The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies

"You have no idea of the wretched feeling produced by incessant disappointment, and the long, long months of weary waiting for decisions without the least hope…"

CHAPTER IV.

GLEAMS OF LIGHT

With the year 1871 the early struggles of the young writer came to an end. He had now secured his position, such as it was, on the local press. As there are no further suggestions of parental opposition, we may suppose that this had now ceased. Parental opposition generally gives way when the lad shows that by following his own path he can maintain himself. This Richard could now do. He continued, however, to live at Coate, partly, no doubt, for economy, and partly for convenience. His old friends point out the short cut across the fields by which he was accustomed to walk from Coate to the office of the paper. Local enthusiasm, however, is proverbially feeble in the case of the native prophet. This grows up in the after-years. The income which a young reporter on a small country paper can make is very modest, and the position is not one which commands the highest respect. Yet many young fellows are satisfied and happy in such a position, because, though they are still at the bottom of the ladder, their foot is planted on the rung, and their hands are on the sides. Being rich, therefore, in hope, he took the step which naturally follows success – he became engaged. His fiancée was a daughter of the late Mr. Andrew Baden, at that time occupying Dayhouse Farm, adjacent to Coate. For the present there could be no thought of marrying, but they would wait till their hopes were partly realized, and the golden shower should begin. Now there were two instead of one looking for the splendid triumph of the future. A first instalment of success came the following year, in November, 1872 – a real, indisputable success – a thing that brought money and more work, and yet more work; a thing which, in the hands of a practical man, would have brought work enough to last a lifetime. To Jefferies it was better than this, because it presently led him – the wanderer in the labyrinth of fruitless effort – to the line in which he was to make his reputation, and to find his true success. Is there anything in the world more truly delightful than the first success in the career you have chosen and ardently desire to adorn? If one desires to become an authority on any subject, to read your own paper in a great magazine; if one desires to become a journalist, to have the columns of a great paper opened to you; if one wishes to be a great novelist, to read the reviews of your first work, and to be assured that you are on the right track – nothing in the world surely can equal that blissful moment.

It came to this pair, thus waiting and hoping, in November, 1872, in this wise:

In the autumn of that year, the mind of the nation was beginning to be exercised with the subject of the relations of the farmer with the agricultural labourer. Richard Jefferies, inspired, if any man ever was, with the thought that he knew all about the subject, sat down and wrote a long letter about "The Wiltshire Labourer." This letter he sent first to a certain London editor (name of the paper not stated), who refused it. He then sent it to the editor of the Times, who not only accepted it and printed it, but had a leader written upon it. Nor was this all. The letter called forth many answers; to these Jefferies replied in two more letters. The subject was noticed in the Pall Mall Gazette, in the Spectator, and in other journals. We are not here concerned with the results of the case – Jefferies wrote on the side of the tenant farmer. It is sufficient to note the fact of the letters and their immediate result – namely, that Jefferies sprang at one bound into the position of an authority on things agricultural. He dated the letters from Coate Farm, Swindon; so that he probably appeared to the editor and to the general public as a farmer, rather than as a newspaper reporter. To the whole of his after-life these letters were most important. They denoted, though as yet he knew it not, an entirely new departure. He was to experience many a bitter disappointment over novels which he ought never to have written. There were plenty of snubs and rubs in store for him, as there are for every literary man at every stage of his career. Snubs and rubs are part of a profession which has an advantage quite peculiar to itself, that everything a man does is publicly commented upon by his brother professors writing anonymously. It is as if a clergyman's sermons should be publicly and every week handled by brother clergymen, or a doctor's cases by brothers of the calling; or as if a barrister's speeches should be anonymously criticised by other barristers. A man cannot make an ass of himself in the profession, and expect that nobody will notice it. Not at all; the greater the mess he makes, the more he will hear of it. Now Jefferies – poor man – was going to make a big mess of two or three jobs before he really found himself.

To be an authority on things agricultural is to speak on behalf of what was then, and is still, the most important interest of the whole country; to speak of agricultural labourers and of tenant farmers is to speak of the best blood of the country, the hope and stay of Great Britain. Here was opened a chance such as comes to few. If it had been properly followed up, if it had fallen to a practical man, there would have been perceived here an open door leading to an honourable career, a safe line, with a sufficient income. I mean that any of our great newspapers would have been glad to number on its staff, and to retain, one who could write with knowledge on things agricultural. Always, throughout the whole of his life, Richard Jefferies wanted someone to advise him, but never so much as at this moment. He had this splendid chance, and he threw it away, not deliberately, but from ignorance and want of aptitude in business.

Yet the letters mark a new departure, for they made him write about the country. Success was before him at last, though not in the way he hoped.

The first letter to the Times was, for a young man of twenty-four, a most remarkable production. It was crammed with facts and information. In point of style it was clear and strong, without any faults of fine writing. It would be taken – I have no doubt at all that the editor so received it – as the letter of a clear-headed, well-informed, middle-aged Wiltshire farmer. He writes at full length, covering two columns and a quarter of the Times, in small print. The letter itself is so curious, as giving an account of a condition of things which has already greatly changed in the sixteen years since it was written, that I have placed it for preservation in an appendix to this volume. The leader on the subject in the Times of the same day thus sums up the case:

"When so much is done for labourers by an improved class of landlords and tenants, and when it is evident that they cannot but share the general advance of wages, what is it that remains to be done? There can be no doubt about it, and we commend it to the attention of the talkative gentlemen who are making fine speeches and backing up the labourer to a stand-up fight with his employer. It is the labourer himself who wants improvement. He will do everything for himself so very badly. He will not show common-sense in his cottage – if it is his own choice – or his clothing, or his food, or in his general arrangements. He will insist on poisoning the air of his cottage, his well, or the stream that runs past his door. He will not bestow half an hour on some needful repair which he thinks a landlord ought to do for him. He goes to the worst market for his provisions, buying everything on credit and in the smallest quantities. He allows a waste that would not be tolerated in wealthier households. He will not second with home discipline the efforts made to instruct his children at the school. He will still permit it to be almost impossible that his children shall be taught in the same room or play in the same ground with the children of his employer. In a word, he will not do his part – no easy one, it is true, yet not impossible. He escapes from thought, effort, and responsibility at the village 'public,' and lets his household go its way. Of course, he is only doing what many of his betters are doing in his own class and condition. But there is the same to be said of all. If men are to rise, it must be done by themselves, for the whole world will never raise, or better appreciably, those who will not raise themselves."

You have already seen the letter written in May, 1873, in which he speaks despairingly of his efforts and his ill-success; in fact, he allowed a whole year to elapse without following up the advantage and experience acquired by these letters. It seems incredible. Meanwhile he was muddling his time, and perhaps his money, in bringing out things from which neither money nor honour could be expected. The first of these was the little book I have already noticed, on reporting and journalism. It would be curious to learn the pecuniary result of this volume.

The next volume was a "Family History of the Goddards of North Wilts." Now, if the Goddards were anxious to have their history written, they might have paid for it. Perhaps they did pay for the work, but I find no record of their doing so. Perhaps they thought that Swindon would rally round the Goddard flag, and eagerly buy the book. I have not read the work; but it had the honour of getting a notice from the Athenæum, which the author heroically cut out and preserved. The plain truth was spoken in that notice, and the most was made of a very unfortunate mistake of a place, a date, and a poet, concerning which the curious may consult the Athenæum for the year 1873.

The results of publishing at his own expense were, we suppose, so satisfactory that Jefferies in 1874 brought out his first novel – "The Scarlet Shawl" – on that delightful method. It is always in vain that one assures a young writer that works which publishers with one consent refuse must be commercially worthless; it is always in vain that one preaches, exhorts, and implores the inexperienced not to throw away their money in the vain hope of getting it back with profit of gold and glory. They will do it. There are always publishing houses of a kind which are ready to print young writers' crude and foolish works at their own risk, and to talk vaguely beforehand of enormous profits to be shared. Poor wretches! they never get any profits. Nobody ever buys any copies. There is never for the unfortunate writer any gold or any glory, but only sure, certain, and bitter disappointment.

As yet, Jefferies still clung to his old ideas, and had learned none of the lessons which the Times letters should have taught him. Therefore he brought out three novels in succession (see Chapter VI.), never getting any single advantage or profit out of them except the pain of shattered hopes, the loss of money, and the most contemptuous notices in the reviews.

We are in the year 1874. Apparently, Jefferies has had his chance, and has thrown it away. He is six-and-twenty years of age – it is youth, but this young man has only twelve more years of life, and none of his work has yet been done. Why – why did no one tear him away from his vain and futile efforts? See, he toils day after day, with an energy which nothing can repress – a resolution to succeed which sustains him through all his disappointments. He covers acres of paper, and all to no purpose; for no one has told him the simplest law of all – that Art is imitation. One must not close the shutters, light the lamp, and then paint a flower one has never seen, as the painter thinks it ought to have been. Yet this is what Jefferies was doing. The young country lad, who knew no other society than that of the farm and the country town, was wasting and spoiling his life in writing about people and things whom he imagined. He was painting the flower he had never seen as he thought it ought to be.

Well, the great success of the Times letters seemed to have led to nothing. Yet it gave him a better position in his native place. His work was now so assured, and his income so much improved – though still slender enough – that in July, 1874, after a three years' engagement, he was married.

For the first six months of their marriage the young pair lived on at Coate. They then removed to a small house in Victoria Street, Swindon, where their first child was born. It is a happy thing to think that it was in the first year of his wedded life that Jefferies brushed away the cobwebs from his brain, left the old things behind him for ever, and stepped out upon the greensward, the hillside, the forest, and the meadows, where he was to walk henceforth until the end. It was time, indeed, to throw away his novels of society, to put away the unreal rubbish, to forget the foolish dreams, to let the puppets who could never have lived lie dust-covered in the limbo of false and conventional novels. Where is it, that limbo? Welcome, long-desired flowers of May! Welcome, fragrant breath of the breezy down!

CHAPTER V.

FIRST YEARS OF SUCCESS

Jefferies made his way to the fields through the farmers first and the labourers next.

He wrote a paper for Fraser's Magazine (December, 1873) on the "Future of Farming," which attracted a considerable amount of attention. The Spectator had an article upon it. The paper is full of bold speculations and prophecies; as, for instance:

"We may, then, look to a time when farming will become a commercial speculation, and will be carried on by large joint-stock concerns, issuing shares of ten, fifteen, or fifty pounds each, and occupying from three to ten thousand acres. Such companies would, perhaps, purchase the entire sewage of an adjacent town. Their buildings, their streets of cattle-stalls, would be placed on a slope sheltered from the north-east, but near the highest spot on the estate, so as to distribute manure and water from their reservoirs by the power of gravitation. A stationary steam-engine would crush their cake, and pulp their roots, pump their water, perhaps even shear their sheep. They would employ butchers and others, a whole staff, to kill and cut up bullocks in pieces suitable for the London market, transmitting their meat straight to the salesman, without the intervention of the dealer. That salesman would himself be entirely in the employ of the company, and sell no other meat but what they supplied him with. This would at once give a larger profit to the producer, and a lower price (in comparison) to the public. In summer, meat might be cooled by the ice-house, or refrigerator, which must necessarily be attached to the company's bacon factory. Except in particular districts, it is hardly probable that the dairy would be united with the stock-farm; but if so, the ice-house would again come into requisition, and there would be a condensed-milk factory on the premises."

This was going back to the right line. He seems, however, to have done no more in this line until August of the next year (the month after his marriage), when he returned in earnest to the rural life, and never afterwards left it. His earliest and fastest friend was Fraser's Magazine, now, alas! defunct. But he was speedily engaged to write for other papers and magazines. His real literary life, in fact, may be said to begin at this period. The "Farmer at Home" was the title of this paper singled out by the Spectator as the best of all the papers for the month. Here there occurs a really striking passage on the "Farmer's Creed." They live, says the writer, amid conditions so unchanging that they have acquired a creed of their own, which they rarely express, never discuss, and never fail to act upon.

"… In no other profession do the sons and the daughters remain so long, and so naturally, under the parental roof. The growth of half a dozen strong sons was a matter of self-congratulation, for each as he came to man's estate took the place of a labourer, and so reduced the money expenditure. The daughters worked in the dairy, and did not hesitate to milk occasionally, or, at least, to labour in the hay-field. They spun, too, the home-made stuffs in which all the family were clothed. A man's children were his servants. They could not stir a step without his permission. Obedience and reverence to the parent was the first and greatest of all virtues. Its influence was to extend through life, and through the whole social system. They were to choose the wife or the husband approved of at home. At thirty, perhaps, the more fortunate of the sons were placed on farms of their own nominally, but still really under the father's control. They dared not plough or sow except in the way that he approved. Their expenditure was strictly regulated by his orders. This lasted till his death, which might not take place for another twenty years. At the present moment I could point out ten or twelve such cases, where men of thirty or forty are in farms, and to all appearance perfectly free and independent, and yet as completely under the parental thumb as they were at ten years old… These men, if they think thus of their own offspring, cannot be expected to be more tender towards the lower class around them. They did at one time, and some still wish to, extend the same system to the labouring population… They did not want only to indulge in tyranny; what they did was to rule the labouring poor in the same way as they did their own children – nothing more nor less. These labouring men, like his own children, must do as the farmer thought best. They must live here or there, marry so and so, or forfeit favour – in short, obey the parental head. Each farmer was king in his own domain; the united farmers of a parish were kings of the whole place. They did not use the power circumstances gave them harshly, but they paid very little regard to the liberty of the subject… In religion it is, or lately was, the same. It was not a matter with the farmer of the Athanasian Creed, or the doctrine of salvation by faith, or any other theological dogma. To him the parish church was the centre of the social system of the parish. It was the keystone of that parental plan of government that he believed in. The very first doctrine preached from the pulpit was that of obedience. 'Honour thy father and thy mother' was inculcated there every seventh day. His father went to church, he went to church himself, and everybody else ought to go. It was as much a social gathering as the dinner at the market ordinary, or the annual audit dinner of their common landlord. The Dissenter, who declined to pay Church-rates, was an unsocial person. He had left the circle. It was not the theology that they cared about, it was the social nonconformity. In a spiritual sense, too, the clergyman was the father of the parish, the shepherd of the flock – it was a part of the great system. To go a step farther, in political affairs the one leading idea still threaded itself through all. The proper Parliamentary representative – the natural law-giver – was the landlord of the district. He was born amongst them, walked about amongst them, had been in their houses many a time. He knew their wants, their ideas, their views. His own interest was identical with theirs. Therefore he was the man."

A third paper, called "John Smith's Shanty," gave a picture of the agricultural labourer's life. He here began, timidly at first, to leave the regions of hard actual fact, and to venture upon the higher flights of poetic and ideal work, but poetry based upon the actual facts. Yet not to leave altogether the journalistic methods. Thus, he wrote for Fraser a paper on "The Works at Swindon," which was simply a newspaper descriptive article, and one on "Allotment Gardens" for the New Quarterly Review. This was like his "Future of Farming" – a wholly practical paper. One of the new principles, he says, that is now gradually entering the minds of the masses, is a belief that each individual has a right to a certain share in the land of his birth. That was written twelve years ago. Since that time this belief has extended far and wide. There are now books and papers which openly advocate the doctrine that the land is the property of the people. It is no longer a question which is asked, an answer which has to be whispered on account of its great temerity: it is a doctrine openly held and openly taught. But Jefferies was the first to find it out. He heard the whisper in the cottage and in the village ale-house; the reeds beside the brook whispered it to him. If, he thinks, every labouring man had his allotment, he would cease to desire the general division of the land.

"If it is possible to find ground near enough to the residence of the population to be practically useful as cemeteries, there can be no valid reason why spaces should not be available for a system of gardens. Numerous companies have been formed for the purpose of supplying the workmen with houses; the building societies and their estates are situated outside the city, but within easy reach by rail. Why should not societies exist and flourish for the equally useful object of providing the workman with a garden? If the plan of universal division of land were thoroughly carried out, it follows that the cities would disappear, since, to obtain a bare living out of the four acres, a man must live on or very near to it, and spend his whole time in attending to it. But the extent of allotment-ground which such a society as this would provide for the workman must not be so large as to require any more attention than he could pay to it in the evening, or the Saturday afternoon, or at most in a day or so of absence from his work. He would have, of course, to go to his allotment by rail, and rail costs money. But how many thousands of workmen at this very hour go to their work day by day by rail, and return home at night; and the sum of money they thus expend must collectively be something enormous in the course of a year! To work his allotment he would have no necessity to visit it every day, or hardly every week. Such an allotment-ground must be under the direction of a proper staff of officers, for the distribution of lots, the collection of rent, the prevention of theft, and generally to maintain the necessary order. Looked at in this light, the extension of the allotment system to large towns does not hold out any very great difficulties. The political advantage which would accrue would be considerable, as a large section of the population would feel that one at least of their not altogether frivolous complaints was removed. As a pecuniary speculation, it is possible that such a society would pay as well as a building society; for the preliminary expenses would be so small in comparison. A building society has to erect blocks of houses before it can obtain any return; but merely to plough, and lay out a few fields in regular plots, and number them on a plan, is a light task. If the rent was not paid, the society could always seize the crops; and if the plot was not cultivated in a given time, they might have a rule by which the title to it should be vacated. To carry the idea further, a small additional payment per annum might make the plot the tenant's own property. This would probably act as a very powerful inducement."

In the year 1874 he meditates a great work, which he began but never finished, using up his notes in after-years for what is really the same subject treated with more literary finish and style than he had as yet acquired. He proposes (May 20th) to Messrs. Longmans to write a great book in two volumes on the whole Land Question. The first volume he proposes to call "Tenant and Labourer;" the second, "Land and Landlord." He will deal, he says, with the subject in an "impartial and trenchant" manner, but still "with a slightly conservative tone, so as to counsel moderation." On June 8th he sends an instalment of two hundred manuscript folios, proposing that the first volume shall be called "The Agricultural Life." The chapters are to be as follows:

I. The Creed of the AgriculturistII. The Agriculturist at HomeIII. Agriculture as a BusinessIV. Summary of the Farmer's CaseV. The Labourer's Daily LifeVI. The Labourer's CaseVII. The Gist of the Whole Matter

This proposal never came to anything; but the subject-matter was abundantly treated by Jefferies later on. Most of the chapters will be found in "Hodge and his Masters." So far, he is still, it will be observed, the practical man. Whatever feeling he has for the poetry of Nature, he has as yet found little expression of it. He next wrote a paper on "Field-faring Women" for Fraser. He also wrote a most delightful article for the Graphic on the same subject, in which the truth is told about these women. This was the very first paper written in his later and better style: