The Life of the Fields
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Richard Jefferies >> The Life of the Fields
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16 This eBook was produced by Malcolm Farmer.
THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS
BY RICHARD JEFFERIES
My thanks are due to those editors who have so kindly permitted me to
reprint the following pages:--"The Field-Play" appeared in _Time_; "Bits
of Oak Bark" and "The Pageant of Summer" in _Longman's Magazine_; "Meadow
Thoughts" and "Mind under Water" in _The Graphic_; "Clematis Lane,"
"Nature near Brighton," "Sea, Sky, and Down," "January in the Sussex
Woods," and "By the Exe" in _The Standard_; "Notes on Landscape
Painting," in _The Magazine of Art_; "Village Miners," in _The Gentleman's
Magazine_; "Nature and the Gamekeeper," "The Sacrifice to Trout," "The
Hovering of the Kestrel," and "Birds Climbing the Air," in _The St.
James's Gazette_; "Sport and Science," in _The National Review_; "The
Water-Colley," in _The Manchester Guardian_; "Country Literature,"
"Sunlight in a London Square," "Venice in the East End," "The Pigeons at
the British Museum," and "The Plainest City in Europe," in _The Pall Mall
Gazette_.
RICHARD JEFFERIES
CONTENTS
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER
THE FIELD PLAY:
I. UPTILL-A-THORN
II. RURAL DYNAMITE
BITS OF OAK BARK:
I. THE ACORN-GATHERER
II. THE LEGEND OF A GATEWAY
III. A ROMAN BROOK
MEADOW THOUGHTS
CLEMATIS LANE
NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON
SEA, SKY, AND DOWN
JANUARY IN THE SUSSEX WOODS
BY THE EXE
THE WATER-COLLEY
NOTES ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING
VILLAGE MINERS
MIND UNDER WATER
SPORT AND SCIENCE
NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER
THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT
THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL
BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR
COUNTRY LITERATURE:
I. THE AWAKENING.
II. SCARCITY OF BOOKS
III. THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING
IV. PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION
SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE
VENICE IN THE EAST END.
THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER
I
Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch,
told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the
hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like
summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they
were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate
scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass or
leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in
the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and
freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had
drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the
air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes--the common
rushes--were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses
growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs
were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the grass,
and leaves and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems of angelica, big
as a gun-barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope of the mound,
their tiers of well-balanced branches rising like those of a tree. Such a
sturdy growth pushed back the ranks of hedge parsley in full white
flower, which blocked every avenue and winding bird's-path of the bank.
But the "gix," or wild parsnip, reached already high above both, and
would rear its fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it could face a man.
Trees they were to the lesser birds, not even bending if perched on; but
though so stout, the birds did not place their nests on or against them.
Something in the odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps, is not
quite liked; if brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent.
Under their cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against
or on the stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain
supports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the
ditch itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was
wrapped and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it; it
would have needed a ladder to help any one look over.
It was between the may and the June roses. The may-bloom had fallen, and
among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed
the redwings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and
towering while there was a thorn, or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green
willow to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The buds
were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may and the rose.
As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible
portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so
the air lingering among the woods and hedges--green waves and
billows--became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched hawthorn
leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval willows; from
vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under; brushed from the waving
grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the sunshine was borne along and
breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds,
the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It was life to
breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth went
up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of the
Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer--to the
broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the grass, up to the
highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in its dead form, like the
Primary rocks, like granite and basalt--clear but cold and frozen
crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the
earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the
solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves. Living things
leap in the grass, living things drift upon the air, living things are
coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the
immense weight of Matter--the dead, the crystallised--press ponderously
on the thinking mind. The whole office of Matter is to feed life--to feed
the green rushes, and the roses that are about to be; to feed the
swallows above, and us that wander beneath them. So much greater is this
ween and common rush than all the Alps.
Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just visible as he passes;
did he pause, the light would he apparent through their texture. On the
wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is
a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the
minute filaments on a swallow's quill, more delicate than the pollen of a
flower. They are formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is
resolved into the means and organs of life! Though not often consciously
recognised, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the
earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living case of
life, to see the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by degrees the
perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come the wings that by-and-by
shall pass the immense sea. It is in this marvellous transformation of
clods and cold matter into living things that the joy and the hope of
summer reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and
petal, is an inscription speaking of hope. Consider the grasses and the
oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue butterfly--they are one and all a sign
and token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So that my hope
becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on
every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much for
us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and enjoyed. Not for you and me,
now, but for our race, who will ultimately use this magical secret for
their happiness. Earth holds secrets enough to give them the life of the
fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that
ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky,
shall become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take
from all their beauty and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower is
to me so much more than stalk and petals. When I look in the glass I see
that every line in my face means pessimism; but in spite of my face--that
is my experience--I remain an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has
etched thin crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has cast the
original expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow flow over us with little
ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the beach. Let us not look at ourselves
but onwards, and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field.
He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal life of man.
Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind.
The long grass flowing towards the hedge has reared in a wave against it.
Along the hedge it is higher and greener, and rustles into the very
bushes. There is a mark only now where the footpath was; it passed close
to the hedge, but its place is traceable only as a groove in the sorrel
and seed-tops. Though it has quite filled the path, the grass there
cannot send its tops so high; it has left a winding crease. By the hedge
here stands a moss-grown willow, and its slender branches extend over the
sward. Beyond it is an oak, just apart from the bushes; then the ground
gently rises, and an ancient pollard ash, hollow and black inside, guards
an open gateway like a low tower. The different tone of green shows that
the hedge is there of nut-trees; but one great hawthorn spreads out in a
semicircle, roofing the grass which is yet more verdant in the still pool
(as it were) under it. Next a corner, more oaks, and a chestnut in bloom.
Returning to-this spot an old apple tree stands right out in the meadow
like an island. There seemed just now the tiniest twinkle of movement by
the rushes, but it was lost among the hedge parsley. Among the grey
leaves of the willow there is another flit of motion; and visible now
against the sky there is a little brown bird, not to be distinguished at
the moment from the many other little brown birds that are known to be
about. He got up into the willow from the hedge parsley somehow, without
being seen to climb or fly. Suddenly he crosses to the tops of the
hawthorn and immediately flings himself up into the air a yard or two,
his wings and ruffled crest making a ragged outline; jerk, jerk, jerk, as
if it were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even at that height.
He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone
into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a pond. It is a
whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles. Presently he
will go out to the island apple tree and back again in a minute or two;
the pair of them are so fond of each other's affectionate company they
cannot remain apart.
Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either near at
hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a
second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover.
Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now
and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart.
They are fly-fishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips
and grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird
slips up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut
tree. But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with
intervals. The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of sight. All
the thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, and finches are hidden, most
of them on the mound among the ivy, and parsley, and rough grasses,
protected too by a roof of brambles. The nests that still have eggs are
not, like the nests of the early days of April, easily found; they are
deep down in the tangled herbage by the shore of the ditch, or far inside
the thorny thickets which then looked mere bushes, and are now so broad.
Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man would be in a wood;
they have nests and eggs on the ground for which you may search in vain
till the mowers come.
Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and marks of scratching show
where a doe has been preparing for a litter. Some well-trodden runs lead
from mound to mound; they are sandy near the hedge where the particles
have been carried out adhering to the rabbits' feet and fur. A crow rises
lazily from the upper end of the field, and perches in the chestnut. His
presence, too, was unsuspected. He is there by far too frequently. At
this season the crows are always in the mowing-grass, searching about,
stalking in winding tracks from furrow to furrow, picking up an egg here
and a foolish fledgling that has wandered from the mound yonder. Very
likely there may be a moorhen or two slipping about under cover of the
long grass; thus hidden, they can leave the shelter of the flags and
wander a distance from the brook. So that beneath the surface of the
grass and under the screen of the leaves there are ten times more birds
than are seen.
Besides the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound which is only
heard in summer. Waiting quietly to discover what birds are about, I
become aware of a sound in the very air. It is not the midsummer hum
which will soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over the
cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a hum, and does but
just tremble at the extreme edge of hearing. If the branches wave and
rustle they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder it
overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot, define it,
except by calling the hours of winter to mind--they are silent; you hear
a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the
hoar-frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without
sound in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere--in the passing
breeze, in the hedge, in the broad branching trees, in the grass as it
swings; all the myriad particles that together make the summer are in
motion. The sap moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass
and flower, and yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square
miles of grass blades--for they would cover acres and square miles if
reckoned edge to edge--are drawing their strength from the atmosphere.
Exceedingly minute as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps may
give them a volume almost reaching in the aggregate to the power of the
ear. Besides the quivering leaf, the swinging grass, the fluttering
bird's wing, and the thousand oval membranes which innumerable insects
whirl about, a faint resonance seems to come from the very earth itself.
The fervour of the sunbeams descending in a tidal flood rings on the
strung harp of earth. It is this exquisite undertone, heard and yet
unheard, which brings the mind into sweet accordance with the wonderful
instrument of nature.
By the apple tree there is a low bank, where the grass is less tall and
admits the heat direct to the ground; here there are blue flowers--bluer
than the wings of my favourite butterflies--with white centres--the
lovely bird's-eyes, or veronica. The violet and cowslip, bluebell and
rose, are known to thousands; the veronica is overlooked. The ploughboys
know it, and the wayside children, the mower and those who linger in
fields, but few else. Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass,
imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the grass, these
growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun. From this island I
look down into the depth of the grasses. Red sorrel spires--deep drinkers
of reddest sun wine--stand the boldest, and in their numbers threaten the
buttercups. To these in the distance they give the gipsy-gold tint--the
reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal. It will show even on
a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say. Gather the open
marguerite daisies, and they seem large--so wide a disc, such fingers of
rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much green. Clover heads
of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from
Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in shape: some tend to a
point--the foxtails--some are hard and cylindrical; others, avoiding the
club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with fruit of seed at the
ends, which tremble as the air goes by. Their stalks are ripening and
becoming of the colour of hay while yet the long blades remain green.
Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded by
foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become
monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of
veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of flowers,
and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows oak and elm ranks with
elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however many times reduplicated,
their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on
the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky, but did we
ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years! There seems always
a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that has not been seen through,
a corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may give us
something. Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on for
the most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or up
to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The hive
bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear to entangle
their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one will enter a
hedge. They like an open and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the
sward by the roadside, fields of clover, where the flower is not deep
under grass.
II
It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the
mowing-grass. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem and
takes wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar
buoyantly glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to himself as he
goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work in glass receives
his labour, no artificial saccharine aids him when the beams of the sun
are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in comfort;
the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for the
flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm
descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and
tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron
nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn; but
no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall
(in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape
the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering
nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out
and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far
inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest
is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound; a mere tunnel
beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the
fern grows by, red mice rustle past.
It thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the
treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the
lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of
a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree
fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the
wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a
fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into the
fields; but the humble-bee's home, under moss and matted fibres, remains
uninjured. His house at the root of the king of trees, like a cave in the
rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the air is the
sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme; there will
be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always in the
field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild and
humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at heart
at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the
brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression of
being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn sky.
The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground and the livid flame
to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do in the
evening.
Caught by such a cloud, I have stayed under thick larches at the edge of
plantations. They are no shelter, but conceal one perfectly. The
wood-pigeons come home to their nest trees; in larches they seem to have
permanent nests, almost like rooks. Kestrels, too, come home to the wood.
Pheasants crow, but not from fear--from defiance, in fear they scream.
The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky. The rabbits
quietly feed on out in the field between the thistles and rushes that so
often grow in woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their favourite
places, utterly heedless how heavy the echoes may be in the hollows of
the wooded hills. Till the rain comes they take no heed whatever, but
then make for shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal of noise; but
the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as savage as it
will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone, more senseless than a
pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to this day, though the printing press
has set a foot on every threshold, numbers bow the knee when they hear
the roar the timid dove does not heed. So trustful are the doves, the
squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures of the field.
Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of mental terrors, and face
death itself as calmly as they do the livid lightning; so trustful and so
content with their fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by
reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage of what we so
thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should lead a nearly perfect
life.
The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have been standing is
shrunken like iron which has been heated and let cool round the rim of a
wheel. For a hundred years the horses have rubbed against it while
feeding in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone or smoothed
down and level, so that insects have no hiding-place. There are no
crevices for them, the horsehairs that were caught anywhere have been
carried away by birds for their nests. The trunk is smooth and columnar,
hard as iron. A hundred times the mowing-grass has grown up around it,
the birds have built their nests, the butterflies fluttered by, and the
acorns dropped from the oaks. It is a long, long time, counted by
artificial hours or by the seasons, but it is longer still in another
way. The greenfinch in the hawthorn yonder has been there since I came
out, and all the time has been happily talking to his love. He has left
the hawthorn indeed, but only for a minute or two, to fetch a few seeds,
and comes back each time more full of song-talk than ever. He notes no
slow movement of the oak's shadow on the grass; it is nothing to him and
his lady dear that the sun, as seen from his nest, is crossing from one
great bough of the oak to another. The dew even in the deepest and most
tangled grass has long since been dried, and some of the flowers that
close at noon will shortly fold their petals. The morning airs, which
breathe so sweetly, come less and less frequently as the heat increases.
Vanishing from the sky, the last fragments of cloud have left an
untarnished azure. Many times the bees have returned to their hives, and
thus the index of the day advances. It is nothing to the green-finches;
all their thoughts are in their song-talk. The sunny moment is to them
all in all. So deeply are they rapt in it that they do not know whether
it is a moment or a year. There is no clock for feeling, for joy, for
love.
And with all their motions and stepping from bough to bough, they are not
restless; they have so much time, you see. So, too, the whitethroat in
the wild parsley; so, too, the thrush that just now peered out and partly
fluttered his wings as he stood to look. A butterfly comes and stays on a
leaf--a leaf much warmed by the sun--and shuts his wings. In a minute he
opens them, shuts them again, half wheels round, and by-and-by--just when
he chooses, and not before--floats away. The flowers open, and remain
open for hours, to the sun. Hastelessness is the only word one can make
up to describe it; there is much rest, but no haste. Each moment, as with
the greenfinches, is so full of life that it seems so long and so
sufficient in itself. Not only the days, but life itself lengthens in
summer. I would spread abroad my arms and gather more of it to me, could
I do so.
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