woods the oaks are far apart, the ashes thin; the verge is like a
wilderness and scrubby, so that the forest does not seem to begin till
you have penetrated some distance. Under the beeches the forest begins at
once. They stand at the edge of the slope, huge round boles rising from
the mossy ground, wide fans of branches--a shadow under them, a greeny
darkness beyond. There is depth there--depth to be explored, depth to
hide in. If there is a path, it is arched over like a tunnel with boughs;
you know not whither it goes. The fawns are sweetest in the sunlight,
moving down from the shadow; the doe best partly in shadow, partly in
sun, when the branch of a tree casts its interlaced work, fine as
Algerian silverwork, upon the back; the buck best when he stands among
the fern, alert, yet not quite alarmed--for he knows the length of his
leap--his horns up, his neck high, his dark eye bent on you, and every
sinew strung to spring away. One spot of sunlight, bright and white,
falls through the branches upon his neck, a fatal place, or near it: a
guide, that bright white spot, to the deadly bullet, as in old days to
the cross-bow bolt. It was needful even then to be careful of the aim,
for the herd, as Shakespeare tells us, at once recognised the sound of a
cross-bow: the jar of the string, tight-strained to the notch by the
goat's-foot lever, the slight whiz of the missile, were enough to startle
them and to cause the rest to swerve and pass out of range. Yet the
cross-bow was quiet indeed compared with the gun which took its place.
The cross-bow was the beginning of shooting proper, as we now understand
it; that is, of taking an aim by the bringing of one point into a line
with another. With the long-bow aim indeed was taken, but quite
differently, for if the arrow were kept waiting with the string drawn,
the eye and the hand would not go true together. The quicker the arrow
left the bow the moment that it was full drawn, the better the result. On
the other hand, the arblast was in no haste, but was adjusted
deliberately--so deliberately that it gave rise to a proverb, 'A fool's
bolt is soon shot.' This could not apply to the long-bow, with which the
arrow was discharged swiftly, while an arblast was slowly brought to the
level like a rifle. As it was hard to draw again, that added strength to
the saying; but it arose from the deliberation with which a good
cross-bowman aimed. To the long-bow the cross-bow was the express rifle.
The express delivers its bullet accurately point-blank--the bullet flies
straight to its mark up to a certain distance. So the cross-bow bolt flew
point-blank, and thus its application to hunting when the deer were
really killed for their venison. The hunter stole through the fern, or
crept about the thickets--thickets and fern exactly like those here
to-day--or waited Indian-like in ambush behind an oak as the herd fed
that way, and, choosing the finest buck, aimed his bolt so as either to
slay at once or to break the fore-leg. Like the hare, if the fore-leg is
injured, deer cannot progress; if only the hind-quarter is hit, there is
no telling how far they may go. Therefore the cross-bow, as enabling the
hunter to choose the exact spot where his bolt should strike, became the
weapon of the chase, and by its very perfection began the extermination
of the deer. Instead of the hounds and the noisy hunt, any man who could
use the cross-bow could kill a buck. The long-bow, of all weapons,
requires the most practice, and practice begun in early youth. Some of
the extraordinary feats attributed to the outlaws in the woods and to the
archers of the ancient English army are quite possible, but must have
necessitated the constant use of a bow from childhood, so that it became
second nature. But almost any man who has strength to set a cross-bow,
with moderate practice, and any idea at all of shooting, could become a
fairly good shot with it. From the cross-bow to a gun was a comparatively
easy step, and it was the knowledge of the power of the one that led to
the quick introduction of the other. For gunpowder was hardly discovered
before hand-guns were thought of, and no discovery ever spread so
swiftly. Then the arquebuse swept away the old English chase.
These deer exist by permission. They are protected with jealous care; or
rather they have been protected so long that by custom they have grown
semi-consecrated, and it is rare for anyone to think of touching them.
The fawns wander, and a man, if he choose, might often knock one over
with his axe as he comes home from his work. The deer browse up to the
very skirts of the farmhouse below, sometimes even enter the rick-yard,
and once now and then, if a gate be left open, walk in and eat the pease
in the garden. The bucks are still a little wilder, a little more nervous
for their liberty, but there is no difficulty in stalking them to within
forty or fifty yards. They have either lost their original delicacy of
scent, or else do not respond to it, as the approach of a man does not
alarm them, else it would be necessary to study the wind; but you may get
thus near them without any thought of the breeze--no nearer; then,
bounding twice or thrice, lifting himself each time as high as the fern,
the buck turns half towards you to see whether his retreat should or
should not be continued.
The fawns have come out from the beeches, because there is more grass on
the slope and in the hollow, where trees are few. Under the trees in the
forest proper there is little food for them. Deer, indeed, seem fonder of
half-open places than of the wood itself. Thickets, with fern at the foot
and spaces of sward between, are their favourite haunts. Heavily timbered
land and impenetrable underwood are not so much resorted to. The deer
here like to get away from the retreats which shelter them, to wander in
the half-open grounds on that part of the park free to them, or, if
possible, if they see a chance, out into the fields. Once now and then a
buck escapes, and is found eight or ten miles away. If the pale were
removed how quickly the deer would leave the close forest which in
imagination is so associated with them! It is not their ideal. They would
rather wander over the hills and along the river valleys. The forest is,
indeed, and always would be their cover, and its shadows their defence;
but for enjoyment they would of choice seek the sweet herbage, which does
not flourish where the roots of trees and underwood absorb all the
richness of the soil. The farther the trees are apart the better the
forest pleases them. Those great instinctive migrations of wild animals
which take place annually in America are not possible in England. The
deer here cannot escape--solitary individuals getting free of course, now
and then; they cannot move in a body, and it is not easy to know whether
any such desire remains among them. So far as I am aware, there is no
mention of such migrations in the most ancient times; but the omission
proves nothing, for before the Normans, before the game laws and parks
together came into existence, no one who could write thought enough of
the deer to notice their motions. The monks were engaged in chronicling
the inroads of the pagans, or writing chronologies of the Roman Empire.
On analogical grounds it would seem quite possible that in their original
state the English deer did move from part to part of the country with the
seasons. Almost all the birds, the only really free things in this
country now, move, even those that do not quit the island; and why not
the deer in the old time when all the woods were open to them? England is
not a large country, but there are considerable differences in the
climate and the time at which vegetation appears, quite sufficient of
themselves to induce animals to move from place to place. We have no
narrowing buffalo zone to lament, for our buffalo zone disappeared long
ago. These parks and woods are islets of the olden time, dotted here and
there in the midst of the most modern agricultural scenery. These deer
and their ancestors have been confined within the pale for hundreds of
years, and though in a sense free, they are in no sense wild. But the old
power remains still. See the buck as he starts away, and jumps at every
leap as high as the fern. He would give the hounds a long chase yet.
The fern is fully four feet tall, hiding a boy entirely, and only showing
a man's head. The deer do not go through it unless startled; they prefer
to follow a track already made, one of their own trails. It is their
natural cover, and when the buckhounds meet near London the buck often
takes refuge in one or other of the fern-grown commons of which there are
many on the southern side. But fern is inimical to grass, and, while it
gives them cover, occupies the place of much more pleasant herbage. As
their range is limited, though they have here a forest of some extent as
well as the park to roam over, they cannot always obtain enough in
winter. In frost, when the grass will not grow, or when snow is on the
ground, that which they can find is supplemented with hay. They are, in
fact, foddered exactly the same as cattle. In some of the smaller parks
they are driven into inclosures and fed altogether. This is not the case
here. Perhaps it was through the foggers, as the labourers are called who
fodder cattle and carry out the hay in the morning and evening, that deer
poachers of old discovered that they could approach the deer by carrying
a bundle of sweet-smelling hay, which overcame the scent of the body and
baffled the buck's keen nostrils till the thief was within shot. The
foggers, being about so very early in the morning,--they are out at the
dawn,--have found out a good many game secrets in their time. If the deer
were outside the forest at any hour it was sure to be when the dew was on
the grass, and thus they noticed that with the hay truss on their heads
they could walk up quite close occasionally. Foggers know all the game on
the places where they work; there is not a hare or a rabbit, a pheasant
or a partridge, whose ways are not plain to them. There are no stories
now of stags a century old (three would go back to Queen Elizabeth); they
have gone, like other traditions of the forest, before steam and
breechloader. Deer lore is all but extinct, the terms of venery known but
to a few; few, indeed, could correctly name the parts of a buck if one
were sent them. The deer are a picture only--a picture that lives and
moves and is beautiful to look at, but must not be rudely handled. Still,
they linger while the marten has disappeared, the polecat is practically
gone, and the badger becoming rare. It is curious that the badger has
lived on through sufferance for three centuries. Nearly three centuries
ago, a chronicler observed that the badger would have been rooted out
before his time had it not been for the parks. There was no great store
of badgers then; there is no great store now. Sketches remain in old
country-houses of the chase of the marten; you see the hounds all yelping
round the foot of a tree, the marten up in it, and in the middle of the
hounds the huntsman in top-boots and breeches. You can but smile at it.
To Americans it must forcibly recall the treeing of a 'coon. The deer
need keep no watch, there are no wolves to pull them down; and it is
quite probable that the absence of any danger of that kind is the reason
of their tameness even more than the fact that they are not chased by
man. Nothing comes creeping stealthily through the fern, or hunts them
through the night. They can slumber in peace. There is no larger beast of
prey than a stoat, or a stray cat. But they retain their dislike of dogs,
a dislike shared by cattle, as if they too dimly remembered a time when
they had been hunted. The list of animals still living within the pale
and still wild is short indeed. Besides the deer, which are not wild,
there are hares, rabbits, squirrels, two kinds of rat,--the land and the
water rat,--stoat, weasel, mole, and mouse. There are more varieties of
mouse than of any other animal: these, the weakest of all, have escaped
best, though exposed to so many enemies. A few foxes, and still fewer
badgers, complete the list, for there are no other animals here. Modern
times are fatal to all creatures of prey, whether furred or feathered;
and so even the owls are less numerous, both in actual numbers and in
variety of species, than they were even fifty years ago.
But the forest is not vacant. It is indeed full of happy life. Every
hollow tree--and there are many hollow trees where none are felled--has
its nest of starlings, or titmice, or woodpeckers. Woodpeckers are
numerous, and amusing to watch. Wood-pigeons and turtle-doves abound, the
former in hundreds nesting here. Rooks, of course, and jackdaws,--daws
love hollow trees,--jays, and some magpies. The magpie is one of the
birds which have partly disappeared from the fields of England. There are
broad lands where not one is to be seen. Once looking from the road at
two in a field, a gentleman who was riding by stopped his horse and
asked, quite interested, 'Are those magpies?' I replied that they were.
'I have not seen any since I was a boy till now,' he said. Magpies are
still plentiful in some places, as in old parks in Somersetshire, but
they have greatly diminished in the majority of instances. There are some
here, and many jays. These are handsome birds, and with the green
woodpeckers give colour to the trees. Night-jars or fern-owls fly round
the outskirts and through the open glades in the summer twilight. These
are some of the forest birds. The rest visit the forest or live in it,
but are equally common to hedgerow and copse. Woodpeckers, jays, magpies,
owls, night-jars, are all distinctly forest and park birds, and are
continually with the deer. The lesser birds are the happier that there
are fewer hawks and crows. The deer are not torn with the cruel tooth of
hound or wolf, nor does the sharp arrow sting them. It is a little piece
of olden England without its terror and bloodshed.
The fawns fed away down the slope and presently into one of the broad
green open paths or drives, where the underwood on each side is lined
with bramble and with trailing white rose, which loves to cling to bushes
scarcely higher than itself. Their runners stretch out at the edges of
the drive, so that from the underwood the mound of green falls aslant to
the sward. This gradual descent from the trees and ash to the bushes of
hawthorn, from the hawthorn to the bramble, thence to the rose and the
grass, gives to the vista of the broad path a soft, graceful aspect.
After the fawns had disappeared, the squire went on and entered under the
beeches from which they had emerged. He had not gone far before he struck
and followed a path which wound between the beech trunks and was entirely
arched over by their branches. Squirrels raced away at the sound of his
footsteps, darting over the ground and up the stems of the trees in an
instant. A slight rustling now and then showed that a rabbit had been
startled. Pheasants ran too, but noiselessly, and pigeons rose from the
boughs above. The wood-pigeons rose indeed, but they were not much
frightened, and quickly settled again. So little shot at, they felt safe,
and only moved from habit.
He crossed several paths leading in various directions, but went on,
gradually descending till the gable end of a farmhouse became visible
through the foliage. The old red tiles were but a few yards distant from
the boughs of the last beech, and there was nothing between the house and
the forest but a shallow trench almost filled with dead brown leaves and
edged with fern. Out from that trench, sometimes stealthily slipping
between the flattened fern-stalks, came a weasel, and, running through
the plantains and fringe-like mayweed or stray pimpernel which covered
the neglected ground, made for the straw-rick. Searching about for mice,
he was certain to come across a hen's egg in some corner, perhaps in a
hay-crib, which the cattle, now being in the meadow, did not use. Or a
stronger stoat crept out and attacked anything that he fancied. Very
often there was a rabbit sitting in the long grass which grows round
under an old hay-rick. He would sit still and let anyone pass who did not
know of his presence, but those who were aware used to give the grass a
kick if they went that way, when he would carry his white tail swiftly
round the corner of the rick. In winter hares came nibbling at everything
in the garden, and occasionally in summer, if they fancied an herb: they
would have spoiled it altogether if free to stay there without fear of
some one suddenly appearing.
Dogs there were in plenty, but all chained, except a few mere puppies
which practically lived indoors. It was not safe to have them loose so
near the wood, the temptation to wander being so very strong. So that,
though there was a continual barking and long, mournful whines for
liberty, the wild creatures came in time to understand that there was
little danger, and the rabbit actually sat under the hay-rick.
Pheasants mingled with the fowls, and, like the fowls, only ran aside out
of the way of people. In early summer there were tiny partridge chicks
about, which rushed under the coop. The pheasants sometimes came down to
the kitchen door, so greedy were they. With the dogs and ponies, the
pheasants and rabbits, the weasels and the stoats, and the ferrets in
their hutches, the place seemed really to belong more to the animals than
to the tenant.
The forest strayed indoors. Bucks' horns, feathers picked up, strange
birds shot and stuffed, fossils from the sand-pits, coins and pottery
from the line of the ancient Roman road, all the odds and ends of the
forest, were scattered about within. To the yard came the cows, which,
with bells about their necks, wandered into the fern, and the swine,
which searched and rooted about for acorns and beech-mast in autumn. The
men who dug in the sand-pits or for gravel came this way in and out to
their labour, and so did those who split up the fallen trunks into logs.
Now and then a woodpecker came with a rush up from the meadows, where he
had been visiting the hedgerows, and went into the forest with a yell as
he entered the trees. The deer fed up to the precincts, and at intervals
a buck at the dawn got into the garden. But the flies from the forest
teased and terrified the horses, which would have run away with the
heavily loaded waggon behind them if not protected with fine netting as
if in armour. They did run away sometimes at harrow, tearing across the
field like mad things. You could not keep the birds out of the garden,
try how you would. They had most of the sowings up. The blackbirds pecked
every apple in the orchard. How the dead leaves in autumn came whirling
in thousands through rick-yard and court in showers upon the tiles! Nor
was it of much avail to sweep them away; they were there again to-morrow,
and until the wind changed. The swallows were now very busy building;
there were not many houses for them, and therefore they flocked here. Up
from over the meadows came the breeze, drawing into the hollow recesses
of the forest behind. It came over the grass and farther away over corn
just yellowing, the shadows of the clouds racing with it and instantly
lost in the trees. It drew through the pillars of the forest, and away to
the hills beyond.
The squire's ale was duly put for him, the particular gossip he liked was
ready for him; and having taken both, he looked at his old watch and went
on. His path now led for a while just inside the pale, which here divided
the forest from the meadows. In the olden time it would have been made of
oak, for they built all things then with an eye to endurance; but it was
now of fir, pitched, sawn from firs thrown in the copses. For the purpose
of keeping the deer in, it was as useful as the pale of oak. Oak is not
so plentiful nowadays. The high spars were the especial vaunting-places
of the little brown wrens which perched there and sang, in defiance of
all that the forest might hold. Rabbits crept under, but the hares waited
till evening and went round by the gates. Presently the path turned and
the squire passed a pond partly dried up, from the margin of which
several pigeons rose up, clattering their wings. They are fond of the
neighbourhood of water, and are sure to be there some time during the
day. The path went upwards, but the ascent was scarcely perceptible
through hazel bushes, which became farther apart and thinner as the
elevation increased, and the soil was less rich. Some hawthorn bushes
succeeded, and from among these he stepped out into the open park.
Nothing could be seen of the manor-house here. It was hidden by the roll
of the ground and the groups of trees. The close sward was already a
little brown--the trampling of hoofs as well as the heat causes the
brownish hue of fed sward, as if it were bruised. He went out into the
park, bearing somewhat to the right and passing many hawthorns, round the
trunks of which the grass was cut away in a ring by the hoofs of animals
seeking shadow. Far away on a rising knoll a herd of deer were lying
under some elms. In front were the downs, a mile or so distant; to the
right, meadows and cornfields, towards which he went. There was no house
nor any habitation in view; in the early part of the year, the
lambing-time, there was a shepherd's hut on wheels in the fields, but it
had been drawn away.
According to tradition, there is no forest in England in which a king has
not hunted. A king, they say, hunted here in the old days of the
cross-bow; but happily the place escaped notice in that artificial era
when half the parks and woods were spoiled to make the engraver's ideal
landscape of straight vistas, broad in the foreground and narrowing up to
nothing. Wide, straight roads--you can call them nothing else--were cut
through the finest woods, so that upon looking from a certain window, or
standing at a certain spot in the grounds, you might see a church tower
at the end of the cutting, In some parks there are half a dozen such
horrors shown to you as a great curiosity; some have a monument or pillar
at the end. These hideous disfigurements of beautiful scenery should
surely be wiped out in our day. The stiff, straight cutting could soon be
filled up by planting, and after a time the woods would resume their
natural condition. Many common highway roads are really delightful,
winding through trees and hedgerows, with glimpses of hills and distant
villages. But these planned, straight vistas, radiating from a central
spot as if done with ruler and pen, at once destroy the pleasant illusion
of primeval forest. You may be dreaming under the oaks of the chase or of
Rosalind: the moment you enter such a vista all becomes commonplace.
Happily this park escaped, and it is beautiful. Our English landscape
wants no gardening: it _cannot_ be gardened. The least interference kills
it. The beauty of English woodland and country is in its detail. There is
nothing empty and unclothed. If the clods are left a little while
undisturbed in the fields, weeds spring up and wild-flowers bloom upon
them. Is the hedge cut and trimmed, lo! the bluebells flower the more and
a yet fresher green buds forth upon the twigs. Never was there a garden
like the meadow: there is not an inch of the meadow in early summer
without a flower. Old walls, as we saw just now, are not left without a
fringe; on the top of the hardest brick wall, on the sapless tiles, on
slates, stonecrop takes hold and becomes a cushion of yellow bloom.
Nature is a miniature painter and handles a delicate brush, the tip of
which touches the tiniest spot and leaves something living. The park has
indeed its larger lines, its broad open sweep, and gradual slope, to
which the eye accustomed to small inclosures requires time to adjust
itself. These left to themselves are beautiful; they are the surface of
the earth, which is always true to itself and needs no banks nor
artificial hollows. The earth is right and the tree is right: trim either
and all is wrong. The deer will not fit to them then.
The squire came near enough to the corn-field to see that the wheat-ears
were beginning to turn yellow and that the barley had the silky
appearance caused by the beard, the delicate lines of which divide the
light and reflect it like gossamer. At some distance a man was
approaching; he saw him, and sat down on the grass under an oak to await
the coming of Ettles the keeper. Ettles had been his rounds and had
visited the outlying copses, which are the especial haunts of pheasants.
Like the deer, pheasants, if they can, will get away from the main wood.
He was now returning, and the squire, well knowing that he would pass
this way, had purposely crossed his path to meet him. The dogs ran to the
squire and at once made friends with him. Ettles, whose cheek was the
colour of the oak-apples in spring, was more respectful: he stood till
the squire motioned him to sit down. The dogs rolled on the sward, but,
though in the shadow, they could not extend themselves sufficiently nor
pant fast enough. Yonder the breeze that came up over the forest on its
way to the downs blew through the group of trees on the knoll, cooling
the deer as it passed.
MY OLD VILLAGE.
'John Brown is dead,' said an aged friend and visitor in answer to my
inquiry for the strong labourer.
'Is he really dead?' I asked, for it seemed impossible.
'He is. He came home from his work in the evening as usual, and seemed to
catch his foot in the threshold and fell forward on the floor. When they
picked him up he was dead.'
I remember the doorway; a raised piece of wood ran across it, as is
commonly the case in country cottages, such as one might easily catch
one's foot against if one did not notice it; but he knew that bit of wood
well. The floor was of brick, hard to fall on and die. He must have come
down over the crown of the hill, with his long slouching stride, as if
his legs had been half pulled away from his body by his heavy boots in
the furrows when a ploughboy. He must have turned up the steps in the
bank to his cottage, and so, touching the threshold, ended. He is gone
through the great doorway, and one pencil-mark is rubbed out. There used
to be a large hearth in that room, a larger room than in most cottages;
and when the fire was lit, and the light shone on the yellowish red brick
beneath and the large rafters overhead, it was homely and pleasant. In
summer the door was always wide open. Close by on the high bank there was
a spot where the first wild violets came. You might look along miles of
hedgerow, but there were never any until they had shown by John Brown's.