THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS WORKS BY RICHARD JEFFERIES. Post 8vo, cloth limp, zs. 6J. each. THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. NATURE NEAR LONDON. THE OPEN AIR. »• Also the HAND-MADE PAPER EDITION of the Three Books, bound in buckram, gilt top, 61. each. THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. By WALTER BBS ANT. With a Photograph Portrait. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s. LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, in ST. MAKTIK'S LANE, W.C. THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS RICHARD JEFFERIES AUTHOB OF BK AT HOME." " NATUBK NKAH U "TUX, UfUM All." KTC. LON-DON CHATTO & WINDUS 1899 I HAND-MADE-fA PRR MDITJOM } LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SArvTA BARBARA NOTE. MY thanks are due to those Editors who hare 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 Longmarft Magazine ; " Meadow Thoughts " and " Mind under Water," in The Graphic; "Clematis Lane," "Natnre near Brighton," 44 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!* Ma- gazine ; " Nature and the Gamekeeper,* " The Sacrifice to Trout," 44 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 Manchater 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 FIELD-PLAY 1 L UlTlLL-A-TnOBN ... ... ... ... 1 II BUBAL DYXAMITB ... ... ... ... 10 BITS OP OAK BARK 26 L TUB ACORN-GATIIERKR ... ... ... ... 26 IL TUB LEGEND or A GATEWAY ... ... ... 30 III. A ROMAN BROOK ... ... ... ... 36 THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER ... ... 41 MEADOW THOUGHTS ... ... ... ... 65 CLEMATIS LANE 78 NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON ... ... ... ... 87 SEA, SKY, AND DOWN »0 JANUARY IN THE SUSSEX WOOPB ... ... l(>r, BY THE EXE ... 114 THE WATER-COLLEY ... ... 127 NOTES ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING ... l."-> VILLAGE MINERS ... !•!« MIND UNDER WATER ... ICO SPORT AND SCIENCE ... ... ... ... Itt) NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER UH riii CONTENTS. MM THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT 197 THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL 203 BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR 210 COUNTRY LITERATURE 215 L TOE AWAKEXIMO ... ... ... ... 215 IL SCARCITY OP BOOKS ... ... ... ... 221 IIL THE VIIXAOER'S TASTE IN READING ... ... 227 IV. PLAX or DISTRIBCTIOH ... ... ... 233 SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE 239 VKNICE IN THE EAST END 245 THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM 252 THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE 257 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. THE FIELD-PLAY. I. UPTILL-A-THORN. " Save the nightingale alone ; She, poor bird, aa all forlorn, Lean'd her breast nptill a thorn." Pattionab Pilgrim. SHE pinned her torn dress with a thorn torn from the bushes through which she had scrambled to the hay- field. The gap from the lane was narrow, made more narrow by the rapid growth of summer; her rake caught in an ash-spray, and in releasing it she " ranted " the bosom of her print dress. So soon as she had got through she dropped her rake on the hay, searched for a long, nail-like thorn, and thrust it through, for the good-looking, careless hussy never had any provision of pins about her. Then, taking a June rose which pricked her finger, she put the flower by the " rant," or tear, and went to join the rest of the hay-makers. The blood welled up out of the scratch in i"he finger more freely than would have been sup- 2 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. posed from so small a place. She put her lips to it to suck it away, as folk do in all quarters of the earth yet discovered, being one of those instinctive things which come without teaching. A red dot of blood stained her soft white cheek, for, in brushing back her hair with her hand, she forgot the wounded finger. With red blood on her face, a thorn and a rose in her bosom, and a hurt on her hand, she reached the chorus of rakers. The farmer and the sun are the leading actors, and the hay-makers are the chorus, who bear the burden of the play. Marching, each a step behind the other, and yet in a row, they presented a slanting front, and so crossed the field, turning the " wallows." At the hedge she took her place, the last in the row. There were five men and eight women ; all flouted her. The men teased her for being late again at work ; she said it was so far to come. The women jeered at her for tearing her dress — she couldn't get through a " thornin' " hedge right There was only one thing she could do, and that was to " make a vool of zuiu veller " (make a fool of some fellow). Dolly did not take much notice, except that her nervous tempera- ment showed slight excitement in the manner she used her rake, now turning the hay quickly, now missing altogether, then catching the teeth of the rake in the buttercup-runners. The women did not fail to tell her how awkward she was. By-and-by Dolly bounced forward, and, with a flush on her cheek, took the place next to the men. They teased her too, you see, but there was no spiteful malice in their tongues. There are some natures which, naturally meek, if much condemned, defy that condemnation, and will- THE FIELD-PLAY. 3 ingly give it ground of justification by open guilt The women accused her of too free a carriage with the men ; she replied by seeking their company in the broad glare of the summer day. They laughed loudly, joked, but welcomed her; they chatted with her gaily ; they compelled her to sip from their ale as they paused by the hedge. By noon there was a high colour on her cheeks ; the sun, the exercise, the badinage had brought it up. So fair a complexion could not brown even in summer, exposed to the utmost heat. The beams indeed did heighten the hue of her cheeks a little, but it did not shade to brown. Her chin and neck were wholly untanned, white and soft, and the blue veins roamed at their will Lips red, a little full perhaps ; teeth slightly prominent but white and gleamy as she smiled. Dark brown hair in no great abundance, always slipping out of its confinement and straggling, now on her forehead, and now on her shoulders, like wandering bines of bryony. The softest of brown eyes under long eyelashes; eyes that seemed to see everything in its gentlest aspect, that could see no harm anywhere. A ready smile on the face, and a smile in the form. Her shape yielded so easily at each movement that it seemed to smile as she walked. Her nose was the least pleasing feature — not delicate enough to fit with the complexion, and distinctly upturned, though not offensively. But it was not noticed; no one saw anything beyond the laughing lips, the laughing shape, the eyes that melted so near to tears. The torn dress, the straggling hair, the tattered shoes, the unmended stocking, the straw hat 4 THE LIFE OF TEE FIELDS. split, the mingled poverty and carelessness— perhaps rather dreaminess— disappeared when once you had met the full untroubled gaze of those beautiful eyes. Untroubled, that is, with any ulterior thought of evil or cunning ; they were as open as the day, the day which you can make your own for evil or good. So, too, like the day, was she ready to the making. No stability ; now fast in motion ; now slow ; now by fits and starts ; washing her face to-day, her hands to-morrow. Never going straight, even along the road ; talking with the waggoner, helping a child to pick watercress, patting the shepherd's dog, finding a flower, and late every morning at the hay-field. It was so far to come, she said; no doubt it was, if these stoppings and doublings were counted in. No character whatever, no more than the wind ; she was like a well-hung gate swinging to a touch ; like water yielding to let a reed sway ; like a singing-flame rising and falling to a word, and even to an altered tone of voice. A word pushed her this way ; a word pushed her thai Always yielding, sweet, and gentle. Is not this the most seductive of all characters in women ? Had they left her alone, would it have been any different ? Those bitter, coarse, feminine tongues which gave her the name of evil, and so led her to openly announce that, as she had the name, she would carry on the game. That is an old country saying, " Bear the name, carry the game." If you have the name of a poacher, then poach ; you will be no worse- off, and you will have the pleasure of the poaching. It is a serious matter, indeed, to give any one a bad name, more especially a sensitive, nervous, beautiful girl THE FIELD-PLAY. 5 Under the shady oaks at luncheon the men all petted her and flattered her in their rude way, which, rude as it was, had the advantage of admitting of no mistake. Two or three more men strolled up from other fields, luncheon in hand and eating as they came, merely to chat with her. One was a mower — a powerful fellow, big boned, big everywhere, and heavy fisted ; his chest had been open since four o'clock that morning to the sun, and was tanned like his face. He took her in his mighty arms and kissed her before them all ; not one dared move, for the weight of that bone-smashing fist was known. Big Mat drank, as all strong men do ; he fought ; beyond that there was nothing against him. He worked hard, and farmers are only too glad of a man who will work. He was rather a favourite with the master, and trusted. He kissed her twice, and then went back to his work of mowing, which needs more strength than any other country labour — a mower is to a man what a dray-horse is to a horse. They lingered long over the luncheon under the shady oaks, with the great blue tile of the sky over- head, and the sweet scent of hay around them. They lingered so long, that young Mr. Andrew came to start them again, and found Dolly's cheeks all a-glow. The heat and the laughter had warmed them ; her checks burned, in contrast to her white, pure forehead — for her hat was off — and to the cool shade of the trees. She lingered yet a little longer chatting with Mr. Andrew — lingered a full half-hour — and when they parted, she had given him a rose from the hedge. Young Mr. Andrew was but half a farmer's son ; he was destined for a merchant's office in town ; he had 6 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. been educated for it, and was only awaiting the promised opening. He was young, but no yokel ; too knowing of town cunning and selfish hardness to entangle himself. Yet those soft brown eyes, that laughing shape ; Andrew was very young and so was she, and the summer sun burned warm. The blackbirds whistled the day away, and the swallows sought their nests under the eaves. The curved moon hung on the sky as the hunter's horn on the wall. Timid Wat — the hare — came ambling along the lane, and almost ran against two lovers in a recess of the bushes by an elm. Andrew, Andrew I these lips are too sweet for you ; get you to your desk — that smiling shape, those shaded, soft brown eyes, let them alone. Be generous — do not awaken hopes you can never, never fulfil The new-mown hay is scented yet more sweetly in the evening — of a summer's eve it is always too soon to go home. The blackbirds whistled again, big Mat slew the grass from the rising to the going down of the sun — moon-daisies, sorrel, and buttercups lay in rows of swathe as he mowed. I wonder whether the man ever thought, as he reposed at noontide on a couch of grass under the hedge ? Did he think that those immense muscles, that broad, rough-hewn plank of a chest of his, those vast bones encased in sinewy limbs —being flesh in its fulness — ought to have more of this earth than mere common men, and still more than thin-faced people — mere people, not men — in black coats ? Did he dimly claim the rights of strength in his mind, and arrogate to himself the prerogatives of arbitrary kings * Who knows what big processes of THE FIELD-PLAY. 7 reasoning, dim and big, passed through his mind in the summer days ? Did he conclude he had a right to take what others only asked or worked for ? The sweet scent of the new-mown hay disappeared, the hay became whiter, the ricks rose higher, and were topped and finished. Hourly the year grew drier and sultry, as the time of wheat-harvest approached. Sap of spring had dried away ; dry stalk of high summer remained, browned with heat. Mr. Andrew (in the country the son is always called by his Christian name, with the prefix Master or Mr.) had been sent for to London to fill the promised lucrative berth. The reapers were in the corn — Dolly tying up; big Mat slashing at the yellow stalks. Why the man worked so hard no one could imagine, unless it was for pure physical pleasure of using those great muscles. Unless, indeed, a fire, as it were, was burning in his mind, and drove him to labour to smother it, as they smother fires by beating them. Dolly was happier than ever — the gayest of the gay. She sang, she laughed, her white, gleaming teeth shone in the sun- shine ; it was as if she had some secret which enabled her to defy the taunts and cruel, shameless words hurled at her, like clods of earth, by the other women. Gay she was, as the brilliant poppies who, having the sun as their own, cared for nothing else. Till suddenly, just before the close of harvest, Dolly and Mat were missing from the field. Of course their absence was slanderously connected, but there was no known ground for it Big Mat was found intoxicated at the tavern, from which he never moved for a fort- night, spending in one long drain of drink the lump 8 TBE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. of money his mighty arms had torn from the sun in the burning hours of work. Dolly was ill at home ; sometimes in her room, sometimes downstairs ; but ill, shaky and weak — ague they called it. There were dark circles round her eyes, her chin drooped to her breast ; she wrapped herself in a shawl in all the heat. It was some time before even the necessity of working brought her forth again, and then her manner was hurried and furtive ; she would begin trembling all of a minute, and her eyes filled quickly. By degrees the autumn advanced, and the rooks followed the ploughman. Dolly gradually recovered something of her physical buoyancy ; her former light- heartedness never returned. Sometimes an incident would cause a flash of the old gaiety, only for her to sink back into subdued quietness. The change was most noticeable in her eyes; soft and tender still, brown and velvety, there was a deep sadness in them — the longer she looked at you, the more it was visible. They seemed as if her spirit had suffered some great wrong ; too great for redress, and that could only be borne in silence. How beautiful are beautiful eyes! Not from one aspect only, as a picture is, where the light falls rightly on it — the painter's point of view — they vary to every and any aspect. The orb rolls to meet the changing circumstance, and is adjusted to all. But a little enquiry into the mechanism of the eyes will indicate how wondrously they are formed. Science has dis- pelled many illusions, broken many dreams ; but here, in the investigation of the eye, it has added to our marvelling interest The eye is still like the work of TEE FIELD-PLAY. 9 a magician: it is physically divine. Besides the liquid flesh which delights the beholder, there is then the retina, the mysterious nerve which receives a thousand pictures on one surface and confuses none ; and further, the mystery of the brain, which repro- duces them at will, twenty years, yes, threescore years and ten, afterwards. Perhaps of all physical things, the eye is most beautiful, most divine. Her eyes were still beautiful, but subdued and full of a great wrong. What that wrong was became apparent in the course of time. Dolly had to live with Mat, and, unhappily, not as his wife. Next harvest there was a child wrapped in a red shawl with her in the field, placed under the shocks while she worked. Her brother Bill talked and threatened— of what avail was it ? The law gave no redress, and among men in these things, force is master still. There were none who could meet big Mat in fight Something seemed to burn in Mat like fire. Now he worked, and now he drank, but the drink which would have killed another did him no injury. He grew and flourished upon it, more bone, more muscle, more of the savage nature of original man. But there was something within on fira Was he not satisfied even yet ? Did he arrogate yet further prerogatives of kings ? — prerogatives which even kings claim no longer. One day, while in drink, his heavy fist descended — he forgot his might ; he did not check it, like Ulysses in the battle with Irus — and Dolly fell. When they lifted her up, one eye was gone. It was utterly put out, organically destroyed; no skill, no money, no loving care could restore it. The 10 THE LIFE OF TEE FIELDS. soft, brown velvet, the laugh, the tear gone for ever. The divine eye was broken — battered as a stone might be. The exquisite structure which reflected the trees and flowers, and took to itself the colour of the summer sky, was shapeless. In the second year, Mr. Andrew came down, and one day met her in the village. He did not know her. The stoop, the dress which clothed, but responded to no curve, the sunken breast, and the sightless eye, how should he recognize these ? This ragged, plain, this ugly, repellent creature — he did not know her. She spoke; Mr. Andrew hastily fumbled in his pocket, fetched out half a crown, gave it, and passed on quickly. How fortunate that ho had not entangled himself! Meantime, Mat drank and worked harder than ever, and became more morose, so that no one dared cross him, yet as a worker he was trusted by the farmer. Whatever it was, the fire in him burned deeper, and to the very quick. The poppies came and went once more, the harvest moon rose yellow and ruddy, all the joy of the year proceeded, but Dolly was like a violet over which a waggon-wheel had rolled. The thorn had gone deep into her bosom. II RURAL DYNAMITE. In the cold North men eat bread of fir-bark ; in our own fields the mouse, if pressed for food in winter, will gnaw the bark of sapling trees. Frost sharpens the teeth like a file, and hunger is keener than frost. If any one used to more fertile scenes had walked across THE FIELD-PLAY. 11 the barren meads Mr. Roberts rented as the summer declined, he would have said that a living could only be gained from them as the mouse gains it in frost- time. By sharp-set nibbling and paring; by the keenest frost-bitten meanness of living ; by scraping a little bit here, and saving another trifle yonder, a farmer might possibly get through the year. At the end of each year he would be rather worse off than before, descending a step annually. He must nibble like a frost-driven mouse to merely exist So poor was the soil, that the clay came to the surface, and in wet weather a slip of the foot exposed it — the heel cut through the veneer of turf into the cold, dead, moist clay. Nothing grew but rushes. Every time a horse moved over the marshy land his hoof left deep holes which never again filled up, but remained the year through, now puddles, full of rain water, and now dry holes. The rain made the ground a swamp ; the sun cracked it as it does paint. Who could pay rent for such a place ? — for rushes, flags, and water. Yet it was said, with whisper and nod, that the tenant, Mr. Roberts, was a warm man as warm men go after several years of bad seasons, falling prices, and troubles of all kinds. For one thing, he hopped, and it is noted among country folk, that, if a man hops, he generally accumulates money. Mr. Roberts hopped, or rather dragged his legs from rheumatics contracted in thirty years' hardest of hard labour on that thankless farm. Never did any man labour so continually as he, from the earliest winter dawn when the blackbird, with puffed feathers, still tried to slumber in the thornbush, but could not for cold, on 12 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. till the latest summer eve, after the white barn owl had passed round the fir copse. Both with his hands, and with his eyes, now working, now watching, the man ceased not, and such was his dogged pertinacity that, like the mouse, he won a living. He did more, he saved. At what price ? At the price of a fireless life : I mean without cheer, by denial of everything which renders human life superior to that of the rabbit in his burrow. No wife, no children, no niece, or any woman to see to his comforts ; no comfort and no pleasure; a bare house and rheumatism. Bill, his principal labourer, Dolly's brother, slept with him in the same bed, master and man, a custom common in old times, long since generally disused. Yet Mr. Roberts was not without some humanism, if such a word may be used ; certainly he never gave away a penny, but as certainly he cheated no man. He was upright in conduct, and not unpleasant in manner. He could not have been utterly crabbed for this one labourer, Bill, to stay with him five and twenty years. This was the six and twentieth year they had dwelt there together in the gaunt, grey lonely house, with woods around them, isolated from the world, and without a hearth. A hearth is no hearth unless a woman sit by it This six and twentieth year, the season then just ended, had been the worst of the series; rain had spoiled the hay, increased the payment of wages by lengthening the time of hay-making ; ruin, he declared, stared him in the face; he supposed at last he must leave the tenancy. And now the harvest was done, the ricks thatched with flags from the marsh (to save straw), THE FIELD-PLAY. 13 the partridges were dispersed, the sportsmen having broken up the coveys, the black swifts had departed — they built every year in the grey stone slates on the lonely house — and nothing was left to be done but to tend the cattle morning and evening, to reflect on the losses, and to talk ceaselessly of the new terror which hung over the whole district. It was rick-burning. Probably, gentlemen in London, who "sit at home at ease," imagine rick- burning a thing of the past, impossible since insurance robbed the incendiary of his sting, unheard of and extinct. Nothing of the kind. That it is not general is true, still to this day it breaks out in pkces, and rages with vehemence, placing the country side under a reign of terror. The thing seems inexplicable, but it is a fact ; the burning of ricks and farm-sheds every now and then, in certain localities, reaches the dimen- sions of a public disaster. One night from the garret window, Mr. Roberts, and Bill, his man, counted five fires visible at once. One was in full sight, not a mile distant, two behind the wood, above which rose the red glow, the other two dimly illumined the horizon on the left like a rising moon. While they watched in the dark garret the rats scampered behind them, and a white barn owl floated silently by. They counted up fourteen fires that had taken place since the beginning of the month, and now there were five together. Mr. Roberts did not sleep that night Being so near the woods and preserves it was part of the understanding that he should not keep a gun — he took a stout staff, and went out to his hayricks, and there stayed till daylight. By U THE LIFE OP THE FIELDS. ten o'clock he was trudging into the town ; his mind had been half-crazed with anxiety for his ricks ; he was not insured, he had never insured, just to save the few shillings it cost, such was the nibbling by which he lived. He had struggled hard and kept the secret to himself — of the non-insurance — he foresaw that if known he should immediately suffer. But at the town the insurance agent demurred to issue a policy. The losses had been so heavy, there was no knowing how much farther the loss might extend, for not the slightest trace of the incendiary had yet been dis- covered, notwithstanding the reward offered, and this was a new policy. Had it been to add to an old one, had Mr. Roberts insured in previous years, it would have been different. He could not do it on his own responsibility, he must communicate with the head office ; most likely they would do it, but he must have their authority. By return of post he should know. Mr. Roberts trudged home again, with the misery of two more nights confronting him; two more nights of exposure to the chance of utter ruin. If those ricks were burned, the savings — the nibblings of his life — were gone. This intense, frost-bitten economy, by which alone he had been able to prosper, now threat- ened to overwhelm him with destruction. There is nothing that burns so resolutely as a hay- rick; nothing that catches fire so easily. Children are playing with matches ; one holds the ignited match till it scorches the fingers, and then drops it The expiring flame touches three blades of dry grass, of hay fallen from the rick, these flare immediately ; the flame runs along like a train of gunpowder, rushes up the THE FIELD-PLAY. 15 side of the rick, singeing it as a horse's coat is singed, takes the straw of the thatch which blackens into a hole, cuts its way through, the draught lifts it up the slope of the thatch, and in five minutes the rick is on fire irrecoverably. Unless beaten out at the first start, it is certain to go on. A spark from a pipe, dropped from the mouth of a sleeping man, will do it Once well alight, and the engines may come at full speed, one five miles, one eight, two ten ; they may pump the pond dry, and lay hose to the distant brook — it is in vain. The spread of the flames may be arrested, but not all the water that can be thrown will put out the rick. The outside of the rick where the water strikes it turns black, and dense smoke arises, but the inside core continues to burn till the last piece is charred. All that can be done is to hastily cut away that side of therrick — if any remains — yet untouched, and carry it bodily away. A hay-rick will burn for hours, one huge mass of concentrated, glowing, solid fire, not much flame, but glowing coals, so that the farmer may fully understand, may watch and study and fully comprehend the extent of his loss. It burns itself from a square to a dome, and the red dome grows gradually smaller till its lowest layer of ashes strews the ground. It burns itself as it were in blocks : the rick was really homogeneous ; it looks while aglow as if it had been constructed of large bricks or blocks of hay. These now blackened blocks dry and crumble one by one till the dome sinks. Under foot the earth is heated, so intense is the fire ; no one can approach, even on the windward side, within a pole's length. A widening stream of dense white smoke flows away 16 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. upwards, flecked with great sparks, blackening the elms, and carrying flakes of burning hay over out- houses, sheds, and farmsteads. Thus from the clouds, as it seems, drops further destruction. Nothing in the line of the wind is safe. Fine impalpable ashes drift and fall like rain half a mile away. Sometimes they remain suspended in the air for hours, and come down presently when the fire is out, like volcanic dust drift- ing from the crater. This dust lies soft and silky on the hand. By the burning rick, the air rushing to the furnace roars aloud, coming so swiftly as to be cold ; on one side intense heat, on the other cold wind. The pump, pump, swing, swing of the manual engines ; the quick, short pant of the steam fire-engine ; the stream and hiss of the water ; shouts and answers ; gleaming brass helmets; frightened birds; crowds of white faces, whose frames are in shadow ; a red glow on the black, wet mud of the empty pond ; rosy light on the walls of the homestead, crossed with vast magnified shadows ; windows glistening ; men dragging sail-like tarpaulins and rick cloths to cover the sheds; con- stables upright and quiet, but watchful, standing at intervals to keep order; if by day, the strangest mixture of perfect calm and heated anxiety, the smoke bluish, the floating flakes visible as black specks, the flames tawny, pigeons fluttering round, cows grazing in idol-like indifference to human fears. Ultimately, rows of flattened and roughly circular layers of blackened ashes, whose traces remain for months. This is dynamite in the hands of the village ruffian. This hay, or wheat, or barley, not only represents money; it represents the work of an entire year, the THE FOLD-PLAT. 17 sunshine of a whole summer; it is the outcome of man's thought and patient labour, and it is the food of the helpless cattle. Besides the hay, there often go with it buildings, implements, waggons, and occa- sionally horses are suffocated. Once now and then the farmstead goes. Now, has not the farmer, even if covered by insur- ance, reason good to dread this horrible incendiarism ? It is a blow at his moral existence as well as at his pecuniary interests. Hardened indeed must be that heart that could look at the old familiar scene, blackened, fire-spilt, trodden, and blotted, without an inward desolation. Boxes and barrels of merchandise in warehouses can be replaced, but money does not replace the growth of nature. Hence the brutality of it — the blow at a man's heart His hay, his wheat, his cattle, are to a fanner part of his life ; coin will not replace them. Nor does the incendiary care if the man himself, his house, home, and all perish at the same time. It is dynamite in despite of insurance. The new system of silos — bury- ing the grass when cub at once in its green state, in. artificial caves — may much reduce the risk of fire if it comes into general use. These fire invasions almost always come in the form of an epidemic; not one but three, five, ten, fifteen fires follow in quick succession. Sometimes they last through an entire winter, though often known to take place in summer, directly after harvest. Rarely does detection happen ; to this day half these incendiary fires are never followed by punishment. Yet it is noted that they generally occur within a c 18 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. certain radius ; they are all within six, or seven, or eight miles, being about the distance that a man or two bent on evil could compass in the night time. But it is not always night ; numerous fires are started in broad daylight. Stress of winter weather, little food, and clothing, and less fuel at home have been put forward as causes of a chill desperation, ending in crime. On the contrary, these fires frequently occur when labourers' pockets are full, just after they have received their harvest wages. Bread is not at famine prices ; hard masters are not specially selected for tho gratification of spite ; good masters suffer equally. What then is the cause ? There is none but that bitter, bitter feeling which I venture to call the dynamite disposition, and which is found in every part of the civilized world; in Germany, Italy, France, and our own mildly ruled England. A brooding, morose, concentrated hatred of those who possess any kind of substance or comfort; landlord, farmer, every one. An unsparing vendetta, a merciless shark-like thirst of destructive vengeance ; a monomania of battering, smashing, crushing, such as seizes the Lancashire weaver, who kicks his woman's brains out without any special reason for dislike, mingled with and made more terrible by this un- changeable hostility to property and those who own it. No creed, no high moral hopes of the rights of man and social regeneration, no true sans culottism even, nothing at all but set teeth and inflated nostrils ; blow up, burn, smash, annihilate ! A disposition or cha- racter which is not imaginary but a fact, as proved abundantly by the placing of rails and iron chairs on THE FIELD-PLAY. 19 lines to upset trains, by the dynamite explosions at Government offices, railway stations, and even at news- paper offices, the sending of letters filled with explo- sives, firing dynamite in trout streams just to destroy the harmless fish ; a character which in the country has hitherto manifested itself in the burning of ricks and farm buildings. Science is always putting fresh power into the hands of this class. In cities they have partly awakened to the power of knowledge ; in the country they still use the match. If any one thinks *that there is no danger in England because there are no deep-seated causes of discontent, such as foreign rule, oppressive enactments, or conscription, I can assure !him that he is wofully mistaken. This class needs no 'cause at all ; prosperity cannot allay its hatred, and adversity does not weaken it. It is certainly unwise ito the last degree to provoke this demon, to control i which as yet no means have been found. You can- not arrest the invisible; you cannot pour Martini- Henry bullets into a phantom. How are you going to capture people who blow themselves into atoms in order to shatter the frame of a Czar ? In its dealings with the lower class this generation is certainly far from wise. Never was the distinction so sharp between the poor — the sullen poor who stand scornful and desperate at the street corners — and the well-to-do. The contrast now extends to every one who can afford a black coat. It is not confined to the millionaire. The contrast is with every black coat. Those who only see the drawing-room side of society, thdse who move, too, in the well-oiled atmosphere of commercial offices, are quite ignorant of the savage 20 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. animosity which watches them to and fro the office or the drawing-room from the street corner. Question it is if any mediaeval soldiery bursting abroad in Sini- gaglia were so brutal as is the street rough, that blot and hideous product of modern civilization. How easy it is to point to the sobriety and the good sense of the working class and smile in assumed compla- cency I What have the sober mass of the working class to do with it ? No more than you or I, or the Rothschilds, or dukes of blood royaL There the thing is, and it requires no great sagacity to see that the present mode of dealing with it is a failure and likely to be worse. If you have gunpowder, you should not put it under hydraulic' pressure. You should not stir it up and hold matches to it to see if it is there. That is what prosecutions and imprisonments on charges of atheism and so on do. It is stirring up the powder and trying it with a match. Nor should you put it under hydraulic pressure, which is now being done all over the country, under the new laws which force every wretch who enters a workhouse for a night's shelter to stay there two nights ; under the cold-blooded cruelty which, in the guise of science, takes the miserable quarter of a pint of ale from the lips of the palsied and decrepit in- mates; which puts the imbecile — even the guiltless imbecile — on what is practically bread and water. Words fail me to express the cruelty and inhumanity of this crazed legislation. Sometimes we see a complacent paragraph in the papers, penned by an official doubtless, congratu- lating the public that the number relieved under the THE FIELD-PLAY. 21 new regulations has dropped from, say, six hundred to a hundred and fifty. And what, oh blindest of the blind, do you imagine has become of the remain- ing four hundred and fifty ? Has your precious folly extinguished them ? Are they dead ? No, indeed. All over the country, hydraulic pressure, in the namo of science, progress, temperance, and similar perverted things, is being put on the gun- powder— or the dynamite, if you like — of society. Every now and then some individual member of the Army of Wretches turns and becomes the Devil of modern civilization. Modern civilization has put out the spiritual Devil and produced the Demon of Dyna- mite. Let me raise a voice, in pleading for more humane treatment of the poor — the only way, believe me, by which society can narrow down and confine the operations of this new Devil. A human being is not a dog, yet is treated worse than a dog. Force these human dogs to learn to read with empty stomachs — stomachs craving for a piece of bread while education is crammed into them. In manhood, if un- fortunate, set them to break stones. If imbecility super- vene give them bread and water. In helpless age give them the cup of cold water. This is the way to breed dynamite. And then at the other end of the scale let your Thames Embankment Boulevard be the domain of the street rough; let your Islington streets be swept by bands of brutes; let the well dressed be afraid to venture anywhere unless in the glare of gas and electric light 1 Manufacture it in one district, and give it free scope and play in another. Yet never was there an age in which the mass of society, from the 22 THE LIFE OF TEE FIELDS. titled to the cottager, was so full of real and true humanity, so ready to start forward to help, so im- bued with the highest sentiments. The wrong is done in official circles. No steel-clad baron of Norman days, no ruthless red-stockinged cardinal, with the Bostile in one hand and the tumbril in the other, ever ruled with so total an absence of Heart as the modern "official," the Tyrants of the nineteenth century; whose rods are hobbies in the name of science mis- called, in the name of temperance perverted, in the name of progress backwards, in the name of education without food. It is time that the common sense of society at large rose in revolution against it Mean- time dynamite. This is a long digression : suppose while you have been reading it that Mr. Roberts has passed one of the two terrible nights, his faithful Bill at one end of the rickyard and himself at the other. The second night they took up their positions in the same manner as soon as it was dark. There was no moon, and the sky was overcast with those stationary clouds which often precede a great storm, so that the darkness was marked, and after they had parted a step or two they lost sight of each other. Worn with long wakefulness, and hard labour during the day, they both dropped asleep at their posts. Mr. Roberts awoke from the dead vacancy of sleep to the sensation of a flash of light crossing his eyelids, and to catch a glimpse of a man's neck w ith a red necktie illuminated by flame like a Rembrandt head in the centre of shadow. He leaped forward literally yelling — the incendiary be wholly forgot— his rick I his rick I He beat the side THE FIELD-PLAT. 23 of the rick with his stick, and as it had but just caught he beat the flame out Then he dropped senseless on the ground. Bill, awakened by Roberts' awful yell or shriek of excitement, started to his feet, heard a man rushing by in the darkness, and hurled his heavy stick in that direction. By the thud which followed and a curse, he knew it had hit the object, but not with sufficient force to bring the scoundrel down. The fellow escaped ; Bill went to his master and lifted him up ; how he got Roberts home he did not know, but it was hours before Roberts could speak. Towards sunrise he recovered, and would go immedi- ately to assure himself that the ricks were safe. Then they found a man's hat — Bill's stick had knocked it off— and by that hat and the red necktie the incen- diary was brought to justice. The hat was big Mat's ; he always wore a red necktie. Big Mat made no defence ; he was simply stolidly indifferent to the whole proceedings. The only state- ment he made was that he had not fired four of the ricks, and he did not know who had done so. Example is contagious; some one had followed the dynamite lead, detection never took place, but the fires ceased. Mat, of course, went for the longest period of penal servitude the law allotted. I should say that he did not himself know why he- did it. That intense, brooding moroseness, that worm- wood hatred, does not often understand itsel£ So much the more dangerous is it; no argument, no softening influence can reach it. Faithful Bill, who had served Mr. Roberts almost all his life, and who probably would have served him 24 TEE LIFE OF TEL FIELDS. till the end, received a money reward from the insur- ance office for his share in detecting the incendiary. This reward ruined him — killed him. Golden sove- reigns in his pocket destroyed him. He went on the drink ; he drank, and was enticed to drink, till in six weeks he died in the infirmary of the workhouse. Mat being in the convict prison, and Dolly near to another confinement, she could not support herself; she was driven to the same workhouse in which her brother had but just died. I am not sure, but believe that pseudo-science, the Torturer of these days, denied her the least drop of alcohol during her travail. If it did permit one drop, then was the Torturer false to his creed. Dolly survived, but utterly broken, hollow- chested, a workhouse fixture. Still, so long as she could stand she had to wash in the laundry ; weak as she was, they weakened her still farther with steam and heat, and labour. Washing is hard work for those who enjoy health and vigour. To a girl, broken in heart and body, it is a slow destroyer. Heat re- laxes all the fibres ; Dolly's required bracing. Steam , will soften wood and enable the artificer to bend it to any shape. Dolly's chest became yet more hollow; her cheek-bones prominent; she bent to the steam. This was the girl who had lingered in the lane to help the boy pick watercress, to gather a flower, to listen to a thrush, to bask in the sunshine. Open air and green fields were to her life itself. Heart miseries are always better borne in the open air. How just, how truly scientific, to shut her in a steaniin" wash- house ! The workhouse was situated in a lovely spot, on THE FIELD-PLAY. 25 the lowest slope of hills, hills covered afar with woods. Meads at hand, corn fields farther away, then green slopes over which broad cloud-shadows glided slowly. The larks sang in spring, in summer the wheat was golden, in autumn the distant woods were brown and red and yellow. Had you spent your youth in those fields, had your little drama of life been enacted in them, do you not think that you would like at least to gaze out at them from the windows of your prison ? It was observed that the miserable wretches were always looking out of the windows in this direction. The windows on that sido were accordingly built up and brir.ked in that they might not look out. -IRE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. SITS OF OAK BARK. I. THE ACORN-GATHERER. BLACK rooks, yellow oak leaves, and a boy asleep at the foot of the tree. His head was lying on a bulging root close to the stem : his feet reached to a small sack or bag half full of acorns. In his slumber his forehead frowned — they were fixed lines, like tho grooves in the oak bark. There was nothing else in his features attractive or repellent : they were such as might have belonged to a dozen hedge children. The set angry frown was the only distinguishing mark — like the dents on a penny made by a hobnail boot, by which it can be known from twenty otherwise pre- cisely similar. His clothes were little better than sacking, but clean, tidy, and repaired. Any one would have said, " Poor, but carefully tended." A kind heart might have put a threepenny-bit in his clenched little fist, and sighed. But that iron set frown on the young brow would not have unbent even for the silver. Caw ! Cawl The happiest creatures in the world are the rooks at the acorns. It is not only the eating of them but the finding: the fluttering up there and hopping from BITS OF OAK BARK. 27 branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end of the bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn drop tip-tap from bough to bough. Amid such plenty they cannot quarrel or fight, having no cause of battle, but they can boast of success, and do so to the loudest of their voices. He who has selected a choice one flies with it as if it were a nugget in his beak, out to some open spot of ground, followed by a general Caw I This was going on above while the boy slept below. A thrush looked out from the hedge, and among the short grass there was still the hum of bees, constant sun-worshippers as they are. The sunshine gleamed on the rooks' black feathers overhead, and on the sward sparkled from hawkweed, some lotus and yellow weed, as from a fault ripple of water. The oak was near a corner formed by two hedges, and in the angle was a narrow thorny gap. Presently an old woman, very upright, came through this gap carrying a faggot on her shoulder and a stout ash stick in her hand. Sho was very clean, well dressed for a labouring woman, hard of feature, but superior in some scarcely defined way to most of her class. The upright carriage had something to do with it, the firm mouth, the light blu'» eyes that looked every one straight in the face. Pos- sibly these, however, had less effect than her conscious righteousness. Her religion lifted her above the rest, and I do assure you that it was perfectly genuine. That hard face and cotton gown would have gone to the stake. When she had got through the gap she put the faggot down in it, walked a short distance out into 28 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. the field, and came back towards the boy, keeping him between her and the corner. Caw! said the rooks, Caw! Caw! Thwack, thwack, bang, went the ash stick on the sleeping boy, heavily enough to have broken his bones. Like a piece of machinery suddenly let loose, without a second of dubious awakening and without a cry, he darted straight for the gap in the corner. There the faggot stopped him, and before he could tear it away the old woman had him again, thwack, thwack, and one last stinging slash across his legs as he doubled past her. Quick as the wind as he rushed he picked up the bag of acorns and pitched it into the mound, where the acorns rolled down into a pond and were lost — a good round shilling's worth. Then across the field, without his cap, over the rising ground, and out of sight The old woman made no attempt to hold him, knowing from previous experience that it was useless, and would probably result in her own overthrow. The faggot, brought a quarter of a mile for the purpose, enabled her, you see, to get two good chances at him. A wickeder boy never lived: nothing could be done with the reprobate. He was her grandson — at least, the son of her daughter, for he was not legitimate. The man drank, the girl died, as was be- lieved, of sheer starvation : the granny kept the child, and he was now between ten and eleven years old. She had done and did her duty, as she understood it. A prayer-meeting was held in her cottage twice a week, she prayed herself aloud among them, she was a lead- ing member of the sect Neither example, precept, nor the rod could change that boy's heart. In time BITS OF OAK BARK. 29 perhaps she got to beat him from habit rather than from any particular anger of the moment, just as she fetched water and filled her kettle, as one of the ordi- nary events of the day. Why did not the father interfere ? Because if so he would have had to keep his son : so many shillings a week the less for ale. In the garden attached to the cottage there was a small shed with a padlock, used to store produce or wood in. One morning, after a severe beating, she drove the boy in there and locked him in the whole day without food. It was no use, he was as hardened as ever. A footpath which crossed the field went by the cottage, and every Sunday those who were walking to church could see the boy in the window with granny's Bible open before him. There he had to sit, the door locked, under terror of stick, and study the page. What was the use of compelling him to do that ? He could not read. " No," said the old woman, " he won't read, but I makes him look at his book." The thwacking went on for some time, when one day the boy was sent on an errand two or three miles, and for a wonder started willingly enough. At night he did not return, nor the next day, nor the next, and it was as clear as possible that ho had run away. No one thought of tracking his footsteps, or following up the path he had to take, which passed a railway, brooks, and a canal. He had run away, and he might stop away: it was beautiful summer weather and it would do him no harm to stop out for a week. A dealer who had business in a field by the canal thought indeed that he saw something in the water, but he- 30 THE LIFE Of THE FIELDS. did not want any trouble, nor indeed did he know that some one was missing. Most likely a dead dog ; so he turned his back and went to look again at the cow he thought of buying. A barge came by, and the steerswoman, with a pipe in her mouth, saw some- thing roll over and come up under the rudder: the length of the barge having passed over it She knew what it was, but she wanted to reach the wharf and go ashore and have a quart of ale. No use picking it up, only make a mess on deck, there was no reward — " Gee-up ! Neddy." The barge went on, turning up the mud in the shallow water, sending ripples washing up to the grassy meadow shores, while the moorhens hid in the flags till it was gone. In time a labourer walking on the towing-path saw "it," and fished it out, and with it a slender ash sapling, with twine and hook, a worm still on it This was why the dead boy had gone so willingly, thinking to fish in the " river," as he called the canal. When his feet slipped and he fell in, his fishing-line somehow became twisted about his arms and legs, else most likely he would have scrambled out, as it was not very deep. This was the end; nor was he even remembered. Does any one sorrow for the rook, shot, and hung up as a scare- crow ? The boy had been talked to, and held up as a scarecrow all his life : he was dead, and that is all. As for granny, she felt no twinge: she had done her duty. II. THE LEGEND OP A GATEWAY. A great beech tree with a white mark some way up the trunk stood in the mound by a gate which BITS OF OAK BARK. 81 opened into a lane. Strangers coming down the lane in the dusk often hesitated before they approached this beech. The white mark looked like a ghostly figure emerging from the dark hedge and the shadow of the tree. The trunk itself was of the same hue at that hour as the bushes, so that the whiteness seemed to stand out unsupported. So perfect was the illusion that even those who knew the spot well, walking or riding past and not thinking about it, started as it suddenly came into sight Ploughboys used to throw flints at it, as if the sound of the stone striking the tree assured them that it was really material Some lichen was apparently the cause of this whiteness: the great beech indeed was known to be decaying and was dotted with knot-holes high above. The gate was rather low, so that any one could lean with arms over the top bar. At one time a lady used to be very frequently seen just inside the gate, generally without a hat, for the homestead was close by. Sometimes a horse, saddled and bridled, but without his rider, was observed to be fastened to the gate, and country people, being singu- larly curious and inquisitive, if they chanced to go by always peered through every opening in the hedge till they had discerned where the pair were walking among the cowslips. More often a spaniel betrayed them, especially in the evening, for while the courting was proceeding he amused himself digging with his paws at the rabbit-holes in the mound. The folk returning to their cottages at even smiled and looked meaningly at each other if they heard a peculiarly long and shrill whistle, which was known to every 82 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. one as Luke's signal Some said that it was heard every evening : no matter how far Luke had to rido in the day, his whistle was sure to be heard towards dusk. Luke was a timber-dealer, or merchant, a call- ing that generally leads to substantial profit as wealth is understood in country places. He bought up likely timber all over the neighbourhood: he had wharves on the canal, and yards by the little railway station miles away. He often went up to "Lunnon," but if it was ninety miles, he was sure to bo back in time to whistle. If he was not too busy the whistle used to go twice a day, for when he started off in the morn- ing, no matter where he had to go to, that lane was the road to it. The lane led everywhere. Up in the great beech about eleven o'clock on spring mornings there was always a wood-pigeon. The wood-pigeon is a contemplative sort of bird, and pauses now and then during the day to consider over his labours in filling his crop. He came again about half-past four, but it was at eleven that his visit to the beech was usually noticed. From the window in the lady's own room the beech and the gate could be seen, and as that was often Luke's time she frequently sat upstairs with the window open listening for the sound of hoofs, or the well-known whistle. She saw the wood-pigeon on so many occasions that at last she grew to watch for the bird, and when he went up into the tree, put down her work or her book and walked out that way. Secure in the top of the great beech, and conscious that it was spring, when guns are laid aside, the wood-pigeon took no heed of her. There is nothing so pleasant to stroll amon