The Forest

by Edward Rutherfurd

  Beatrice’s children were fair-haired and pretty. Intelligent. Indeed, because their parents took such interest in these things, they were learning to read and write sooner than most. If they ran about the Forest, as her husband put it, like godless heathens, they seemed to thrive on the regime.

  But the Furzey household was a mess. There was no denying it. The day before, the maid they employed could take it no more and had left. There was no nanny, no maid, only a charity girl from an orphanage in Sarum who worked in the tiny kitchen. Beatrice had been wondering what to do. So Mrs Albion had felt rather pleased with her suggestion that George Pride’s daughter Dorothy should help out.

  Beatrice knew the woodman well. The daughter was twelve or thirteen now. ‘I’ll go over there tomorrow,’ she had told her mother. Coming from the Pride household, Mrs Albion had no doubt she’d be a steady girl and a good influence upon the children.

  Mrs Albion’s true mission that day, however, was more devious. She had never despaired of bringing the Furzeys back into the family fold, but she knew that it would have to be a long and carefully organized campaign. Her strategy today involved two acts of deliberate deception. The first had involved a request to her cousin Totton, her uncle Edward’s son, who lived in London. He had obliged and she had his letter with her. The second was the collection of the brown paper parcel that lay on the seat of the carriage beside her.

  Colonel Albion was in a thoughtful mood when he arrived back home that evening. The day in London had proved to be more eventful than he expected and as soon as he arrived at Albion Park he hastened to give his wife the news.

  ‘Gladstone’s resigned! The government’s fallen.’ The news was grave indeed.

  It wasn’t that he cared for Gladstone so much; but the implications for the Forest were important.

  ‘There’s no doubt, it seems, that he will lose the elections,’ the Colonel reported. ‘That means, you know, that we lose our protection.’

  It was a technical, constitutional point, but an important one. The Resolution in the House of Commons that had forbidden the making of any new inclosures was only binding on the present Parliament. When the Commons met again after the election, it would be a new Parliament.

  ‘You can be quite sure that the Office of Woods knows that, too,’ he said grimly. ‘We can expect the worst.’

  Not that the Forest had been idle. The landowners of the New Forest Association had been preparing their case assiduously. Another group, a Commoners’ League, representing the smaller folk, had begun to agitate too.

  ‘We shall give battle,’ the Colonel said.

  It was after he had had his dinner that his wife produced the letter and the package.

  ‘Do look,’ she said, ‘at what my cousin Totton has sent us. I do think it’s very kind of him.’ The letter announced that her cousin had come across a picture in a gallery. It wasn’t signed, so he couldn’t tell them who the artist was, but he was almost certain the scene depicted came from the New Forest. He’d thought they might like it.

  Colonel Albion grunted. He didn’t take much interest in pictures usually but out of courtesy to Totton he inspected it.

  ‘That’s looking down from Castle Malwood,’ he announced. ‘That’s Minstead church.’ The fact that he could identify the terrain triggered his interest. He inspected it more carefully. The painting showed a summer sunset. After a moment or two he smiled. ‘That’s exactly how it looks,’ he said. ‘The light. Shines exactly like that.’

  ‘I’m glad you like it.’

  ‘I do. It’s really damned good. How very kind of Totton. I’ll write to him myself.’

  ‘I was wondering where to put it.’ She paused. ‘It could go in one of the bedrooms I suppose.’ She paused again.

  ‘I’ll have it in my office,’ said the Colonel. ‘Unless there’s somewhere you’d rather.’

  ‘Your office. Why not, Godwin? I’m so glad you’d like it in there.’

  Although he didn’t know it, the Colonel had just looked at his first Minimus Furzey.

  Colonel Albion was right about the elections. Gladstone lost. March saw a new Parliament. Within weeks, Cumberbatch and his men were felling timber. George Pride himself had been forced to witness one ancient oak come down, over by the Rufus stone.

  ‘He just did it to make a point really,’ he told his wife sadly.

  His own inclosures were in good order. One in particular was due for thinning that year; so when Cumberbatch called him in and demanded a list of timber to be felled, he was able to satisfy him quite easily.

  ‘Good man, Pride,’ the Deputy Surveyor said with a brisk nod. ‘We may be giving you a new plantation to look after soon. Mr Grockleton suggested we could drain some of those bogs and plant them.’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ said George.

  Apart from this, the spring passed without incident. Young Dorothy was happy going over to the Furzeys. ‘It’s a funny sort of place,’ she told her father. But the Furzeys were very kind to her and she liked the children. ‘They’re brought up just like Forest children in some ways,’ she reported.

  Beatrice she liked. ‘You can see she’s a lady, Dad. But she doesn’t live like one I must say.’ Minimus she found funny, but strange. ‘It’s amazing what he knows, though.’ George himself had often wondered how the artist had managed to marry the landowner’s daughter. The whole Forest knew the two men didn’t speak.

  ‘Even worse than me and Dad,’ he’d say, for although the two Prides still avoided each other, they didn’t actually refuse to speak if they chanced to meet.

  Spring turned into summer and the Forest remained quiet.

  They had met at midnight up by Nomansland, the remotest hamlet on the Forest’s northern edge. By the light of the stars and a quarter moon they had ridden their ponies across, past Fritham, like a pack train of smugglers from the good old days. There were about a dozen of them, good Forest men all, led by the big fellow who had spoken to George at Lyndhurst.

  When they reached George’s inclosures they stopped and cut some gorse and dry bracken and started a small fire. They had some torches coated with pitch. At various points along the fence they stacked dry material that would burn.

  ‘I should think we’ll have ourselves a nice little fire here,’ said the burly man.

  ‘What about the gates?’ asked one of the men.

  ‘Makes a very nice gate, does Berty Puckle,’ said the big fellow. ‘You don’t want to burn those. That’d be a crime.’ He was pleased with this joke. ‘Now that would be a crime.’ He laughed. ‘Be a crime that would, don’t you reckon, John?’ There were several laughs in the darkness. ‘We might take some of those gates. Come in useful those will.’

  A few minutes later, several of the smaller gates had been removed from their places.

  ‘All right then, let’s start,’ the big man cried, and the men with the torches started to light the fires.

  They had a quarter-mile of fencing burning nicely when George Pride came along. He was carrying a gun.

  There were cries and whoops.

  ‘Here he comes. Here comes trouble. Whoah there, George!’

  But George wasn’t smiling.

  Nor was the big man.

  ‘Thought I told you to stay in bed,’ he cried.

  George said nothing.

  ‘Go home, George,’ called several voices. ‘We don’t mean you no harm.’

  But George only shook his head.

  ‘You stop that,’ he cried.

  ‘What are you going to do, George?’ asked the big man in his big voice. ‘You going to shoot me?’

  ‘No. I’ll shoot your pony.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, boy,’ said a voice.

  ‘If I shoot a few ponies,’ George called out, ‘you’ll not only walk home. You’ll have to explain to the Deputy Surveyor how your pony came to be there.’

  ‘You might miss and shoot me, George,’ said another voice from the dark.

&
nbsp; ‘That’s right,’ said George.

  ‘I’m not very pleased, George,’ said the big man.

  ‘I didn’t think you would be,’ said George.

  So they left, and George tore down the burning fences and, by a miracle, only lost a few trees.

  ‘So who were they?’ demanded Cumberbatch, the next morning.

  ‘They rode off,’ said George.

  ‘We know who the ringleader is, Pride. You must have seen him. All you have to do is say who it was.’

  ‘I can’t, Mr Cumberbatch,’ he answered, looking him straight in the eye. ‘That’d be a lie because I didn’t see him. They ran off when they saw my gun.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  Cumberbatch looked at him curiously. Was George Pride such a loyal forest man? If he had been on the side of the burners, he could have pretended to sleep through the whole episode until they’d gone. But he obviously hadn’t.

  ‘You’ve got one hour to change your mind,’ he said, and waved him away.

  An hour later, George Pride said the same thing, and Cumberbatch sent him home.

  ‘Couldn’t you have given just one of the names?’ asked his wife. But even to her he said nothing. The risk was too great.

  He couldn’t tell even her that one of the voices he had heard in the dark belonged to his father.

  The next day George Pride was dismissed.

  1875

  The Select Committee of the House of Commons that sat in the summer of 1875 was the most thorough investigation of Forest administration since William the Conqueror founded it. For eleven days they took testimony: from Esdaile and Eyre, from Professor Fawcett, from Cumberbatch and a host of others. The chairman of the Committee, Mr W. H. Smith, had been a stationer and bookseller who, having already made a fortune, had entered politics and proved a considerable statesman as well. He was fair and thorough. If the government intended to legislate for the New Forest, they wanted to be certain they got very good advice. For the public was greatly concerned.

  It was remarkable – Colonel Albion was bound to admit – what had happened in the last year. When Esdaile and Lord Henry had both impressed upon him the need to gather public support, he had dutifully gone to his London club and talked to all sorts of people like himself who had written some well-considered letters to The Times. And they had certainly done some good. But what he had not been prepared for was the public outcry from other sources. While Mr Esdaile had mastered the commoners’ legal case, it was the landowner from the northern Forest, Mr Eyre, who had proved brilliant at marshalling this new public support. Scientists, artists, naturalists: the newspapers were bombarded with letters. ‘Where the devil do you find these people?’ he had genially enquired. ‘Wherever I can,’ Mr Eyre had replied. ‘These are the people, you see, who form public opinion. We need them most of all.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Colonel.

  And now the Committee hearings had begun. Though Albion was not giving evidence himself, Lord Henry had arranged for him to attend. It was a strange sensation to find himself going through a process so like the one he had witnessed seven years before when he had come up to London with Pride.

  There had been a great change in the Pride family recently, and he had been pleased to see it. After young George had been dismissed by Cumberbatch, it seemed that he and his father had been reconciled. Albion had given George a cottage to tide him over and employed him on the estate. But though he’d been happy that the Pride family was reunited, the whole incident of the dismissal had made the Colonel more determined than ever to see the efforts to save the Forest succeed.

  He had a different companion this time. For some reason his wife had insisted on coming with him.

  Generally he was glad of her company, but on the fifth day of the hearings he was not a little irritated when, because of some quite unnecessary shopping, she had caused him to arrive late. By the time they reached the Committee Room, it was already full and they had been obliged to sit at the back. He didn’t even know who was being called that day.

  So he was entirely taken by surprise when he heard Mr W. H. Smith addressing the next witness.

  ‘Mr Furzey, you are an artist living in the New Forest, I believe.’

  Colonel Albion wanted to leave. Even his wife’s restraining hand on his arm might not have kept him there, but for the fact that, to get up now would have caused an embarrassing commotion. He therefore sat there, bemused and furious, while Minimus gave his evidence.

  ‘You believe, Mr Furzey, that the New Forest is an area of particular value to artists?’

  ‘Without a doubt. I would draw your attention to the petition that has recently been signed not only by me, but by some of the most distinguished members of the Royal Academy.’

  The petition had certainly achieved massive publicity. Many of the greatest names in British art had given their opinion that the New Forest was superior even to the Lake District for its natural beauty.

  ‘There is a romantic wildness in the Forest, a sense of primitive nature untouched, that is without equal in southern Britain,’ he heard Furzey say. ‘The play of the light is quite extraordinary upon the ancient oaklands.’

  The Colonel stared. Was it really possible Furzey could get away with this sort of florid stuff in a Select Committee of the British Parliament? Yet several of its members were nodding.

  ‘I should also like to mention the extraordinary resource that the Forest represents for the naturalist,’ Minimus continued. ‘You may not be aware, but the following species …’

  Colonel Albion listened in a daze. Flies, insects, stag beetles, English and Latin names he did not know, Furzey gave them a list of bugs that must surely have bored these gentlemen to death. Yet again, several of them were looking impressed. And so it went on. Opinions that mystified him, terminology he only vaguely understood, Minimus was in his element. Then he came to his peroration.

  ‘This extraordinary area is a national treasure without equal. I say national for, although historically it was a hunting forest for the Crown, it is now a source of inspiration, of study and of recreation for the people of this island. The New Forest belongs to the people. It must be saved for them.’

  Minimus had ended. The Committee took a brief pause. People started to file out. As Colonel Albion sat there, hardly knowing what to think, Mr Eyre came smilingly towards him.

  ‘That was strong stuff,’ he remarked. ‘Just what was needed, don’t you agree?’

  Albion was still in a daze when his wife took him up to Regent Street at the end of the day. Mr Eyre and Lord Henry had arranged a reception there and, though the place they had chosen was hardly one where he would feel comfortable, the Colonel had felt it would seem like discourtesy not to attend.

  There was no doubt that the exhibition of New Forest art that Mr Eyre had organized in the Regent Street gallery had been a very clever idea, and it had attracted favourable attention in the newspapers. Paintings of animals and landscapes were always liked in Britain, and since Queen Victoria had made the wild scenery of Scotland so fashionable, almost any landscape containing heather or a stag was sure of a ready market.

  With as good a grace as he could muster, therefore, the Colonel let himself be led inside.

  There was already a throng of people in the gallery when they entered. Mercifully, as far as Albion could see, most of them did not seem to be artists, but looked like respectable people. It was not long before he found himself having a perfectly reasonable conversation with a retired admiral from Lymington with whom, the previous year, he had shot a large number of duck. And he was feeling considerably cheered when his eye happened to be caught by a small painting of a sunset, seen from Castle Malwood, looking down over Minstead church.

  ‘That’s a lovely thing,’ he remarked. ‘I’ve got one just like it. Don’t know the artist.’

  The admiral didn’t either. But just then they were joined by Lord Henry who, glancing at the picture, gave Albi
on a puzzled look.

  ‘My dear friend,’ he said genially, ‘you are right to like it because it is a very good painting indeed, by a very fine artist. It is by Minimus Furzey.’

  The New Forest Act of 1877 was to settle the shape of the New Forest for generations to come. The provisions of the Act, following the report of the W. H. Smith Committee, could hardly have been more decisive for the commoners. The Office of Woods were to have no new allowance of land. They were to protect and not pull down the Forest’s ancient trees. The commoners, on payment of the usual fee, were explicitly to have their year-round grazing on the Forest.

  But the real sting in the tail came in a provision the W. H. Smith Committee thought of themselves.

  The ancient order of verderers, that had ruled the medieval Forest through its Swainmote courts, was to be given a new life in a new form. Under an Official Verderer, nominated by the Crown, six local landowners were to be elected as verderers by the commoners and parishioners of the Forest. They were to rule the Forest. It was they who would now make the bye-laws, administer the grazing, collect fees, hold judicial courts and, above all, protect the interests of the Commoners. If the Office of Woods misbehaved in the Forest, they would have to answer to the verderers. It was a complete reversal. The Office of Woods had, so to speak, been railed off in their own inclosures.

  Mr Cumberbatch, on hearing the news, left the forest, never to return.

  At a celebratory party given by Lord Henry at Beaulieu, Colonel Albion gravely, albeit hesitantly, took the proferred hand of his son-in-law Minimus and declared:

  ‘We’ve won.’

  1925