are rather below the

mark; I could give instances of much higher pay. To give a good idea of

the wages paid, I will take the case of a hill farmer (arable,

Marlborough Downs), who paid this last summer during harvest 18s. per

week per man. His reapers often earned 10s. a day; enough to pay their

year's rent in a week. These men lived in cottages on the farm, with

three bedrooms each, and some larger, with every modern appliance, each

having a garden of a quarter of an acre attached and close at hand, for

which cottage and garden they paid 1s. per week rent. The whole of these

cottages were insured by the farmer himself, their furniture, etc., in

one lump, and the insurance policy cost him, as nearly as possible, 1s.

3d. per cottage per year. For this he deducted 1s. per year each from

their wages. None of the men would have insured unless he had insisted

upon doing it for them. These men had from six to eight quarts of beer

per man (over and above their 18s. per week) during harvest every day.

In spring and autumn their wages are much increased by forced work,

hoeing, etc. In winter the farmer draws their coal for them in his

waggons, a distance of eight miles from the nearest wharf, enabling them

to get it at cost price. This is no slight advantage, for, at the

present high price of coal, it is sold, delivered in the villages, at

2s. per cwt. Many who cannot afford it in the week buy a quarter of a

cwt. on Saturday night to cook their Sunday's dinner with, for 6d. This

is at the rate of L2 per ton. Another gentleman, a large steam

cultivator in the Vale, whose name is often before the public, informs

me that his books show that he paid L100 in one year in cash to one

cottage for labour, showing the advantage the labourer possesses over

the mechanic, since his wife and child can add to his income. Many

farmers pay L50 and L60 a year for beer drunk by their labourers--a

serious addition to their wages. The railway companies and others who

employ mechanics do not allow them any beer. The allowance of a good

cottage and a quarter of an acre of garden for 1s. per week is not

singular. Many who were at the Autumn Manoeuvres of the present year

may remember having a handsome row of houses, rather than cottages,

pointed out to them as inhabited by labourers at 1s. per week. In the

immediate neighbourhood of large manufacturing towns 1s. 6d. a week is

sometimes paid; but then these cottages would in such positions readily

let to mechanics for 3s., 4s., and even 5s. per week. There was a great

outcry when the Duke of Marlborough issued an order that the cottages on

his estate should in future only be let to such men as worked upon the

farms where those cottages are situated. In reality this was the very

greatest blessing the Duke could have conferred upon the agricultural

labourer; for it insured him a good cottage at a nearly nominal rent and

close to his work; whereas in many instances previously the cottages on

the farms had been let at a high rate to the mechanics, and the labourer

had to walk miles before he got to his labour. Cottages are not erected

by landowners or by farmers as paying speculations. It is well known

that the condition of things prevents the agricultural labourer from

being able to pay a sufficient rent to be a fair percentage upon the sum

expended. In one instance a landlord has built some cottages for his

tenant, the tenant paying a certain amount of interest on the sum

invested by the landlord. Now, although this is a matter of arrangement,

and not of speculation--that is, although the interest paid by the

tenant is a low percentage upon the money laid out, yet the rent paid by

the labourers inhabiting these cottages to the tenant does not reimburse

him what he pays his landlord as interest--not by a considerable margin.

But then he has the advantage of his labourers close to his work, always

ready at hand.

Over and above the actual cash wages of the labourer, which are now very

good, must be reckoned his cottage and garden, and often a small

orchard, at a nominal rent, his beer at his master's expense,

piecework, gleaning after harvest, etc., which alter his real position

very materially. In Gloucestershire, on the Cotswolds, the best-paid

labourers are the shepherds, for in that great sheep country much trust

is reposed in them. At the annual auctions of shearlings which are held

upon the low farms a purse is made for the shepherd of the flock, into

which everyone who attends is expected to drop a shilling, often

producing L5. The shepherds on the Wiltshire downs are also well paid,

especially in lambing time, when the greatest watchfulness and care are

required. It has been stated that the labourer has no chance of rising

from his position. This is sheer cant. He has very good opportunities of

rising, and often does rise, to my knowledge. At this present moment I

could mention a person who has risen from a position scarcely equal to

that of a labourer, not only to have a farm himself, but to place his

sons in farms. Another has just entered on a farm; and several more are

on the high-road to that desirable consummation. If a labourer possesses

any amount of intelligence he becomes head carter or head fagger, as the

case may be; and from that to be assistant or underbailiff, and finally

bailiff. As a bailiff he has every opportunity to learn the working of a

farm, and is often placed in entire charge of a farm at a distance from

his employer's residence. In time he establishes a reputation as a

practical man, and being in receipt of good wages, with very little

expenditure, saves some money. He has now little difficulty in obtaining

the promise of a farm, and with this can readily take up money. With

average care he is a made man. Others rise from petty trading, petty

dealing with pigs and calves, till they save sufficient to rent a small

farm, and make that the basis of larger dealing operations. I question

very much whether a clerk in a firm would not find it much more

difficult, as requiring larger capital, to raise himself to a level with

his employer than an agricultural labourer does to the level of a

farmer.

Many labourers now wander far and wide as navvies, etc., and perhaps

when these return home, as most of them do, to agricultural labour, they

are the most useful and intelligent of their class, from a readiness

they possess to turn their hand to anything. I know one at this moment

who makes a large addition to his ordinary wages by brewing for the

small inns, and very good liquor he brews, too. They pick up a large

amount of practical knowledge.

The agricultural women are certainly not handsome; I know no peasantry

so entirely uninviting. Occasionally there is a girl whose nut-brown

complexion and sloe-black eyes are pretty, but their features are very

rarely good, and they get plain quickly, so soon as the first flush of

youth is past. Many have really good hair in abundance, glossy and rich,

perhaps from its exposure to the fresh air. But on Sundays they plaster

it with strong-smelling pomade and hair-oil, which scents the air for

yards most unpleasantly. As a rule, it may safely be laid down that the

agricultural women are moral, far more so than those of the town. Rough

and rude jokes and language are, indeed, too common; but that is all. No

evil comes of it. The fairs are the chief cause of immorality. Many an

honest, hard-working servant-girl owes her ruin to these fatal mops and

fairs, when liquor to which she is unaccustomed overcomes her. Yet it

seems cruel to take from them the one day or two of the year on which

they can enjoy themselves fairly in their own fashion. The spread of

friendly societies, patronized by the gentry and clergy, with their

annual festivities, is a remedy which is gradually supplying them with

safer, and yet congenial, amusement. In what may be termed lesser morals

I cannot accord either them or the men the same praise. They are too

ungrateful for the many great benefits which are bountifully supplied

them--the brandy, the soup, and fresh meat readily extended without

stint from the farmer's home in sickness to the cottage are too quickly

forgotten. They who were most benefited are often the first to most

loudly complain and to backbite. Never once in all my observation have I

heard a labouring man or woman make a grateful remark; and yet I can

confidently say that there is no class of persons in England who receive

so many attentions and benefits from their superiors as the agricultural

labourers. Stories are rife of their even refusing to work at disastrous

fires because beer was not immediately forthcoming. I trust this is not

true; but it is too much in character. No term is too strong in

condemnation for those persons who endeavour to arouse an agitation

among a class of people so short-sighted and so ready to turn against

their own benefactors and their own interest. I am credibly informed

that one of these agitators, immediately after the Bishop of

Gloucester's unfortunate but harmlessly intended speech at the

Gloucester Agricultural Society's dinner--one of these agitators mounted

a platform at a village meeting and in plain language incited and

advised the labourers to duck the farmers! The agricultural women

either go out to field-work or become indoor servants. In harvest they

hay-make--chiefly light work, as raking; and reap, which is much harder

labour; but then, while reaping, they work their own time, as it is done

by the piece. Significantly enough, they make longer hours while

reaping. They are notoriously late to arrive, and eager to return home

on the hayfield. The children help both in haymaking and reaping. In

spring and autumn they hoe and do other piecework. On pasture farms they

beat clots or pick up stones out of the way of the mowers' scythes.

Occasionally, but rarely now, they milk. In winter they wear gaiters,

which give the ankles a most ungainly appearance. Those who go out to

service get very low wages at first from their extreme awkwardness, but

generally quickly rise. As dairymaids they get very good wages indeed.

Dairymaids are scarce and valuable. A dairymaid who can be trusted to

take charge of a dairy will sometimes get L20 besides her board

(liberal) and sundry perquisites. These often save money, marry

bailiffs, and help their husbands to start a farm.

In the education provided for children Wiltshire compares favourably

with other counties. Long before the passing of the recent Act in

reference to education the clergy had established schools in almost

every parish, and their exertions have enabled the greater number of

places to come up to the standard required by the Act, without the

assistance of a School Board. The great difficulty is the distance

children have to walk to school, from the sparseness of population and

the number of outlying hamlets. This difficulty is felt equally by the

farmers, who, in the majority of cases, find themselves situated far

from a good school. In only one place has anything like a cry for

education arisen, and that is on the extreme northern edge of the

country. The Vice-Chairman of the Swindon Chamber of Agriculture

recently stated that only one-half of the entire population of Inglesham

could read and write. It subsequently appeared that the parish of

Inglesham was very sparsely populated, and that a variety of

circumstances had prevented vigorous efforts being made. The children,

however, could attend schools in adjoining parishes, not farther than

two miles, a distance which they frequently walk in other parts of the

country.

Those who are so ready to cast every blame upon the farmer, and to

represent him as eating up the earnings of his men and enriching himself

with their ill-paid labour, should remember that farming, as a rule, is

carried on with a large amount of borrowed capital. In these days, when

L6 an acre has been expended in growing roots for sheep, when the

slightest derangement of calculation in the price of wool, meat, or

corn, or the loss of a crop, seriously interferes with a fair return for

capital invested, the farmer has to sail extremely close to the wind,

and only a little more would find his canvas shaking. It was only

recently that the cashier of the principal bank of an agricultural

county, after an unprosperous year, declared that such another season

would make almost every farmer insolvent. Under these circumstances it

is really to be wondered at that they have done as much as they have

for the labourer in the last few years, finding him with better

cottages, better wages, better education, and affording him better

opportunities of rising in the social scale.

I am, Sir, faithfully yours,

RICHARD JEFFERIES.

Coate Farm, Swindon,

_November 12_.

THE END

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS. GUILDFORD

[_October, 1888_.

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