Landscape with Figures

by Richard Jefferies

  Primrose Gold in Our Village

  First published in the Pall Mall Gazette, 8 June 1887

  First collected in Field and Farm, 1957

  Every one said how beautiful the tall arching boughs of the elms looked meeting over the road at the entrance to the village. As in the East the bazaars and all the life seem to be under domes and covers, so the entry into English country life is very often under elms like these. It is a common scene, and every one says it is beautiful. The houses just beyond are still for the most part thatched, yet there is a certain difference in the general style of the place, if you can imagine it as an engraving before your eye. Outside the blacksmith’s shop there are a number of strange machines painted a staring red; things with horrible knives, a machine that would be welcomed by a Chinese executioner for cutting off feet first and hands next, and so on; things with long clawy spikes that seem to prick your eyes if you look at them; and another thing is coming that makes a tremendous groan and clank. I always shrink into a gateway if I can when a traction-engine comes by, with a sort of vague prayer to Fate that it may not burst as it passes and blow me up with all my dreams. Somehow there seems such a vast mass of dust about, the grocer’s shop there (which will supply you with French wine) must be sanded with it. There is an unpleasant feeling that this dust is not good, pure road dust; if a little pinch gets up the nose it has a noisome smell. It is like desiccated sewage. A direful odour rises from a grating, and the secret is out: the place has been drained. Till then it was a healthy spot; since then there has been nothing but epidemics. This is a common experience; it is called ‘sanitation’. If you Londoners go into the country for a change be careful that you do not go to a village that has been drained. Especially take notice if there are many villas about, for they are dangerous and indicate deadly improvements. Beware of villas.

  Still, there are rooks and sunshine and twenty gables to draw, and do what they will they cannot quite obliterate the old place. There is a window under a low-tiled roof with yellow stonecrop above it. Yellow wallflowers, marigolds, musk, evening primrose, crown lilies, dwarf genista, eschscholtzia – everything yellow. Behind the window panes the window flowers are so thick they seem to flatten themselves against the glass: some scarlet geraniums, of course, but chiefly yellow calceolarias. Close to the window there is a sort of abutment also tiled – perhaps it is an oven – and this, too, bears yellow stonecrop. There is a gable above, and a high narrow chimney; a very pleasant ‘bit’ to sketch or paint. A golden-chain tree stands in front – long pendants of yellow. All the corner seems stained with golden colour. Any stranger passing along the footpath would be sure to stop and look at it and say, ‘Ah! that really is a bit of old-fashioned country life. Really genuine. Very pretty indeed.’ One would suppose the people who lived there would be in the foremost ranks of everything good.

  The village was made upright, but they have found out many inventions; they have invented an élite, and found out that they possessed a stratum of ‘society’ – in short, they have got a Primrose Habitation, which came in with the drains. The rolls are not open to inspection, but it is believed the clergyman and the curate belong to the élite – that is, to the Habitation. The old doctor certainly does – a genuine old Tory. The new doctor did not at first, but he found he had better do so afterwards, and he finds it better also to be very regular at the ‘celebrations’ at the church. The old doctor has spread about an idea among the old maids that the new man, who is very clever, is a dreadful materialist. In the Middle Ages if a man was very clever in chemistry he was supposed to be a necromancer and keep a familiar spirit in the neck of an alembic. To-day, if a man is very clever, there is always a suspicion that he is a wicked materialist, and deals with ‘spores’, and ‘germs’, and ‘microbes’. There are no spores in the gospel. The professional tradesman, that is to say, the chemist, who is at least a hundred degrees higher in the scale than the old grocer, is thought to be on the list. There are four or five people retired, possibly unprofessional tradesmen once, living in the old farmhouses that have been villafied, who are imagined to supply a good deal of the sinews of war. Of course all the upper class of Tory farmers are affiliated in some way, and there are one or two county families, the M.P. of the district, and four or five of his more or less titled friends, honorary subscribers, and several semi-county families, neither farmers, gentlemen, nor lords. The bulk of the work, however, is got through by a sort of quasi-secretary, who does all the calls and three-line whips, and arranges the meetings and carries out everything, and who is casually alluded to by the big folk as a ‘very good fellow, you know; don’t know what we should do without him’, but they don’t ask him to dinner. This is very nearly all that is known by the vulgar of the village caucus, for such it is – for ways that are ‘dark and tricks that are vain’, commend me to the heathen Tory. There is a still darker branch of this mysterious craft – it is the ladies, great Dames, to whom be honour and glory. What they do I do not know, but there are whispers that there are social divisions, and that one Dame is greater than another Dame, inasmuch that if a great Dame, one of the big folk, proposes a resolution, the resolution is carried, but if a lesser Dame makes a resolution it falls to the ground. Hence it appears that there are heartburnings among the angels. Still, they belong to the order of the élite, and the discipline is perfect.

  Now a local village is a very local place. There is no very great variety of streets, no Charing-Cross, no floating population that drifts up the Strand in endless stream, that drops in at a shop and buys a cigarette for a penny or an ormolu clock for seven guineas. The same customer is never seen again there, but to-morrow a fresh one takes his place. In the local village the customers are always the same. They are a fixed quantity; a glass is full of water and you cannot put any more in, there are so many beads on a string, and count them as many times as you like they are still the same number. Pictorially thus: the old grocer, who is not a ‘professional tradesman’, who exposes dirty Radical prints in his window for sale, who said several hard words to the clergyman a few years ago for refusing to bury his Nonconformist baby, who is a regular old sanded brute – is not boycotted. Certainly not. No private notice sent round, or placards stuck up remarking that if you deal there you will get lead pepper. Still it is not necessary to buy there if the ‘professional’ tradesman’s brother sets up another shop. It is not that you shall not go to the old grocer, but it is suggested how much better it would be to go to the other one and so encourage him. The caucus does not say you shall not deal here; the caucus says you shall deal there. It is boycotting reversed. By-and-by the doctors found out that the prevalence of disease was due to there not being sufficient air-holes to the drains; so in making these improvements one was casually opened by the old grocer’s shop. Always a beastly Radical effluvia just there. Don’t stop there – spores, germs, pah! The old gentleman has written letters about it, but somehow the official wheels don’t move. Ex-officio people are plentiful on country boards, and they are mostly heathen Tories.

  A man who lives in the cottage with the beautiful flowery window was once the dog in the village with a bad name. He is a little owner, a little occupier, he has a little dairy and a little poultry farm, and a heavy mortgage. He was a shocking Radical and upset everything; he was so rough he did not care for threats of action for libel or slander; he did not care if he did go to gaol – a man fearfully and wonderfully made in contempt of authority. Mostly he cursed a good deal, especially about a green and succulent meadow with a pond of never-failing water next to his own arid and waterless fields. This meadow and pond was part of the glebe land, and the clergyman would not let it to such a drunken reprobate. By-and-by, when the Habitation was formed and Primrose gold began to work its way, some one whispered a whisper, and the pond and the meadow were placed at the disposal of this dreadful fellow. He is now shaven and wears a clean smock-frock and goes to church a’ Sundays. Next the villa folk came down to buy his beautiful butter and make mu
ch of his wife, a very respectable woman with a fancy for flowers – a very nice pot came down now and then from the greenhouses. Next it was found out that one of the dry and arid fields was very level and would make an excellent tennis ground for the Primrose Club. Accordingly a square acre or so was rented at a liberal price, and now you may see the stately Knights and Dames disporting where once did grow the weeds of treason rank.

  Once now and then a real lord or a real lady who happens to be visiting one of the county families is marched round to the cottages and takes off his hat and says a few words about the crops, or perhaps my lady strokes the cat. This is not boycotting, it is Primrosing. The golden party work by finding out the soft places, and by making things very pleasant for those who will come under its wings. The voice of the reprobate is still, and the heart of the enemy is broken. The cobbler was another horror; he was consumptive too – evidently a judgment on the wretched atheist. The curate could do nothing with him, till by-and-by he had a great inspiration. ‘He wants encouragement,’ said the curate. The caucus thought so too. After this, about forty pairs of boots came floating in, gentlemen’s and ladies’ boots, neat repairs wanted, 2s. 6d., 3s. 6d. each. By-and-by the curate said ‘You have got a dreadful cough’, and the upshot was they sent him to the seaside for a month, and when he came back his cough was gone and also many of his ancient prejudices. He had no further objection to any number of half-crowns – another vote secure.

  Primrosing goes a great deal higher than cobblers and dairymen. If you are pliant and flexible and don’t mind being petted you have nice things put in your way, and you are passed not only in the local village, but right up to London if you want to do business there. If you are not pliant, you are not harrowed, but you are not watered, and it is best to get out of the local village. Then there are decorations, and the élite of the Dames wear Special Service brooches. What these mysterious special services are, no one knows. Certain, however, it is that a powerful caucus is being established everywhere throughout the country, and the same style of thing is carried on where there is not a formal Habitation.

  Hours of Spring

  First published in Longman’s Magazine, May 1886

  First collected in Field and Hedgerow, 1889

  It is sweet on awaking in the early morn to listen to the small bird singing on the tree. No sound of voice or flute is like the bird’s song; there is something in it distinct and separate from all other notes. The throat of woman gives forth a more perfect music, and the organ is the glory of man’s soul. The bird upon the tree utters the meaning of the wind – a voice of the grass and wild flower, words of the green leaf; they speak through that slender tone. Sweetness of dew and rifts of sunshine, the dark hawthorn touched with breadths of open bud, the odour of the air, the colour of the daffodil – all that is delicious and beloved of spring-time are expressed in his song. Genius is nature, and his lay, like the sap in the bough from which he sings, rises without thought. Nor is it necessary that it should be a song; a few short notes in the sharp spring morning are sufficient to stir the heart. But yesterday the least of them all came to a bough by my window, and in his call I heard the sweet-briar wind rushing over the young grass. Refulgent fall the golden rays of the sun; a minute only, the clouds cover him and the hedge is dark. The bloom of the gorse is shut like a book; but it is there – a few hours of warmth and the covers will fall open. The meadow is bare, but in a little while the heart-shaped celandine leaves will come in their accustomed place. On the pollard willows the long wands are yellow-ruddy in the passing gleam of sunshine, the first colour of spring appears in their bark. The delicious wind rushes among them and they bow and rise; it touches the top of the dark pine that looks in the sun the same now as in summer; it lifts and swings the arching trail of bramble; it dries and crumbles the earth in its fingers; the hedge-sparrow’s feathers are fluttered as he sings on the bush.

  I wonder to myself how they can all get on without me – how they manage, bird and flower, without me to keep the calendar for them. For I noted it so carefully and lovingly, day by day, the seed-leaves on the mound in the sheltered places that come so early, the pushing up of the young grass, the succulent dandelion, the coltsfoot on the heavy, thick clods, the trodden chickweed despised at the foot of the gatepost, so common and small, and yet so dear to me. Every blade of grass was mine, as though I had planted it separately. They were all my pets, as the roses the lover of his garden tends so faithfully. All the grasses of the meadow were my pets, I loved them all; and perhaps that was why I never had a ‘pet’, never cultivated a flower, never kept a caged bird, or any creature. Why keep pets when every wild free hawk that passed overhead in the air was mine? I joyed in his swift, careless flight, in the throw of his pinions, in his rush over the elms and miles of woodland; it was happiness to see his unchecked life. What more beautiful than the sweep and curve of his going through the azure sky? These were my pets, and all the grass. Under the wind it seemed to dry and become grey, and the starlings running to and fro on the surface that did not sink now stood high above it and were larger. The dust that drifted along blessed it and it grew. Day by day a change; always a note to make. The moss drying on the tree trunks, dog’s-mercury stirring under the ash-poles, bird’s-claw buds of beech lengthening; books upon books to be filled with these things. I cannot think how they manage without me.

  To-day through the window-pane I see a lark high up against the grey cloud, and hear his song. I cannot walk about and arrange with the buds and gorse-bloom; how does he know it is the time for him to sing? Without my book and pencil and observing eye, how does he understand that the hour has come? To sing high in the air, to chase his mate over the low stone wall of the ploughed field, to battle with his high-crested rival, to balance himself on his trembling wings outspread a few yards above the earth, and utter that sweet little loving kiss, as it were, of song – oh, happy, happy days! So beautiful to watch as if he were my own, and I felt it all! It is years since I went out amongst them in the old fields, and saw them in the green corn, they must be dead, dear little things, by now. Without me to tell him, how does this lark to-day that I hear through the window know it is his hour?

  The green hawthorn buds prophesy on the hedge; the reed pushes up in the moist earth like a spear thrust through a shield; the eggs of the starling are laid in the knot-hole of the pollard elm – common eggs, but within each a speck that is not to be found in the cut diamond of two hundred carats – the dot of protoplasm, the atom of life. There was one row of pollards where they always began laying first. With a big stick in his beak the rook is blown aside like a loose feather in the wind; he knows his building-time from the fathers of his house – hereditary knowledge handed down in settled course: but the stray things of the hedge, how do they know? The great blackbird has planted his nest by the ash-stole, open to every one’s view, without a bough to conceal it and not a leaf on the ash – nothing but the moss on the lower end of the branches. He does not seek cunningly for concealment. I think of the drift of time, and I see the apple bloom coming and the blue veronica in the grass. A thousand thousand buds and leaves and flowers and blades of grass, things to note day by day, increasing so rapidly that no pencil can put them down and no book hold them, not even to number them – and how to write the thoughts they give? All these without me – how can they manage without me?

  For they were so much to me, I had come to feel that I was as much in return to them. The old, old error: I love the earth, therefore the earth loves me – I am her child – I am Man, the favoured of all creatures. I am the centre, and all for me was made.

  In time past, strong of foot, I walked gaily up the noble hill that leads to Beachy Head from Eastbourne, joying greatly in the sun and the wind. Every step crumbled up numbers of minute grey shells, empty and dry, that crunched under foot like hoar-frost or fragile beads. They were very pretty; it was a shame to crush them – such vases as no king’s pottery could make. They lay by millions in the depths of th
e sward, and I thought as I broke them unwillingly that each of these had once been a house of life. A living creature dwelt in each and felt the joy of existence, and was to itself all in all – as if the great sun over the hill shone for it, and the width of the earth under was for it, and the grass and plants put on purpose for it. They were dead, the whole race of them, and these their skeletons were as dust under my feet. Nature sets no value upon life neither of minute hill-snail nor of human being.

  I thought myself so much to the earliest leaf and the first meadow orchis – so important that I should note the first zee-zee of the titlark – that I should pronounce it summer, because now the oaks were green; I must not miss a day nor an hour in the fields lest something should escape me. How beautiful the droop of the great brome-grass by the wood! But to-day I have to listen to the lark’s song – not out of doors with him, but through the window-pane, and the bullfinch carries the rootlet fibre to his nest without me. They manage without me very well; they know their times and seasons – not only the civilized rooks, with their libraries of knowledge in their old nests of reference, but the stray things of the hedge and the chiffchaff from over sea in the ash wood. They go on without me. Orchis flower and cowslip – I cannot number them all – I hear, as it were, the patter of their feet – flower and bud and the beautiful clouds that go over, with the sweet rush of rain and burst of sun glory among the leafy trees. They go on, and I am no more than the least of the empty shells that strewed the sward of the hill. Nature sets no value upon life, neither of mine nor of the larks that sang years ago. The earth is all in all to me, but I am nothing to the earth: it is bitter to know this before you are dead. These delicious violets are sweet for themselves; they were not shaped and coloured and gifted with that exquisite proportion and adjustment of odour and hue for me. High up against the grey cloud I hear the lark through the window singing, and each note falls into my heart like a knife.