Wolmer Forest--Charm of contrast and novelty in scenery--Aspect of
Wolmer--Heath and pine--Colour of water and soil--An old woman's
recollections--Story of the "Selborne mob"--Past and present times
compared--Hollywater Clump--Age of trees--Bird life in the
forest--Teal in their breeding haunts--Boys in the forest--Story of
the horn-blower.
The first part of the story of that Selborne mound in a strange place
was heard at Wolmer Forest, over five years ago, during my first
prolonged visit to that spot. I have often been there since, and
have stayed many days, but a first impression of a place, as of a
face, is always the best, the brightest, the truest, and I wish to
describe Wolmer as I saw it then.
It struck me on that visit that the pleasure we have in visible
nature depends in a measure on contrast and novelty. Never is moist
verdure so refreshing and delightful to the eye as when we come to it
from brown heaths and grey barren downs and uplands. So, too, the
greenness of the green earth sharpens our pleasure in all stony and
waste places; trim flower gardens show us the beauty of thorns and
briars, and make us in love with desolation. As in light and shade,
wet and dry, tempest and calm, so the peculiar attractions of each
scene and aspect of nature are best "illustrated by their contraries."
I had, accordingly, the best preparation for a visit {204} to Wolmer
by a few days' ramble in Alice Holt Forest, with its endless oaks,
and in the luxuriant meadows and cool shady woods at Waverley Abbey.
It was a great change to Wolmer Forest. Although its soil is a
"hungry, bare sand," it has long been transformed from the naked
heath of Gilbert White's time to a vast unbroken plantation. Looked
upon from some eminence it has a rough, dark aspect. There are no
smooth summits and open pleasant places; all is covered by the shaggy
mantle of the pines. But it is nowhere gloomy, as pine woods are apt
to be: the trees are not big enough, on account of that hungry sand
in which they are rooted, or because they are not yet very old. The
pines not being too high and shady to keep the sun and air out, the
old aboriginal vegetation has not been killed: in most places the
ling forms a thick undergrowth, and looks green, while outside of the
forest, in the full glare of the sun, it has a harsh, dry, dead
appearance.
On account of this abundance of ling a strange and lovely appearance
is produced in some favourable years, when the flowers are in great
profusion and all the plants blossom at one time. That most
beautiful sight of the early spring, when the bloom of the wild
hyacinth forms a sheet of azure colour under the woodland trees, is
here repeated in July, but with a difference of hue both in the trees
above and in the bloom beneath.
[Sidenote: Wolmer Forest]
In May, Wolmer is comparatively flowerless, and there is no bright
colour, except that of the earth itself in some naked spot. The
water of the sluggish {205} boggy streamlets in the forest,
tributaries of the well-named Dead Water, takes a deep red or orange
hue from the colour of the soil. The sand abounds with ironstone,
which in the mass is deep rust-red- and purple-coloured. When
crushed and pulverised by traffic and weather on the roads, it turns
to a vivid chrome yellow. In the hot noonday sun the straight road
that runs through the forest appeared like a yellow band or ribbon.
That was a curious and novel picture, which I often had before me
during the excessively dry and windy weather in May--the vast
whity-blue, hot sky, without speck or stain of cloud above, and the
dark forest covering the earth, cut through by that yellow zone,
extending straight away until it was lost in the hazy distance. Even
stranger was the appearance when the wind blew strongest and raised
clouds of dust from the road, which flew like fiery yellow vapours
athwart the black pines.
[Sidenote: The "Selborne mob"]
In a small house by the roadside in the middle of the forest I found
a temporary home. My aged landlady proved a great talker, and
treated me to a good deal of Hampshire dialect. Her mind was well
stored with ancient memories. At first I let her ramble on without
paying too much attention; but at length, while speaking of the many
little ups and downs of her not uneventful life, she asked me if I
knew Selborne, and then informed me that she was a native of that
village, and that her family had lived there for generations. Her
mother had reached the age of eighty-six years; she had married {206}
her third husband when over seventy. By her first she had had two
and by her second thirteen children, and my informant, who is now
aged seventy-six, was the last born. This wonderful mother of hers,
who had survived three husbands, and whose memory went back several
years into the eighteenth century, had remembered the Rev. Gilbert
White very well: she was aged about twelve when he died. It was
wonderful, she said, how many interesting things she used to tell
about him; for Gilbert White, whose name was known to the great world
outside of his parish, was often in her mind when she recalled her
early years. Unfortunately, these interesting things had now all
slipped out of my landlady's memory. Whenever I brought her to the
point she would stand with eyes cast down, the fingers of her right
hand on her forehead, trying--trying to recall something to tell me:
a simple creature, who was without imagination, and could invent
nothing. Then little by little she would drift off into something
else--to recollections of people and events not so remote in time,
scenes she had witnessed herself, and which had made a deeper
impression on her mind. One was how her father, her mother's second
husband, had acted as horn-blower to the "Selborne mob," when the
poor villagers were starving; and how, blowing on his horn, he had
assembled his fellow-revolutionists, and led them to an attack on the
poorhouse, where they broke down the doors and made a bonfire of the
furniture; then on to the neighbouring village of Headley to get
recruits for their {207} little army. Then the soldiery arrived on
the scene, and took them prisoners and sent them to Winchester, where
they were tried by some little unremembered Judge Jeffreys, who
sentenced many or most of them to transportation; but not the
horn-blower, who had escaped, and was in hiding among the beeches of
the famous Selborne Hanger. Only at midnight he would steal down
into the village to get a bite of food and hear the news from his
vigorous and vigilant wife. At length, during one of these midnight
descents, he was seen, and captured, and sent to Winchester. But by
this time the authorities had grown sick--possibly ashamed--of
dealing so harshly with a few poor peasants, whose sufferings had
made them mad, and the horn-blower was pardoned, and died in bed at
home when his time came.
I did not cease questioning the poor woman, because she would not
admit that all she had heard about Gilbert White was gone past
recall. Often and often had she thought of what her mother had told
her. Up to within two or three years ago she remembered it all so
well. What was it now? Once more, standing dejected in the middle
of the room, she would cudgel her old brains. So much had happened
since she was a girl. She had been brought up to farm-work. Here
would follow the names of various farms in the parishes of Selborne,
Newton Valence, and Oakhanger, where she had worked, mostly in the
fields; and of the farmers, long dead and gone most of them, who had
employed her. All her life she had worked {208} hard, struggling to
live. When people complained of hard times now, of the little that
was paid them for their work, she and her husband remembered what it
was thirty and forty and fifty years ago, and they wondered what
people really wanted. Cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap education
for the children--everything was cheap now, and the pay more. And
she had had so many children to bring up--ten; and seven of them were
married, and were now having so many children of their own that she
could hardly keep count of them.
It was idle to listen; and at last, in desperation, I would jump up
and rush out, for the wind was calling in the pines, and the birds
were calling, and what they had to tell was just then of more
interest than any human story.
Not far from my cottage there was a hill, from the summit of which
the whole area of the forest was visible, and the country all round
for many leagues beyond it. I did not like this hill, and refused to
pay it a second visit. The extent of country it revealed made the
forest appear too small; it spoilt the illusion of a practically
endless wilderness, where I could stroll about all day and see no
cultivated spot, and no house, and perhaps no human form. It was,
moreover, positively disagreeable to be stared at across the ocean of
pines by a big, brand-new, red-brick mansion, standing conspicuous,
unashamed, affronting nature, on some wide heath or lonely hillside.
[Sidenote: Hollywater Clump]
A second hill, not far from the first, was preferable {209} when I
wished for a wide horizon, or to drink the wind and the music of the
wind. Round and dome-like, it stood alone; and although not so high
as its neighbour, it was more conspicuous, and seen from a distance
appeared to be vastly higher. The reason of this was that it was
crowned with a grove of Scotch firs with boles that rose straight and
smooth and mast-like to a height of about eighty feet; thus, seen
from afar, the hill looked about a hundred feet higher than it
actually was, the tree-tops themselves forming a thick, round dome,
conspicuous above the surrounding forest, and Wolmer's most prominent
feature. I have often said of Hampshire--very many persons have said
the same--that it lacks one thing--sublimity, or, let us say,
grandeur. I have been over all its high, open down country, and upon
all its highest hills, which, although rising to a thousand feet
above the sea at one point, yet do not impress one so much as the
South Downs; and I have been in all its forest lands, which have
wildness and a thousand beauties, and one asks for nothing better.
But the Hollywater Clump in Wolmer Forest as soon as I come in sight
of it wakes in me another sense and feeling; and I have found in
conversation with others on this subject that they are affected in
the same way. I doubt if anyone can fail to experience such a
feeling when looking on that great hill-top grove, a stupendous
pillared temple, with its dome-like black roof against the sky,
standing high above and dominating the sombre pine and heath country
for miles around.
{210}
[Sidenote: Bird life in the forest]
Gilbert White described Wolmer as a naked heath with very few trees
growing on it. The Hollywater Clump must, one cannot but think, have
been planted before or during his time. One old native of Wolmer,
whose memory over five years ago went back about sixty years, assured
me that the trees looked just as big when he was a little boy as they
do now. Undoubtedly they are very old, and many, we see, are
decaying, and some are dead, and for many years past they have been
dying and falling.
The green woodpecker had discovered the unsoundness of many of them;
in some of the trunks, in their higher part, the birds had made
several holes. These were in line, one above the other, like stops
in a flute. Most of these far-up houses or flats were tenanted by
starlings. This was only too apparent for the starling, although
neat and glossy in his dress is an untidy tenant, and smears the
trunk beneath the entrance to his nest with numberless droppings.
You might fancy that he had set himself to whitewash his tenement,
and had carelessly capsized his little bucket of lime on the
threshold.
It was pleasant in the late afternoon to sit at the feet of these
stately red columns--this brave company of trees, that are warred
against by all the winds of heaven--and look upon the black legions
of the forest covering the earth beneath them for miles. High up in
the swaying, singing tops a kind of musical talk was audible--the
starlings' medley of clinking, chattering, wood-sawing,
knife-grinding, whistling, and bell-like sounds. Higher still, above
{211} the tree-tops, the jackdaws were at their aerial gambols,
calling to one another, exulting in the wind. They were not breeding
there, but were attracted to the spot by the height of the hill, with
its crown of soaring trees. Some strong-flying birds--buzzards,
kites, vultures, gulls, and many others--love to take their exercise
far from earth, making a playground of the vast void heaven. The
wind-loving jackdaw, even in his freest, gladdest moments, never
wholly breaks away from the earth, and for a playground prefers some
high, steep place--a hill, cliff, spire, or tower--where he can perch
at intervals, and from which he can launch himself, as the impulse
takes him, either to soar and float above, or to cast himself down
into the airy gulf below.
Stray herons, too, come to the trees to roost. The great bird could
be seen far off, battling with the wind, rising and falling, blown to
this side and that, now displaying his pale under-surface, and now
the slaty blue of his broad, slow-flapping wings.
As the sun sank nearer to the horizon, the tall trunks would catch
the level beams and shine like fiery pillars, and the roof thus
upheld would look darker and gloomier by contrast. With the passing
of that red light, the lively bird-notes would cease, the trees would
give forth a more solemn, sea-like sound, and the day would end.
My days, during all the time I spent at Wolmer, when I had given up
asking questions, and my poor old woman had ceased cudgelling her
brains for lost memories, were spent with the birds. The yaffle,
{212} nightjar, and turtle-dove were the most characteristic species.
Wolmer is indeed the metropolis of the turtle-doves, even as
Savernake is (or was) that of the jays and jackdaws. All day long
the woods were full of the low, pleasing sound of their cooing: as
one walked among the pines they constantly rose up in small flocks
from the ground with noisy wines and as they flew out into some open
space to vanish again in the dark foliage, their wings in the strong
sunlight often looked white as silver. But the only native species I
wish to speak of is the teal as I found it a little over five years
ago. In Wolmer these pretty entertaining little ducks have bred
uninterruptedly for centuries, but I greatly fear that the changes
now in progress--the increase of the population, building, the large
number of troops kept close by, and perhaps, too, the slow drying up
of the marshy pools--will cause them to forsake their ancient haunts.
[Sidenote: Teal]
By chance I very soon discovered their choicest breeding-place, not
far from that dome-shaped, fir-crowned hill which was my principal
landmark. This was a boggy place, thirty or forty acres in extent
surrounded by trees and overgrown with marsh weeds and grasses, and
in places with rushes. Cotton grass grew in the drier parts, and the
tufts nodding in the wind looked at a distance like silvery white
flowers. At one end of the marsh there were clumps of willow and
alder, where the reed-bunting was breeding and the grasshopper
warbler uttered his continuous whirring sound, which seemed to accord
{213} with the singing of the wind in the pines. At the other end
there was open water with patches of rushes growing in it; and here
at the water's edge, shaded by a small fir, I composed myself on a
bed of heather to watch the birds.
The inquisitive moor-hens were the first to appear, uttering from
time to time their sharp, loud protest. Their suspicion lessened by
degrees, but was never wholly laid aside; and one bird, slyly leaving
the water, made a wide circuit and approached me through the trees in
order to get a better view of me. A sudden movement on my part, when
he was only three yards from me, gave him a terrible fright.
Mallards showed themselves at intervals, swimming into the open
water, or rising a few yards above the rushes, then dropping out of
sight again. Where the rushes grew thin and scattered, ducklings
appeared, swimming one behind the other, busily engaged in snatching
insects from the surface. By-and-by a pair of teal rose up, flew
straight towards me, and dropped into the open water within eighteen
yards of where I sat. They were greatly excited, and no sooner
touched the water than they began calling loudly; then, from various
points, others rose and hurried to join them, and in a few moments
there were eleven, all disporting themselves on the water at that
short distance. Teal are always tamer than ducks of other kinds, but
the tameness of these Wolmer birds was astonishing and very
delightful. For a few moments I imagined they were excited at my
presence, but it very soon appeared that they were entirely absorbed
{214} in their own affairs and cared nothing about me. What a
wonderfully lively, passionate, variable, and even ridiculous little
creature the teal is! Compared with his great relations--swans,
geese, and the bigger ducks--he is like a monkey or squirrel among
stately bovine animals. Now the teal have a world-wide range, being
found in all climates, and are of many species; they are, moreover,
variable in plumage, some species having an exceedingly rich and
beautiful colouring; but wherever found, and however different in
colour, they are much the same in disposition--they are loquacious,
excitable, violent in their affections beyond other ducks, and,
albeit highly intelligent, more fearless than other birds habitually
persecuted by man. A sedate teal is as rare as a sober-coloured
humming-bird. The teal is also of so social a temper that even in
the height of the breeding season he is accustomed to meet his
fellows at little gatherings. A curious thing is that at these
meetings they do not, like most social birds, fall into one mind, and
comport themselves in an orderly, disciplined manner, all being moved
by one contagious impulse. On the contrary, each bird appears to
have an impulse of his own, and to follow it without regard to what
his fellows may be doing. One must have his bath, another his
frolic; one falls to courting, another to quarrelling, or even
fighting, and so on, and the result is a lively splashing, confused
performance, which is amusing to see. It was an exhibition of this
kind which I was so fortunate as to witness at the Wolmer pond. The
body-jerking {215} antics and rich, varied plumage of the drakes gave
them a singular as well as a beautiful appearance; and as they dashed
and splashed about, sometimes not more than fourteen yards from me,
their motions were accompanied by all the cries and calls they
have--their loud call, which is a bright and lively sound;
chatterings and little, sharp, exclamatory notes; a long trill,
somewhat metallic or bell-like; and a sharp, nasal cry, rapidly
reiterated several times, like a laugh.
After they had worked off their excitement and finished their fun
they broke up into pairs and threes, and went off in various
directions, and I saw no more of them.
It was not until the sun had set that a snipe appeared. First one
rose from the marsh and began to play over it in the usual manner,
then another rose to keep him company, and finally a third. Most of
the time they hovered with their breasts towards me, and seen through
my glass against the pale luminous sky, their round, stout bodies,
long bills, and short, rapidly vibrating wings, gave them the
appearance of gigantic insects rather than birds.
[Sidenote: Boys in the forest]
At length, tired of watching them, I stretched myself out in the
ling, but continued listening, and while thus occupied an amusing
incident occurred. A flock of eighteen mallards rose up with a
startled cry from the marsh at a distance, and after flying once or
twice round, dropped down again. Then the sound of crackling
branches and of voices talking {216} became audible advancing round
the marsh towards me. It was the first human sound I had heard that
day at that spot. Then the sounds ceased, and after a couple of
minutes of silence I glanced round in the direction they had
proceeded from, and beheld a curious sight. Three boys, one about
twelve years old, the others smaller, were grouped together on the
edge of the pool, gazing fixedly across the water at me. They had
taken me for a corpse, or an escaped criminal, or some such dreadful
object, lying there in the depth of the forest. The biggest boy had
dropped on to one knee among the rough heather, while the others,
standing on either side, were resting their hands on his shoulders.
Seen thus, in their loose, threadbare, grey clothes and caps, struck
motionless, their white, scared faces, parted lips, and wildly
staring eyes turned to me, they were like a group cut in stone. I
laughed and waved my hand to them, whereupon their faces relaxed, and
they immediately dropped into natural attitudes. Very soon they
moved away among the trees, but after eight or ten minutes they
reappeared near me, and finally, from motives of curiosity, came
uninvited to my side. They proved to be very good specimens of the
boy naturalist; thorough little outlaws, with keen senses, and the
passion for wildness strong in them. They told me that when they
went bird-nesting they made a day of it, taking bread and cheese in
their pockets, and not returning till the evening. For an hour we
talked in the fading light of day on the wild creatures in the
forest, until we could no {217} longer endure the cloud of gnats that
had gathered round us.
About three years after the visit to Wolmer I made the acquaintance
of a native of Selborne, whose father had taken part as a lad in the
famous "Selborne mob," and who confirmed the story I had heard about
the horn-blower, whose name was Newland. He had been a soldier in
his early manhood before he returned to his native village and
married the widow who bore him so many children. It was quite true
that he had died at home, in bed, and what was more, he added, he was
buried just between the church porch and the yew, where he was all by
himself. How he came to be buried there he did not know.
Lately, in October 1902, I heard the finish of the story. I found an
old woman, a widow named Garnett, an elder sister of the woman at
Wolmer Forest. She is eighty years old, but was not born until a
year or two after the "Selborne mob" events, which fixes the date of
that outbreak about the year 1820. She has a brother, now in a
workhouse, about two years older than herself, who was a babe in arms
at that time. When Newland was at last captured and sent to
Winchester, his poor wife, with her baby in her arms, set out on foot
to visit him in gaol. It was a long tramp for her thus burdened, and
it was also in the depth of one of the coldest winters ever known.
She started early, but did not get to her destination until the
following morning, and not {218} without suffering a fresh misfortune
by the way. Before dawn, when the cold was most intense, while
walking over Winchester Hill, her baby's nose was frozen; and though
everything proper was done when she arrived at the houses, it never
got quite right. His injured nose, which turns to a dark-blue colour
and causes him great suffering in cold weather, has been a trouble
and misery to him all his life long.
[Sidenote: Story of the horn-blower]
Newland, we know, was forgiven and returned to spend the rest of his
life in his village, where he died at last of sheer old age, passing
very quietly away after receiving the sacrament from the vicar, and
in the presence of his faithful old wife and his children and
grandchildren.
After he was dead, two of his children--my informant, and that
brother who as a babe had travelled to Winchester in his mother's
arms in cold weather--talked together about him and his life, and of
all he had suffered and of his goodness, and in both their minds
there was one idea, an anxious wish that his descendants should not
allow him to go out of memory. And there was no way known to them to
keep him in mind except by burying him in some spot by himself, where
his mound would be alone and apart. Finally, brother and sister,
plucking up courage, went to the vicar, the well-remembered Mr.
Parsons, who built the new vicarage and the church school, and begged
him to let them bury their father by the yew tree near the porch, and
he good-naturedly consented.
That was how Newland came to be buried at that {219} spot; but before
many days the vicar went to them in a great state of mind, and said
that he had made a terrible mistake, that he had done wrong in
consenting to the grave being made there, and that their father must
be taken up and placed at some other spot in the churchyard. They
were grieved at this, but could say nothing. But for some reason the
removal never took place, and in time the son and daughter themselves
began to regret that they had buried their father there where they
could never keep the mound green and fresh. People going in or
coming out of church on dark evenings stumbled or kicked their boots
against it, or when they stood there talking to each other they would
rest a foot on it, and romping children sat on it, so that it always
had a ragged, unkept appearance, do what they would.
It is certainly an unsightly mound. It would be better to do away
with it, and to substitute a small memorial stone with a suitable
inscription placed level with the turf.
{220}