SUMMER DAYS ON THE COTSWOLDS
"What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature?"
E. SPENSER.
The finest days, when the trees are greenest, the sky bluest, and the
clouds most snowy white are the days that come in the midst of bad
weather. And just as there is no rest without toil, no peace without
war, no true joy in life without grief, no enjoyment for the _blasé_, so
there can be no lovely summer days without previous storms and rain, no
sunshine till the tearful mists have passed away.
There had been a week's incessant rain; every wild flower and every
blade of green grass was soaked with moisture, until it could no longer
bear its load, and drooped to earth in sheer dismay. But last night
there came a change: the sun went down beyond the purple hills like a
ball of fire; eastwards the woods were painted with a reddish glow, and
life and colour returned to everything that grows on the face of this
beautiful earth.
"It seems a day
(I speak of one from many singled out),
One of those heavenly days which cannot die."
WORDSWORTH.
So it is pleasant to-day to wander over the fields; across the crisp
stubbles, where the thistledown is crowding in the "stooks" of black
oats; past stretches of uncut corn looking red and ripe under a burning
sun. White oxeye daisies in masses and groups, lilac-tinted thistles,
and bright scarlet poppies grow in profusion among the tall wheat
stalks. A covey of partridges, about three parts grown, rise almost at
our feet; for it is early August, and the deadly twelve-bore has not yet
wrought havoc among the birds. On the right is a field of green turnips,
well grown after the recent rains, and promising plenty of "cover" for
sportsmen in September. In the hedgerow the lovely harebells have
recovered from the soaking they endured, and their bell-shaped flowers
of perfect blue peep out everywhere. The sweetest flower that grows up
the hedgeside is the blue geranium, or meadow crane's-bill. The humble
yarrow, purple knapweed, field scabious, thistles with bright purple
heads, and St. John's wort with its clean-cut stars of burnished gold
and its pellucid veins, form a natural border along the hedge, where
wild clematis or traveller's joy entwines its rough leaf stalks round
the young hazel branches and among the pink roses of the bramble.
By the roadside, where the dust blew before the rain and covered every
green leaf with a coating of rich lime, there grow small shrubs of
mallow with large flowers of pale purple or mauve; here, too, yellow
bedstraw and bird's-foot lotus add their tinge of gold to the lush green
grass, and the smaller bindweed, the lovely convolvulus, springs up on
the barrenest spots, even creeping over the stone heaps that were left
over from last winter's road mending.
Many another species of wild flower which, "born to blush unseen and
waste its sweetness on the desert air," grows in the quiet Cotswold
lanes might here be named; but even though at times one may feel, with
Wordsworth,
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
I will leave the humble wayside plants and descend into the vale. For it
is along the back brook that the tallest and stateliest wild flowers may
best be seen. The scythes mowed them all down in May, and again in July,
in the broad "millpound," so that they do not grow so tall by the main
stream; but the back brook, the natural course of the river before the
mills were made, was left unmolested by the mowers, and is a mass of
life and colour.
Here grows the graceful meadow-sweet, fair and tall, and white and
fragrant; here the willow-herb, glorious with pink blossoms, rears its
head high above your shoulders among the sword-flags and the green
rushes and "segs"; the whole bank is a medley of white meadow-sweet,
scorpion-grasses, forget-me-nots, pink willow-herbs, and lilac heads of
mint all jumbled up together. Never was such a delightful confusion of
colour! Great dock leaves two feet wide clothe the path by the
water-side with all the splendour of malachite.
The breeze blows up stream, and the trout are rising incessantly, taking
something small. They will not look at any artificial fly, even in the
rippling breeze; there is nothing small enough in any fly-book to catch
them this afternoon. But when the sun gets low, and the great brown
moths come out and flutter over the water, the red palmer will catch a
dish of fish. Willow trees--"withies" they call them hereabouts--grow
along the brook-side. So white are the backs of their oval leaves that
when the breeze turns them back, the woods by the river look bright and
silvery. To-morrow, when the breeze has almost died away, only the tops
of the willows will be silvered; the next day, if all be calm and still,
all will be green as emerald. Such infinite variety is there in the
woods! Not only do the tints change month by month, but day by day the
colour varies; so that there is always something new, some fresh effect
of light and shade to delight the eye of man in the quiet English
country. Dotted about in the midst of the stream are little islands of
forget-me-nots. The lovely light blue is reflected everywhere in the
water. Very beautiful are the scorpion-grasses both on the banks among
the rushes and scattered about in mid stream.
The meadows are full of life. There are sounds sweet to the ear and
sights pleasing to the eye. In the new-mown water-meadow
grasshoppers--such hosts of them that they could never be numbered for
multitude--are chirping and dancing merrily. "They make the field ring
with their importunate chink, whilst the great cattle chew the cud and
are silent. How like the great and little of mankind!" as Edmund Burke
said years ago. By catching one of these "meagre, hopping insects of the
hour," you will see that their backs are green as emerald and their
bellies gold: some have a touch of purple over the eyes; their thighs,
which are enormously developed for jumping purposes, have likewise a
delicate tinge of purple.
Contrary to the saying of Izaak Walton, the trout do not seem to care
much for grasshoppers nowadays, although perhaps they may relish them in
streams where food is less plentiful. Our trout even prefer the tiny
yellow frogs that are to be found in scores by the brook-side in early
August. We have often offered them both in the deep "pill" below the
garden; and though they would come with a dart and take the little frog,
they merely looked at the grasshopper in astonishment, and seldom
took one.
As we stand on the rustic bridge above the "pill" gazing down into the
smooth flowing water, dark trout glide out of sight into their homes in
the stonework under the hatch. These are the fish that rise not to the
fly, but prey on their grandchildren, growing darker and lankier and
bigger-headed every year. Wherever you find a deep hole and an ancient
hatchway there you will also find these great black trout, always lying
in a spot more or less inaccessible to the angler, and living for years
until they die a natural death.
Was ever a place so full of fish as this "pill"? Looking down into the
deeper water, where the great iron hooks are set to catch the poachers'
nets, I could see dozens of trout of all sizes, but mostly small. At the
tail of the pool are lots of small ones, rising with a gentle dimple. As
the days became hotter and the stream ran down lower and lower, the
trout left the long shallow reaches, and assembled here, where there is
plenty of water and plenty of food.
Standing on the bridge by the ancient spiked gate bristling with sharp
barbs of iron, like rusty spear and arrow-heads (our ancestors loved to
protect their privacy with these terrible barriers), I listened to the
waterfall three hundred yards higher up, with its ceaseless music; the
afternoon sun was sparkling on the dimpling water, which runs swiftly
here over a shallow reach of gravel--the favourite spawning-ground of
the trout. There is no peep of river scenery I like so much as this.
Thirty yards up stream a shapely ash tree hangs its branches, clothed
with narrow sprays, right across the brook, the fantastic foliage
almost touching the water. A little higher up some willows and an elm
overhang from the other side.
There is something unspeakably striking about a country lane or a
shallow, rippling brook overarched with a tracery of fretted foliage
like the roof of an old Gothic building.
Who that has ever visited the village of Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire
will forget the lane by which he approached the home and last
resting-place of the poet Gray? Perhaps you came from Eton, and after
passing along a lane that is completely overhung with an avenue of
splendid trees, where the thrushes sing among the branches as they sing
nowhere else in that neighbourhood, you turned in at a little rustic
gate. Straight in front of your eyes were very legibly written on grey
stone three of the finest verses of the "Elegy." The monument itself is
plain, not to say hideous, but the simple words inscribed thereon are
unspeakably grand when read amongst the surroundings of "wood" and
"rugged elm" and "yew-tree's shade," unchanged as they are after the
lapse of a century and a half. The place, and more especially the lane,
is a fitting abode for the spirit of the poet. One could almost hear the
song of him who, "being dead, yet speaketh":
"And the birds in the sunshine above
Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed."
LONGFELLOW.
Gray is a poet for whom, in common with most Englishmen, the present
writer has a sincere respect. It has been said, however, of the "Elegy"
by one critic that the subject of the poem gives it an unmerited
popularity, and by another--and that quite recently--that it is the
"high-water mark of mediocrity." Although Gray's own modest dictum was
the foundation of the first of these harsh criticisms, we are unable to
allow the truth of the one and must strongly protest against the other.
It has been reported that Wolfe, the celebrated general, after reciting
the "Elegy" on the eve of the assault on Quebec, declared that he would
sooner have written such a poem than win a victory over the French. This
was nearly a century and a half ago. Yet after so long a lapse of time
the verses still retain their hold on the minds of all classes. In spite
of the fact that Matthew Arnold and other admirers have declared that
the "Elegy" was not Gray's masterpiece, yet it was this poem that
brought a man who accomplished but a small amount of work into such
lasting fame. From beginning to end, as Professor Raleigh says of
Milton's work, the "Elegy" "is crowded with examples of felicitous and
exquisite meaning given to the infallible word." Was ever a poem more
frequently quoted or so universally plagiarised? In writing or speaking
about the country and its inhabitants, if we would express ourselves as
concisely as we possibly can, we are bound to quote the "Elegy"; it is
invariably the shortest road to a terse expression of our meaning. Who
can improve on "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife," or "The
short and simple annals of the poor"? If Gray's "Elegy" is but "a mosaic
of the felicities" of those who went before, let it be remembered that
had he not laboriously pieced together that mosaic, these "felicities"
would have been a sealed book to the majority of Englishmen. Not one man
in a hundred now reads some of the authors from which they were culled.
And as Landor said of Shakespeare, "He is more original than his
originals." Even that strange individual, Samuel Johnson, who was
accustomed whenever Gray's poetry was mentioned either to "crab" it
directly or "damn it with faint praise," towards the end of his career
admitted in his "Lives of the Poets" that "the churchyard abounds with
images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which
every bosom returns an echo." But the chief value of the work seems
really to lie in this: it has dignified the rural scenes and the honest
rustics of England. It has invested every hoary-headed swain, every busy
housewife, and every little churchyard in the country with a special
dignity and a lasting charm. The traveller cannot look upon these scenes
and faces without unconsciously connecting them with the lines he knows
so well. Gray's "Elegy" will never be forgotten; for it has struck its
roots deep in the national language and far down into the
national heart.
Very similar to the quiet and leafy lane at Stoke Poges is the brook
below the waterfall at A---- in the Cotswolds. On your left as you look
up stream from the bridge of the "pill," a moss-grown gravel path runs
alongside the water under a hanging wood of leafy elms and
smooth-trunked beech trees, where the ringdoves coo all day. A tangled
hedge filled with tall timber trees runs up the right-hand bank. Here
the great convolvulus, queen of wild flowers, twists her bines among the
hedge; the bell-shaped flowers are conspicuous everywhere, large and
lily-white as the arum, so luxuriant is the growth of wild flowers by
the brook-side.
A silver stream is the Coln hereabouts, the abode of fairies and fawns,
and nymphs and dryads. But when the afternoon sun shines upon it, it
becomes a stream of diamonds set in banks of emeralds, with an arched
and groined roof of jasper, carved with foliations of graceful ash and
willow, and over all a sky of sapphire sprinkled with clouds of pearl
and opal. Later on towards evening there will be floods of golden light
on the grass and on the beech trees up the eastern slope of the valley
and on the bare red earth under the trees, red with fifty years' beech
nuts. And later still, when the distant hills are dyed as if with
archil, the sapphire sky will be striped with bars of gold and dotted
with coals of fire; rubies and garnets, sardonyx and chrysolite will all
be there, and the bluish green of beryl, the western sky as varied as
felspar and changing colour as quickly as the chameleon. And as the day
declines the last beams of the setting sun will find their way through
the tracery of foliage that overhangs the brook, and the waters will be
tinged with a rosy glow, even as in some ancestral hall or Gothic
cathedral the sun at eventide pours through the blazoned windows and
floods the interior with rays of soft, mysterious, coloured light.
I have been trying to describe one of the loveliest bits of miniature
scenery on earth; yet how commonplace it all reads! Not a thousandth
part of the beauty of this spot at sunset is here set down, yet little
more can be said. How bitter to think that the true beauty of the trees,
the path by the brook, and the sunlight on the water cannot be passed on
for others to enjoy, cannot be stamped on paper, but must be seen to be
realised! Truly, as Richard Jefferies says somewhere, there is a layer
of thought in the human brain for which there are no words in any
language. We cannot express a thousandth part of the beauty of the woods
and the stream; we can but dimly feel it when we see it with our eyes.
Below the "pill"--for we have been gazing up stream--some sheep are
lying under a gnarled willow on the left bank; some are nibbling at the
lichen and moss on the trunk, others are standing about in pretty groups
of three and four. One of them has just had a ducking. Trying to get a
drink of water, he overbalanced himself and fell in. He walks about
shaking himself, and doubtless feels very uncomfortable. Sheep do not
care much for bathing in cold water. You have only to see the
sheep-washing in the spring to realise how they dislike it. There is a
place higher up the stream called the Washpool, where every day in May
you can watch the men bundling the poor old sheep into the water, one
after the other, and dipping them well, to free the wool from insects of
all kinds. And how the trout enjoy the ticks that come from their
thickly matted coats! One poor sheep is hopping about on the cricket
field dead lame. Perhaps that leg he drags behind is broken! Why does
not the farmer kill the poor brute? There is much misery of this kind
caused in country places by the thoughtlessness of farmers. How much has
yet to be learnt by the very men who love to describe the labourers as
"them 'ere ignorant lower classes"! Alas! that these things can happen
among the green fields and spreading elms and the heavenly sunshine of
summer days! We should have more moral courage, and do as Carlyle bids
us in his old solemn way: "But above all, where thou findest Ignorance,
Stupidity, Brute-mindedness, attack it, I say; smite it, wisely,
unwearily, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite
in the name of God. The Highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so
command thee, still audibly if thou hast ears to hear."
On the cricket pitch, a bare hundred yards away from the river bank, is
a plentiful crop of dandelions, crow's-foot, clover, and, worst of all,
enormous plantains. A gravel soil is very favourable to plantains, for
stones work up and the grass dies. The dreadful plantain seems to thrive
anywhere and everywhere, and on bare spots where grass cannot live he
immediately appears. Rabbits have been making holes all over the pitch,
and red spikes of sorrel, wonderfully rich and varied in colour, rise
everywhere at the lower end of the field towards the river. The cricket
ground has been somewhat neglected of late.
There is a great elm tree down close to the ground--the only tree that
the winter gales had left to shade us on hot summer days. It came down
suddenly, without the slightest warning; and underneath it that most
careless of all keepers, Tom Peregrine, had left the large
mowing-machine and the roller. So careless are some of these
Gloucestershire folk that sooner than do as I had ordered and put the
mowing-machine in the barn hard by, they must leave it in the open air
and under this ill-fated tree. Down came my last beloved elm, smashing
the mowing-machine and putting an end to all thoughts of cricket here
this summer. It will be ages before the village carpenter will come with
his timber cart and draw the tree away. A Gloucestershire man cannot do
a job like this in under two years; they are always so busy, you see, in
Gloucestershire--never a moment to spare to get anything done!
There was a time when the chief delight of summer lay in playing
cricket. What ecstasy it was to be well set and scoring fast on the
hard-baked ground (the harder the better), cutting to the boundary when
the ball pitched short on the off, and driving her hard along the ground
when they pitched one up! What could surpass the joy of scoring a
century in those long summer days? Now we would as soon spend the
holidays in the woods and by the busy trout stream, reading and taking
note of the trees and the birds and the rippling of the waters as they
flow onwards, ever onwards, towards the sea. There comes a time to all
men, sooner or later, when we say to ourselves, _Cui bono?_ In a few
short years I shall no longer be able to hit the ball so hard, and in
the "field" I am already becoming a trifle slow. Then do we take to
ourselves pursuits that we can follow until the limbs are stiffened with
age and the hair is white as snow.
Having spent the best years of life in the pursuit of pleasures that,
however engrossing, nevertheless bore no real and lasting fruit, we
finally fall back on interests that will last a lifetime, perhaps an
eternity--for who knows how much of knowledge we shall take with us to
another world? Aristotle was not far wrong when he described earthly
happiness as a life of contemplation, with a moderate equipment of
external good fortune and prosperity. There is no book so well worthy to
be studied as the book of nature, no melodies like those of the field
and fallow, wood and wold, and the still small voice of the busy streams
labouring patiently onwards day by day.
In the fields beyond the river haymakers are busy with the second crop.
Down to the ford comes a great yellow hay-cart, drawn by two strong
horses, tandem fashion. One small boy alone is leading the big horses.
Arriving at the ford, he jumps on to the leader's back and rides him
through. The horses strain and "scaut," and the cart bumps over the deep
ruts, nearly upsetting. Luckily there is no accident. So much is
entrusted to these little farm lads of scarce fifteen years of age it is
a wonder they do the work so well. From the tops of the firs comes the
sound of pigeons winging their way from the "grove" to the "conygers"
(the latter word means the "place of rabbits"; there are lots of woods
so called in Gloucestershire). It is a curious piping sound that
wood-pigeons make, and, not seeing the birds, you might think it came
from the throat instead of the wings. One day two of us were looking at
a wood-pigeon flying over, when we observed something drop from the
skies and fall into the stream. On going up we saw that it was an egg
she had dropped. There it lay at the bottom of the brook, apparently
unbroken by the fall. Floating on the soft south wind, a heron flies
over so quietly that unless he had given one of his characteristic
croaks it was a hundred to one you did not see him pass. Many a heron
and wild duck must pass over us unobserved on windy days. It is so
difficult to observe when you are thinking. A man absorbed in reverie
cannot see half the things that many country folk with less active
brains never fail to observe. When we find people who live in the
country unversed in the ways of birds, the knowledge of flowers and
trees, and the habits of the simple country folk, we need not
necessarily conclude that they are dull and empty-headed; the reverse is
often the case. A man absorbed in business or serious affairs may love
the country and yet know little of its real life. A good deal of time
must be spent in acquiring this kind of knowledge, and it is not
everybody who has the time or the opportunity to do it. If we come
across a man with plenty of leisure, yet knowing nothing of what is
going on around him, we may then perhaps have cause to complain of
his dulness.
Mr. Aubrey De Vere relates an amusing story about Sir William Rowan
Hamilton which exactly illustrates my meaning: "When he had soared into
a high region of speculative thought he took no note of objects close
by. A few days after our first meeting we walked together on a road, a
part of which was overflowed by a river at its side. Our theme was the
transcendental philosophy, of which he was a great admirer. I felt sure
that he would not observe the flood, and made no remark on it. We walked
straight on till the water was half way up to our knees. At last he
exclaimed, 'What's this? We seem to be walking through a river. Had we
not better return to the dry land?'"
There is a spot in the woods by the River Coln that is almost untrodden
by man. It is the favourite resort of foxes. Nobody but myself and the
earth-stopper has been there for years and years, save that when the
hounds come the huntsman rides through and cheers the pack. It is in the
conyger wood. No path leads through its quiet recesses, where ash and
elm and larch and spruce, mostly self-sown, are mingled together, with a
thick growth of elder spread beneath them. It was here, in an ancient,
disused quarry, that the keeper pointed out not long since the secret
dwelling-house of the kingfishers. A small crevice in the limestone
rock, from which a disagreeable smell of dried fish bones issued forth,
formed the outer entrance to the nest. One could not see the delicate
structure itself, for it appeared to be several feet within the rock. A
mass of powdered fish bones and the pungent odour from within were all
the outward signs of the inner nest. By standing on a jutting ledge of
the soft cretaceous rock, and holding on by another ledge, which
appeared not unlikely to come down and crush you, one could peep into
the hole and comfort oneself with the thought that one was nearer a
kingfisher's nest than is usually vouchsafed to mortal man. It would be
easy to get ladder and pickaxe and break open the rock until the nest
was reached, but why disturb these lovely birds? They have built here
year by year for centuries; even now some of this year's brood may be
seen among the willows by the back brook.
From this quarry was dug in the year 1590 the stone to build the old
manor house yonder. A few miles away toward Burford is the quarry from
which men say Christopher Wren brought some of the stone to raise St.
Paul's Cathedral. Yet the local people do not care a bit for this
beautiful freestone of the Cotswold Hills. They want to bring granite
from afar for their village crosses, and ugly blue slates for the roofs
of the houses. At a parish council meeting the other day it was
seriously proposed to erect a "Jubilee Hall" of _red_ brick in our
village. Anything for a change, you see; these people would not be
mortal if they did not love a change. The pure grey limestone is
commonplace hereabouts; I have actually heard it said that it will not
last. Yet in every village stand the old Norman churches, built entirely
of local stone, walls and roof; and many an old manor house as well lies
in our midst, as good as it was three hundred years ago. To me, this
limestone of the hills is one of the most beautiful features of the
Cotswold country. I love to stand in a limestone quarry and mark the
layers and ponderous blocks of clean white virgin rock--a tiny cleft in
"the great stone floor which stretches over the face of the earth and
under the limitless expanse of the sea." That solid cretaceous mass is
but the remnants of the countless inhabitants of the old seas,--life
changed into solid, hard rock; and even now, as the green grass and the
sweet sainfoin spring up on the surface, feeding the flocks and herds
that will soon in their turn feed mankind, earth is turning back again
into life. Thus onwards in an endless cycle, even as the earth goes
round, and the waters return to the place from whence they came, does
nature's work go on; and when we consider these things, eternity and
infinity lose part of their strangeness. Does it seem strange when we
look upon this glorious country?--in May a sea of golden buttercups, in
summer a sea of waving grass, and in the autumn a sea of golden corn;
once it was a sea of salt water. And these great rounded banks, these
hills and valleys, these billowy wolds,--could they but speak to us
might tell strange things of the passing of the waters and of the
inhabitants of the old ocean ages and ages ago; the mystery of the sea
would be sung in every vale and echoed back by every rolling down.
A very wonderful matter it certainly is that the stone in which the
whole history of the country-side is writ, not only in rolling downs and
limestone streams, but even in church, tithe-barn, farm, and cottage, as
well as in the walls and the roads and the very dust that blows upon
them, should be nothing more nor less than a mass of dead animals that
lived generation after generation, thousands of years ago, at the bottom
of the sea.
There is silence in the woods--the drowsy silence of summer. Most of
the birds have gone to the cornfields. An ash copse is never so full of
birds as the denser woodlands, where the oaks grow stronger on a stiff
clay soil. Here are no laughing yaffels, no cruel, murderous shrikes,
and very few song-birds. Still, there are always the pigeons and the
cushats, the wicked magpies and the screaming "jaypies," as the local
people call the jays. Then, too, there are the birds down among the
watercress and the brooklime in the clear pool below the spring,
moorhens occasionally awakening the echoes by running down a weird
chromatic scale or calling with their loud and mellow note to their
friends and relations over at the brook; here, too, the softer croak of
the mallard and the wild duck is also heard. A hawk, chasing some
smaller bird, is darting and hovering over the tops of the firs, but,
catching a glimpse of me, disappears from sight. Presently a little
bird, with an eye keener even than the cruel hawk's, comes out from the
hazels and perches on a post some ten yards away. It is a fly-catcher.
As he sits he turns his eyes in every direction, on the look-out for
dainty insects. He seems to have eyes at the back of his head, for
instantly he sees a fly in the air right behind him, makes a dash,
catches it, and flies on to the next post. He repeats the performance
there, then once more changes his ground. When he has made another
successful raid, he returns to his first post, always hunting in a
chosen circuit, and always catching flies. He was here yesterday, and
will be here again to-morrow. When you try to approach him, however, he
flies away and hides himself in the firs.
If there are not many birds in the woods just now, still, there is
always the beauty of the trees. How marvellous is the symmetry of form
and colouring in the trunk and branches of a big ash tree! If you put
mercury into a solution of nitrate of silver, and leave them for a few
days to combine, the result will be a precipitation of silver in a
lovely arborescent form, the _arbor Dianae_, beautiful beyond
description. Such are my favourite ash trees when the summer sunshine
sparkles on them. It is their bare, silvered trunks that give the
special charm to these hanging woods. They stand out from dark recesses
filled with alder and beech and ivy-mantled firs, rising in bold but
graceful outline; columns of silver, touched here and there with the sad
gold and green shades of lichen and moss. The moss that mingles with
golden lichens is of a soft, velvety hue, like a mantle of half drapery
on a beautiful white statue. And, oddly enough, though ferns do not grow
on the limestone soil of the Cotswolds, yet on the first story so to
speak of every big ash tree by the river, as well as on the pollard
willows, there is a beautiful little fernery springing up out of the
moss and lichen, which seems to thrive most when the lichen thrives--in
the winter rather than in the summer. Then, too, the foliage of all
kinds of trees and shrubs is not only different in form, but the
minutest serrations vary; so that the leaves of two kinds of trees are
no more alike than any two human faces are alike. The elm leaves are
rough to the touch, like sandpaper, and their edges are clearly
serrated; those of the beeches are smooth as parchment, and though the
edges appear at first sight to be almost clean cut, they have very
slight serrations, as if nature had rounded them with a blunt knife. The
lobed ivy leaves are likewise highly polished, and they have sharp,
pointed tips. The leaves of the common stinging-nettle ("'ettles" the
labourers call them) have deep indents all round them. A great dock
leaf, in which the chives have a strange resemblance to the arteries in
the human frame, has small shallow indents all round it. Hazels are
rough and almost round in form, save for a pointed tip at the end; they
have ragged edges and ill-defined serrations. Everybody knows the
sycamore from its five lobed leaves; and the chestnuts and oaks are,
again, as different as possible. These are only a few instances; one
might go on for a long time showing the endless variations of form
in foliage.
Then there is the remarkable difference in colour and shade; not only
are there a dozen different greens in one wood, but in one and the same
beech you may see a marked contrast in the tone of its leaves. For about
midsummer some trees put forth a second growth of foliage, so that there
is the vivid yellow tint of the fresh shoots and the dark olive of the
older leaves on one and the same branch. Of the rich autumnal shades I
am not speaking; they would require a chapter to themselves.
There are other things to be noted in the woods besides the trees and
the birds: lots of rabbits and squirrels, not to mention an occasional
hedgehog. Squirrels are the most delightful of all the furred denizens
of the woods. Running up the trees, with their long brushes straight out
behind, they are not unlike miniature foxes. The slenderness of the
twigs on which they manage to find support is one of the greatest
wonders of the woods. The harmless hedgehog, as everybody is aware,
rolls himself up into a lifeless ball of bristles on being disturbed. By
staying quietly by him and addressing him in an encouraging tone, I
lately induced a very large hedgehog to unroll himself and creep slowly
along close to my feet.
It is very extraordinary how all wild animals, especially when young,
can be won by kindness. I once came across a young hedgehog about
three-parts grown; he was running about on the grass in front of the
house in broad daylight, and kept poking his little nose into the earth
searching for emmets and grubs. I made friends with him, dug him up some
worms, and in less than half an hour he became as tame as possible. Tom
Peregrine, the keeper, stood by and roared with laughter at his antics,
saying he had never seen such a "comical job" in all his life. And it
really was a curious sight. The hedgehog, with the merriest twinkle in
his eyes, would take the worms out of my hand; and when I dangled them
five or six inches off the ground, he would rear up on his hindlegs and
snatch and grab until he secured them. Then he would sit up and scratch
himself like a dog. He would allow me to take him up in my hands and
stroke him, and yet not retire into his bristly shell. He ate a dozen
worms and a bumble-bee straight off the reel, and then with all the
gluttony of the pig tribe he went searching about for more food. I
noticed that he ate the grass, in the same way as dogs do, for medicinal
purposes. We put him into a large box with some hay in it, and as he
still seemed hungry that evening, we gave him a couple of cockchafers
from the kitchen, which he appeared to relish mightily. The little
fellow was as happy as a king, crying and squeaking whenever we went to
look at him, and hunting round the box for food. But, alas! we had
overfed him. To our intense regret he died the next day from acute
indigestion.
There are but few snakes or vipers in the district of which I am
writing. But quite recently a man found a large trout about eighteen
inches in length lying dead in the Coln, and protruding from the mouth
of the fish was a large snake, also dead. The snake must have been
swimming in the water (as they are known to do occasionally), and the
trout being in a backwater, where food was scarce, must have seized the
snake and choked himself in his efforts to bolt it This was a remarkable
occurrence, because a Coln trout is most particular as to his bill of
fare, and snakes are certainly not usually included in the list. There
is such a plentiful supply of larvae, caddis, "stone-loach," fresh-water
shrimps, crayfish, and other crustaceans, to say nothing of flies,
minnows, and small fry, that a trout would very seldom attack a snake. A
large lobworm, however, as every one knows, is a very attractive bait
for any kind of fresh-water fish except pike.
Stoats with reddish-brown backs and yellow bellies may often be seen
hunting the rabbits, and the little weasels may sometimes be drawn out
of their holes in the walls if one makes a squeaking noise with the
lips. Stoats usually hunt singly, weasels in packs and pairs.
But we must leave the woods, for the evening shadows are lengthening and
the "golden evening brightens in the west." It is time to go up to the
cornfields on the hill and see the sun set. I have said that there is no
path through this wood; it is sacred to foxes. They are not here now,
however; they will not be back till all the corn is cut. The wheatfields
are their summer quarters.
It is no easy matter to get out of a tangled wood in August. The
stinging-nettles are seven feet high in places; we must hold our hands
high above our heads and plough our way through them. When we finally
emerge we are covered from head to foot with large prickly burrs from
the seeding burdocks, as well as with the small round burrs of the
goose-grass. Then
"On and up where nature's heart
Beats strong amid the hills."
As we pass onwards over the cornfields towards a piece of high ground
from which it is our wont to watch the sun set, a silvery half-moon
peeps out between the clouds. In the north-west the range of limestone
hills is already tinged with purple. In the highest heaven are bars of
distant cloud, so motionless that they appear to be sailing slowly
against the wind. Lower down, dusky, smoke-like clouds, tinged here and
there with a rosy hue, are flying rapidly onwards, ever onwards, in the
sky. Later on the higher clouds will turn deep red, whilst brighter and
brighter will glow the moon.
Yonder, twenty-five miles away, the old White Horse is just visible upon
the distant chalk downs. Overhead the sky has the deep blue of mazarine,
but westwards and south-west the colour is light olive green, gradually
changing to an intensely bright yellow. Heavy banks of clouds are slowly
rising in the south-west; the bleating of sheep at the ancient homestead
half a mile away is the only sound to be heard. As the sun goes down
to-night it resembles a great ship on fire amidst the breakers on a
rockbound coast; for the western sky is dashed with fleecy clouds, like
the spray that beats against the chalk cliffs on the shore of the mighty
Atlantic; and amid the last plunges of the doomed vessel the spray is
tinged redder and redder, ere with her human cargo she disappears amid
the surf. But no sooner has she sunk into the abyss than the foam and
the fierce breakers die away, and a wondrous calm broods over all
things. In twenty minutes' time nothing is left in the western sky but a
tiny bar of golden cloud that cannot yet quite die away, reminding me,
as I still thought about the burning ship and her ill-fated crew, of
"the golden key
Which opes the palace of Eternity."
But eastwards, above the old legendary White Horse, the "Empress of the
Night," serene and proudly pale, is driving her car across the
darkening skies.
[Illustration: Ablington Manor 399.png]