II

The dismal pits in a disused brickfield, unsightly square holes in a

waste, are full in the shallow places of an aquatic grass, Reed Canary

Grass, I think, which at this time of mists stretches forth

sharp-pointed tongues over the stagnant water. These sharp-pointed

leaf-tongues are all on one side of the stalks, so that the most

advanced project across the surface, as if the water were the canvas,

and the leaves drawn on it. For water seems always to rise away from

you--to slope slightly upwards; even a pool has that appearance, and

therefore anything standing in it is drawn on it as you might sketch on

this paper. You see the water beyond and above the top of the plant,

and the smooth surface gives the leaf and stalk a sharp, clear

definition. But the mass of the tall grass crowds together, every leaf

painted yellow by the autumn, a thick cover at the pit-side. This tall

grass always awakes my fancy, its shape partly, partly its thickness,

perhaps; and yet these feelings are not to be analysed. I like to look

at it; I like to stand or move among it on the bank of a brook, to feel

it touch and rustle against me. A sense of wildness comes with its

touch, and I feel a little as I might feel if there was a vast forest

round about. As a few strokes from a loving hand will soothe a weary

forehead, so the gentle pressure of the wild grass soothes and strokes

away the nervous tension born of civilised life.

I could write a whole history of it; the time when the leaves were

fresh and green, and the sedge-birds frequented it; the time when the

moorhen's young crept after their mother through its recesses; from the

singing of the cuckoo by the river, till now brown and yellow leaves

strew the water. They strew, too, the dry brown grass of the land,

thick tuffets, and lie even among the rushes, blown hither from the

distant trees. The wind works its full will over the exposed waste, and

drives through the reed-grass, scattering the stalks aside, and scarce

giving them time to spring together again, when the following blast a

second time divides them.

A cruder piece of ground, ruder and more dismal in its unsightly holes,

could not be found; and yet, because of the reed-grass, it is made as

it were full of thought. I wonder the painters, of whom there are so

many nowadays, armies of amateurs, do not sometimes take these scraps

of earth and render into them the idea which fills a clod with beauty.

In one such dismal pit--not here--I remember there grew a great

quantity of bulrushes. Another was surrounded with such masses of

swamp-foliage that it reminded those who saw it of the creeks in

semi-tropical countries. But somehow they do not seem to see these

things, but go on the old mill-round of scenery, exhausted many a year

since. They do not see them, perhaps, because most of those who have

educated themselves in the technique of painting are city-bred, and can

never have the _feeling_ of the country, however fond they may be of it.

In those fields of which I was writing the other day, I found an artist

at work at his easel; and a pleasant nook be had chosen. His brush did

its work with a steady and sure stroke that indicated command of his

materials. He could delineate whatever he selected with technical skill

at all events. He had pitched his easel where two hedges formed an

angle, and one of them was full of oak-trees. The hedge was singularly

full of "bits"--bryony, tangles of grasses, berries, boughs half-tinted

and boughs green, hung as it were with pictures like the wall of a

room. Standing as near as I could without disturbing him, I found that

the subject of his canvas was none of these. It was that old stale and

dull device of a rustic bridge spanning a shallow stream crossing a

lane. Some figure stood on the bridge--the old, old trick. He was

filling up the hedge of the lane with trees from the hedge, and they

were cleverly executed. But why drag them into this fusty scheme, which

has appeared in every child's sketch-book for fifty years? Why not have

simply painted the beautiful hedge at hand, purely and simply, a hedge

hung with pictures for any one to copy? The field in which he had

pitched his easel is full of fine trees and good "effects." But no; we

must have the ancient and effete old story. This is not all the

artist's fault, because he must in many cases paint what he can sell;

and if his public will only buy effete old stories, he cannot help it.

Still, I think if a painter _did_ paint that hedge in its fulness of

beauty, just simply as it stands in the mellow autumn light, it would

win approval of the best people, and that ultimately, a succession of

such work would pay.

The clover was dying down, and the plough would soon be among it--the

earth was visible in patches. Out in one of these bare patches there

was a young mouse, so chilled by the past night that his dull senses

did not appear conscious of my presence. He had crept out on the bare

earth evidently to feel the warmth of the sun, almost the last hour he

would enjoy. He looked about for food, but found none; his short span

of life was drawing to a close; even when at last he saw me, he could

only run a few inches under cover of a dead clover-plant. Thousands

upon thousands of mice perish like this as the winter draws on, born

too late in the year to grow strong enough or clever enough to prepare

a store. Other kinds of mice perish like leaves at the first blast of

cold air. Though but a mouse, to me it was very wretched to see the

chilled creature, so benumbed as to have almost lost its sense of

danger. There is something so ghastly in birth that immediately leads

to death; a sentient creature born only to wither. The earth offered it

no help, nor the declining sun; all things organised seem to depend so

much on circumstances. Nothing but pity can be felt for thousands upon

thousands of such organisms. But thus, too, many a miserable human

being has perished in the great Metropolis, dying, chilled and

benumbed, of starvation, and finding the hearts of fellow-creatures as

bare and cold as the earth of the clover-field.

In these fields outside London the flowers are peculiarly rich in

colour. The common mallow, whose flower is usually a light mauve, has

here a deep, almost purple bloom; the bird's-foot lotus is a deep

orange. The fig-wort, which is generally two or three feet high, stands

in one ditch fully eight feet, and the stem is more than half an inch

square. A fertile soil has doubtless something to do with this colour

and vigour. The red admiral butterflies, too, seemed in the summer more

brilliant than usual. One very fine one, whose broad wings stretched

out like fans, looked simply splendid floating round and round the

willows which marked the margin of a dry pool. His blue markings were

really blue--blue velvet--his red, and the white stroke shone as if

sunbeams were in his wings. I wish there were more of these

butterflies; in summer, dry summer, when the flowers seem gone and the

grass is not so dear to us, and the leaves are dull with heat, a little

colour is so pleasant. To me, colour is a sort of food; every spot of

colour is a drop of wine to the spirit. I used to take my folding-stool

on those long, heated days, which made the summer of 1884 so

conspicuous among summers, down to the shadow of a row of elms by a

common cabbage-field. Their shadow was nearly as hot as the open

sunshine; the dry leaves did not absorb the heat that entered them, and

the dry hedge and dry earth poured heat up as the sun poured it down.

Dry, dead leaves--dead with heat, as with frost--strewed the grass,

dry, too, and withered at my feet.

But among the cabbages, which were very small, there grew thousands of

poppies, fifty times more poppies than cabbage, so that the pale green

of the cabbage-leaves was hidden by the scarlet petals falling wide

open to the dry air. There was a broad band of scarlet colour all along

the side of the field, and it was this which brought me to the shade of

those particular elms. The use of the cabbages was in this way: they

fetched for me all the white butterflies of the neighbourhood, and they

fluttered, hundreds and hundreds of white butterflies, a constant

stream and flow of them over the broad band of scarlet. Humble-bees

came too; bur-bur-bur; and the buzz, and the flutter of the white wings

over those fixed red butterflies the poppies, the flutter and sound and

colour pleased me in the dry heat of the day. Sometimes I set my

camp-stool by a humble-bees' nest. I like to see and hear them go in

and out, so happy, busy, and wild; the humble-bee is a favourite. That

summer their nests were very plentiful; but although the heat might

have seemed so favourable to them, the flies were not at all numerous,

I mean out-of-doors. Wasps, on the contrary, flourished to an

extraordinary degree. One willow tree particularly took their fancy;

there was a swarm in the tree for weeks, attracted by some secretion;

the boughs and leaves were yellow with wasps. But it seemed curious

that flies should not be more numerous than usual; they are dying now

fast enough, except a few of the large ones, that still find some sugar

in the flowers of the ivy. The finest show of ivy flower is among some

yew trees; the dark ivy has filled the dark yew tree, and brought out

its pale yellow-green flowers in the sombre boughs. Last night, a great

fly, the last in the house, buzzed into my candle. I detest flies, but

I was sorry for his scorched wings; the fly itself hateful, its wings

so beautifully made. I have sometimes picked a feather from the dirt of

the road and placed it on the grass. It is contrary to one's feelings

to see so beautiful a thing lying in the mud. Towards my window now, as

I write, there comes suddenly a shower of yellow leaves, wrested out by

main force from the high elms; the blue sky behind them, they droop

slowly, borne onward, twirling, fluttering towards me--a cloud of

autumn butterflies.

A spring rises on the summit of a green brow that overlooks the meadows

for miles. The spot is not really very high, still it is the highest

ground in that direction for a long distance, and it seems singular to

find water on the top of the hill, a thing common enough, but still

sufficiently opposed to general impressions to appear remarkable. In

this shallow water, says a faint story--far off, faint and uncertain,

like the murmur of a distant cascade--two ladies and some soldiers lost

their lives. The brow is defended by thick bramble-bushes, which bore a

fine crop of blackberries that autumn, to the delight of the boys; and

these bushes partly conceal the sharpness of the short descent. But

once your attention is drawn to it, you see that it has all the

appearance of having been artificially sloped, like a rampart, or

rather a glacis. The grass is green and the sward soft, being moistened

by the spring, except in one spot, where the grass is burnt up under

the heat of the summer sun, indicating the existence of foundations

beneath.

There is a beautiful view from this spot; but leaving that now, and

wandering on among the fields, presently you may find a meadow of

peculiar shape, extremely long and narrow, half a mile long, perhaps;

and this the folk will tell you was the King's Drive, or ride. Stories

there are, too, of subterranean passages--there are always such stories

in the neighbourhood of ancient buildings--I remember one, said to be

three miles long; it led to an abbey. The lane leads on, bordered with

high hawthorn hedges, and occasionally a stout hawthorn tree, hardy and

twisted by the strong hands of the passing years; thick now with red

haws, and the haunt of the redwings, whose "chuck-chuck" is heard every

minute; but the birds themselves always perch on the outer side of the

hedge. They are not far ahead, but they always keep on the safe side,

flying on twenty yards or so, but never coming to my side.

The little pond, which in summer was green with weed, is now yellow

with the fallen hawthorn-leaves; the pond is choked with them. The lane

has been slowly descending; and now, on looking through a gateway, an

ancient building stands up on the hill, sharply defined against the

sky. It is the banqueting hall of a palace of old times, in which kings

and princes once sat at their meat after the chase. This is the centre

of those dim stories which float like haze over the meadows around.

Many a wild red stag has been carried thither after the hunt, and many

a wild boar slain in the glades of the forest.

The acorns are dropping now as they dropped five centuries since, in

the days when the wild boars fed so greedily upon them; the oaks are

broadly touched with brown; the bramble thickets in which the boars

hid, green, but strewn with the leaves that have fallen from the lofty

trees. Though meadow, arable, and hop-fields hold now the place of the

forest, a goodly remnant remains, for every hedge is full of oak and

elm and ash; maple too, and the lesser bushes. At a little distance, so

thick are the trees, the whole country appears a wood, and it is easy

to see what a forest it must have been centuries ago.

The Prince leaving the grim walls of the Tower of London by the

Water-gate, and dropping but a short way down with the tide, could

mount his horse on the opposite bank, and reach his palace here, in the

midst of the thickest woods and wildest country, in half an hour.

Thence every morning setting forth upon the chase, he could pass the

day in joyous labours, and the evening in feasting, still within

call--almost within sound of horn--of the Tower, if any weighty matter

demanded his presence.

In our time, the great city has widened out, and comes at this day down

to within three miles of the hunting-palace. There still intervenes a

narrow space between the last house of London and the ancient Forest

Hall, a space of corn-field and meadow; the last house, for although

not nominally London, there is no break of continuity in the bricks and

mortar thence to London Bridge. London is within a stone's-throw, as it

were, and yet, to this day the forest lingers, and it is country. The

very atmosphere is different. That smoky thickness characteristic of

the suburbs ceases as you ascend the gradual rise, and leave the

outpost of bricks and mortar behind. The air becomes clear and strong,

till on the brow by the spring on a windy day it is almost like

sea-air. It comes over the trees, over the hills, and is sweet with the

touch of grass and leaf. There is no gas, no sulphurous acid in that.

As the Edwards and Henries breathed it centuries since, so it can be

inhaled now. The sun that shone on the red deer is as bright now as

then; the berries are thick on the bushes; there is colour in the leaf.

The forest is gone; but the spirit of nature stays, and can be found by

those who search for it. Dearly as I love the open air, I cannot regret

the mediaeval days. I do not wish them back again, I would sooner fight

in the foremost ranks of Time. Nor do we need them, for the spirit of

nature stays, and will always be here, no matter to how high a pinnacle

of thought the human mind may attain; still the sweet air, and the

hills, and the sea, and the sun, will always be with us.