THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THIS REALM, THIS ENGLAND
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE AIRY WAY. 
 
 THE GLAMOUR OF THE EARTH. 
 
 THE LEANING SPIRE. 
 
 THE FAERY YEAR. 
 
 MINIATURES. 
 
 WILD BIRDS THROUGH THE YEAR. 
 
 THE BIRDS IN OUR WOOD. 
 
 THE BOOK OF THE DRY FLY.
 
 THE OLD ENGLISH SQUIRE.
 
 THIS REALM, THIS 
 ENGLAND 
 
 BY GEORGE A. B. DEWAR 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE AIRY WAY." "THE GLAMODR OF THE EARTH," 
 "THE LEANING SPIRE," ETC. 
 
 c 
 
 LONDON 
 CHATTO & WINDUS 
 
 1913
 
 WITH 9 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 All right* reservtd
 
 TO 
 
 LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON 
 
 " Chatham's language was his mother tongue, 
 And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own. 
 
 8CG173
 
 ". . . this little world ; 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea, 
 
 ***** 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PHASE ONE 
 
 ENGLISH SOIL 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. CLIFFS OF ALBION 3 
 
 II. DOWNS OF ALBION 10 
 
 III. "THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH " 17 
 
 IV. THE ENGLISH SQUIRE 41 
 V. A CRITIC OF SQUIRES 48 
 
 VI. THE SQUIRE'S RABBITS 55 
 
 VII. THE SQUIRE'S PHEASANTS 62 
 
 VIII. NEW ATLANTIS 69 
 
 IX. THE ENGLAND OF MAY 75 
 
 X. WHEAT GOLD AND GREEN 82 
 
 XI. THE LONG JUNE DAY 89 
 
 XII. THE LONG JUNE EVE 95 
 
 XIII. IMMEMORIAL LANES 98 
 
 XIV. MIRAGE OF AN ENGLISH AUTUMN 102 
 
 PHASE TWO 
 
 ENGLISH WORTHIES 
 
 I. THE HURDLER 1 1 1 
 
 II. TARPAULIN 118 
 
 111. FLINT 124
 
 viii Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 IV. DIPS 132 
 
 V. THE FREE MAN 139 
 
 VI. PRIDE, THE BIRDCATCHER 146 
 
 VII. GILES CHAWBACON 153 
 
 VIII. THE TRUE WATER- DIVINER 160 
 
 IX. BAKK.Y BERKSHIRE 167 
 
 X. THE WORKING ENGLISH FARMER 173 
 
 PHASE THREE 
 
 ENGLISH WILDS 
 
 I. MAGIC OF THE MORN 181 
 
 II. CORBIES 194 
 
 III. THE CORBIES' LITTLE BROTHER 207 
 
 IV. COUSINS TO THE CORBIES 214 
 V. HINTS OF SPRING 221 
 
 VI. THE PERFECT THING 227 
 
 VII. "SMALL, BUT A WORK DIVINE" 234 
 
 VIII. PHILOMEL 240 
 
 * IX. LlLLIPUT 248 
 
 X. STORM SPRITES 255 
 
 XI. FASCINATION OF FUR 268 
 
 XII. FASCINATION OF FEATHER 275 
 
 XIII. THE FLOCK OF FAYS 282 
 
 XIV. HENGISTBURY 289 
 XV. THE BLACK REDSTART 296 
 
 XVI. SHAKESPEARE'S MIDWINTER 303
 
 Contents ix 
 
 PHASE FOUR 
 
 ENGLISH SEA 
 
 :H AFTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE PAGEANT OF PORTSMOUTH 311 
 
 II. ISLET AND ISLK 318 
 
 III. ILLUSIONS OF THE ENGLISH SEA 325 
 
 IV. THE LOVELINESS OF ENGLAND 333 
 
 INDEX 338 
 
 Nora. 7 thank the Editor of the ' ' Morning Post."G. A.B.D
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE OLD ENGLISH SQUIRE Frontispiece 
 
 (from a picture owned by A. /f. Dctuar, Esq., of 
 Doles, Hampshire.) 
 
 "ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND" To/acep. 8 
 
 (From a photograph by Messrs. H. Symonds, High 
 Street, Portsmouth.) 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S PALE-FACED COAST 12 
 
 (From a photograph by Messrs. Frith, Rcigate.) 
 
 ALBION 4.6 
 
 HOMELIEST ENGLAND 90 
 
 THE MOST ENGLISH SCENE OF ALL 1 1 z 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S OWN CLIFF 184 
 
 (From a photograph by Messrs. Lambert Weston, 
 Dover.) 
 
 "Tnis ENGLAND HEMMED IN BY THE MAIN" 256 
 
 (From a photograph by Messrs. Frith, Rtigate.) 
 
 SPEAKING 290 
 
 (From a photograph by Messrs. H. Symonds, High 
 Street, Portsmouth.) 
 
 XI

 
 PHASE ONE 
 ENGLISH SOIL
 
 CHAPTER I 
 CLIFFS OF ALBION 
 
 I THOUGHT the noblest view in England 
 opened out in a flash to me one day, having 
 walked from Totland Bay across Headon Hill, and 
 turned south and seaward at the road that leads 
 right up to the cliff at Alum. It was late summer, 
 and at that spot a sheet of purple heather on the 
 slope and sheltered side of the hill went out to 
 meet the sheet of azure above and the deeper blue 
 of the sea far below. 
 
 I want such a day clear and bright, and such a 
 union of colour to make that claim for the scene 
 at Alum ; but, given them, I think it not a wild 
 or reckless claim. I have never seen a finer bit of 
 land and sky and seascape well compressed together, 
 and the whole animate with the sense of national 
 life and power, than the scene at Alum presents. 
 
 There is only one thing wanting at such a time 
 at Alum a good view of the great white or grey 
 escarpment of the rock which has given England 
 another name. To get that view you must cross to 
 the mainland opposite, anywhere between Milford 
 village or the Haven at Poole, and look over the
 
 4 This Realm, This England 
 
 water to Alum or to Scratchels Bay and the Needles. 
 Then you shall see Albion: and the Gaul, or who- 
 ever made that name, was a very true judge of the 
 natural features of a country, for the great white- 
 fronted cliff is easily the master feature of the 
 English coast scene. 
 
 You see it again near Portland and in that huge 
 bit of escarpment between the Old Harry Rocks 
 and Swanage, where the shining white herring gulls 
 nest in May with a jet-black raven or two among 
 them ; and then turning east you have it in a very 
 splendid form at Dover and by Eastbourne. To 
 understand the truth of the name Albion it is a 
 good way to steam in a fast man-of-war or a cruiser 
 right down the coast from the Thames or the 
 Medway to Portland or to the end of the Dorset- 
 shire cliffs and the end of the chalk. I have done 
 that, and been divided in homage between the 
 splendid ritual of the daily life and round on a ship 
 of war and the pageant of our English sea ; divided 
 and yet faithful to both, for there are times when 
 they do appear to be welded naturally into one 
 another, to be one dominion. 
 
 Another way is to come in across the Channel 
 in a good light and watch the Seven Sisters and 
 Beachy Head come clear and clearer out of the 
 distance till the whole of their lovely curve and 
 scallop are cut out with perfect precision on the 
 skyline.
 
 Cliffs of Albion 5 
 
 Shakespeare, I think, must have had that ex- 
 perience more than once in his life, and felt it 
 through and through his glorious being. Only a man 
 who was an intimate of these compelling scenes of 
 the coast could have got them into words as he did 
 in two or three of his plays. 
 
 He knew at least and revelled in the figuring and 
 vast bulwark of that cliff at Dover that bears his 
 name. He must have watched it at sea growing and 
 growing in distinction and substance out of the dis- 
 tance 
 
 " That pale-faced shore 
 Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides, 
 
 . . . that England hedged in with the main." 
 
 Equally he must have been drawn and held by 
 the immense magnetic power which these cliffs often 
 exercise over those who view them from imme- 
 diately below or look down from their summits. He 
 exaggerated the height of the precipice : 
 
 <: Look up a-height j the shrill-gorged lark so far 
 Cannot be seen or heard " 
 
 One must exaggerate the height and mass of " this 
 chalky bourn " when the full spell of the cliff is felt 
 at such near quarters. The thing is common to all 
 imaginations that are ruled at all by the power of the 
 cliff at the sea. In the scene at " the cliff without a 
 name" in Mr. Hardy's story, "A Pair of Blue Eyes," 
 one is impressed by an idea of Himalayan height and
 
 6 This Realm, This England 
 
 bulk, though has not the author conscientiously told 
 us in a later preface to the book that the actual 
 height is but seven hundred feet, almost a small affair 
 against something at Chamonix or the Matterhorn ? 
 ***** 
 
 The charm of the chalk is in some degree the 
 charm of insularity among many of us. Right or 
 wrong, one hugs the idea that it is above all other 
 rocks the special rock of England, geologically our 
 rock. It is something of a surprise to find a pale- 
 faced shore across the water as well as at home. 
 Travelling by train through Normandy anyone who 
 knows the English chalk scenery well its streams 
 and hills, and the configuration of the land but does 
 not know France well, may wonder still more to 
 find some of the familiar features there too. 
 
 Where the chalk is really the soil or undersoil, even 
 though it does not actually break through the green 
 in places or take the form of rolling down and grey 
 greensward, I think it cannot be overlooked or mis- 
 taken. In Normandy you can tell you are on the 
 chalk in places, though you may not see a sign of 
 down. There is something in its form as well as in 
 its flora, and, where water flows, there is something 
 still more in its streams and meadows that announces 
 chalk quite clearly. 
 
 So that as a man who knows the chalk character 
 well travels through Normandy he is often finding 
 himself back in England at this spot and that, in
 
 Cliffs of Albion 7 
 
 spite of French blinds and French poplars. There is 
 no doubt about the chalk abroad wherever it carries 
 a stream or curves into the suggestion of a down or 
 shows a few sprays of vital ba, the " traveller's joy " 
 being a bit of England. 
 
 Chalk is Albion. Not another rock or soil in Eng- 
 land strikes one in the same way. Who, coming upon 
 Bagshot sands or Cornish serpentine or upon good 
 red sandstone of Devon in a foreign country, feels, 
 in the same degree he feels when on a chalk down, 
 that he is back in England ? I suppose an Aberdonian 
 hardly has the illusion that his foot is on his native 
 heath when he alights abroad upon the very stuff, 
 grand stuff, which Grampian or Cairngorm is made of. 
 
 The chalk, I insist, is even more Albion, more 
 English, than the granite is Aberdeen and Deeside. 
 ***** 
 
 The charm of the chalk cliffs of England has 
 nothing to do with rarity and choiceness of colouring. 
 The last thing on earth to claim for chalk is pretti- 
 ness. It has no curious veining. It has nothing crys- 
 talline. It has nothing of colour. From its rock no 
 paper-knife or letter-weight can be contrived ; there 
 cannot be knicknacks or except perhaps for fossils 
 curios of chalk, which defects account a virtue in 
 chalk. It is true you can have " A Present from 
 Alum " ; I do not know whether they still make and 
 find buyers for the little glass lighthouse so labelled 
 in my childhood in any Isle of Wight toy-shop at
 
 8 This Realm, This England 
 
 Ryde or Newport ; but anyhow the present has, or 
 had, nothing to do with chalk from the sea cliff of 
 England it was an arrangement in pretty little 
 layers of the gay-tinted sands of Alum. 
 
 The chalk wall, in fact, is essentially an ugly rock 
 as we see it at near quarters round the English coast. 
 I do not mean, of course, that it is an ugly object as 
 we view it from the sea, and as it comes out of dis- 
 tance. I have looked a hundred times at the cliff at 
 Alum and at Scratchels Bay from he mainland, and 
 seen it appearing and disappearing in the sea films 
 through October and November and December days, 
 and I know well that the effect is often most strange 
 and magical ; and I know that viewed thus the chalk 
 cliff can be a thing of utmost beauty. But view it 
 close by and in a harder and brighter light, and one 
 must admit that a great sea wall of chalk can be an 
 ugly, sullen-looking object. Alum illustrates this as 
 well as any cliff I know. It has been so stained and 
 fouled by weather that "white" ill expresses it. 
 Alum cliff, when we fairly come into the bay and 
 view it from the strand below, has nothing of beauty. 
 ***** 
 
 The appeal to us of these weather-stained walls of 
 chalk is doubtless an appeal of Nature. The magnetic- 
 like, almost the mesmeric-like, power which the huge, 
 sheer mass has on us at close quarters is wholly the 
 force of Nature. But there is quite another appeal in 
 Shakespeare's pale-faced shore as we view it out at
 
 Cliffs of Albion 9 
 
 sea : these cliffs have an appeal of Nation as well as 
 an appeal of Nature. Shakespeare writing those lines 
 on his cliff was writing national and patriotic poetry 
 hardly less than Campbell in his sea songs or Cowper 
 in " Toll for the brave." 
 
 If the downs and streams and meadows of the chalk 
 express particularly the Nature of Albion, the rock 
 at Alum or at Shakespeare's Cliff expresses particu- 
 larly the Nation of Albion. 
 
 The rock at Alum is to me quite inseparate from 
 the idea of nation and sea power and rule. Portsmouth 
 Harbour is hard by, Spithead is hard by, and the 
 whole scene is one constant expression of nationhood 
 and sea power. Take away this emotion and half the 
 appeal of the chalk cliffs viewed from the sea is lost. 
 I do not see how the chalk of Albion can have much 
 of a charm for the cosmopolite. The appeal of Shake- 
 speare's Cliff to Shakespeare was an appeal largely of 
 nation. What a case it was among all those great, 
 fresh Elizabethans of " This England ... set in the 
 silver sea"!
 
 CHAPTER II 
 DOWNS OF ALBION 
 
 THERE may be countries besides Albion with 
 the great white escarpment, the " pale-faced 
 shore." Shakespeare's Cliffs may belong to France as 
 well as to England. There may be other countries 
 with those lovely clear chalk-streams which we often 
 pride ourselves we only have. I have seen something, 
 I must say, across the water very like the distinctive 
 stream of the chalk districts of England. The cliff 
 and the stream, however, are one thing, the down is 
 quite another, and I take my stand there. Never 
 having seen anything like a true English chalk down 
 abroad, I cannot imagine there is one out of England. 
 France is a splendid country, the land and the people, 
 but I cannot conceive of its having great stretches of 
 our chalk down scenery. The idea of Lambourne 
 Downs or of a Salisbury Plain out of England is too 
 much for belief. 
 
 The long, glorious sweep of the down as I know it 
 in England, the grand extent in grey and green of it, 
 the leagues of its original short, crisp turf studded 
 with a flora that sometimes rivals in all but colour the 
 miniature flora of the Alps these things we must 
 have to ourselves.
 
 
 Downs of Albion 1 1 
 
 Chalk, as I have said, wherever it comes near the 
 surface, is unmistakable to those who have lived on 
 it or know its character at all well. Its trees declare 
 it; much of its smaller flora as well as its fauna de- 
 clare it. The whole lie of the land, the configuration 
 of hill and vale, do so. But there can be those dis- 
 tinguishing marks over miles and miles of a soil or 
 under-soil of chalk without the chief feature of all 
 the ungoverned chalk down. Until we reach a point 
 in the chalk country where the ploughed fields and 
 rich pastures and more or less planted woods give 
 place to grey down we are scarcely on the true 
 thing ; at least we do not realize the simplest, noblest, 
 and far the most characteristic expression of 
 chalk. 
 
 The chalk stream often flows over gravel beds so 
 yellow or gold they paint the trout that lie on them ; 
 or often it flows through a peaty or loamy soil. The 
 chalk-faced sea cliff often alternates with sands and 
 other substances that are its accidental neighbours 
 utterly unrelated to it thus, Alum sands, close along- 
 side Alum chalk. But once we reach fairly on to the 
 downs inland, on to those, for example, of King 
 Alfred's country about the Blowing Stone and the 
 White Horse with its huge manger, we reach the 
 thing in its grand, simple, elemental form. 
 
 Albion to me and I think that many who like 
 and have lived upon chalk will agree to this is no- 
 where more undisputed Albion than inland and lifted
 
 12 This Realm, This England 
 
 clear of the highest wheatfield and of even the 
 highest sainfoin. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The appeal of the chalk down, like that of the 
 chalk cliff, is one of Nation as well as one of Nature. 
 In it again is Albion absolute. Only there is this dif- 
 ference in the appeal away from the coast line and 
 coast height it is not related to the emotion of Im- 
 perialism or patriotism. The great, white-fronted cliff 
 suggests all the old might and sea pride of Albion. It 
 bespeaks defiance I risk being called a Jingo ; indeed, 
 I believe I am something of the Jingo ; but anyhow, 
 I here choose defiance in preference to defence. The 
 great stretch of chalk downs inland, most of them out 
 of sight and thought of the sea, have an appeal homely 
 rather than majestic, though this, too, is often an 
 appeal to the spirit of nation " This is England out 
 and out, and there is no country quite to match it !" 
 
 The charm of the chalk downs from the natural 
 point of view, their charm in landscape, consists 
 largely, I think, in their long, gentle roll and easy 
 curve. Broken ground is what we often desire and 
 admire in landscape. Abrupt breaks in the land, hill, 
 and hollow, and rocks and strata of all forms and tilts, 
 flung carelessly together, are the making of many of 
 the most effective English landscapes. But where 
 chalk heaves up to the surface and curves into these 
 noble grey-green downs the last thing we shall find 
 is anything abrupt or broken into diverse forms. The
 
 Downs of Albion 13 
 
 only abrupt break in these tracts of chalk is at certain 
 spots where the turf suddenly ends and with it the 
 down itself suddenly ends ; it is as if it had been split 
 and broken clean off, the whole of one huge side to 
 the down, and had tumbled into the valley below, 
 leaving exposed a sheer wall of white rock. That is 
 the inland cliff of the chalk country, exactly like 
 Shakespeare's Cliffs at the shore, only rarely, if ever, 
 so high. I can think of one at this moment which has 
 always struck me as a most solemn and splendid thing 
 to see the rude escarpment of the great chalk downs 
 that are rolled and massed above the Kingsclere dis- 
 trict. 
 
 Many of these chalk downs, even some of the 
 highest of them as the one which overlooks that 
 Kingsclere panorama and the valleys of the Kennet 
 and Thames are beech-crowned ; whilst hazel 
 woods climb far up others, and the yew-trees flourish 
 there on some of the most windy slopes. These 
 clumps are inspiring landmarks certainly ; it is good 
 on a clear day to stand at some high spot and pick 
 out Faringdon Clumps or Cottington Clumps, forty 
 or fifty miles away. But, on the whole, the best scenes 
 of the chalk downs are the absolutely bare ones. 
 Where the downs are high, rising from seven hundred 
 to nine hundred feet above the sea level in one 
 spot they rise to a thousand feet and ranged in 
 great masses, I want no vegetation to soften their out- 
 line against the sky. The contour of the chalk down
 
 14 This Realm, This England 
 
 is one of the most beautiful things in English land- 
 scape. The outline is so fine and true on the horizon; 
 the roll and heave of the range have a curve and 
 sweep I cannot tire of looking at, near by or from the 
 distance. 
 
 An old English house, set right among the downs, 
 has a wonderful site. There are some houses in this 
 setting, but not many, because these best places in 
 the downs are the wildest, and they are very greatly 
 exposed to storms and are not at all hospitable. 
 There is one I have never seen, though I know parts 
 of the range well enough, and I know its position. 
 You go out on to the lawn, and at the end of the 
 lawn, right in front of you, is the great calming slope 
 of grey-green. Wordsworth, who understood in an 
 extraordinary degree what intimacy with Nature 
 meant, knew the worth of such surroundings. He 
 could find neighbours and friends in inanimate things, 
 and a certain wonderful sympathy in Nature, as his 
 lines on the death of Fox show : 
 
 " Loud is the vale, the voice is up 
 With which she speaks when storms are past." 
 
 What a noble neighbour a great chalk down, un- 
 ploughed and unplanted, must be just outside our 
 door and window, unchanging through life, except 
 that the turf grows a shade greener in summer, and 
 a shade greyer in winter ! 
 
 ***** 
 The chalk downs are Albion absolute, but not so
 
 Downs of Albion 1 5 
 
 their human history that seems to have started and 
 ended ages before the name had been thought of, ages 
 before England had dimly begun. They have prob- 
 ably had no history worth speaking of since the start 
 of England ; only the history of shepherd and sheep. 
 But these downs had a great remote drama. No man 
 who walks across a range or two of the chalk can 
 doubt it for a moment. The proof of the thing is 
 perfectly clear to see, first in the camps and next in 
 the barrows where the men of the Bronze Age 
 buried their leaders that are scattered about many 
 of the high, bare spots, and have here and there given 
 a name to some village in the coombe or valley be- 
 neath. There is " the field of the seven barrows," 
 and there is " the field of the dead " among these 
 grey downs, and to this day, when the barrows are 
 opened, the ashes of the heroes, and sometimes the 
 very hair, untouched by time, are found within. 
 
 The plough has never passed over the barrows on 
 the highest downs ; their outline and size must be 
 very much what they were when piled in the age 
 of bronze. In some places the barrows are the only 
 objects that for mile upon mile of close turf break 
 the gentle curve and smooth undulation of the downs ; 
 but they have become so grown into the downs, both 
 the round barrows and the long, that they appear to 
 be part of the natural scene. The barrow looks as 
 though it was in the geology and evolution of the 
 downs.
 
 1 6 This Realm^ This England 
 
 The supreme minutes in the scene of the bare 
 downs are when the sun, as a globe of intense orange- 
 red fire, with its photosphere clear of the least wisp 
 of cloud, drops on to the edge of the down darkly 
 etched on the horizon. Perceptibly and quickly it 
 sinks out of sight. The sun, till it actually touches 
 the rim of the earth, appears stationary, but the in- 
 stant it is there it is seen as a moving thing ; and it 
 moves so quickly that we can understand then the 
 excellence of that old commonplace figure named the 
 flight of time. We see the flight. They are minutes 
 a very few of them, but packed with Nature sen- 
 sation ! of precise, of extreme definition. For defi- 
 nition in these chalk downs I must wait for the dusk, 
 whether on a November day or on a June day. I 
 realize then to the full the fineness of the long, clean, 
 unshowy line ; and when the sun is sunk below that 
 line I can realize too the huge swart bulk and ma- 
 terialism of the downs.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 "THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH " 
 
 I WALKED up the long, straight " ride " and came 
 out at the end of the wood, to stand for a while 
 in the large unfenced sainfoin field and look on twenty 
 miles of harvest just begun. I go there when I want 
 some feeling of the great open spaces. I think I have 
 generally got some good out of the scene when I have 
 been cramped and low and dispirited. This ride to- 
 wards the close of summer is a tunnel through brake- 
 fern and hazel underwood and oak-trees. It is 
 always so overgrown at this time of year that there 
 can be no riding along it with comfort till the boughs 
 are trimmed for the fox-hunt, and even in walking 
 one has often to put aside the ends and trailers of 
 underwood and to brush through thick, tall brake- 
 ferns which, by August, are beginning to give at the 
 point where their clean, straight stems leave the 
 ground. 
 
 That bending and breaking of the fern stem, weeks 
 before the fronds turn yellow, months sometimes be- 
 fore they are brown what a warning sign it is of 
 the end now in sight, in feel 7 Wet and wind in 
 17 2
 
 1 8 This Realm, This England 
 
 August no doubt may force down the bracken before 
 its proper time ; yet, whatever the weather, I always 
 find at this time some of the tallest stems giving thus 
 at the point where they leave the ground ; and not 
 even reddening or yellowing leaves warn me clearer 
 than they do that the summer is mainly spent. 
 
 The bracken was almost or quite the latest thing 
 in this gleaming woodland tunnel to perfect its green ; 
 it is the earliest thing to falter out of the pageant. It 
 cannot carry upright its own weight, when the run 
 of the sap has ended and the summer turned. Many 
 things in Nature seem to stay a little at perfection 
 though we know that really nothing can but the 
 bracken in these deep, woody places does not even 
 seem to stay. 
 
 The view from the rough sainfoin at the top of 
 the ride is not one of distinguished landscape. Some 
 people may find it prosaic English. I find it homely 
 English. It has no signal height, no very striking 
 feature in form, though about it is none of the 
 monotony of some rich champaign of the flat Mid- 
 lands. It is twenty miles of ample, easy sweep of hill 
 and hollow ; nothing abrupt or very wild about its 
 medley of corn and pasture, of downs, oak woods, 
 and parklands, with here and there a thread of clear 
 water, yet nothing in its effect as a whole I think 
 that can fairly be called tame. 
 
 With the dulled green of late summer largely sup- 
 pressed in the landscape, its ruling colours are the
 
 " The Old Order Changeth" 19 
 
 faint purple of the woods and distance, and the brown 
 and pale yellow of the three chief corn crops cut and 
 standing. 
 
 Prosaic scenery or not, it is absolute English. I 
 doubt from what I have seen and heard whether one 
 could find anything truly like it abroad. I certainly 
 have not found its match in Italy, France, Norway. 
 We have plenty of scenery, hill and plain, which can 
 be matched by Continental landscape, but here, as in 
 the scene from Alum, the great thing is the blend 
 of national and natural features that keeps the scene 
 so very English ; the large and moderate sized farms, 
 the large and the less estates, and the two or three 
 great parks and old domains form a whole peculiar 
 to our life and character. 
 
 It is quite a good microcosm of the English social 
 system in the countryside; the villages of two to 
 five hundred souls, the hamlets of twenty or so up- 
 wards, the small town with its market and railway, 
 the squires, the one or two " territorialists " as Lord 
 Morley styles the largest type of landowner, the 
 tenant-farmers renting anything from fifty to two 
 thousand acres three to four hundred may be the 
 average farm and then the mass of the small trading 
 and working people who thrive or sicken according 
 to whether or not the class above them is stable or 
 fluctuating. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Of all prejudices to-day about English life and
 
 2O This Realm, This England 
 
 Society surely the most absurd is that which be- 
 littles old family and old tenure. To scorn old family 
 and the holding through generations of a piece of land, 
 large or small, by the same family, poor or rich, is 
 about as wise as to make light of the Japanese for 
 worshipping their ancestors. The ignorance of the 
 thing is comic and it is colossal. 
 
 If there is one thing in our whole system of society 
 that is clearly not " snobbish " it is the feeling of re- 
 spect for old names and old families on the soil. 
 
 It would be senseless to regard old books or old 
 pictures or old buildings as snobbish, or to argue that 
 there is no virtue in their being old, but perhaps not 
 quite so senseless as this other prejudice. The mob 
 who in revolution want to smash the pictures and 
 buildings have the same kind of intelligence and 
 imagination as those who in peace want to smash the 
 tradition of old family. 
 
 This twenty miles of English harvest which one 
 looks over from the high field of sainfoin depends very 
 largely for the welfare of its people on whether the 
 social system is lasting and steady a thing that is only 
 secured by the families being secured. If the holders 
 of the great estates and the holders of the lesser 
 estates are constantly shifted, the whole body of people 
 suffer there is nothing surer in the problem of the 
 land. Lately I ran through a list of most of the chiet 
 land-owning families in this bit of England which 
 the view from the high point embraces. I ran through
 
 " The Old Order Changeth" 2 1 
 
 it with one who knows it still better than I do ; and 
 I think we could not fix on more than about three 
 considerable families which have been secured on this 
 stretch of land for over fifty years. 
 
 Within the last fifteen years or so nearly all the old 
 families of note have been forced to sell and go, and 
 now their successors in many a case are selling and 
 going. Only the largest and the oldest have been 
 able to hold on. 
 
 Leaving the sainfoin field, one takes a path that 
 leads to a spot a mile away, which commands quite 
 a different view. It overlooks a stretch of wider and 
 more hilly country another twenty miles of fair 
 English harvest ! I doubt if there are more than two 
 of its old families left. It is not Goldsmith's story by 
 any means, for men decay, but wealth does not accu- 
 mulate. True, wealth often comes in with the new 
 name, but it has a habit of not staying ; it is a shy 
 visitor. Why should it stay ? It soon discovers that 
 the deepest rooted on the soil may be the easiest to 
 despoil. 
 
 " A man who buys land to-day in England is a 
 fool " when " Domesday " is complete and the 
 volume ready for the State binder, this bitter familiar 
 saying to-day of the countryside might make an apt 
 quotation for one of its preliminary pages. 
 
 The old order of the land changes then, but it does 
 not seem to be giving place to anything that can be 
 called a new order. The new family is often gone
 
 22 This Realm , This England 
 
 almost as soon as come. Very likely it came because 
 it knew nothing about the land, and is gone because 
 it learnt something more than it had reckoned for. 
 
 Instead of the understanding of the land and its 
 duties handed down from generation to generation 
 we have flux and a loss of that old sense of re- 
 sponsibility that knits together a society. 
 
 There is the net result so far of the passing of the 
 old order from the land. I believe in change and strife 
 or struggle as supremely necessary to all progress : one 
 must, unless one turns into a soft or sentimentalist. 
 The thing is always going on everywhere in Nature. 
 But as Nature breaks down she builds up. Our twen- 
 tieth-century Solons seem to overlook that truth. 
 
 II 
 
 Scott spoilt "St. Ronan's Well," it is said, by 
 changing the plot to suit the morals of his publishers 
 or his public. I have never quite known what was 
 the original version, so the criticism does not appeal 
 to me. But whatever else Scott spoilt for the sake of 
 decorum, he certainly did not spoil those last few 
 pages which set forth the later phases in the laird's 
 career. It is about the most convincing thing in " St. 
 Ronan's Well " or in the whole of the mighty Scott's 
 work one is convinced convinced of its absolute 
 truth and naturalness. Scott did not contrive any arti- 
 ficial ending for the career of Mowbray, making him
 
 " The Old Order Changeth" 23 
 
 live happily ever after, or wretchedly ever after. Scott 
 let the laird dree his own weird. 
 
 It would have been much easier and not in the 
 least convincing to bring old Touchwood's entire 
 fortune to the service of St. Ronan's straight away. 
 But Scott knew better. He left it to Nature, and he 
 left it to the laird,and between them they pulled round 
 the estate, with Meiklewham as their middleman. 
 
 I by no means take the laird of St. Ronan's Well 
 as a favourable example of the old order on the land. 
 Far from it ; he was, I should say, quite an exception 
 on most sides of his character. But the later phase in 
 his career does serve to point a capital moral : it well 
 shows what a man who has been careless, even reck- 
 less, in his calling can do to work out his own salva- 
 tion if not discouraged or actually forbidden by out- 
 side, by essentially artificial, interruption. 
 
 St. Ronan's, a bad representative of the old order, 
 quite one whom we should call " a waster " at the 
 start, pulled his own round after the smash. The 
 novelist, knowing real life well, allowed him to do so, 
 and the result is felt by the reader to be true and 
 excellent. Now this is quite the lesson which the 
 statesman wise in fact as Scott was in fiction would 
 always bear in mind in his plans to fortify or to re- 
 place the old order as a whole on the land. As it is, 
 the one ruling wish of the theorists and terrorists 
 of to-day in England really seems to be to prevent any- 
 thing like a natural restoring and reforming. Nothing
 
 24 This Realm, This England 
 
 is to be allowed to grow up naturally ; the first and 
 pressing business in all things to do with the old order 
 on the land is to pull down artificially. 
 
 To those who have lived in actual touch with it, 
 and thought without passion of its problems, the land 
 in an old country like England seems the last subject 
 fit for the theorists and artificers of Society, the Sieyes 
 sort, to play with ; and yet the land is the foremost 
 thing they persist in playing with. 
 
 Whether he happens to be a good and unfortunate 
 laird, or whether like the character in Scott a bad 
 and unfortunate laird, St. Ronan's to-day is to have 
 no chance whatever of rescuing himself. He is to go, 
 and he is not even to be allowed to go naturally. He 
 is to be forced out artificially. The place is to be put 
 into Chancery, and henceforth whatever St. Ronans 
 yields Chancery will apply to the upkeep, not of the 
 countryside, but of the badge and livery of its brand 
 new order of officers. 
 
 Now, suppose Scott had ended his story in that 
 fashion. How we should have yawned over its last 
 pages ! How well we could all have agreed that " St. 
 Ronan's Well " marked the close of Scott's great fund 
 of common sense and Scott's gift of informed imagina- 
 tion ! 
 
 ***** 
 I wrote of the panorama of the harvest, some twenty 
 miles of that splendid English scene, as it appears from 
 the sainfoin field or from the hanger overlooking the
 
 " The Old Order Changeth" 25 
 
 downlands. Living or staying near such a spot, we are 
 drawn to it day after day to see what is happening to 
 the crops. To be interested in the scene, we need not 
 be directly concerned in it as owner, farmer, or 
 worker. The immense stake of the thing must appeal 
 to us, and the obvious truth that so many thousand 
 pounds' worth of food is here spread out to save or 
 spoil, according to whether sun or cloud prevails in 
 the next week or two. 
 
 Not to be moved by the harvest when we survey 
 it thus in great bulk, at an anxious season when rain 
 may spoil all, would argue a strangely incurious mind. 
 Wheat is a form of gold. Realize this, and it is im- 
 possible not to be interested in the sight and in the 
 question whether it is to be gathered or in large de- 
 gree lost before the month is out. 
 
 The wheat scene has, or should have, a clear, 
 direct bearing on this question of the old order on 
 the land throughout England and its future. We need 
 only glance at the market price of corn to-day to 
 understand this. It shows that once again wheat in 
 England can be grown at a good or a fair profit. The 
 harvest scene from the steep beech and oak hanger 
 goes to prove this, quite apart from the figures 
 given in every local print. Right among the dark 
 green of a mass of rough woodland, on the slope and 
 in the hollow of one of the downs, lies a large patch 
 of brown and yellow. That distant patch is crops of 
 corn oats and barley perhaps, mixed with wheat.
 
 26 This Realm, This England 
 
 Many years ago I cannot well recall the day my- 
 self there was the same yellow and brown amid the 
 dark green or blue of those woods ; it was when the 
 old order on the land was still largely undisturbed. 
 Then come a stretch of years, something like thirty, 
 when the colour of corn died out of that down : the 
 land had gone to waste, for corn could not be grown 
 on it to profit. Now once more appears the grand 
 gold of the best crop in the world for wheat, when 
 all has been said, is that. 
 
 The English land system, wisely modified, has the 
 chance to steady itself anew this is what the value 
 of corn to-day tells us, and the colour of it beginning 
 to reappear in places which for so many years were 
 given over to rough and rabbit. Land system does 
 not mean the man who owns the cornfield, or the 
 man who rents it, or the man who reaps it. Land 
 system means the three together and much more 
 than the three, for it means all the trading and pro- 
 fessional people throughout the countryside. There 
 is no segregating their lives and interests. 
 
 That is the very simple truth about a society like 
 that of the land in England, which backward or im- 
 patient minds somehow cannot grasp. The man who 
 thinks he could destroy one of the classes from this 
 society without injury to the whole is as a man who 
 thinks he can remove a spring from his watch and 
 yet not hurt it as a timepiece. Really, I think I 
 would prefer the full-fledged Socialist for my watch-
 
 " The Old Order Changeth- 27 
 
 maker. He at least is more amusing. He would take 
 not a spring out of the timepiece to make it go better, 
 but would take the whole mechanism to bits and re- 
 make it while you wait the chief objection to his 
 plan being the truth that he has never made any- 
 thing save a theory. But it is not from such minds 
 that we can look for help or hope about the land. 
 Take a look at the great harvest scene from the beech 
 and oak hanger to-day how utterly it confounds the 
 land theorist and the land tinker ! 
 
 I thought, looking on the old familiar scene, which 
 il yet so new again, that I had never seen anything 
 finer in a year of English landscape. There is no 
 deceiving oneself August is quite the last act of 
 summer. The elms are black-green in coombes below, 
 and here on the hanger all the wild grasses are seeded 
 and spent. The burnet moths burr heavily among 
 them, settling now and then on the knapweed, the 
 bronze and purple being about the only bits of high 
 colour left from the pageant. But the scene wants no 
 high colour. It is supreme without it. 
 
 In every feature of this scene there is a reflection 
 to confound the theorist in reform. The figuring of 
 the very fields, their irregularity, and varying size con- 
 found him. It has taken centuries to work out a plan 
 like this, centuries of character and endeavour. The 
 theorist is ready to work out something better on a 
 bit of paper ! 
 
 The whole pageant as one sees it from the hanger,
 
 28 This Realm, This England 
 
 is a set of illustrations in the growth of England. It 
 is history in landscape. Anyone who knows the story 
 of the land, will see at once the significance in the 
 figuring of many of the fields, small and large, and 
 the way they dovetail in one with another. Imagine 
 the conceit of the man who thinks that he can in- 
 vent something to improve on this nation-old system ! 
 He has a theory in the air to replace a practice in the 
 earth. He has something ready-made and untried to 
 replace a thing that has slowly grown and steadily 
 been tried through the best part of a thousand years. 
 I do advise anybody who is playing with theories 
 in the air, and yet has some sense of humour, to go 
 up to the downs or hangers in August and view the 
 harvest scene. If that immense reality does not bring 
 him into touch with truth and fact, nothing can. 
 
 Ill 
 
 St. Ronan's was of the old order on the land. I 
 shall take for illustration another character in our 
 literature who was quite as sinister a figure in his 
 way as St. Ronan's Sir Aylmer Aylmer, " that al- 
 mighty man." It is so very easy to cite many noble 
 examples of this old English order that one need not 
 fear to cite one or two harsh ones. The central figure 
 of " Aylmer's Field " is essentially a poet's character 
 creation, but I cite him because he does answer well 
 to the legend a true and fine legend of pride in 
 forefathers and of continuous holding of the land.
 
 " The Old Order Changeth 29 
 
 "Sir Aylmer Aylmer in his Aylmerism" would make 
 a telling text for a cheap and shallow sermon against 
 the whole class he stood for. Very likely he has already 
 been used for that end. I recall him for another. 
 
 Sir Aylmer Aylmer is an instance of a family of 
 the old order dying out through its own fault or mis- 
 fortune perhaps the two together. It is a story of 
 rare power, and in the main, despite its romantic 
 vein, true enough to life and human nature. The 
 Aylmer pride and habit of exclusion concentrating 
 in one strong, harsh nature bring to ruin an ancient 
 line. The whole estate is broken up past recognition ; 
 the hall itself is levelled with the ground : 
 
 " And where the two contrived their daughter's good 
 Lies the hawk's cast. The mole has made his run, 
 The slow-worm creeps, and the thin weasel there 
 Follows the mouse, and all is open field." 
 
 The story of St. Ronan's Well and the story of 
 Aylmer's Field, with their widely different ends, are 
 alike in this one thing the entire responsibility of 
 the owner in both cases. St. Ronan's estate was saved 
 wholly by the work of Mowbray ; Aylmer's Field 
 was spoiled wholly by the work of Sir Aylmer 
 Aylmer. Neither was interfered with for good or 
 evil by a deliberate and artificial influence from out- 
 side. Both were allowed to dree their own weird. 
 
 The saving of St. Ronan's and the ruin of Aylmer's 
 Field were due to natural causes ; not in the least
 
 30 This Realm, This England 
 
 degree to the political schemer and theorist, friend or 
 foe. Therein lies their value for illustration. 
 
 Aylmer's Field died out the power, the title, the 
 whole little countryside it stood for through the 
 fault of Aylmer's Field. We feel that the great man's 
 fate was deserved. The bark in the imagery of the 
 story itself was wrecked through " the pilot's guilt 
 . . . the captain's knowledge" Spda-ovn iraQelv. 
 
 If the old order of the land dies out through its 
 own defect, no one who cares for the good of the 
 country will wish to prop it up ; artificial support of 
 a thing in natural decay cannot be good for any society 
 or country. If the old order of the land to-day in Eng- 
 land were Aylmerism, or not better than St. Ronan's 
 before St. Ronan's recovered himself and built up his 
 estate anew, it would deserve to die out ; and they 
 would not be wise and farseeing friends of our country- 
 side who tried by artificial aid and scheme to save or 
 revive it. 
 
 The point is that the old order of the land is not 
 mere Aylmerism. The master of Aylmer's Field did 
 represent the old tradition of family and of continuous 
 holding through a long stretch of time. But only the 
 mind that is quite uninformed, or that sets out to be 
 unfair, could find in Sir Aylmer's over-pride and 
 harshness the marks of the order he belonged to. 
 ***** 
 
 The harvest scene from the beech hanger includes 
 a long list of changes in holding since I first knew it
 
 " The Old Order Changeth- 3 1 
 
 in boyhood. The changes have been great in the style 
 of tenant as well as in the name of owner. One re- 
 calls quite clearly, for example, the last of the jovial 
 race of sporting farmers on these wild downlands. 
 They lived the generous life of men whose names 
 stood well at the bank in the market town. They 
 had time to shoot partridges in the old style in Sep- 
 tember we walked up the birds on those hills and 
 coombes until lately and I remember two or three 
 who were well-known figures at the hunt in the 
 eighties. At least one of these stout, comfortable 
 men could tell a racy story of mighty Assheton 
 Smith himself in the hunting-field. 
 
 The class has died out among those downs and 
 valleys: I doubt if a single example of the type lingers 
 there. They lived too well for ill times. The class 
 that filled their place was at the other pole of life on 
 the land ; the class of men who worked like even 
 harder than their own farm hands ; men with 
 scarcely more luxuries than their carter and plough- 
 man had. The spirit of the hunt was in these men, 
 but I never knew of one of them in that country 
 who actually took part in it. Shooting was the only 
 pleasure which exalted master over man ; and even 
 in this spot they would have an eye to livelihood and 
 saving. The southern farmer, new style, was quite 
 as far removed from the old race as the " Northern 
 Farmer, New Style," in Tennyson from his ale- 
 drinking forerunner who stubbed Thurnaby Waaste.
 
 32 This Realm, This England 
 
 He was and he is a rather dingy figure compared 
 with the old race. He stints more than he spends. 
 He was and is a constant toiler in trifles and his 
 wife has the same habit. It may not be altogether a 
 lovely life to the view of an idealist. But these men 
 endured through years at least as lean as those which 
 broke the race that had its balance at the bank. The 
 England I see from this steep beech hanger owes 
 much to them, and many other parts of the country 
 must owe the same. 
 
 The old sporting worthy went in the natural course 
 of things. He died out, say, partly through his fault, 
 partly his misfortune. There was one of the natural, 
 inevitable changes. We can regret the loss of him on 
 the ground of sentiment, but we must be glad of the 
 rise of the new race on the ground of common sense. 
 
 Without that somewhat drab figure always in 
 working clothes I never saw him in riding-breeches 
 among those rude downs Thurnaby might to-day 
 be largely waaste again 
 
 " Nowt at all but bracken an' fuzz !" 
 
 In the new tenant for the old we have then an 
 instance of the natural change in this high harvest 
 scene. I believe that all attempts to arrest or defeat it 
 would have been bad. The land of the downs at this 
 place had no more use for the old style of tenant who 
 throve there when prices and profits were high. His 
 race, which had been a long and good one, was run.
 
 u The Old Order Changeth" 33 
 
 Quality had smiled when it met him at the cover- 
 side or in his gig on the turnpike road, and quality 
 had often been quite right to value him, for on the 
 whole he might fairly have boasted with the hero of 
 Thurnaby Waa'ste 
 
 " Fur they knaws what I bean to Squoire sin fust a coomM 
 
 to the 'All ; 
 I done moy duty boy Squoire and I done moy duty boy hall." 
 
 The change in the style of owner has been in one 
 way a great contrast to the change in the style of 
 tenant. The new man to farm the land came often 
 with little or no money ; the new man to own the 
 land came often with a flush of money. The old owner 
 on this hard down country has died out in many 
 cases, I admit, through natural cause. Sometimes it 
 has been the fault in the family, sometimes the ill- 
 fortune. Whichever it was, he went, I believe, be- 
 cause the land had done with him. A new period had 
 opened, and he was not fitted to it. So far as the old 
 owners and the new ones have gone and are going 
 through natural cause, one can only regret the change 
 in one's mood of sentiment, not in one's mood of 
 common sense. It is evolution. The old must go 
 in such a case, though there is no new as yet to 
 replace it. 
 
 But the change going on to-day happens sometimes 
 not to be evolution at all. It is not a change in nature, 
 but an artful change ; and looking at the thing as a 
 
 3
 
 34 This Realm, This England 
 
 detached outsider, one sees anger and greed at the 
 root of it. 
 
 The best of the old best because it is old and has 
 been constant and has endured through hard years 
 is being forced off the land with a set scheme. And 
 with the old are going many of the new men who 
 took the place of families worn out ten or twenty 
 years ago. The scene from the hanger supplies one 
 with not a few names that bear witness to this ; and 
 wherever we go in Southern England it is much the 
 same. 
 
 The best of the old order is being driven out, and 
 with it the new, just when the land is mending and 
 the whole system could be steadied by small owner- 
 ship. But it is not in the scheme to steady, because 
 the idea is to shake and bring down ; and it is not in 
 the scheme to rebuild, because an architect is wanting. 
 
 IV 
 
 What have the theorists in the air to set against the 
 long centuries of practice in the earth that made the 
 land system we have in England to-day ? They have 
 a plaything in paper which they style " Nationaliza- 
 tion " a word that may or may not be good Latin, 
 but anyhow sounds vile English. It is not easy to take 
 the idea quite gravely ; still, it is hugged by people 
 who believe themselves to be much in earnest. This 
 doctrine is to bring us peace and abundance. It is to
 
 " The Old Order Changeth" 35 
 
 increase the fruits of the earth at least twofold. By it 
 no man is to own wholly the plot of land he culti- 
 vates ; but, instead, he is to own in some infinitesimal 
 part the plot of every cultivator in the Kingdom. The 
 State is to own wholly ; and, as every man is the 
 State, every man will own in part. 
 
 But not only the actual cultivators of the soil will 
 under " Nationalization " be petty landlords, frac- 
 tional landlords, in principle, through the State, all 
 over the country from Land's End to John o' Groats 
 though they must not own fully their own little 
 plot ; the folk who live in the towns and work in the 
 factories will equally be landowners, too. Immeasur- 
 able ignorance about the soil and the things that grow 
 in it and the seasons will not at all disqualify. 
 
 As things are now, in the reign of practice, the 
 land is often owned by those who do know and care 
 somewhat about such matters ; as things are to be in 
 the reign of theory the land will be owned by many 
 millions who know nought about such matters. 
 
 We often hear a man who has worked hard in a 
 town trade or calling or in one of the Colonies, and 
 has made or is making a little money, say he would 
 like to own a piece of land in England it would 
 make him feel, he thinks, that he had a solid stake in 
 the Empire. But commonly it ends in a patriotic wish. 
 To own that piece of England means a risk and re- 
 sponsibility which deter him. His training has been 
 in another field of action, and he wisely judges that
 
 36 This Realm, This England 
 
 he had better not engage in a new and very hard 
 venture he knows nothing of. The " Nationalizer " 
 is ready with a plan on paper to change this with all 
 the ease in the world. 
 
 Henceforward, every man, whether he aspire to it 
 or not, is to be a landowner in theory, if no man is 
 to be one in practice ! 
 
 We shall no longer fear to dabble in things we have 
 not studied through long and hard experience. The 
 State shall dabble in them on our behalf ! We shall 
 own in theory and yet not feel the risk or heavy 
 burden of owning. Shall we not all securely become 
 mine-owners without knowing how a shaft is sunk, 
 factory-owners without knowing where the factories 
 are or what it is they make ? 
 
 Why should we not all become, quite as ably, land- 
 owners without knowing a threshing-machine from 
 a cutter and binder ? 
 
 That, however, is a very small part of the profit 
 to come when we mount from the inferno of land 
 practice to the paradise of land theory. It seems that 
 by some hidden virtue, if not in the soil, at least in 
 the Socialism, two grains of wheat shall shoot where 
 but one grain shoots now. Good things of the earth, 
 perhaps, will spring spontaneously. It reminds me or 
 the map of the brand-new thriving city of Eden that 
 hung in Scadder's office the city where man was 
 " bound to man in one vast bond of equal love and 
 truth."
 
 The Old Order Changeth" 37 
 
 " Heyday ! What's that ?" asked Martin Chuzzle- 
 wit as his eye fell on a great plan which filled a whole 
 side of the office. 
 
 "That's Eden," said Scadder. 
 
 " Why, I had no idea it was a city." 
 
 " Hadn't you ? Oh, it's a city." 
 
 " I suppose," said Martin, "there are several archi- 
 tects there ?" 
 
 " There ain't a single one," said Scadder. 
 
 " The soil being very fruitful, public buildings 
 grows spontaneous, perhaps," said Mark Tapley. 
 
 Nobody knew a humbug better than Dickens, and 
 the blessed Eden of our theorists in the air should 
 be the very spot for his hard Scadders and his soft 
 Jellabys. 
 
 * * * # * 
 
 It is good to forget these dealers in empty doctrine 
 and go up to drink deep of the great scene of reality 
 that opens out from the beech and oak hanger. Since 
 I began to write on the hanger and its scene the 
 season has turned. It was summer at this spot despite 
 wet and grey sky very lately. It is now autumn in 
 everything but the calendar. Not falling leaves prove 
 this sudden change, for they were beginning to turn 
 and fall nearly a month ago. Besides, new leaves are 
 springing everywhere ; the oak underwood and some 
 of the oak-trees are at the full of their second spring 
 that time that comes with the second flowering of 
 the honeysuckle.
 
 38 This Realm, This England 
 
 What proves autumn absolute to me is, first, the 
 little pinch in the air on a bright morning after the 
 wet ; and, second, that almost complete strain of 
 the redbreast which began to sing again a month ago, 
 but then only in fragments that once or twice I hardly 
 recognized as redbreast notes. One always feels the 
 redbreast strain at the first phase of autumn to be a 
 very signal feature of the natural year in England. It 
 is wonderful. It is interwoven most subtly with the 
 whole spirit of the season. It suits the storms of the 
 autumn, but. equally on this high and lonely place 
 with the wide sweep of farms and downs and elmy 
 villages, it suits the calm to-day. 
 
 Where the coppice feathers off and the hanger 
 breaks into open down, is a small field of mixed 
 grasses with a history I wish I knew well. It would 
 throw light on the fortunes of humble families of late 
 years related to the soil. It would illustrate how a poor 
 man may rise to be his own master and a landowner. 
 This is a rough little field with a shed in one corner 
 such as any village handyman can build with some 
 boards and posts, with tin sheeting for a roof, and dead 
 bracken or furze for walls. It might have been bought 
 ten or fifteen years ago I think it actually was bought 
 about then for a sum in gold a working village man 
 might have scraped together by the savings of twenty 
 years or so, and kept, according to his intelligence in 
 finance, in the savings bank or an old teapot. 
 
 There is no road to the field, only a deep, rutted
 
 " The Old Order Changeth" 39 
 
 lane along the edge of a wood, where the right of way 
 is very doubtful ; and there is a footpath from the 
 village, that winds over the winterbourne, through 
 the fields, and up the side of the hanger, which, I 
 should say, is a good right, though a stile or two that 
 way forbids the cow or horse they have to be driven 
 or led, I think, up the lane used for carting away fag- 
 gots and wattle hurdles. 
 
 The field was owned till a few years ago by a man 
 who rose by cow's milk first one cow, which he 
 fed on common land or by the roadside ; then several, 
 and this bit of ground on which he knocked up his 
 own shed. I believe he began by retailing the milk 
 round the village, but later, as his stock grew, the 
 railway milk-can was needed. This man never rose 
 to be "a farmer" outright ; he fell off the rick he had 
 piled up himself, whilst he was thatching it or cutting 
 hay, and ended there. But, if not one of the keenest 
 and ablest of the class of villagers who rise to be their 
 own masters, he was a fair example of what hard work 
 and the saving habit can do. 
 
 It is this type of man we want to fortify the weak 
 spots in our land system to-day. We do need a large 
 number of small men, small owners, small freeholders, 
 securely planted on the soil all over our country. It 
 is a vital, a supreme necessity, I believe. Only, look- 
 ing over the harvest scene from the little rough grass 
 field, one sees at once that it would be absurd to think 
 of planting the whole of that wide sweep of country
 
 40 This Realm, This England 
 
 with the type. The peopling of the district, the rail- 
 way system in it, the scattered villages, and the small 
 towns far apart, the nature of the soil, all are against 
 it. We should want a new Ordnance map and a new 
 history of England, with the old ones quite wiped 
 out, for the venture. Such schemes might be very well 
 for the walls of Scadder's office or the airy Edens of 
 " Nationalization " ; they are not for the Ordnance 
 map of real life. I shall return to this matter of the 
 small man on the land. It is a tremendously pressing 
 English question.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE ENGLISH SQUIRE 
 
 " Tell me, knife-grinder, how came you to grind knives ? 
 Did some rich man tyrannically use you ? 
 Was it the squire ? or parson of the parish ? 
 
 Or the attorney ?" 
 
 IT is more than a hundred years since the squib was 
 printed \nt\\e Anti-Jacobin, but the whole is so fresh 
 and topical it might have been written for to-day. 
 " The Friend of Humanity " and " the needy knife- 
 grinder " are both on the scene to-day ; the squire 
 and the parson and the attorney are still here ; and 
 the Chequers too. There is only wanting the gift of 
 Canning, who hit the thing off in a flash of his 
 brilliant wit. That particular knife-grinder, when 
 Humanity met him, had a hole in his hat and a hole 
 in his breeches, and his wheel was out of gear. He 
 was the kind of figure that could be picked up, with 
 a little searching, on most highways, though it 
 might be hard to find another needy knife-grinder so 
 perfect in his candour 
 
 " Story ! God bless you, I have none to tell, Sir, 
 Only last night, a-drinking at the Chequers, 
 This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were 
 
 Torn in a scuffle."
 
 42 This Realm, This England 
 
 He was hauled off by the village policeman before 
 Justice Oldnixon, who put him in the stocks for a 
 vagrant. The end of the squib will be recalled by any- 
 one who has read Canning : the friend of Humanity 
 changes his tone, calls the knife-grinder " wretch," 
 kicks him, " overturns his wheel, and exit in a trans- 
 port of republican enthusiasm and universal philan- 
 thropy." 
 
 " / give thee sixpence ! I will see thee d d first 
 
 Wretch ! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance 5 
 Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded, 
 
 Spiritless outcast !" 
 
 Was Canning really writing of the life and custom 
 of his own time, or had he, like true genius, an eye 
 that saw far into the future ? Certainly there never 
 could have been a time when Humanity was more 
 often on the English highways in search of knife- 
 grinders than to-day. It is not long since rather a 
 delicate story came to me, part in print, part oral, of 
 the meeting of the two in some out-of-the way spot 
 in the country. The friend goes in this case for a long 
 walk in the country in search of Humanity. The roads 
 are lonely, the people few. Not only does the friend 
 look in vain for the knife-grinders, he looks long in 
 vain for squires. It seems to him as if all the land, a 
 beautiful but to his view a barren land, is held by a 
 sort of fund-lords, as Cobbett styled bankers or finan- 
 ciers, and there is, of course, the usual terrible warn- 
 ing to trespassers. At last a man is seen working near
 
 The English Squire 43 
 
 the road, and the friend steps aside to talk with him. 
 The knife-grinder is communicative. He amazes the 
 friend by telling how he has saved quite a " tidy " 
 sum, put it under the thatch either at home or in 
 the village savings bank and ended by buying his 
 own house. Imagine the joy of the friend on finding 
 a knife-grinder of such mettle as this no need even 
 to ask him : 
 
 " Was it the squire for killing of his game, or 
 Covetous parson for his tithes distraining, 
 Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little 
 
 All in a law suit ?" 
 
 So the friend does not kick the knife-grinder ; he pats 
 him on the back, and by-and-by goes his way re- 
 joicing in the thrift and good sense of the English 
 peasant ; but, going, he needs must picture the sur- 
 prise, the anger of" the squire " on learning how the 
 serf has dared rise to be his own freeholder ! 
 
 But the friend was not imaginative enough, other- 
 wise he might have pictured a further scene, a scene 
 in real life, where the troubled knife-grinder seeks 
 the squire and shows an alarming, puzzling bit of 
 paper with threats of pain and penalty a fine, per- 
 haps of 50, nearly the whole value of that cottage 
 which is his castle. So it is not always " the squire 
 for the killing of his game," nor "covetous parson for 
 his tithes distraining," that so despitefully uses the 
 knife-grinders to-day ! There is another party alto- 
 gether set against the poor knife-grinder. Is there not
 
 44 This Realm, This England 
 
 to be reckoned with "the attorney," that great 
 attorney the State r 
 
 3JC ?(C >j< 5JC 2jC 
 
 Canning's sapphics are valuable, partly through 
 their brilliant banter and partly because they show 
 how old the rancour is among the gentle hypocrites 
 against the English squire. No doubt it may be 
 argued that Canning, though on the side of humanity 
 if ever an English statesman was so, was not of the 
 party of knife-grinders. It is true he was not. Can- 
 ning was writing in the Anti-Jacobin. He was by 
 birth, and in mind and training, the Anti-Jacobin. 
 So one must agree he had a bias, and that bias not in 
 favour of the knife-grinders. But, then, one needs not 
 Canning's lines to know the falseness of that old- 
 new outcry against a class of men who have been so 
 great a part of English country life since England 
 began. There are certain things about the English 
 squire, not this individual or that, but the class, which 
 are accepted. They are not things of opinion, points 
 of view, questions of taste they are facts. One of 
 these is his ample excellence as a class. 
 
 I think Dickens in one of his stories describes a 
 man fond of doing up his opinions in brown paper 
 parcels, tying them round, and placing them on 
 shelves, with strict orders that they must not be dis- 
 turbed. The habit is very irritating where private 
 opinions are concerned, and we feel we have a perfect 
 right to untie the parcels of people like these and
 
 The English Squire 45 
 
 scatter the contents. But the broad excellence of the 
 English country squire in the making and keeping of 
 England has nothing to do with private opinion or 
 party bias. One might as well say that the glory of 
 Shakespeare, or the value of Magna Carta, or the 
 oratory of Fox, or the brain of Burke, or the patriot- 
 ism of Hampden, or the service of Nelson in winning 
 Trafalgar, was a matter of opinion. The general 
 feeling and the set tradition of English people has de- 
 cided once and for all about these things. They have 
 been accepted as facts, and have simply passed into 
 our history. They are fixed and immutable as dates 
 we accept them as we accept 1066 and 1689. 
 
 The English archer, the English yeoman, and the 
 English country squire we do not think they may 
 or may not have been, we know they have been, ex- 
 cellent figures, master workers in the making and 
 keeping of England. 
 
 A very great body of tradition, word of mouth and 
 printed, must be behind a thing like this before it can 
 pass clean out of the region of opinion into the region 
 of fact. It must not merely be thought by this or that 
 curious student or deep historian ; it must be felt by 
 the country.' There is such a tradition about the 
 English squire. Nothing is clearer in the story of Eng- 
 land than that on the whole, and right through, the 
 squires have been a good class that has done its work 
 well. 
 
 Outside our party contests, outside the game ot
 
 46 This Realm, This England 
 
 politics, " an English country squire " long ago be- 
 came a term expressing directness and simplicity and 
 a single-minded habit of life. It was even used 
 quizzically by people inclined to make light of char- 
 acter and conduct not complex ; " country squire " 
 became in their mouths almost what Trench called 
 an immoral word. 
 
 Such has been the squire. He is all through the 
 books : Sir Roger de Coverley " We love him," said 
 Thackeray, "for his vanities as well as for his virtues " 
 and Bracebridge, and Thurnaby, and Locksley 
 Hall 
 
 " Served the poor, and built the cottage, raised the school, 
 and drained the fen." 
 
 He is in a hundred other authentic prints. Still more, 
 far more convincing, he is a national tradition which, 
 when the mass is great as this, stands for known truth. 
 It is hard or hopeless to set people at all intelligent 
 and fair against tradition like this ; the authority of 
 it is too long and too thorough. The shrewder " com- 
 rade," or communist, or Socialist, knows this very 
 well. He feels he is about as likely to assure the world 
 that the tradition of the squire is false as that habeas 
 corpus, or John Bull, or the Royal Exchange, is a 
 fiction. So he has ridden off on a new line. The tra- 
 dition may have been all very well in its time, he 
 allows, but the whole system it sprang from is out- 
 worn now. The days for it are past. Let us supplant
 
 The English Squire 47 
 
 this hoary old tradition without violence. Let us buy 
 it out root and branch. Let us buy it with fairness 
 buy it with the money of somebody else. 
 
 " England cannot begin again," was the text of a 
 speech by Disraeli. But the Socialist who is going to 
 change the face of the English countryside is hot to 
 begin England again. After all, as he is to begin 
 human nature again, may he not start with the 
 English nature ? The buying out of the squires is his 
 first step. Next, he must break down the whole of the 
 vast and complex body of custom and habit and inter- 
 dependence which are country life in England : the 
 body which has been growing and endlessly modify- 
 ing since the start of the thing. Finally, having worked 
 back to the virgin soil or the prairie value of 
 English country life, he will sow his strictly theoretic 
 seed and wait for the crop of his imagination. 
 
 I have suggested that the " Blessed Eden " of the 
 " nationalizer," where even the public buildings will 
 spring spontaneous, would be good soil for those hard 
 humbugs and those soft ones who live in Dickens's 
 stories, the Scadders and the Jellabys. There is another 
 type in one of those books, named Bitzer. He was 
 not a pleasing man, but he had at least a watchful 
 sense of the absurd. When it was urged that gam- 
 bling was immoral, he was quick to show it was worse 
 it was ridiculous. A Bitzer or two might be a use- 
 ful corrective in the land theorists' councils.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 A CRITIC OF SQUIRES 
 
 THERE is a sort of fashion to-day in Cobbett 
 Cobbett, that unsparing critic of many of the 
 squires a hundred years ago. Cobbett truly was 
 English to the core. The " Rides " is a real work. 
 It is a masterpiece of print, with all its monstrous 
 conceit and its grotesque prejudice its prejudice 
 against pines and potatoes, bank-notes, and that 
 knuckle-end of England, as Sydney Smith called the 
 Scottish race. There appears to be not one line of 
 dead words in the " Rides " ; and even many of the 
 most ferocious and most obscure political wrangles 
 are half worth musing over for the force of the word- 
 ing one finds oneself glancing through them, italics 
 and all, without any particular wish to know the 
 rights of the dispute, but just because the English is 
 so very good of its kind. 
 
 There is a burly fellow behind the words, doubt- 
 less blustering too much at times, but firmly set on 
 his saddle, and uncommonly good company on the 
 highway. We who only know or only care about the 
 book of his Rides can hardly think of Cobbett a-foot 
 at all. We can just imagine him dismounted and buy-
 
 A Critic of Squires 49 
 
 ing and bragging about his cheap whips at Weyhill 
 Fair, or sitting down at the farmers' dinner in one 
 of the market towns he turned to again and again. 
 But, on the whole, we see him always most distinctly 
 in the saddle. He is cut out as cleanly and clearly 
 there as a figure on bright new coin. 
 
 One may picture Assheton Smith out of the saddle 
 as soon as one may picture Cobbett. Cobbett, by the 
 way, names Assheton Smith in one or two of his rides, 
 speaking of some severe sentence on a poacher who 
 attacked Squire Smith's gamekeepers. What would 
 have happened if, instead of riding round and round 
 Dundas, near Highclere, and waiting for a horse- 
 whipping, Cobbett had ridden round Assheton Smith 
 at a hunt in the Tedworth country hard by ? As a 
 boy I knew one or two ancients of that hunt who 
 rode to hounds with the iron squire, and one has the 
 notion that he would never have taken a cross look 
 or act from any living man in the field. It would be 
 possible, it would be inevitable, to think of Cobbett 
 and his horse parting company had he and Smith 
 crossed crops, and possibly as a result " Rural Rides " 
 would have been poorer in pictures of at least that 
 part of England. 
 
 It is because the book treats so largely of downs and 
 towns and little villages and rough lonely roads in 
 that Assheton Smith country that I first came to read 
 and value it. Cobbett in his rides west and south-west 
 from the Wen, as he nicknamed London in a flash 
 
 4
 
 50 This Realm, This England 
 
 of genius, often drew rein at a little old red-brick farm- 
 house, which is one of my earliest reminiscences. The 
 Old Familiar Faces that Charles Lamb lamented in- 
 clude sometimes, besides the faces of schoolmates and 
 companions, those of houses. One grows up with 
 houses and comes to know their features, their ex- 
 pressions, as one knows those of human beings. There 
 is an unforgettable line by Rogers in which he de- 
 scribes the chairs of his old home revisited awaking 
 the feelings of a friend 
 
 " As o'er the dusky furniture I bend 
 Each chair awakes the feelings of a friend." 
 
 Mr. HuefFer has touched the same chord in a 
 wonderfully true passage in one of his books where 
 an old chair is brought out on to the lawn for a family 
 sale. Houses and their old precincts undisturbed have 
 the same power, but stronger. This little red-brick 
 house, backed by great rookery elms, and its walled 
 garden, has exercised the power, and when I learnt 
 from village history that this was the place Cobbett 
 often made for, and praised for its excellent free 
 quarters, I plunged into his " Rides " and found it 
 one of the most interesting books I had ever read. 
 
 Some men have an eye for geology, but some men 
 have an eye for the earth. Cobbett was of the latter 
 class. He was one of those rare people who can note 
 the lie of the land, and by word of mouth or of pen 
 describe it in a few absolutely effective sentences. I
 
 A Critic of Squires 5 1 
 
 stayed for rabbit shooting a day or two one winter in 
 Cobbett's free quarters with a friend who had this 
 gift of seeing and quickly understanding the char- 
 acter of a bit of countryside. I did not tell him that 
 in the room we breakfasted and supped Cobbett had 
 breakfasted and dined eighty years ago,and that there- 
 in he, with, it is said, his Roman Catholic host, had 
 plotted against the rule of the day ; for it might have 
 spoilt his supper and his sport. How he would have 
 hated the ghost of Cobbett ! 
 
 In not disliking Cobbett's ghost myself, I am act- 
 ing in not quite a loyal spirit to my own forbears. It 
 is true Cobbett in his " Rides " does not set upon any 
 of them with the truculence he sets upon some of the 
 folk in that part of England. He never rode round 
 them as he rode round Dundas ; or to and fro with 
 his son in front of their house cracking his whip and 
 hullabalooing as he did against the poor hoaxed parson 
 at Botley. But on his way to and from Mr. Blount's 
 he would often pass their land and dwelling, and the 
 best relations I can imagine between the old Tory 
 squire and the revolutionist for Cobbett must have 
 appeared in that light to the neighbourhood are re- 
 lations of armed neutrality. 
 
 Cobbett, then, does not fall foul of that particular 
 squire who was not one of the " fund-lords." Per- 
 haps Mr. Blount, who provided the free quarters, 
 gave Cobbett a kind account of him and his treat- 
 ment of the poor in the Manor ; but I rather fancy
 
 52 This Realm, This England 
 
 from a passage in the " Rides " that Cobbett was for 
 teaching the squire all the same how to plant hazels 
 better. " I see some plantations of ash and of hazel 
 have been made along here ; but with great submis- 
 sion to the planters I think they have gone the wrong 
 way to work . . . they have brought the bottom soil 
 to the top ; and that is wrong always. ... I know 
 that some people will say that this is a puff, and let it 
 pass for that ; but if any gentleman that is going to 
 plant v/ill look at my * Book on Gardening ' " 
 
 Cobbett was dead sure he knew all about hazel- 
 trees, as he was that he knew all about the acacia or 
 locust-tree of the " Rides " which was to work such 
 wonders in England if cultivated according to Cob- 
 bett ; but I have not the smallest doubt the gentle- 
 men went on planting hazels without deigning to 
 look at " my ' Book on Gardening,' " which would 
 come under the heading of " Twopenny Trash." 
 Who could expect an Old English country squire 
 to consult a firebrand on the practice of forestry ? 
 
 Cobbett's theories, indeed, seem to have been the 
 weakest part of Cobbett, as they are of most strong 
 men. Who minds to-day his pet prejudices about 
 acacia-trees, about pines and potatoes and paper 
 money ? He stamped and bridled at Scotsmen as u feel- 
 osafers," and the Quakers he wrote down as " ver- 
 min." But there was this merit about his theories 
 he did believe in them with quite a tremendous belief. 
 He held his theories : they! were tenets. He did not
 
 A Critic of Squires 5 3 
 
 hint or hesitate them. People knew at any rate what 
 he would be at. 
 
 Cobbett of the " Rides " was plainly a Philistine. 
 I am rather surprised to find the cult in Cobbett 
 spreading, if mildly, among those who are for sweet- 
 ness and light, and like Disraeli on the side of the 
 angels. For Cobbett beyond question was a thumping 
 kind of fellow, with a habit of gross language at times, 
 and with a scorn for the refinements. He was not a 
 soul. He was out-and-out of the earth earthy. 
 
 Besides, when he could for a while as I think in 
 his rides he often did forget Pitt and Peel and the 
 parsons and paper money and pines and the Reforma- 
 tion, he could show a full vein of common sense, 
 which in this world always will be clashing with 
 things of the Spirit. He rode about counting the corn- 
 stacks and collecting all manner of facts about the 
 roads and the roots, sheep, cattle, farmhouses, market 
 towns ; and the odd thing is that these facts, utterly 
 out of date, are quite interesting to a reader of Cob- 
 bett to-day. A warmth of observation lights the 
 " Rides," and has much to do, I think, with keeping 
 the work alive. Cobbett's mere catalogues are often 
 quite good, better than a great deal of his criticism. 
 The man gives out heat. 
 
 Riding along the turnpike where in years that do 
 not come again I have ridden how many hundreds 
 of times alone ! Cobbett conveys to one something 
 like a bodily sense of warmth on a chill autumn after-
 
 54 This Realm, This England 
 
 noon. It is always afternoon near dusk when I picture 
 Cobbett on the road. It is chill . . . the lights will 
 soon begin to gleam in the far-scattered, lonely houses 
 of the downland. . . . "The country, though so open, 
 has its beauties. The homesteads in the bottoms, with 
 fine lofty trees about the houses and yards, form a 
 beautiful contrast with the large, open fields. The 
 little villages running straggling along the dells (al- 
 ways with lofty trees and rookeries) are very interest- 
 ing objects, even in the winter. You feel a sort of 
 satisfaction, when you are out upon the bleak hills 
 yourself, at the thought of the shelter which is ex- 
 perienced in the dwellings in the valleys."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SQUIRE'S RABBITS 
 
 THE question of the English squire is, and per- 
 haps always has been, bound up with the 
 question of game. 
 
 Many stories have been told of Parish Councils in 
 their early days when they had all the charm of new- 
 ness and we talked of village Witans ; but the story 
 I recall most clearly relates to a day when the fresh- 
 ness of the thing was waning, and in some places it 
 was hard at times to find a quorum, much less a gal- 
 lery. However, here was both quorum and gallery, 
 for the rumour had gone out that a newcomer to the 
 place, who was said to be something of a revolution- 
 ist in his way, meant to be at the next meeting and 
 to speak. The dark horse came. He spoke, and the 
 gallery listened in stony silence. But at the close, 
 when he vowed that Parish Councils and the Act 
 were " all humbug," the gallery was suddenly articu- 
 late. It woke. It burst into one loud, startling cheer, 
 and then it dispersed. 
 
 The cause of the cheer was not to be sought in 
 any persuasive argument in that speech. The cheer 
 came from a group of men who had somehow got it 
 55
 
 56 This Realm, This England 
 
 fixed in their heads, when these councils started, that 
 two things were at length to be more or less pooled 
 in the parish and divided up and paid out. One was 
 land, the other was that which so often lays land waste 
 the rabbits ; and of the two it was doubtless the 
 rabbit which had chiefly kindled their enthusiasm. 
 
 Wherever rabbits burrow or lie about in " forms " 
 at the surface I have found it the same in England 
 they are a matter of extravagant interest to a great 
 number of country people. The town imagination is 
 not much stirred by rabbits. Perhaps a townsman who 
 is invited by a farmer to come down and have a little 
 rabbit-shooting at Christmas, or in August when the 
 corn is cut, will show an intelligent curiosity and 
 keenness in the subject. But his interest is merely 
 that of a casual sportsman. We have only to see him 
 pick up and carry a shot or wired rabbit to know at 
 once he never was born and bred to it. There is the 
 difference between the way he carries the rabbit and 
 an expert villager would carry it that there is between 
 the way a champion billiard- player carries a cue round 
 the table and a man carries it who is playing his first 
 game. 
 
 Now notice the world between this amateur and 
 the villager in any rabbit neighbourhood in the Mid- 
 lands or the South of England. Note it, for example, 
 at any shooting party where there are beaters and 
 "stops," and perhaps two or three keepers' followers 
 or friends who do not themselves beat in the regular
 
 The Squire's Rabbits 57 
 
 way, but give a helping hand when needed, and will 
 mark down birds and serve various useful offices of 
 the kind. All these men, the rank and file and the 
 petty officers of the party, are expert and keenly con- 
 cerned in rabbits. They are much more interested 
 when a rabbit starts running than when a pheasant 
 starts flying. They will take or recommend risks 
 gladly for the sake of a few rabbits being added to 
 the bag. They have often pointed out to me rabbits 
 running right down the line of guns or beaters, with 
 the clear wish that I should shoot. After all, they 
 would say, will not most of the charge go into the 
 rabbit or into the ground ? There is no doubt that a 
 certain recklessness often marks the whole rank and 
 file when, at the end of a beat, rabbits begin to run 
 freely. 
 
 I never noticed that a hare or a pheasant aroused 
 feelings of the kind. Game does not touch the im- 
 agination of the English villager in anything like the 
 degree the rabbit touches it. The rabbit is the most 
 democratic wild creature in England, and it is also 
 the most popular. In that " bare and level plain " 
 which Robert Lowe imagined, " where every ant- 
 hill is a mountain and every thistle a forest tree," the 
 rabbit will ever burrow. 
 
 It is not wholly a question of food it is a question 
 often of sport. But it is largely a question of food, 
 and the English villager is very fond of a piece of 
 rabbit, hot or cold, for supper. He likes it far better,
 
 58 This Realm, This England 
 
 as a rule, than he would like pheasant or partridge or 
 woodcock ; to those who know the village taste, this 
 is past dispute. 
 
 So these villagers, when they learnt for sure that 
 rabbits were not, after all, to come under the Act, 
 went out of Parish Council politics and ceased to 
 take the least interest in the thing. The " circus," to 
 recall a jest of Lord Salisbury's, was thereafter more 
 to their taste. 
 
 One has often heard the question asked by sports- 
 men and others who understand country life What 
 would become of the game if the theorists had their 
 way and bought up all the land in the name of the 
 State ? The answer usually is that there would be no 
 game left. It is quite true as to partridges and pheas- 
 ants. Under Socialism there will be no room for 
 shooting-syndicates. When all those wild wastes now 
 kept for "selfish sport" are made fruitful, what 
 chance will there be for the game ? 
 
 So the pheasants and partridges will go, and with 
 them will go doubtless the foxes. But the rabbits are 
 a very different matter. They will linger. They will 
 reassert themselves in many spots. The rabbit will 
 outlive the revolution. 
 
 And when all the land and all the goods of the 
 country have been " nationalized " and pooled and 
 presumably divided up and doled or let out, under 
 what rule will the rabbits come ? I put it to the young 
 dreamers of Socialist societies. If they think for one
 
 The Squires Rabbits 59 
 
 moment the rabbit does not matter, that it is an ab- 
 surd trifle, let them spend their next holiday in any 
 typical village in rabbit England, and mix with the 
 farmers and labourers and odd workers, and judge for 
 themselves of the importance of the animal. 
 
 If the inquirer will make a close study of the 
 matter, he will find that the villager can distinguish 
 to quite a fine shade between the merits of this rabbit 
 and that. I have seen the Arabs in the meat-markets 
 of the desert gauging to a nicety the relative values 
 of numbers of little bits of black-looking meat on the 
 street stalls between which to my unknowing eye 
 there seemed no difference in weight or worth. So it 
 is with the villager and the rabbit. He is a connois- 
 seur in conies. 
 
 The most delicate compliment that can be paid to 
 many a working man is a compliment in conies. I am 
 glad to think it very often is paid him by the squire 
 or the farmer, to judge by the village worker we see 
 often at this time of year going home in the evening 
 with a rabbit not an illicit rabbit bulging out a 
 pocket suspiciously, but one carried bodily and happily 
 in the hand for all the world to see. 
 
 The rabbit, then, really counts, and the idealists 
 and " comrades " of the societies that deal in theory 
 must not run away from the rabbit. When all things 
 are "nationalized," the rabbit will have to be "nation- 
 alized " with the rest. But how will they do it ? I 
 foresee many pitfalls and burrows into which theory
 
 60 This Realm , This England 
 
 will stumble. One might just imagine a communism 
 or a collectivism in cavies or in cats. One might just 
 imagine it in pigs or in ponies. But who could con- 
 ceive of it in conies ? 
 
 The " nationalization " or rabbits must change all 
 the old country custom and way of looking at things. 
 There will be no more delicate compliments in conies, 
 no more charity^ that shocking word to the " com- 
 rade" ear ! The beater will not be insulted by a rabbit 
 at the end of the day for one thing, there will be no 
 more beaters. 
 
 But the rabbits will go on ; and I wonder what 
 will happen when the villager is told that these rabbits 
 no longer belong to any particular man indeed, by 
 the time the revolution reaches rabbits, will any man 
 own anything in particular? I wonder what will 
 happen when he is brought to understand that the 
 era of individualism in rabbits is ended and the era 
 of collectivism or communism in rabbits has started 
 instead. My idea is there will be a great trade for a 
 time in wire. 
 
 Competition is to be mended or clean ended 
 when all the land and the goods of the country are 
 "nationalized." When each man gets his equal or 
 fair share of things, no one is to compete against his 
 neighbour. The sense of honour, so we understand, 
 will keep men from wishing for more than their share 
 of pay or less than their share of work in Elysium. 
 
 But will it keep them really from the rabbits when
 
 The Squire's Rabbits 6 1 
 
 the rabbits have lost a definite owner ? One distrusts 
 the notion of an honour rooted in rabbits. If I know 
 the English villager at all, his way of looking at things, 
 and his love of sport that very old and ruling in- 
 stinct which the Socialist takes no account of the 
 " nationalization " of the land can only result in a 
 furious competition for conies. 
 
 As it is, wires under the Ground Game Act and 
 under no Act abound in many English places. But 
 when it is understood that the rabbit belongs to the 
 State, and that every man is the State, shall we not 
 be caught in and thrown by wires in every direction ?
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE SQUIRE'S PHEASANTS 
 
 HOW few things are there much better to look 
 on than homely landscape of England on a 
 keen, bright morning in autumn ! There are days 
 mild, or with a little sting in the air, when this 
 familiar scene of some of the best years of one's life 
 really seems as good as any through the seasons 
 good almost as the high crest of mid-summer. The 
 kind of morning I mean comes after the leaves, or 
 the great bulk of the leaves, are down. Then woods 
 and hedgerows and whole field landscapes where the 
 plough has lately been at work have a look of ex- 
 cellent cleanness and freshness. Who that knows 
 landscape does not know that look in Nature ? Who 
 has not been struck and pleased by it anew year after 
 year ? Sometimes in November or December it is 
 always seen in that grand old medley of farms and 
 woods and parks and commons. It is England absolute 
 in autumn. A sickly appearance is often about the 
 woods and hedges just before the turn of the leaf, and 
 in some lights all things seem spent and miserably 
 shabby ; and this look may be repeated in a somewhat 
 different form just at the end of the turn, when the 
 62
 
 The Squire s Pheasants 63 
 
 leaves have lost the best of their glow and colour. 
 We feel then the sooner the trees are quite bare again 
 the better. But once the leaves are well down and 
 the clear sparkling autumn day comes in, all that sense 
 of loss and death in Nature is gone. This is the morn- 
 ing in "James Lee's Wife" : 
 
 " Oh good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth 
 This autumn morning !" 
 
 Such mornings, in an English countryside sprinkled 
 over with woods and commons and with plenty of 
 good ploughland, give a tone to us. They brace 
 people up for exercise in the open as much as any 
 mornings in the year. They make that physical 
 appeal which is such a great part of the pleasure of 
 the two English field sports of autumn and winter ; 
 the keen, clear morning, after rain or during frost, 
 is the time above all to engage with zest in the Eng- 
 lish field sport of shooting. 
 
 Rather crabbed or else very careless tongues 
 talk sourly, or they talk lightly, of the field pursuits, 
 shooting and hunting, as the pleasure of the few and 
 the selfish. Have they any idea how bounden these 
 things are with the whole immemorial habit of 
 country England to-day ? The old order changes in 
 many forms, the style of owner, the style of tenant, 
 most of the outward fashions of our country life. But 
 there has been no change in the feeling for sport. The 
 love of the chase is as ruling this day among, not the
 
 64 This Realm, This England 
 
 selfish few, but among the many selfish or not as 
 it has been since the time of the Norman King and 
 the Forest Law. 
 
 One may leave the third field sport, angling, out 
 of this account. It belongs to a somewhat different 
 genre. It is not attacked in the same spirit in which 
 shooting or hunting are attacked. It is not supposed 
 to stand in the light of the land theorist or land revo- 
 lutionist as these two others are. If he sees in |it a 
 vice at all, he sees in it at most a "solitary vice," not 
 a social one, as with shooting and hunting. The 
 Chartist in " Alton Locke " is inclined to be a little 
 hurt, and on his manhood, when he passes a stream 
 and sees one who clearly is not a Chartist fishing for 
 trout ; but, if I remember right, he is beguiled or 
 amused by the graceful action of the rod and line. 
 So, after watching a little while, he goes on his way 
 without grudging the angler the pleasure. That, per- 
 haps, expresses well enough the attitude to-day of our 
 " sowre-complexioned man," as the old seventeenth- 
 century writer called him, to the pastime of angling. 
 It seems to him, on the whole, a harmless sort ot 
 trifling with life not worth the powder and shot 
 of his invective. 
 
 Hunting and shooting come under a very different 
 head, and of the two shooting is to the sowre com- 
 plexion the worse offender. Macaulay's Puritans 
 hated bear-baiting, not because it was a pain to the 
 bear, but because it was pleasure to the baiter. One
 
 The Squire's Pheasants 65 
 
 might sometimes suspect that the land theorist hates 
 pheasant shooting because it is pleasure to the 
 shooter, not because it may be pain to the pheasant. 
 But this may be but a side issue of his dislike, the 
 result of some atrobile in him. He chiefly and frankly 
 hates the field sport of shooting on quite another 
 ground he hates it as a powerful interest against 
 his plan for breaking up the order of country life in 
 England. 
 
 What the land revolutionist and theorist fails to 
 see is not that field sports are a power against him ; 
 he knows this well enough. What he has missed com- 
 pletely is that these field sports are greatly liked, and 
 generally liked, by the average country worker and 
 villager a fact as true and sure as anything we know 
 about village life. The English villager has the innate 
 passion for sport. It is in blood and bone with him. 
 He may enjoy it merely as an onlooker, or merely 
 in the humble calling of beater, or the lowlier one 
 still of " stop " ; it does not matter his heart is in it. 
 I have been shooting in the fields and woods since 
 childhood, and I have always been struck by the zest 
 with which these men enter into sport. Beaters and 
 camp-followers generally of the party they all enter 
 into it heartily. 
 
 It is the rabbit, as I have said, that is always the 
 most popular feature of the day. It is the rabbit cer- 
 tainly which is the chief source of their joy. The 
 rabbit is the cynosure of every village eye in the chase. 
 
 5
 
 66 This Realm, This England 
 
 But the whole thing powerfully attracts and interests 
 them. No one who has shot much in England and 
 talked with beaters and stops and the casuals or sutlers 
 of a shooting party can question the sporting instinct 
 of an English villager. 
 
 " Nationalization " must put a close to all that ; 
 for, really, how can you have shooting, yet have 
 Socialism r Shooting cum Socialism must mean, I 
 suppose, pheasants for all. We might as well propose 
 at once to have peacocks for all. 
 
 But there are land idealists who, frightened at the 
 logic of their own theory, will run a little way off 
 from it, and at a safe distance they will protest that 
 " pheasants for all " or " peacocks for all " is a gross 
 caricature of the noble theory. In the kind of Utopia 
 they will propose there will be room for distinctions 
 even peacocks and pheasants for some. The method 
 of selection, the choosing of these some, has yet to 
 be worked out in theory. It is to be worked out by 
 the clever men in Utopia by-and-by on paper. 
 
 A great English statesman, speaking of a certain 
 class of" middling men," defined them as "meaning 
 very little, nor meaning that little well." The saying 
 fits rather nicely these middling men of the land 
 theory who preach from the text, but shy away from 
 the severity of it. 
 
 ***** 
 
 That old affection of the English villager for sport, 
 and the ungrudging way he joins in it, is a small
 
 The Squire's Pheasants 67 
 
 matter, after all, the theorist will say ; it should not 
 bar the way of progress. I agree it is a small thing as 
 against real progress, though an old, true thing, deeply 
 rooted ; and we can agree it should not be spared or 
 regarded for a moment if it bars the way to a better 
 order of life. But put this thing out of account alto- 
 gether as a trifle, and there is left something past com- 
 parison greater for our theorist to displace. There is 
 the whole body of English country custom and 
 country thought that has come out of our land 
 practice to be done away with. All that must be 
 rubbed out before the slate is clean and ready for his 
 new demonstration. We shall not merely have to start 
 on a new grammar we must start on a brand-new 
 alphabet of country life. It will be more confounding 
 than the Thermidor and the Fructidor of the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 Shooting is a small enough matter when we measure 
 it against the great body of country custom, then. It 
 is a pastime, and it may be fairly argued that it ends 
 at this. But the sport serves as an excellent example 
 of the way in which interests and duties and the in- 
 timate relationship between class and class in country 
 England are all worked together, woof and weft of the 
 English broadcloth. It is easy to illustrate this. Let, 
 for instance, a stranger to a district take a shooting, 
 and try to enjoy it without the slightest regard to the 
 custom and life of that place. Let him say, "I rent the 
 land, I pay for it, I can afford to be perfectly inde-
 
 68 This Realm, This England 
 
 pendent of local feeling and custom and the relations 
 of one class with another." How soon he will dis- 
 cover his mistake ! He will find custom and courtesy 
 and the camaraderie of the countryside have to do 
 with even such a thing as this just a pastime. 
 Labourer, landowner, tenant, and tradesmen are all 
 together in a bond of mutual service that is too finely 
 ravelled for the gross vision of the Socialist. The 
 village is a community which the Communist neither 
 knows nor cares for a jot. But he is ready with his 
 steam-roller, brutal and insane, to crush out its 
 thousand wonderful years of growth and duty and 
 service of class to class.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 NEW ATLANTIS 
 
 IT is told of Carlyle that when he was a very young 
 man, hot for work, he tried for any post which 
 was vacant. He knew nothing of stars, but he applied 
 for the post of Astronomer Royal at least, that is 
 the story, false or true, and only a pedant or a prig 
 would think worse of Carlyle for it. A good man at 
 the start of life, with a consuming passion for work, 
 and failing day after day to find it, is too good a man 
 to pick and choose. He is as a starving man any food 
 will serve, the choicest dinner of the most delicate 
 courses or a parcel of broken victuals. That is very 
 natural and right ; the man who is eager for any 
 work lest he continue with no work is in the right 
 way. Work-hunger is worth in a man. But can we 
 think as well of a certain number of people rich or 
 poor to-day who do not know, who only half think 
 they are land-hungry ? On the face of it land-hunger 
 is the sign of health. True, the thing has been ex- 
 ploited in England during the last twenty years. The 
 name of it has been hackneyed. It has sometimes been 
 made a cry of. Yet when hunger for land is real or 
 native in a man, poor or rich, who can say or think 
 69
 
 jo This Rea/m, This England 
 
 a word against it ? To dispraise it seems like dis- 
 praising Nature. But we want to feel sure it is real. 
 We want to feel sure that if the old class of the 
 squires, for instance, is to be replaced, it will be re- 
 placed by men, large and small, who really have the 
 instinct and an abiding desire for the land and for 
 life on it. Some people are given to eating when they 
 are not hungry ; they are not sure, they think they 
 are hungry, or will be shortly. So they eat, and 
 indigestion follows. Now, this is exactly true of 
 people who are not sure or have not long been sure 
 who only fancy they are land-hungry. So they 
 buy land or rent it, and ere long they, too, like the 
 others, suffer from its pains. 
 
 I fear there are many people of this kind to-day 
 playing with the toy of small holdings and large new 
 estates. A few years ago I saw the start of a land 
 experiment in a village I knew well. These little 
 homes were freehold, and the buyers were largely 
 English come home from the Colonies. They 
 bought their holdings ready made and rough made 
 small plots of rather thin soil with a light, reddish 
 clay. Each had its tin or its tiled building with a slip 
 of garden. A railway-station on a main line lay a few 
 hundred yards off what could promise better for 
 profit in eggs, fruit, and green stuff? 
 
 But, prejudiced, I never could take those experi- 
 mental estates seriously they differed so extremely 
 from the thing I had known from early years, the thing
 
 New Atlantis 71 
 
 forked and scraped together, bit by bit very likely, by 
 my old playmate, Ginger Marlpit, ex-cowboy ; or by 
 Smallpiece and Stubbit the rude sons of Flint. And, 
 indeed, I heard that only one worker on that land 
 could quite chew what he had bitten off, and had his 
 appetite at all satisfied. That man seemed to be so 
 fixed to his bit of soil that a little way off he might 
 have been taken for a scarecrow to warn away other 
 birds, gulls, so the cynics might have said. 
 
 The man, who was bone and wire, had a pitched 
 battle with the soil. He was not as one who entered 
 into loving intimate relations with the earth and 
 coaxed it round. It was not mother earth but enemy 
 earth. He fought it. He dug and forked and raked 
 it, instead of ploughing it, and I think he was too 
 much for it. When he did " let it be " for a very 
 little while, it was merely that he might give it a 
 stiffer dressing in the end. He drove a cart, and by 
 driving you for an hour or so any day he made a few 
 extra shillings, and so was able, being in pocket, to 
 drive the land all the more for the next few days. 
 
 By now for that was some years ago his bit of 
 soil ought to be quite clean, unless the thistles and 
 dandelions have seeded too freely on his neighbour's 
 holdings. Perhaps the whole settlement has pulled 
 round. I cannot tell. I hope it has, though there 
 seems to me, when I pass it in the train, too much 
 tin and wire about, and the tiles look red as ever. 
 
 But if they are still the wrong kind of holder and
 
 72 This Realm, This England 
 
 holding, they are not the only new comers who have 
 gone wrong in land. One can be wrong tremen- 
 dously, childishly wrong as a big holder too. " Lati- 
 fondo " is probably all wrong ; I was told it was one 
 of the chief curses of Sicily and of Southern Italy. 
 But at least in " Latifondo " there is something staple. 
 It has staying power. We have no " Latifondo " in 
 England though we have great estates but here 
 and there we have something for a while that, like 
 "Latifondo," is big ; but, unlike "Latifondo," is soft. 
 
 We have the generous, very rich man, who has 
 made a series of fortunes out of something somewhere 
 in New Atlantis, and, returning home, feels it a duty 
 to buy up two or three large estates in the market. 
 He makes of them one estate, puts a ring fence round 
 them, turns an old manor house into a palace. The 
 model farm itself stands for a fortune the outlay of 
 one. You know when you are nearing that model, 
 for every hedge is spruce, and the roads even public 
 roads seem to have been privately finished. 
 
 It is a noble experiment, and whilst it lasts a neigh- 
 bourhood may thrive on it. But often it does not last. 
 Then the ill begins. Land, when a toy, is a toy so soon 
 tired of ! Here is an example. Many times during the 
 last two summers I have passed an experimental 
 estate of the kind. It is splendid, and it is unlike any- 
 thing else in that bit of deep, quiet English country 
 whose feature might be described as elder and elms. 
 The elms are wonderful even for elms, so towering,
 
 New Atlantis 73 
 
 and with such foregrounds and backgrounds of dark 
 foliage ; whilst often, on a moist evening, how the 
 great white disks of musky elder smell in the hedges 
 as one walks past. 
 
 But elder and elms will not keep us on the soil 
 when the soil no longer calls us. New Atlantis is 
 empty. It has been empty for months, and the 
 months are growing into years, and nobody dares or 
 cares to handle the toy it is so big. 
 
 I went into the village inn for my supper, and 
 met two people who were housed there whilst their 
 new home was being fitted up. We fell to talking of 
 the great experiment all talk in the neighbourhood 
 comes round in the end, I suppose, to that and I 
 asked, Was it true Atlantis had found at last a new 
 ruler, and was to be lived in again ? They told me 
 there was not a word of truth in the story. 
 
 Then one of them said : " No ; since our fools of 
 authorities would build the new county asylum at 
 
 , I don't see what chance there is of anyone 
 
 taking on Atlantis." 
 
 I looked up to see whether he was passing a jest. 
 But he was earnest. The last thing he meant was 
 irony. He was a payer where the rate was up ; and 
 he thought that if the asylum authorities had not 
 been so conceited about their precious building fads, 
 something might have been done with the toy. 
 ***** 
 
 So the high towers and fine wells and fountains
 
 74 This Realm, This England 
 
 and orchards and gardens and all the other riches of 
 Solomon's house, which were to be used here as in 
 the Atlantis of Bacon's fable, lie vacant ! It is good 
 for the architect of the new asylum one cannot find 
 another who profits by it. It was fizz whilst it lasted. 
 Everyone was up. But the fizz ended, and the cellar 
 of that neighbourhood is full of its empty bottles. 
 
 The result of the new ring fence experiment is 
 bad. Trade that was boomed by it has fallen lower 
 than before Atlantis piled up lower than before 
 because felt more than before. Slowly, insecurely, a 
 large staff, skilled labour and unskilled, must distrib- 
 ute itself. If Atlantis of the fable had been shut up, 
 what would have become of the head-manager and 
 the under-manager of the perfume-house and of those 
 kitchens where they made the dishes of rare and 
 special effects r You must be a rich man to hire the 
 head perfumier at Atlantis rate ; whisper says his 
 rate was so high he would waive aside a tip and 
 murmur, as the men of the fable, " What, Twice 
 Paid !" You need be a bold one to hire him at all. 
 
 The ill of Atlantis is it cannot stay. It does not 
 root. That sort, big or small, is no good to the soil. 
 And I do not think much of the heart that rejoices 
 when those who were rooted deep in the land are 
 driven out to make room for mere annuals who come 
 and go after their kind. What we want in England 
 is an abundance of perennials, the small healthy plants. 
 
 We want, too, I think, the shelter and endurance 
 ot the fine timber trees.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE ENGLAND OF MAY 
 
 ALL that the rhapsodists say about the glory of 
 England in the best days of the year is true. It 
 does not matter if they gush. It does not matter how 
 high they pile their adjectives of praise, their 
 " sweets " and " beautifuls," and the whole set of 
 rather sugary expressions that are used year after year 
 to take Nature by force or by fancy. I have only to 
 go out and be lost for a day or large part of it in any 
 bit of green English country to know that they do 
 not at all overrate the thing. Almost any place fairly 
 safe from towns and new building districts will serve 
 to prove this, if only it has that familiar English 
 mingling of woods and lanes and farm by-roads, with 
 some water meadows and a furze common. Indeed, 
 to realize the exceeding splendour of May, near its 
 height in England, we need not choose specially 
 favoured landscapes. If we go as the whim of the 
 moment or the gradient of the road will have it, and 
 go deep enough, into any group of Domesday hamlets 
 and villages, we shall get all we wish. 
 
 I have felt this truth many times in May after 
 wandering about for a day in homely scenes of Eng- 
 land. Starting out for some special point of view, say 
 75
 
 7 6 This Realm, This England 
 
 a high place from which one can look round and 
 down into five or six shires, or a place famed for both 
 scenery and story, I have failed to reach it, yet have 
 found a neighbouring road or piece of country serve 
 me just as well. Certainly the New Forest about 
 Sway and Setthorns or Holmsley and Wotton 
 villages is a great place in that particular phase of 
 May when the oaks are still vivid green. For that 
 supreme oak week or ten days of the year I know of 
 no place I would sooner go to than Sway. One day 
 I set out to Sway with a rough itinerary in my mind 
 that held the two Parleys one, I think, in Dorset, 
 the other in Hampshire thence Hurn ; and after- 
 wards right into the depths of the Forest by Wil- 
 verley and Rhinefield. The inner Forest was the goal 
 of the day's travel, but I never reached it, nor after 
 the first few hours had any wish for it. By the aid of 
 a false map, and on the road some of those casual 
 village directions that often mislead, I lost my way 
 in a maze of rough by-roads between the river and 
 the western edge of the Forest. So, giving up all 
 thought of a definite goal and of the oaks of Sway 
 and Setthorns, I drifted anywhere till the evening, 
 when at length I came out on a metalled road. I 
 asked a villager which was the way to Hinton Ad- 
 miral and to Christchurch. " This is Hinton Admiral 
 about all of it," he said, pointing to a park and a 
 little old inn named Cat and Fiddle ; " and there's 
 the road to Christchurch, three mile."
 
 The England of May 77 
 
 Now, that summary of Hinton would fit well 
 enough a succession of back hamlets hidden among 
 beech and elm and oak I had come through since 
 losing my way at the Forest edge. A park and an inn 
 with a few cottages clustered round a shop of all 
 wares is the about-all of thousands of hamlets 
 throughout many of the best and least known parts 
 in this "precious stone set in the silver sea . . . this 
 realm, this England " ; and for immense wealth and 
 splendour in mid-May we need go no farther. 
 
 Three things impressed me in the twenty or thirty 
 miles of country I came through that day, very ob- 
 vious things which might appeal to the eye and 
 thought of anyone who sets out to see and enjoy a 
 piece of country like this at such a season. The first 
 is purely an appeal to the eye. When all is said about 
 the pageant of flower and flower colour in May, it 
 remains that the fresh vivid green is really the great 
 feature of such days in England. It is wonderful and 
 boundless, and the chief makers of it are, I think, the 
 oak and the beech. 
 
 The elm a tree rare in the Forest itself, though 
 abundant in the villages just without was perhaps at 
 perfection that day, but its green was not brilliant. It 
 appeared to be a kind of grey-green in the sunlight. 
 But what a green is that of the oaks when once they 
 are fairly past their stage of brown and red and yellow 
 sometimes almost primrose yellow of early 
 spring ! I had long thought that the most vivid and
 
 7 8 This Realm, This England 
 
 freshest tree-green in the English spring is that early 
 one of the larches. But looking at the oaks in May, it 
 has seemed to me that theirs is even fuller and richer 
 when it fairly comes. The larch-green has scarcely a 
 rival save the birch in April ; the oak has many rivals, 
 and appears to surpass them easily. 
 
 This stage, like the larch's, is soon done, and in a 
 week or two the foliage of the oak is so full that we 
 lose sight of what is now a signal charm of the tree 
 the dark limbs, " elbows " and " knees " in the old 
 Forest and park type of tree, showing clearly among 
 and at the back of the splendid mass of greenest leaf. 
 
 The beech is next, no doubt; the ash, which at 
 this time is only beginning to leaf in its meagre way, 
 scarcely counting in this competition of chlorophyl. 
 But the beech is second to none in the faery light- 
 ness and delicacy of its leaf, singly or in the mass. 
 Before the foliage hardens and coarsens, it is as if the 
 sun pierced right down through these very soft beech- 
 leaves and shone the other side of them ! The beech- 
 leaf is very fresh, only it looks somewhere less of a 
 pigment green than that of the oak. That is the 
 difference in beech and oak. They supply between 
 them the utmost one could wish for of vivid fresh- 
 ness and of airy lightness. 
 
 But this effect must pass almost at once : a day and 
 night or two of intense growth, and it is over. 
 Nothing one day in May is as it was yesterday. I 
 noticed that the caterpillar was already at work on
 
 The England of May 79 
 
 some of the brightest leaves of the oak on the edge 
 of the New Forest the end being so clear in the 
 beginning ! 
 
 The sense of perfect newness and freshness felt in 
 any of these ordinary, homely scenes in England is 
 nearly everywhere associated with the sense of great 
 age and centuries of tradition. A village with a name 
 like Hum must have, of course, some undying tra- 
 dition. I have forgot, or I never knew, what the story 
 is, though there surely must have been some mighty 
 hunter of that name. But passing Hum, I reached the 
 great flat meadows of a river, and rested on the bridge, 
 and saw a salmon leap. What a typical South of Eng- 
 land scene ! One sees hundreds of the kind. Ripple 
 and dark glide of a broad, clear stream, with large, 
 easy curves, hosts of brown and white cattle feeding 
 and splashing at the water's edge, and the summer 
 wagtails, with breasts almost buttercup yellow, flying 
 among them or balancing on the weeds that here and 
 there lie flat on the surface. 
 
 It is not a spot that seems to promise much human 
 drama or great tradition. Only one man, a game- 
 keeper, crossed the bridge during the hour I stayed 
 there, whilst the village across the stream slept se- 
 curely. But it occurred to me after T had risen and 
 gone on into the country the other side of the stream 
 that this was the Avon between Ringwood and Sop- 
 ley. The village was Avon, and does not, or did not 
 quite lately, the village smithy which I passed pay a
 
 8o This Realm, This England 
 
 yearly fine because the knight stopped here to have 
 his horse shoed, flying from the arrow which no 
 pedant or^philosopher can withdraw from English 
 history ? It has been there since 1 100. What a virtue 
 is in that ! 
 
 Tyrell, or Tirel, forded the stream a little higher 
 up after the shoes were reversed and to this day 
 we have a Tyrell Avon. There are hundreds of Tyrell 
 Avons in England. They are worth going to in 
 May. 
 
 ***** 
 
 It is impossible not to be impressed by the immense 
 body of tradition that is held in these ordinary homely 
 scenes of village life and labour. Here is the real 
 Illustrated History of England. But bound up inex- 
 tricably and to the end with this natural scene and 
 these thousand years of human story moving and 
 stately, except to the dolt is that which we hardly 
 dare name above our breath to-day for fear of giving 
 mortal offence ! England in May, the best scenes of 
 it, that perfect disarray and array of wood and 
 meadow and common, and park, sward, and elmy 
 hamlet lane, and endless hedgerows trimmed or strag- 
 gling what is it but in the main our English land 
 tradition ? I cannot understand the carelessness of 
 men who value these scenes, and yet would do away 
 ruthlessly, utterly, with the scheme from which they 
 came, and through which they continue. To destroy 
 the land tradition must be to destroy that which makes
 
 The England of May 8 1 
 
 a day of English countryside at this season a day 
 where Shakespeare's praise still holds good. Seeley, 
 in one of his lectures on the "Expansion of England," 
 made light of the notion that we could whistle off 
 our Colonies and return to the England of Elizabeth 
 " in a great pool a swan's nest." But the Socialist 
 goes farther: it is not even going to leave us the 
 swan's nest.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 WHEAT GOLD AND GREEN 
 
 AFTER all, there is something in extent and 
 wealth of colour to rival oak-green of May in 
 England, and that is wheat-green. I am not thinking 
 of the vivid, very fresh green of young corn just be- 
 ginning to hide the ploughland in April and early 
 in May, the green which throws up the great hosts 
 of larks with their myriad music fine thing, though, 
 that is. I mean the wheat-green or gilt-green of full 
 summer, which in June begins again to rule the 
 English landscape. 
 
 It begins to be noticed as one of the chief features 
 of the scene at about the start of harvest, and the 
 English harvest opens with the fall of the first crop 
 of hay and continues till the close of summer. 
 Harvest fills the best part of three months in each 
 year in England, for it includes grass, clovers, beans, 
 peas, barley, oats, and wheat, and is almost con- 
 tinuous from midsummer till far into September. 
 
 Wheat may be a thing of stiff and formal growth. 
 At its best it is formal. It gives the idea of weight 
 and solidity. It presents to the eye, when seen in 
 82
 
 Wheat Gold and Green 83 
 
 large tracts, the appearance at a little distance of a 
 dead level floor. The sameness and regularity of wheat 
 goes on growing more and more marked between 
 now and the close of the corn harvest, till there comes 
 a day, in August as a rule, when many a corn-grow- 
 ing district in the South or the Midlands looks as if 
 it were ruled out into figures straight-lined and exact 
 almost as Euclid's. 
 
 One appreciates this by going to some fairly high 
 spot near the end of harvest, where the eye can com- 
 mand a large sweep of country yielding mainly corn. 
 Then the neatly dotted shocks and sheaves of cut and 
 bound corn ready to be stacked, and the crops still 
 standing, and the crops which the cutter and binder 
 is at work on one and all appear in the most precise 
 regularity ; dead straight lines as if secured by mathe- 
 matical measure, dead level floors as if secured by the 
 theodolite ! 
 
 Moreover, it is not only a case of uniform but of 
 unicolour ; the gold yellow and the chocolate brown 
 of the all but ripe and of the quite ripe wheat do not 
 vary over hundreds and thousands of acres of ground 
 in a good corn year. 
 
 It is really hard to overstate the orderly appearance 
 of these wheat scenes viewed from a hill a mile or so 
 away. All that disarray and medley of hedgerow 
 and lane and spinney, which make so many idylls, 
 are wanting in the wheat scene. And yet the wheat- 
 fields, from early July right on through the harvest,
 
 84 This Realm, This England 
 
 are a noble feature of the English landscape. They 
 cannot be too heavy-looking, too level, too orderly, 
 too ruled out, too one-coloured. The more these 
 features prevail in wheatfields, the nobler the crop 
 and the promise of corn. This is one of the cases, 
 if one of the few, in Nature under man where there 
 can be no clash between use and beauty. The more 
 of one, the more of the other ; the loss of one, the loss 
 to the other such is the rule of the wheatfield. 
 
 I confess to small patience with the school that 
 would take wheat in England out of the grand com- 
 petition of the soil. There may be a little sentiment 
 in my belief in wheatfields. The wheatfield is one of 
 the oldest and most lasting and signal things in the 
 history of the land in England. It has seen the best 
 part of the oak itself out. It has seen ten centuries 
 out, and it still waves gilt-green over large English 
 spaces. That is a thing which offers excuse for a little 
 sentiment. 
 
 But one believes in the wheatfield besides, for very 
 different reasons. People who have lived on the land, 
 and been in close touch with those who work it, do 
 absolutely know that wheat has been, is, and must 
 be one of the staple and standard crops throughout 
 large tracts of England. " The old corn of the land " 
 is still good to grow and to eat. That talk of changing 
 corn for cabbages all over our England it is a theory 
 too thin to grow anything in the end but thistles. It
 
 Wheat Gold and Green 8 5 
 
 .can never be. All our markets and our manners 
 are against it. 
 
 To do away with these wheatfields as a main 
 feature of the soil we must do away with a great deal 
 more than the English land system. We must change 
 the habits of the people, the channels of collection 
 and distribution. We must change even the nature 
 of a great deal of the soil itself. 
 
 It could only be done, if ever it were done, by 
 the laws of evolution ; no mere revolution can long 
 lay down in cabbage that which Nature means for 
 corn. 
 
 Belief in wheat its glory as a great feature of land- 
 scape and as a maker of manhood implies no dis- 
 trust of small men in land. It is the last thing it 
 implies with me. Since I have thought at all about 
 that supreme English problem, the land, I have felt 
 that the small man, where he can make his way, should 
 surely be a large part of the solution. Many of the 
 crops thrive with him. The harder moral qualities 
 are found in the successful small man in land grit 
 and thrift and the love and pride of standing alone, 
 instead of being propped up by others. I never met a 
 small man in land who did not in somewise illustrate 
 these hard-shell virtues. Idealists need not think this 
 makes the small independent holder fit only for the 
 methods of Gradgrind in Coketown. We may be sure 
 he can have another side to life like others who work 
 hard and make a livelihood. The successful small man
 
 86 This Realm., This England 
 
 in land to-day is probably very much like the old 
 English yeoman. For one thing, he is a patriot 
 absolutely. 
 
 The ill of this class is its smallness. Where we have 
 half a dozen of these men in a village we want a score. 
 As to ownership, it is a great question. I was not 
 altogether in favour of ownership a few years ago, 
 but I have come round to feel it is the only plan worth 
 having if the new class of small man is to last on the 
 land. If he is worth growing at all, he should be grown 
 not as an annual, but as a perennial. I do not know 
 that ownership is " magic." Magic deals in dark arts. 
 For a man to own the bit of ground he digs and sows 
 and gives his life to means no magic ; it is all in the 
 light of Nature a perfectly simple plan, all above- 
 board. 
 
 I leant at first to the idea of hiring out the land to 
 him, because I dreaded an inrush of small men who 
 have no land virtue and have never been really soiled. 
 Moreover, to set up the man as owner cannot get 
 such a good result as for the man to set himself up. 
 But the best plan, I feel now, would be to choose 
 out by a close scrutiny the likeliest of the small men 
 who apply for the land and set them up to work out 
 their ownership. It is State-aid to secure self-aid, and 
 the union of the opposites seems hard. But the best 
 of the men who go on this crutch will, year by year, 
 step by step, lean less on it. In the end they put it 
 aside altogether.
 
 Wheat Gold and Green 87 
 
 The prize should be property. I cannot take 
 gravely the story that men who keenly want the land 
 in small parcels, and are fit to work it, do not want 
 to own the land. They would settle on the soil, they 
 would work it, but they would not own it ! The 
 thing reads like some irony on human nature. Now, 
 the small men in land I have known see the thing in 
 quite another light, the light of "The Northern 
 Farmer, New Style" 
 
 " Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere, an', Sammy, I'm blest 
 If it isn't the saame oop yonder, fur them as "as it's the 
 best." 
 
 How is the man not fit to own or afraid to own 
 the strip of land he works at all his life, fit to hire it ? 
 I object to have him as a tenant, and under this hiring 
 plan I am perhaps as a ratepayer already a landlord ! 
 A man with this mouse-heart is not fit to hire or 
 hold. But this is not the true small holder. He wants, 
 of course, above all to hold. 
 
 * # * * * 
 
 The cornfields must continue, and if ever again the 
 value of the grain sinks so low that we cannot grow 
 it on English soil save at a loss, the worse for 
 England. There is national character in what a 
 country has grown hard for a thousand years. Con- 
 tinuity in corn, like continuity in Constitution, is a 
 thing of worth. It is a kind of national goodwill. But 
 with the wheatfields and greater pastures and greater
 
 88 This Realm, This England 
 
 flocks there is room for small men in every parish. 
 It is variety of holder we want on our soil. Monotony 
 in a land where conditions widely differ, often in the 
 same district and even parish, means decay. Variety 
 is evolution's way. It means energy, constant ad- 
 vance. Variety is at the root of life.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 THE LONG JUNE DAY 
 
 WHAT is the great thing about June in Eng- 
 land as we touch the zenith of the year ? I 
 take it to be the splendid length of the day. This is 
 the time when some of us can almost get our right 
 share, full measure, of open life, instead of those mere 
 snatches of it which is the usual allowance at other 
 seasons. Full measure, I reckon, is eight to nine good 
 hours spent without the least break, supremely free 
 from custom and interference, in absolute country. 
 If we are to realize the truth of John of Gaunt's 
 eulogy of England, we must get our full measure of 
 the thing at this season. 
 
 But I question much whether the effect of a single 
 day like this of eight to nine hours, even with weather 
 and scene kind in every way, is enough, unless it falls 
 to the lot of one who is already elate or fairly keen, 
 and in almost perfect health and heart. The man who 
 is jaded at all or overstrained wants an allowance of 
 quite two or three continuous days in the open each 
 day, yielding this eight to nine hour measure. I put 
 it from personal and repeated experience at three 
 days. Then what is talked and written of to-day as 
 8 9
 
 90 This Realm, This England 
 
 11 the open-air cure " does truly begin to work on 
 nerve and brain. Continuity is of the essence of it ; 
 and, largely because this is often overlooked, the good 
 of the thing is soon spent, or indeed never realized, 
 by many people. 
 
 My idea of this open-air redress or restorative is 
 quite another thing from the doctor's ordinary pre- 
 scription or routine, though that may be in some 
 cases perhaps in many thousands excellent in its 
 way. I am not thinking at all of the habit of taking 
 a moderate amount of regular exercise out of doors 
 every day ; of sitting in the sun ; of sleeping on the 
 veranda or in a hammock slung under garden trees. 
 This habit may often bring or keep health. But it is 
 a wholly different matter from what I have in mind. 
 Convention and interruption and restraint cannot be 
 quite put away by such habits of health as these. 
 
 The open-air recipe I should advise does not at all 
 demand that we should sleep out of doors, or break- 
 fast and sup there. It only insists that during the 
 greater part of the daylight for three long days run- 
 ning we shall put ourselves deep in fields, downs, or 
 woods at a secure distance from the ordinary scenes 
 and routine of our life. One meal, it is true, must be 
 made out of doors if this plan is followed the light 
 midday meal ; but there is no reason why the other 
 two should not be taken in comfort indoors, at an 
 inn or at any other quarters it may be well to choose. 
 I only desire to escape custom or convention so far
 
 HOMELIEST ENGLAND.
 
 The Long June Day 91 
 
 as it breaks in on my seven or eight to ten o'clock 
 day given up absolutely to the influence of Nature 
 and the open air in the best and longest-lit time of 
 year. 
 
 To shun convention or custom to this end is no 
 cult of the open or of the so-called simple life, which 
 strikes one as a false thing. A few years ago a painted 
 and important-looking imitation of a gipsy cart took 
 up its station in a lane near a village where I was 
 living. One who lived in the place, hearing the name 
 of the owners, and recognizing it well, was shocked 
 to think of the discomfort they must be enduring. 
 He wrote begging them to make free of his house 
 and table. But the owners, much ruffled, gave him 
 to understand very clearly that for the present they 
 were strangers to him ; they were living, it appeared, 
 by a rather complicated plan, the simple life. 
 
 Now, that was not the cure of the open, but the 
 cult of it. What real value can there be in a gipsy 
 cart, I wonder, or in a gipsy kettle, save to gipsies ? 
 * * * * # 
 
 June, with anything like the kind of air and sky 
 we naturally look for about midsummer, is the kindest 
 month for our three long days given up to open air, 
 free from the fret and strain of life. Nature in Eng- 
 land has by mid-June lost the wonderful radiancy of 
 green which is the feature of mid and later May. 
 But the light is longer that is the chief advantage 
 of June; and then, though the leaf has spent its
 
 92 This Realm, This England 
 
 freshness, it has as recompense that fulness which is 
 never seen or felt in spring. 
 
 There is a sense of something immensely solid and 
 satisfying about Nature in the English June. Every 
 foot of ground in coppices and streamsides and hedge- 
 rows and roadsides off the main ways is packed and 
 pressed with green. Every nook and cranny is peopled 
 by teeming plant-life. Nothing of the kind is felt in 
 spring. Spring in England promises, summer per- 
 forms ; and June, at its zenith, is more summer than 
 any month in the year. 
 
 At the close of the third long day at this time 
 given up to Nature without hindrance or break one 
 has a sense of having received some solid and satisfy- 
 ing gift through the earth. I have felt this, and it 
 seems to be in the nature of a physical even more 
 than of a spiritual gift. After all, June, in the weight 
 and vastness of its green and the richness of its life, 
 is nothing if not material. It is not easy to take June 
 in England to-day quite spiritually; I must accept it 
 in a large degree sensuously. 
 
 June, then, being the best month of all though 
 far from the only month in which to exchange 
 ordinary life, whether town or country life, for our 
 three long days in the open, the question is : By what 
 means shall we withdraw ourselves from routine ? 
 The gipsy cart and kettle would be too complicated 
 a business, even granting it were not a cult. Nor, to 
 turn to something ludicrously its opposite and to
 
 The Long June Day 93 
 
 what is anything on earth but a cult does a motor 
 promise at all well. I am sure that petrol is not the 
 right motive power to this end. Least of all would 
 one choose to buzz along by motor-cycle a hundred 
 miles a day. I hope I know better than to disparage 
 motor-cycles; I rode once on one of the first 
 brought to England. Perhaps one may suggest a 
 single little drawback the rider after a long spin 
 through dust sometimes comes off looking like 
 Jacques when he dropped from the back springs of 
 Monseigneur the Marquis's great carriage in "A 
 Tale of Two Cities." But anyhow, the motor- 
 cycle is not fit for our purpose its mechanism 
 should not be spoilt by rude roads in deep country- 
 side. 
 
 My own plan is often to hire an old cycle with a 
 very low gear, which takes me deep into the country 
 and leaves me there. Afterwards, I can wander as I 
 choose by the stream, or in the woods, or among the 
 tracks that wind through the great thymy chalk 
 downs. Probably the most human plan is to go all 
 the way on foot after we have left the town or village 
 railway-station, or go on horseback. I think the way 
 of the horse, indeed, may be best of all. It is little 
 used now for holiday, but wise generations will surely 
 come back to the saddle and bridle. There was a 
 dignity and ease, a habit of health and serenity, in 
 horseback England which we are wanting to-day. A 
 good horse means freedom and firm independence.
 
 94 This Realm, This England 
 
 The horse, too, can carry us quite far enough afield 
 and off the beaten way. 
 
 However, the great business is not how we go ; it 
 is not where we go, if only the spot chosen by chance 
 or deliberation is real countryside teeming with the 
 boundless green life of June. The great business is to 
 give oneself enough time there to get thoroughly 
 saturated and steeped in the power of the season. 
 Three days in the open will not cure the ills of life, 
 though we repeat them every month of the year; but 
 the influence of green earth and running water and 
 large expanses of sky, when for a time we give our- 
 selves up wholly to them, is great.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE LONG JUNE EVE 
 
 FOR a sense of Nature magic I know nothing in 
 England to surpass the long, light calm of the 
 midsummer evenings. They seem to be all witchery. 
 To get the full effect of the thing a sure plan is to come 
 out of the town in the late afternoon and start walk- 
 ing home from the railway-station a few minutes after 
 sundown between eight and nine now. One takes 
 the footpath. It leads across grass and wheatlands, 
 through hazel and oak coppices into the Sussex dell, 
 and up again out of that steep dark place to the light 
 hayfields on the uplands beyond. This is not a hard 
 plan, because England is fairly wound about by foot- 
 paths of the kind they are one of its modest glories. 
 Some of them may be marked by dotted lines on 
 Ordnance maps, and many of the longest and most 
 winding and overgrown lead back almost to the be- 
 ginning of the land system. But the map is not a 
 good way to learn their courses. One knows them 
 best, no doubt, by that priceless thing, old association ; 
 one knows them all the more by going wrong once 
 or twice, and straying to farmhouses and gates and 
 fences which are another side to the system. 
 95
 
 96 This Realm, This England 
 
 Nothing very fearful happens if one does stray to 
 that other side. What is there of fear in the tread of 
 the carter or the keeper coming home late to supper ? 
 He puts us back on the dotted lines by a word or two, 
 and his " good-night " has some ring of human 
 brotherhood at such a time and place. 
 
 There nearly always are evenings at the zenith of 
 the year when, for half an hour or so after the sun is 
 well down, the state of light appears to be unchang- 
 ing. At half-past eight it seemed not a degree lighter 
 that it became at ten minutes to nine that was my 
 experience on one of these evenings in June. At ten 
 minutes to nine, at nine, at a quarter past nine I 
 like to time it to the minute ! nothing was easier in 
 the open, three and four hundred feet above the sea, 
 than to discriminate nicely between the varying shades 
 of green, those of the wheat, the oaks, the brake-fern 
 at its full foliage, and the brake fern not yet quite 
 uncrumpled at the tips ; and, at the latest time of 
 these three times, when a female ghost moth dropped 
 to rest on a grass stem under an oak even there, 
 looking close, one might trace something of the 
 eccentric device on her brown upper wing. 
 
 I do not know at what time before ten the mono- 
 chrome absolute began, but I know that when I 
 came out of the deep Sussex dell at the end of the 
 footpath on that haunted, God-lit night and went 
 indoors, the world was still green, though a few 
 minutes later a clock chimed the half-hour.
 
 The Long June Eve 97 
 
 During this deep trance, between sundown and the 
 verge of night, the light, I am clear, is of a peculiar 
 quality. It is not like the wan light of earliest dawn, 
 it is not the soft evening dusk we know so well in 
 England. A certain ethereal lustre seems to shine 
 through all space : it may remind one, if faintly, of 
 the close of the Desert day when the chill follows 
 blazing heat and the light is suddenly plunged into 
 dark with scarcely any penumbra between the two. 
 
 But the state of the air on these few wondrous, 
 drawn-out midsummer evenings cannot be truly ex- 
 pressed through words any more than through colour 
 and canvas. There is no language for light. Its ap- 
 pearances are infinitely too illusive to catch and con- 
 fine in terms of speech ; we see them, and, far more, 
 we feel them, that is all. 
 
 The lull, which grows and grows through this rapt 
 and radiant hour or so, seems to be inseparable from 
 the state of light at least, we cannot at this time 
 have one without the other. Certain sounds in the 
 deep hush of the evening or night, at any season, do 
 accentuate silence this is common knowledge to 
 those who have lived or spent much time in large 
 woods or on lonely downs, and waste places. But on 
 such an evening the emphasis is not needed. It was 
 not given. The thrush ended between eight and nine, 
 before his usual time, and it was not much before half 
 past nine that I heard the nightjar I thought it 
 must be over bright for him before then. 
 
 7
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 IMMEMORIAL LANES 
 
 THE Italians have a name for summer which 
 sounded to me very happy when I first heard 
 it. Summer is " estate " in Italian, and I was half 
 cheated into thinking it akin with our word ! No 
 doubt the Italian word is one with the Latin, mean- 
 ing heat, and has nothing whatever to do with ours; 
 yet the summer perfected, the second part of it, might 
 fairly be described as " estate" in the English mean- 
 ing of the term without much forcing of fancy. 
 There is a sense of material possession, and the 
 leisurely enjoying of it, felt at this time and scarcely 
 known at another. There is now, too, that other 
 strong sense of rest after rush which, I think, is 
 always felt in July in deep English country. 
 
 That tremendous energy of creation which we are 
 continuously alive to through later spring, and right 
 on till midsummer, seems to come to an abrupt stop. 
 It is an illusion, of course, a viewing of Nature through 
 subjective eyes. There can no more be a dead point 
 in the progress of green life than in the orbit of a 
 star. Under the surface of things the work of making 
 and of unmaking goes on without the least pause 
 98
 
 Immemorial Lanes 99 
 
 in every field and hedge and wood. The hand of the 
 clock never stays an instant in the great business of 
 the green world ; God's business in which things are 
 perpetually being built up to be broken down, and re- 
 broken to be rebuilt. The business is just as unpaus- 
 ing and sleepless in July as in the sappiest hours of 
 the year. But one is quite unconscious of it, and every 
 season my impression grows, if anything, stronger 
 that some day or week in June simply cuts the summer 
 in two parts, the character of the first being pressure 
 and of the second pause. 
 
 It is the second part which the description seems 
 to fit. It is estate. The thing is fulfilled. The season 
 stands. 
 
 I could not name a place where one is more con- 
 scious of this apparent end of one stage in the summer 
 and beginning of the other than an old English wood- 
 lane. I suppose these wood- lanes are peculiar to 
 England. I have seen nothing remotely like them 
 abroad. At least, from what I have seen of those 
 countries, I should say the thing is impossible in Italy 
 or France or Switzerland. France surpasses us utterly 
 in compact and complete little farms and homesteads 
 exquisite in detail. France is mosaic of them in many 
 places. Switzerland has those Alpine pastures which 
 we could not imitate in the least if we would. But as 
 in the footpath, so in the lane and lane-end, in the 
 spinney and the tiny hamlet green and the great 
 hedgerow we beat them all.
 
 ioo This Realm, This England 
 
 I went up such a wood-lane one day in July, and 
 July is the month for the wood-lanes. This one is 
 almost a mile long. It winds and winds with the 
 careless, beautiful curve of the wood, and it has a 
 hedgerow on the opposite side to the wood which has 
 got quite beyond the control of the hedger with his 
 small billhook and long slasher. It is ten, fifteen feet 
 high in spots, and some of the hedge timber "hedge 
 trumpery " Evelyn called it maples and ash stems 
 that are ash-trees almost, look fit for a saw-pit. This 
 wood-lane hedgerow has an immense tangle of wild 
 clematis, or traveller's joy, the nesting-place of parties 
 or small flocks of late green-finches. 
 
 Such hedgerows, through much of the homely land- 
 scape of south-western shires, are nearly always bound 
 and smothered by clematis. It has so grown into and 
 arched over the lane in one or two spots that it has there 
 become a spinney instead of hedgerow. No interest 
 is hurt by the hedgerow encroaching on the lane. A 
 timber-cart goes up the lane now and then, whilst 
 perhaps the wain is sometimes seen at hay harvest 
 there is room for them in spite of clematis. The 
 wood-lane is really little more than a footway or 
 bridle-path, and it has been so for two or three 
 generations. 
 
 As to the origin of the wood-lane, it is manorial 
 arid immemorial that is about all I care to know of 
 it. Manorial, for men beat the bounds along or close 
 beside it within the memory of the oldest folk about ;
 
 Immemorial Lanes 101 
 
 immemorial, for it goes right back judging by its 
 local name into the dim beginnings of English 
 history. It may be earlier even than the history of 
 England, for it has a bit of Rome in its full name. 
 It recalls dough's poem, "Whence comest thou, 
 shady lane ?" 
 
 Now, this is a typical feature of England, southern 
 England. Lanes, hedged and overgrown like it, wind- 
 ing round the woods and losing themselves in remote 
 fields and downs in just the same way, and like it, 
 manorial and immemorial, are threaded through the 
 country. They are among the best spots on earth to 
 go to in July. One scarcely misses the freshness of 
 the year, the compensation in its fulness being here 
 so noble. The song these wood-lanes were brimming 
 with earlier gives place to a gracious quiet after that 
 concert deep calm. 
 
 Like the footpath, the green lane came through, 
 and exists through, the historic land tradition of Eng- 
 land. Is it well to keep these places unspoilt in the 
 form they have come down to us through Tudor, 
 Norman, and Saxon ? I think that it is, and that only 
 a vandal would deny the value of that wood-lane, 
 though scarcely a waggon in a month goes along it. 
 
 He is a barbarian probably to deny it. But he is a 
 blockhead certainly if he thinks to keep this good 
 thing and destroy the system through which it exists. 
 Might he not as well propose to keep intact the pig- 
 ments of a work in the National Gallery and throw 
 away the canvas r
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 MIRAGE OF AN ENGLISH AUTUMN 
 
 THE lighting power of leaves is a strange and 
 splendid feature of autumn in England. It is 
 very marked some years. I have often been struck by 
 it in the Brickhill Woods of Buckinghamshire, when 
 the brake-fern, after its manner in shaded and shel- 
 tered spots, turns pale yellow in the glades, unspotted 
 and unstained as yet by the least tinct of brown. On 
 a sunless day the fern's yellow at a little distance is 
 like mild sunlight streaming through the trees. But 
 there are places and states of light in which you can 
 have exactly the same effect in the open, though the 
 October sky is blank from zenith to horizon with 
 uniform grey cloud. Streaks of pure pale yellow, of 
 much the same shade as the brake-fern's, lying across 
 the fading green of elm-trees, will make an illusion of 
 sunshine. The illusion is so complete on a day when 
 now and then the sun does gleam through the grey 
 cloud that we may be deceived by it, though even on 
 our guard. 
 
 At such times we may have to glance up at the 
 sky to see whether the sun is actually shining or not 
 before we can be satisfied that the yellow light is the
 
 Mirage of an English Autumn 103 
 
 elm's or the sun's. It recalls mirages I have seen in 
 the Sahara, where the eye is constantly too much for 
 the understanding. The brake-fern and the elm, I 
 think, are the chief makers of this mirage of English 
 woods and fields in October, but the lighting power 
 of blanched and fading leaf is general in many places 
 even where the fern and elm are absent. I have seen 
 the splendid Brickhill Woods, despite an overcast grey 
 sky, steeped in light, though not in that look of actual 
 sunshine. 
 
 Other woods at this time make light by the same 
 means. All that is needed for the mirage of autumn 
 is that a great abundance of leaves should have turned, 
 not red or pink or brown, but pale and pure yellow. 
 
 The larger the leaf the more its light-making gift 
 on a subdued October day. The Brickhill Woods are 
 largely woods of Spanish chestnuts, whose leaves, 
 where sheltered and well inside the wood, often turn 
 pure yellow before falling, like those of the horse- 
 chestnut. They light the wood powerfully. 
 
 But chestnuts are not the only leaves that make 
 the illusion of light. Most trees and underwoods that 
 grow in England, and cast their leaf at this time, have 
 it in some degree. I have seen the effect in woods 
 where there are neither Spanish nor horse-chestnuts, 
 but a careless, excellent mingling of hazel, oak, maple, 
 birch, wild cherry, beech, and various lesser contrib- 
 utors of autumn colour as cornel or dog-wood, white- 
 beam, wayfaring-tree, ash, poplar, and the round-
 
 104 This Realm, This England 
 
 leaved sallow. No matter how dull the day, we have 
 in this October scene an impression of lightness and 
 brightness, and here and there of mild sunshine, 
 though the whole sky is wrapped in a heavy pall. It 
 is the " mock sunshine of the faded woods." The 
 thing is strange and beautiful. When it is at its height, 
 the usual idea of death and decay in autumn is 
 banished from the mind. There is no sense of de- 
 pression about the lit wood, even though the air is 
 dead still and steeped in autumn must, and the gauzy 
 veils and stratus or earth clouds lie about the woods 
 and commons. 
 
 Just before the turn of the leaf, and at the first hint 
 of turning, there is often something lowering about 
 the scene. Everything appears to be worn down 
 the immense vital force and flow of spring and full 
 summer come to nothing and wherever we look is 
 sign of something miserable and shabby and smudged 
 and finished with. 
 
 The last state of the green oak, elm, beech, what- 
 ever it be is the most dismal in an English year. 
 It is not the Fall of the year that at times is 90 
 terrible ; it is the stage just before the Fall. But the 
 leaf turns, and in a week or two the whole scene is 
 transfigured. The work of sap running down seems 
 to the eye more magical in speed than of sap ascend- 
 ing. It can light the wood in a fortnight; it took 
 longer than this to kindle the same wood in spring. 
 
 Light, rather than fire, is, on the whole, the image
 
 Mirage of an English Autumn 105 
 
 that expresses the autumn in ordinary and wild 
 English woods and coppices. The idea of fire is con- 
 veyed better in spring, when the live tips of the twigs 
 appear to burn just before they break into leaf and 
 life. There may be a suggestion of fire in autumn 
 woods ; but, except on the outsides of great masses of 
 beech-trees it is seen only in dabs or patches here 
 and there. In the oak, birch, and hazel woods of the 
 South of England and the Midlands there is a look 
 of light in October rather than of fire. Fire is a figure 
 of speech forautumn in England that has been slightly 
 overdone by the poets and the prose writers alike. 
 
 A striking thing about the spectacle of these 
 English woods of oak and mixed underwoods at this 
 time is the way it is produced by two quiet colours. 
 The variety of tone and tint seems to be almost with- 
 out end, but look into the thing and you find that 
 mainly it is made by the blending of a pale yellow 
 and a warm brown. The high colours in the leaf are 
 in a very small minority. There are some vivid and 
 biting reds in bramble-leaves and a few other under- 
 growth plants in the wood ; and there are more 
 sullen reds and purples than there are pinks in 
 cornel, and spindlewood, and in wayfaring and wild 
 guelder rose-trees, and in the wild cherry or gean- 
 tree, whilst here and there a maple " burns itself 
 away." But these are trifling contributors of colour. 
 The vast bulk of the colour in the autumn wood at 
 the middle of October is made up of the plain yellow
 
 io6 This Realm, This England 
 
 and even plainer brown leaf, the brake-fern and 
 hazel and oak and beech for really the beech turns 
 for the most part brown, not red, at the Fall. The 
 brown dominates. The subdued far exceeds the san- 
 guine. 
 
 Out of brown and yellow, plain and unmistakable 
 to every eye not colour-blind, Nature works up the 
 great scene of October in England. The medium is 
 the atmosphere, which is never so favourable to the 
 making and mingling of curious and subtle dyes as 
 it is in autumn. The process is seen all through the 
 day. It often begins in the fresh of morning, when 
 the sun is shining into the fine veils that are lifting 
 and dispersing, and, as they lift, the new-ploughed 
 land sometimes appears to be shot over with an iri- 
 descent bloom of purple. 
 
 It goes on through the afternoon and when the sun 
 is quite obscured ; and I think that as October ad- 
 vances, and the oaks lose the last of their green and 
 grow browner and browner, the flushes and dyes on 
 the surface of the woods seen at a little distance grow 
 in number and subtlety till a hard frost or heavy rain 
 brings it to an end, and completes the Fall of the year. 
 
 The expression " autumn tints " has come to be 
 suspected. It is grown maudlin. A thing believed to 
 be gush is associated with it. And no doubt there has 
 been a certain amount of gush about it. It often took 
 the harmless form of album verses a generation or 
 two since. The fault arose because people did not go
 
 Mirage of an English Autumn 107 
 
 out enough into fields and woods and forget them- 
 selves in the natural scene. The best preventive 
 against gush about autumn is an intimacy with these 
 immense scenes of light and colour ; going out into 
 the open and being saturated with them. There is 
 the true antiseptic against any tendency to false 
 sentiment. 
 
 But may not the intimacy with the real thing in 
 Nature do a great deal more than save people from 
 false sentiment about such scenes ? It can act appar- 
 ently as a safe guide and as a corrective in many 
 questions of art and even literature. There are mirages 
 in art and literature art and literature are at times 
 full of them and we want not to be deceived by 
 them. 
 
 The frequent puzzle among many people is how 
 to distinguish the true from the false in books and in 
 paintings and in sculpture and in architecture and in 
 every branch of art. Often the puzzle grows still 
 harder how to know the difference between the 
 best and what looks the best ; how, for example, to 
 distinguish in letters and art between style and stylish- 
 ness, the pretender and the performer, paste and 
 diamond. It seems as if the best training for such 
 matters should be training in the schools that profess 
 them. The theory of the thing is good, but the prac- 
 tice of it is always failing. The truth seems to be this 
 there is too much attention to artifice, too little 
 grounding in Nature. Intimacy with Nature is being
 
 io8 This Realm, This England 
 
 in close touch with what is actual and essential ; 
 dealing not with figments so much as with facts. It 
 is being in constant touch with the real, and at the 
 root of all that is fine and true in books and in paint- 
 ings and stonework is the great element of reality. 
 That is why the surest way to good taste in these 
 things is intimacy with Nature. All the teaching and 
 theory and study in the world will not do where that 
 is wanting.
 
 PHASE TWO 
 ENGLISH WORTHIES
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE HURDLER 
 
 IS not the ideal open air life the life of the hurdler 
 in the coppices of England ? There is a time of 
 year when he works in perfect conditions : the time 
 when oaks have just gone down among the felled 
 underwood and the bark-stripper is at work. The two 
 or three weeks that are spent in barking the oaks are 
 often the loveliest, though far from the richest, in the 
 wood year. Walking in the coppices then we find 
 everything so good. The sound of the stripping is good 
 to the ear ; I half believe there is an intrinsic melody, 
 a music in such sound apart even from the charm of 
 its environment and association. Who that has split 
 ash-wood logs with a wedge and boidel has not re- 
 joiced in the sound of the splitting ? The saw can 
 offend, at least be uninteresting and monotonous, not 
 so the boidel ; and it is with the tools of the bark- 
 stripper as with the tools of the wood-splitter the 
 note pleases in itselr. 
 
 As to the scent of the wet, intensely live oaks in 
 these bark-stripping days, there is not the faintest 
 doubt about this being good. The wood is a world of 
 scent varying almost from week to week as the season
 
 1 1 2 This Realm, This England 
 
 waxes and wanes, certainly varying from month to 
 month. Everyone who knows well the wood atmo- 
 sphere in England knows it to be full of peculiar 
 essences, fragrances, some strong, others delicate, and 
 nearly all good to our sense. I except the smell which 
 on a rare scenting day a fox, crossing the ride during 
 a pheasant shoot, leaves on a moist air though some 
 may find this sweetest of all and I except the scent 
 of a few disgraceful toadstools which in decay melt at 
 a damp wood corner. The smell of bracken at full 
 foliage, the smell in May of young hazel underwood 
 leaves after showers, the smell of ground-ash roots 
 (and of other underwood roots), above all that in- 
 describable and untraceable smell of the wood as a 
 whole in soppy, sappy hours all are very good to 
 the sense. 
 
 Fields and downs, with many a merit that the wood 
 has not, cannot surpass the wood in myrrh. 
 
 The scent of oak and hazel where the wattle 
 hurdler works from dawn till dusk seems something 
 more than a scent. Is it not as an aura ? The best of 
 it is at about stripping time ; but, save for a few wilted 
 weeks late in summer, the wattle hurdler's wood is 
 fragrant through the year. On a clean morning in 
 October a hurdler works in conditions that are far 
 above those of most of the world's toilers in country 
 or in town. 
 
 The wattle hurdler can be at work in the wood for 
 his five or six days a week throughout the year. He
 
 .' 
 *
 
 The Hurdler 1 1 3 
 
 is not actually at the frame all this time. Many weeks 
 must be spent in cutting the ripe hazel, ash, or oak 
 underwood, and laying it in lans or rows. Some of 
 this cut wood is fit only for bavins or faggots, but the 
 best is chosen for the upright stakes ten to each 
 hurdle and for the athwarts wattled in and out of 
 the uprights. People who think hurdling needs no 
 headwork should watch the man not only at his frame, 
 but picking out of the lans those rods fit for wattling. 
 How delicate and how firm and strong is the work 
 at the curved frame ! Each wand or rod twisted and 
 pressed down between the uprights must be neatly 
 split or trimmed ere it is set in its place. Hand, knee, 
 and eye are active partners in the making of that 
 beautiful thing, the English sheep-hurdle. The hand 
 may be chief partner, but there is headwork if in any 
 form of physical labour under the sun. 
 
 Last, when the wattling is done and the hurdle 
 prised up out of its frame, laid on the ground, and 
 straightened by a firm tread or two of the foot, I like 
 to see those refining touches with the little axe that 
 pares off the rough ends. It is the artistry of the 
 hurdler. Whoever saw a stroke of it go wrong when 
 a crack hand is making hurdles ? A bungler might 
 miss his aim, and so mar an hour's work, but the 
 quick, true hand and eye of the hurdler never missed. 
 
 So the hurdle is off the frame, carried away a few 
 yards from the shelter, and laid level on the perfectly 
 even pile which has been growing very slowly, 
 
 8
 
 1 1 4 This Realm, This England 
 
 steadily growing for months past, till it stands for 
 perhaps half a year's work in the coppice. Measured 
 in money that hurdle represents fourpence to the 
 maker. " So much for the ideal life !" a scoffer or a 
 striker may exclaim in his haste. But the profit, the 
 value to the maker of such work, cannot only be 
 measured in mere money; it is a child's mistake to 
 suppose they can ; indeed, it is far worse than a child's 
 mistake, for a child, watching with wonder the hurdle 
 grow, knows nothing of the money side of the 
 account, yet knows the beauty and delight of the 
 work. Each bit of work finely wrought and ended is 
 in some measure its own wage to the maker. I admit 
 the lowness of the money profit to the woodman. I 
 may deplore it. But watching such work as this, done 
 in the best spots in the world, in the best conditions 
 for hardihood and health, I can easily understand that 
 the main prize is not all in pence. There is a great 
 deal of truth in that old tag about labouring being 
 praying. Are there not forms of work that are prayer 
 in practice ? 
 
 I long thought that the largest number made by 
 one man in a day was twelve, roughly a hurdle an 
 hour in a long summer day, allowing about two hours 
 for food. A great feat even among the best men, 
 heroes of the hurdle ! It needs an eager worker in the 
 full joy and power of life. But I find I have a record 
 of a man who made sixteen hurdles in a day, though 
 here all the uprights must have been trimmed and
 
 The Hurdler 1 1 5 
 
 ready at hand by the frame, and the hazel stems split 
 and pared for the wattling. I suppose no worker ever 
 kept up this pace for more than a day or two at a 
 stretch. Nor could any man turn out the perfect 
 hurdle working at such pressure. The difference 
 between the perfect hurdle of the master hand and 
 the hurdle of the average hand, or of the very quick 
 hand in the copse, can only be detected by the most 
 trained eye, but it must tell in the end. The differ- 
 ence is not only in beauty of workmanship, in the 
 look of the thing. Fine finish tells in the life of a 
 sheep-hurdle. 
 
 Each hurdle of the master hand has a better life 
 by a small fraction than one made by the man who, 
 I do not say scamps, but hastes through with his 
 work ; and these small fractions must form together 
 a whole that really means something to a sheep 
 farmer who buys a pile of hurdles in the copse ten 
 feet high, four to each layer. But in the press of life 
 and the market even in the remote and quiet spots 
 where nothing ever seems to press, the places where 
 wattle hurdling is still a steady trade I doubt 
 whether there is any money equivalent for such 
 fractions of excellence. The return can only be in 
 reputation and in self-respect. 
 
 The wattle sheep-hurdle has not been improved 
 away like some things our forefathers knew as simple 
 necessities of a farming life the reaping-hook, the 
 flail, the scythe, for example. (Imagine country folk
 
 1 1 6 This Realm ^ This England 
 
 in the fifties, or even in the sixties, asked to believe 
 that the scythe would go out before the century 
 turned one might as well have asked a seaman to 
 believe that the days of the sail were numbered !) 
 The wattle sheep-hurdle has not even been improved 
 on. It is what it was when our fathers bird-nested in 
 the hazel copse. The curved frame is, I doubt not, 
 exactly the same. The hurdle itself has the same 
 number of uprights; it is the same height, the same 
 length, made of the same underwoods nay, the 
 underwoods, I dare say, cut often from the same stubs 
 or plants to-day that they were cut from before we 
 were born. Many a good hazel-plant was throwing 
 up its clean, straight shoots fifty years or more ago, 
 and will throw them up strong long after we have 
 gone. Underwoods outlast those who fell them. They 
 outlast the oldest worker in the wood, though at 
 eighty he is not too stiff and rheumy to work slowly 
 at the frame even a few hours in open weather. 
 
 The truth about the sheep-hurdle is that it is not 
 only good to the eye when fresh from the frame and 
 flashing white in the sun, clearly seen on its pile two 
 or three hundred yards away through the copse ; it is 
 what the scythe (bearing in mind English weather) 
 never really was completely efficient. Wattle hurdles 
 have not gone out simply because, for the control 
 and feeding of sheep in the roots or in the sainfoin 
 or the grass-lands, there is nothing to surpass these 
 hurdles. To appreciate this you have only to watch
 
 The Hurdler 117 
 
 the under shepherd at work hard work in truth on 
 ground frozen in winter or baked by a summer 
 drought fixing the pen for the coming night and 
 morrow. 
 
 Barbed wire and that other terrible wire threaded 
 through iron stakes never served a shepherd. Wire 
 has its wicked way in many walks of life, barbed and 
 netted and tanging, but no wire can supplant the 
 good withy on an English sheep-walk. 
 
 The wattle hurdle is the right height, the right 
 length, the right weight for its purpose. Here at least 
 the hand is greater than the machine which has ousted 
 it in sowing, in cutting, in binding, in threshing, and 
 even in the greater fields and farms in ploughing. 
 This hurdle remains one of the very few necessaries 
 of field work in England to-day that are wholly 
 hand-made. It is old style, yet it is style absolutely 
 competent. I never myself knew of a really good 
 wattle hurdler who was a bad man. Such a character 
 or contradiction is probably rare. Environment tells 
 so much in the making of men, and this hard work 
 and life in the copse, all seasons and weathers from 
 boyhood up, mean about the soundest and purest 
 environment on earth.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 TARPAULIN 
 
 IT is hard to understand the temperament of people 
 who say they would not care to live their lives 
 again. Yet some hold this opinion in all sincerity. A 
 friend, with whom I was talking over past angling 
 days on a famous Derbyshire trout stream, entered 
 into the enthusiasm of the thing, and agreed those 
 were great times when at the height of the Mayfly 
 season we did not always sit down to eight o'clock 
 dinner at the angling inn till half-past ten. Yet, he 
 added, there had been on the whole too much ill with 
 the good he would not wish to live his life again. 
 But who would not live childhood over again after 
 childhood has become part of the enchanted, infi- 
 nitely remote world of dreams that appeared once to 
 be real ? It would be worth while a hundred times 
 worth while to put up with a repetition of the rest 
 of life, with all its failures and forfeits, if we could 
 get back into the castle of childhood, with its divine 
 pains and joys. Unbreachable the fort of the world 
 looked to Arnold in later life, the walls that sanguine 
 youth once thought to scale showing higher and 
 higher. If one could get back and make a breach in 
 til
 
 Tarpaulin 1 1 9 
 
 that earlier, securer, and more beautiful castle in the 
 past, it would not much matter about the one in front 
 of us probably a lying one that recedes and recedes 
 like an autumn mist as we advance towards it. 
 
 The ad ventures one had in that great castle of youth 
 were so much more exciting the escapes so much 
 more hairbreadth than any that befel one after. The 
 people there were surely beyond measure more enter- 
 taining than people later. There never were such 
 gamekeepers, such gardeners' boys (with single- 
 barrelled, long, crooked Brummagem muzzle-loaders 
 to shoot at the jays), such birdnesting cowboys on the 
 freeholders' common. 
 
 Above all, there never have been such adventurous 
 drives home as there were then in the carrier's cart 
 from the market town five or seven miles away. It 
 might be worth getting back to childhood just to 
 know to the full once more the joy of the carrier's 
 cart. Happily, Careful the carrier himself and the cart 
 still are. Light railways with lighter dividends 
 have opened up parts of aloof England which were 
 once served only by the carrier ; but the lightest ot 
 them do not go up and down the steep hills and 
 along the byroads between the small market towns 
 of our south-country shires and the lonely villages 
 of Domesday, the kind of villages that begin in ash, 
 shaw, oak, and end in combe, bourne, holt names 
 that murmur in the ear with how rare a charm for 
 many of us !
 
 i2o This Realm, This England 
 
 Steep hills are almost essential to carriers. There 
 is the hero of the hurdle, the hero of the hayfield, the 
 hero of the hoe, on the roll of the hard workers. The 
 carrier is hero of the hill. A carrier confined to the 
 flat, to my mind, does not count. I was reared in a 
 land of hills, where carriers were carriers, and are so 
 to-day ; where carriers were and are a necessity of 
 life, an institution. 
 
 The old order may be passing from our country 
 life, the ruling classes ceasing to rule ; the old cottage, 
 the old courtesy, the old language, rich in pure Anglo- 
 Saxon going with the scythe, the thatched barn, the 
 squire, the manor courts, the sporting farmer. The 
 carrier continues. In truth, there seems to be some- 
 thing elemental about Careful the carrier about his 
 horse, his cart, his tarpaulin. 
 
 What did carriers do before tarpaulin was dis- 
 covered ? The imagination boggles at the idea of a 
 village carrier's cart in the ham, bourne, ash part of 
 England covered with anything but an old, battered 
 tarpaulin. These tarpaulins must have come rather 
 worn from the hands of the maker, a little of the tar 
 in places off the paulin at the very start. 
 
 No one who has lived in a carrier's-cart part ot 
 England could doubt for a moment about the carrier 
 being one of the hard workers. It is not that even, 
 ceaseless pulse of labour, manual labour, that the 
 woodman and the farm-worker are born to : the 
 labour that exhibits stooping slowness as a figure of
 
 Tarpaulin 1 2 1 
 
 nobility seeing that such slowness simply means 
 endurance. It is another sort of toil. Yet into that 
 series of peasant figures which Millet painted, how 
 finely would a picture of Careful the carrier have 
 fitted his horse all angle and bone, his lumbering 
 cart with its shabby cover rocking along the ancient 
 remote roads of the absolute countryside ! The pic- 
 ture should have been set in a monochrome, the mean 
 cart with the coarse figures of its passengers up to 
 their eyes in thick gossip, half lit by the single poor 
 lamp. I cannot recall seeing a true carrier's cart in 
 true countryside with more than its one lamp fixed 
 on the right of the cart. It is not many years since I 
 hired that single lanthorn for a shilling and left the 
 carrier in the dark. We were driving home on a late 
 summer evening from a bourne to an oak village, a 
 road mostly all hill and hollow, when dark overtook 
 and found us without a light. In old days, when the 
 hill at its steepest was loose flints and the traffic all 
 horse-drawn, a light may have been almost a luxury 
 on some of the branch roads ; to-day it may be life. 
 But the carrier felt his way back in the half dark. 
 The shilling meant two fares and no extra load ; it 
 is not every evening the carrier picks up in the last 
 mile or so two passengers like that. 
 
 The hard work of the carrier, then, is not of quite 
 the same kind as the hard work of the hoer or 
 hurdler. Instead of making himself to move all day, 
 his work during much of the day is making his beast
 
 122 This Realm, This England 
 
 to move. Let no one who has not striven often with 
 a beast without a mouth belittle this job. There is 
 need, too, of constant attention to the machine in all 
 weathers, in all states of road. There is the great 
 hill to be faced twice a day, once up, once down, the 
 drag being put on at the dip. We were between six 
 and seven hundred feet high, at the point where the 
 carrier towards the journey's end gets out of the cart 
 for the third or fourth time that afternoon, fixes the 
 chained drag on the back wheel, and lights the tallow 
 candle in his old lanthorn that, like his tarpaulin, 
 was never known to be new. By the time we have 
 swung and rocked to the foot of that hill we shall be 
 scarcely three hundred feet, in another air, another 
 world. 
 
 England is divided up not by district or country 
 council boundaries, or into manors these last have 
 gone, or are going, and the others will not last, being 
 mere paper or Parliament-made things that do not 
 wear. Men never divided up England. It is divided 
 still in Anglo-Saxon, carrier countryside, as it was, 
 by hills. The folk who live in the village at the foot 
 of the hill are often separated from the folk who live 
 a mile or two away at the top, on the road to the 
 market town, by a very clearly defined boundary. 
 To the folk above, the folk below belong to " the 
 end of the world." How often I have heard that 
 term used by folk above ! True, there are towns be- 
 yond the village in the hollow, hundreds of miles of 
 them according to the map, but in practice such
 
 Tarpaulin 123 
 
 towns do not count, being out of range. The carrier 
 puts the otherwise benighted inhabitants of world's 
 end in touch with society as it exists at the top of 
 the hill, and in polite villages and hamlets that lie 
 about the town, enlightened villages near the hub of 
 things. 
 
 The bicycle did not shift the boundary ; the motor 
 no more effects it than an airship. Instal wireless 
 telegraphy at the village post-office ; but the hill still 
 stands, and on it the carrier's cart. Electricity, rubber, 
 petrol one may imagine Domesday England, holt 
 and bourne and ash England, watching these things 
 or their effects pass as the East watched the thunder- 
 ing legions of the West, then turning to itself again 
 unmoved. The people from the hamlet and the 
 hollow will still go to market in the carrier's cart. 
 
 The carrier deals in parcelsand in persons. Roughly, 
 the rate stands at sixpence a head for the human 
 package. I knew of an instance years ago where the 
 package wasa French tutor who weighed twenty stone. 
 The entente being not at all cordial in those days, 
 this man was a butt for country wit, which can be 
 direct and brutal in old-world England. The village 
 laundress proposed to charge double for Monsieur's 
 white waistcoats a sort of blackmail that set the 
 neighbourhood in guffaws. I cannot remember actu- 
 ally seeing the poor tutor in the carrier's cart, but 
 can imagine that when he sat down the others on the 
 bench may have been prised upward. He was always 
 charged a shilling for a sixpenny drive.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 FLINT 
 
 WHAT a mistake it is to imagine that, save for the 
 South Pole or Siberia, the world has been now 
 fully discovered, and that the days for adventure by 
 land have passed ! In spite of the guide-books and 
 place-books, Ordnance maps, in spite of Kelly himself 
 who on the face of it may seem the last word in the 
 line of discovery England is still in certain spots an 
 unknown land. Maps are fascinating to pore over 
 for an hour and more on an autumn or winter night ; 
 but a copy of " Kelly " can hold one entranced for a 
 whole evening. I suppose " Kellies," had they been 
 printed in his time, would have come under the ban 
 of Charles Lamb as false books, things parading 
 themselves in book's clothing ; but I find " Kelly " 
 at times fuller of poetry than Keats. Spending the 
 night at some country inn, I have often been cheered 
 by the sight in the " coffee-room " as if coffee 
 could be made in an English inn ! of the faded cover 
 of a " Kelly " of one of the southern counties I know 
 well. But the copy must be old it takes years for 
 the undoubted prose or a brand new edition of 
 " Kelly " to mellow into poetry and romance. The 
 124
 
 Flint 125 
 
 red binding of the new edition, fresh from the binder, 
 is like the red roof of a new house fresh from the 
 builder : there is no story to tell of that house, no 
 hope of discovery or adventure about it. 
 
 One must wait for its charm till the red tiles pale 
 and the lichens grow thick on its walls. Generations 
 that have gone make the house. Generations that 
 have gone make the " Kelly." 
 
 People turn to " Kelly " for various ends. Many 
 go to him to learn what is the rateable value ; others 
 to learn what is the soil, the sub-soil ; what is the 
 hundred, petty sessional division, archdeaconry, rural 
 deanery. The sub-soil leaves me somewhat cold ; 
 the other matters I do not rightly comprehend. I go 
 to " Kelly " old editions, that is and dive deep in 
 him to discover, first, how many names of the 
 "private residents" and "commercials "tally with the 
 names of the "private residents" and "commercials" 
 who live in this village or that to-day ; and, second, 
 to learn anew the exact mileage between the most 
 outlying villages in the county and their nearest 
 railway-station and market town. The first inquiry 
 is sometimes rather sad, for in this roll-call of the 
 villages and hamlets so many once familiar figures 
 drop out between the editions. I must be very low 
 if the other inquiry fails to hearten me a little 
 There still are "Kelly" and the Ordnance map 
 prove it places in England, places within a hundred 
 less than a hundred miles of London, that are
 
 126 This Realm, This England 
 
 largely undiscovered. " Kelly " of a few years back 
 and the Ordnance map of to-day prove the argument 
 of tarpaulin, the carrier's cart on the hill, that England 
 has yet to be " opened up," " colonized," and put to 
 indignities of that kind. 
 
 It is in just such a bit of uncolonized England as 
 this that I set my small-holder, because it is there I 
 have known the type during a great part of my life. 
 "Kelly," a new edition or old, and the Ordnance 
 map show that there are still South Country villages, 
 to say nothing of hamlets, seven, eight, nine, ten 
 miles from the nearest railway-station and small 
 market town and this within sixty or eighty miles 
 of the world's railway terminus. Here, for example, 
 is one on the map which has a town and good station 
 eight miles over the hills to the south, and another 
 town and goods station eight miles over the hills to 
 the north. A neighbour village rivals it, being a good 
 nine miles of flint some of which still rolls down 
 the hills in winter from the nearest town, and 
 seven and a half from the nearest small station. This 
 is undiscovered England, to-day very much what it 
 was when railways came to the shire sixty or seventy 
 years ago or, indeed, long ere railways came. Here 
 is a third village of the same group on the map, six 
 full, hard miles from the town and station ; one may 
 put it on the border-line of the discovered and opened- 
 up, a village that looks on its more benighted neigh- 
 bour as a sort of outlander.
 
 Flint 127 
 
 These places can each show its small man in 
 land who has come out of absolute peasant depen- 
 denceout of, say, twelve shillings a week, with 
 hiring money at Michaelmas and a few allowances 
 at Christmas to the full pride of farmerhood. A 
 " magic in property " there may be, but the soil of 
 his native place, which charms a man upward out 
 of his native station, is more magical still. The soil 
 makes him drink water where his brother drinks beer 
 or spirit, deny himself any but the coarsest food and 
 clothing, sternly withhold from all luxury and relaxa- 
 tion. The soil sends him every week faithfully to the 
 village post-office to add to his minute savings there. 
 The soil makes him sweat from dusk till dark every 
 working day of his life. All that one day he may 
 rent two or three little fields with a little wood cow- 
 shed, or at most a small farm worked by a lean beast 
 and himself and his wife, and perhaps one village lad, 
 and contrive through every known device of saving 
 and toiling and haggling to make a living, not always 
 far bigger, not always far safer, than that of the 
 ordinary hired farm hand. 
 
 This is the small man in land, the earth's own 
 chosen small-holder, as we find him in these English 
 villages. They are villages often on the chalk, and 
 that chalk is always full of flint. I might dissociate 
 the man from the chalk, I could not from the flint. 
 Flint works up everywhere to the surface of road and 
 by-road, and to the surface of the fields. I have been
 
 128 This Realm, This England 
 
 told a flint grows like a live thing, and can hardly 
 doubt it. Gather together in heaps all the loose flints 
 of any size on one of these fields, let that field lie 
 fallow for a season or two, and behold the crop of 
 flints upon it is as large as ever ! And so through 
 a succession of years. I have seen fields .where one 
 could not see the soil for flints, yet a year or two 
 before the pickers had been at work men and boys; 
 and women, perhaps, with their babies in a go-cart 
 under the shelter of a hedge or rick and picked it 
 clean, so it seemed, of every stone of any size. 
 
 Trust a flint, however, to catch a flint. I watched 
 one of these small-holders of Nature work with his 
 women folk and children on about the flintiest field 
 I ever saw and I have seen some a four or five 
 acre field at the edge of a sloping wood, and it looked 
 as if to pick it clean for a crop they must take up the 
 very soil. It was the harvest of the flint. The women 
 filled their aprons and emptied on to the heaps that 
 grew up all over that field, and in the end came the 
 man and his cart, and all the heaps were made into 
 one. This was the sheep-shearer. 
 
 Next year I saw the place of stones again, and it 
 had turned the colour of gold.* 
 
 This is what men can do with the earth who were 
 
 born to it. The earth is in the blood of this type of 
 
 man, not merely in his skin. He must have been 
 
 soiled in youth. The earth is his element. It is not 
 
 * " Life and Sport in Hampshire," p. 247.
 
 Flint 129 
 
 particularly ours ; we only rent it or own it or build 
 on it, buy or sell it, theorize about it. 
 
 Imperceptibly from childhood up he has been gain- 
 ing and storing a very peculiar lore of the soil, its 
 temper, its taste a sour taste in some fields its 
 power to produce, its need of change. This small man 
 on flint has never read a book on farming. Very likely 
 he has never since he left school read anything but 
 the Bible on Sunday, and the local paper on Saturday 
 night. Yet, none the less that it has not been printed, 
 there is a whole book on land in his brain. 
 
 Never believe in the ignorance of these small men, 
 who, without any of the chemist's arts, can yet turn 
 flint to gold. 
 
 This minute, extremely careful science of the soil 
 got from a single parish, and applied to a few poor 
 acres, is no doubt a large part of the natural small- 
 holder's stock. Call it his Consols. But, if so, there 
 must be other gilt-edged securities of his holding. 
 The earth habit is a great thing, and without it the 
 hardest strivers in these fields will rarely get well 
 rooted. But strong character and habit is wanted, too, 
 for tackling flint ; a habit of ceaseless toil, a lifetime 
 of toil over trifles, and a lifetime of thrift. It is only 
 when the two join, earth habit and character the 
 character not so gracious always as one might wish 
 io find that the root gets a sure hold of the soil and 
 keeps it even through ill seasons. 
 
 Such in the rough is the successful small man on 
 
 9
 
 130 This Realm^ This England 
 
 flint. But even allowing for the full value of the earth 
 habit and strong character and the power of the two 
 together to win a living and freedom from the land, 
 there is a mystery sometimes as to the way the small 
 man started master. What did he take off from in his 
 leap from man to masterhood ? One has known cases 
 where the savings banked at the post-office could not 
 have been more than a few pounds when the small 
 man a carter, a carrier in a very small way, or a 
 woodman suddenly started farmer. In the latest 
 " Kelly " I find the names of two men who began 
 thus in the nineties. Both belong to the six to nine 
 mile group of villages. Neither had any money 
 capital worth the name, yet each started not on a 
 field and a pig or cow, but on a farm and farmhouse 
 complete. The man in the village nine miles from 
 town and station is a perfect example of the natural 
 small-holder in grit, in unending industry, in thrift, 
 in hard bargaining power, and in the minute homely 
 study of things that grow and soils that suit them. 
 He was born to begin on a pig and a paddock. But 
 he began on seven hundred acres, and he farms those 
 acres to-day. He seemed to go in on nothing, when 
 wheat was only worth growing for straw the time 
 in England when chaff was better than the grain ! 
 He and his brother, with a boy and a beast, worked 
 that land. I heard they lived on sainfoin, and there 
 may be more truth in the story than appears. But 
 they had no cattle, no sheep. It never was known
 
 Flint 131 
 
 how they got their plough and their cutter. How 
 they got their landlord is not so hard landlords 
 were not very shy of tenants in those days on the 
 flint. The thing is a mystery a romance of roots ; 
 but I incline to think that if they lived on sainfoin 
 when in, they worked their way in simply by force 
 of character. Character in a struggle like this is, after 
 all, a kind of capital, or equivalent of capital, which 
 the old dictionary maker defined as "a stocke, a 
 man's principall substance."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 DIPS 
 
 THE most undiscovered thing in hidden England 
 is the village shop. A mystery, a romance, clings 
 to it which began in cur childhood, and has not passed 
 away with many childish things. I never went into 
 a real old shop, the shop of all wares, in a real old 
 English village without a delicious sense of mystery. 
 By village shop I mean not a mere branch of universal 
 or national or international stores such as have been 
 started of late years in many, if not in most, large 
 English villages. These places, for what I know, may 
 sell just as good salt butter and American cheese 
 and bread and tinned salmon as the real place, and at 
 a halfpenny a pound less. 
 
 But they are not the village shop. As there are 
 Biblia abiblia^ so are there shops that are not shops 
 things in the village shop's clothing. 
 
 The difference in mystery between a branch of the 
 British and Continental Provision Stores (Limited) 
 and the, village shop, a shop that was bom and bred 
 in the village, and whose keepers were born and bred 
 in the village or, at least, whose keepers' forerunners 
 were is beyond reckoning. It is more than the differ-
 
 Dips 133 
 
 ence between the sense of mystery felt in a mosque 
 in Kairouan or Mecca and in a large, new Congre- 
 gational chapel in a growing English market town. 
 I mean no disrespect to the chapel, far from it, for the 
 life and fervour of these spiritual sects in our country- 
 side have long had a strong interest for me. But a 
 building like this a "new and handsome edifice," 
 as it would be styled in a local directory is so 
 physically without the sense of mystery : whilst I 
 have seen among wild Derbyshire hills the four plain 
 walls and the flat roof of some poor little Methodist 
 or Primitive chapel that abound in this sense. 
 
 Most things new and handsome especially "edi- 
 fices " and " residences " want mystery. Things 
 new and not handsome want it likewise ; and among 
 these is the yellow brick, be-windowed branch of 
 the Universal Provision Emporia, which came into 
 the hamlet with corrugated iron sheeting, and bunga- 
 lows made of deal and lined, I should say, with a 
 kind of baize or felt material. 
 
 It would be easy to find out everything the Em- 
 porium branch sells. It is quite likely that the place 
 has even a printed list of the things. The charm of 
 the true village shop is that nothing is inventoried 
 in it. I cannot in all my dealings with the proper 
 village shop recall being quite sure beforehand that 
 it did not sell something I wished to buy there. Of 
 course, there are certain things for which the thorough 
 village shop simply could not be drawn blank. No
 
 134 This Realm^ This England 
 
 one ever drew it blank who wanted dips. Dips would 
 do well for the coat-of-arms of a village shopman 
 who became ennobled, and, seeing the money which 
 some years since was to be made out of a first- 
 class shop of all wares in a large remote village, the 
 idea is not altogether fantastic. 
 
 A bundle of dips, hanging by their wicks from a 
 nail on the wall, is a feature of the true village shop. 
 One has known village shops where the smells of 
 dips, of bootlaces closely related to dips through 
 tallow of tanned gaiters, of corduroys, and of cheese 
 have been in constant rivalry. If dips and cheese have 
 it in one corner of the shop, corduroys have it in 
 another. The scent of corduroy in the somewhat 
 close air of an old village shop can be oppressive. I 
 never took to it, even at the village shop in the 
 days of faery. Dips and cheese, bootlaces and gaiters, 
 were much better. Dips fitted the stems of stable 
 lanthorns that we lit and took into mystic woods at 
 nightfall. There were three sorts of candles then, and 
 in spite of denials I say there are three to-day : 
 (i) wax, (2) composite, (3) tallow. Wax was draw- 
 ing-room, composite ordinary. How far finer was 
 tallow, being kept for out-of-door uses ! A gang of 
 poachers stole up the hanger one night and dug a 
 badger from its great bury there. They did it by dips. 
 I shall never forget the keeper showing me the drops 
 of heavy grease at the mouth of the burrow. The 
 scent of bootlaces was good, too, if only for the
 
 Dips 135 
 
 quality of those laces no base mohair there, but 
 thick, strong leather, cut square. They were for real 
 out-of-door boots, wood boots, boots for ferreting in 
 winter. The scent of gaiters made a like appeal. The 
 smell of cheese in a shop anywhere attracts me. It 
 can suddenly create hunger with a keen edge where 
 no hunger was. 
 
 Village shop cheese American very often is like 
 the rest. It is cut at the village shop precisely as cut 
 at the grandest shop or stores in London with a 
 plain wire, either end twisted round a little bit of 
 white wood. Restless human invention cannot im- 
 prove on this simplest of instruments the acme of 
 efficiency the first word, the last word in cheese- 
 paring. 
 
 I have sometimes thought I should like an hour 
 behind the counter, with a spotless apron and the 
 wire that cuts so fine and straight. I think I could 
 force through the toughest Dutch cheese. 
 
 I have known a fortune in thousands made out of 
 a village shop or two. Dips, not only the making 
 of them, but the selling of them over the counter of 
 Arcadia, can make a man safe in life ; insure him and 
 pension him without any aid from the State on the 
 contrary, in spite of the State. But it can only be 
 done by a zeal in mighty small things. Twice, more 
 than twice, Gilpin's ten tedious seasons might be 
 spent without a holiday worth naming. There can 
 be no leaping from the counter and till in this tor-
 
 136 This Realm, This England 
 
 toise race to fortune unless, of course, the fleet of 
 the poet's fancy really were to come " yonder round 
 by the hill," when our friend, who is not wanting in 
 patriotism, would strike with his yardwand among 
 the rest. This is a toil in trifles more trifling even 
 than those on which the small man in land must 
 concentrate. 
 
 It is the fortune that is founded from farthings. It 
 is a fortune in dips. 
 
 There are some things in England to-day too 
 cheap. I recognized this on going into a London shop 
 and asking for a pennyworth of safety matches, for 
 the packet was too large to go into my pocket. Now 
 this was never one of the evils which the village shop 
 business encouraged. Its customers are not made to 
 buy a surfeit of anything for a song. There is no 
 dumping dips upon them. Matches in Arcady are 
 bought and sold in discreet quantities for a discreet 
 sum. Thrift must be practised by the seller and the 
 buyer alike. This is the system that runs through all 
 the business of the true old-fashioned English village 
 shop. 
 
 How hard is the work of the worthy who rises to 
 fortune, through the shop, or to independence, which 
 is to many strong natures the crown of fortune, we 
 can realize if we consider the wide range of this busi- 
 ness in many villages. This man or woman is universal 
 provider. At the village shop we get not alone our 
 string, braces, wire for rabbit nooses, billhooks, to-
 
 Dips 137 
 
 bacco, crocks, blacklead, powder and shot for filling 
 cartridges, scythes, spades, hay-rakes, prongs, boots, 
 hats, clothes, drugs and sweetmeats, matches, butter 
 and tallow, soap and cheese, we get our daily bread 
 there. The best bread I have tasted and sometimes 
 the worse, too, it must be said has been baked in 
 the ovens of the village shop of all wares. Who would 
 touch bread made by steam or other base mechani- 
 cal means who instead could have bread baked in 
 those brick ovens that are or were heated by a 
 noble blaze of bavins ? 
 
 I have seen the splendid glow of the bricks red-hot 
 from that furnace which makes of big bavins a heap 
 of fine grey ash, an ash that seems to keep pure the 
 loaves set to bake on the bricks. It is a glow as fine 
 as the blacksmith's forge. There is a virtue in that 
 deliberate baking, a strength and a sweetness about 
 the crusty loaves, which I think they may know little 
 of who live on machine-made bread. Now, who ever 
 heard of the local depot of some British and European 
 Provision Emporium baking by bavins ? 
 
 Considering what the shop of all wares is to the 
 village its baker, its draper, its druggist, its grocer, 
 its tallow-chandler, its stationer, its confectioner, its 
 hatter, its leather merchant who can wonder that 
 the folk who carry on this business are often charac- 
 ters ? Think of their experience, of the life they must 
 see, every side of village life, in the course of the 
 season !
 
 138 This Realm, This England 
 
 Not everybody goes to the parson or squire or 
 Methody minister. Everyone goes to the shop of all 
 wares. 
 
 The place is a news agency. Gossip, a simple 
 necessity of life to village society, is business here, not 
 idleness. It is wrapped up in the parcels and handed 
 across the counter. 
 
 The man who keeps the shop of all wares can 
 minister not alone to the bodies of the inhabitants. 
 Is he not often a bright light in the chapel at Ebene- 
 zer-end ? he may hold the plate in church, and raise 
 his voice with the choir, his surplice whitest of all. 
 Needs of the body and needs of the spirit cannot be 
 separated in a village if anywhere on earth. It is a 
 narrow view that people like this can only work hard 
 in carnal matters. One of the hardest workers I knew 
 in this trade buried her husband in a corner of the 
 churchyard only a step or two from the wall and side 
 window of her shop of all wares. So she could keep an 
 eye on him during the rest of her life. Browning said 
 a man had two sides to his soul, one for the world and 
 one for his wife. This woman had two, an inseparable 
 two, one for the spirit and one for the shop.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FREE MAN 
 
 THERE is a princess in " Frederick the Great " 
 who would take a pinch of snuff on solemn 
 occasions for a protest against flummery. She was a 
 plain one who had meditated from of old on the 
 infinitely little. The man of all jobs, the handy man 
 of the English village, has concentrated from of old 
 on the infinitely little. Indeed, looking through my 
 gallery of the workers in our country life, I must 
 admit that they one and all are concentrated on the 
 little. They are heroes in what the grandiloquent 
 will regard as causes not at all heroic. The hurdler 
 engaged in chipping off odds and ends of hazel sticks 
 and in twisting bits of withy ; the carrier in at most 
 a jog-trot on the level and a crawl up and down the 
 hill ; the small-holder in piling little heaps of flint 
 and hoeing rows of little turnips ; the village shop- 
 man of all wares in doing up in scraps of waste- 
 paper such trifles as a slice or two of streaky bacon, 
 four dips valued at a penny, a coarse mug for tea 
 or small ale, a birch besom, or a bootlace for a clod- 
 hopper. 
 
 It must appear a niggard list to those who wish 
 139
 
 140 This Realm, This England 
 
 to swell on bold, large acts and fine ideas. There is 
 not a Jellaby in this gallery ; no one to " raise the 
 masses " at home or to go among the heathen abroad ; 
 no one to make a war or to stop it ; no one to theorize, 
 hold high argument, propound principles. True, 
 among these hard workers there is plain living, but 
 where, it may be asked, is the high thinking ? It 
 seems sure on the face of it that they are small- 
 holders in those ampler fields, their horizon being 
 just the nearest range of little English hills, an horizon 
 of home. Viewing the matter in this light one is 
 quite shocked by the mean limits which Nature sets 
 to the heroism of the hard workers of village life. 
 If one could only bring in some Robert Burns, even 
 some Bloomfield, for the sake of appearance, or a 
 village Hampden as a set-off against the village 
 hurdler ! 
 
 However, I draw some comfort from the common- 
 place of certain very prosy, true lines got somehow 
 by heart in early youth spent largely among these 
 village workers lines which tell how "little drops of 
 water, little grains of sand, make the mighty ocean 
 and the pleasant land." So nobility can be at work 
 after all in the infinitely little. Besides, I am fortified 
 by a rare and exquisite mind of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury : one that could not think a commonplace, and 
 valued the lesser engines above the great set Regie 
 Montanus's fly above his eagle. 
 
 To speak of a man as one who does odd jobs about
 
 The Free Man 141 
 
 the house or garden appears to be a kind of reproach. 
 We may think of hack-work ; or even strike com- 
 parisons between odd jobs and old clo' or the hawk- 
 ing of rabbit skins. Such a man, to those who have 
 not come across him in the countryside, that part of 
 it at least that still lies aloof from the power of the 
 town, may be thought of as a pariah, an outcast. He 
 is to them a mere casual hireling, living from hand 
 to mouth ; fit for nothing in particular, ready to pick 
 up a shilling out of anything that turns up. He be- 
 longs to no trade union, they conclude, and here 
 they conclude right. A union of odd job or handy 
 men of village life is unthinkable. Its forming would 
 defy the craftiest of all organizing brains. It would 
 be a flat contradiction in terms ; for does not odd 
 jobs imply no fixed hours, no fixed wage ? What 
 odd job man of mettle ever went into the overtime 
 question ? Any time he chooses is his time. 
 
 Whilst the world has odd jobs to do and odd 
 hands to do them the principle of individualism can 
 never be stamped out. The odd job, the handy man, 
 is all unconsciously that principle incarnate. I wonder 
 he has not been picketed. 
 
 People are right, then, who think that the man 
 of odd jobs has no union to keep the number of his 
 jobs within the bounds of law and order, but the 
 rest of their criticism is founded largely on prejudice. 
 There is no fair parallel between odd jobs and rabbit 
 skins. Nor is there anything in its nature debased or
 
 142 This Realm, This England 
 
 low about this calling, and the words "hireling" or 
 " hack-work " often very far from fit it. Among the best 
 types of manhood, full and independent, strong and 
 kind and true, I have met, including all classes and 
 workers by brain as well as workers by brawn, I often 
 recall with affection two men of odd jobs. One had 
 been a worker in the wood, the other in the iron, 
 way. After forty years of work in the even line, work 
 for a set wage at set hours, both changed into the odd 
 line. They had spared enough to indulge henceforth 
 in that one supreme luxury of every man reckoned 
 a man, the luxury of freedom. 
 
 Man is born free, the sentimentalist complained, 
 and everywhere he is in chains. The sentimentalist 
 forgot there could be no freedom worth the name 
 without chains. It is through gyves that freedom 
 is so good. Liberty which does not come from 
 battling through many years is a sweetmeat to 
 cloy. 
 
 These two men were born to chains, and lived to 
 free themselves by work. They had saved just enough 
 to face the future without daring it ; and henceforth 
 they turned their hands to any job in digging, mend- 
 ing fences and outhouses, lesser carpentering, lesser 
 building, road-making, tidying, that came their way. 
 It is surprising how many small tasks do come the 
 way of handy men like these in many a district 
 once they have proved their industry and skill. That 
 old tag about jack-of-all-trades and master of none
 
 The Free Man 143 
 
 took no account of the able man of odd jobs. Only 
 give this worker a paint-pot, some packing-cases, a 
 saw, and a hammer and nails, and he will make 
 something of nothing. 
 
 I had some packing-cases that were always in the 
 way. Wicked nails and splinters threatened all who 
 came near them. They would not be cut for fire- 
 wood and defied the chopper and the saw, and their 
 nails would not be drawn or hammered out. But 
 when the handy man took them in earnest they 
 grew into a good stout garden seat that has travelled 
 with me from one county to another. Nails were 
 coaxed out and straightened and driven in at fresh 
 spots, and vicious wood that had jarred and splintered 
 at my touch yielded as sweetly to the village handy 
 man as dry logs of ash-tree to the boidel and wedge. 
 Legs were fixed firm and a back against which one 
 could lean with safety, and can lean now after years 
 of use. 
 
 Finally came the paint-pot to make one white 
 harmonious whole. My handy man was a Heppel- 
 white in the rough. 
 
 It was the same whatever he set himself to do. I 
 can see him digging now. Anyone can dig after a 
 fashion, but he was one of the stylists with a spade. 
 It was as if a theodolite was in his spade or prong, 
 the soil lay so finely level when he had done with it. 
 He sowed and he planted and he clipped and he 
 mowed with the same nicety.
 
 144 This Realm, This England 
 
 It was much the same with the other handy man 
 from the hamlet : his home-made fences or wicket- 
 gates will last while the wood lasts. These men 
 handle the scythe as if they had been trained to mow 
 in the days before the machine-cutter became general 
 in England, yet very likely they never worked in 
 the fields as farm hands. They may never have 
 worked a full day in the wood in their lives, yet the 
 axe and the billhook fit into their hands as comfort- 
 ably as the fiddle into the hand of the violinist. It 
 is the same with all these simple tools of hand labour 
 the able man of the odd jobs can manage them 
 with the ease and confidence with which a fine 
 angler manages his rod and line or a professional 
 bowler the cricket ball. Yet how hard it is to 
 manage a scythe or an axe, which looks so easy, 
 many an athlete or sportsman bred to life in the open 
 knows well. 
 
 Not only handiness with the hand or skill with 
 the body marks these worthies of hard work. The 
 intelligence is something besides physical ; there is 
 headwork as well as handwork wanted for many of 
 the tasks which the man of odd jobs sets himself to 
 carry through. It is not showy intelligence, but one 
 has tested it often and proved it sound and enduring 
 in result. In an age when most people specialize, and 
 commonly are helpless one-armed or one-legged or 
 one-eyed outside their specialism these workers, 
 starting late in years as all-rounders, can yet excel in
 
 The Free Man 145 
 
 many little things that count. There is headwork in 
 this. Besides, men who have won, unaided and 
 shilling by shilling, the chief prize in the stern school 
 of the poor freedom, actual not theoretic must be 
 above the ruck in understanding.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 PRIDE, THE BIRDCATCHER 
 
 A FEATURE of most of these worthies of our 
 absolute English villages and hamlets is the way 
 they suit their environment. It might remind one of 
 the processes of natural selection among birds and 
 butterflies, a method of Evolution. The hurdler fits 
 into the oak wood like a tree ; the carrier and his cart 
 on the hill are part and parcel of the landscape. It is 
 the same with the small man in land who has founded 
 his own fortune, and with the hoer and with the hay- 
 maker they seem not to be mere figures on the 
 scene, they are of the scene. 
 
 There was a familiar fashion of art in early Vic- 
 torian times by which young ladies who made elegant 
 water-colour sketches were always taught to intro- 
 duce a picturesque human figure for a finishing touch. 
 The custom was as general as touching up and finish- 
 ing off the sky in the picture with a few short wavy 
 lines signifying a flock of birds in the distance, rooks 
 probably. This human ornament in the water-colour 
 sketch often took the shape of a gipsy in a woodland 
 path ; or sometimes of a group of gipsies busy about 
 a fire and kettle on a bit of common or roadside waste. 
 146
 
 Pride, the Birdcatcher 147 
 
 How well in the days of fae"ry we knew that kettle 
 and that gipsy, with her bit of gay colour ! It had 
 been framed long since and bore witness to the elegant 
 instruction of the young ladies of a generation or two 
 before ours. The exact opposites to these figures of 
 Victorian convention are the real earthy characters. 
 The hard workers of the hoe, the hurdle, or the hill, 
 bear no likeness to the water-colour gipsy in her bit 
 of finery, with the water-colour fire and kettle on the 
 common. Nature, not Art, put them in. There is 
 nothing picturesque about their setting. 
 
 Pride, the birdcatcher, fits into the Nature scene, 
 is of it, no less than the hurdler or the flint gatherer. 
 He happens to be a townsman in his dwelling-place, 
 but not the less through a great part of his working 
 life he belongs to a wild land and water scape. Pass- 
 ing one day through a dreary back street in the gloom 
 of snow drizzle I saw a crowd of pitiful creatures 
 surging round a tall man who held up some tickets 
 in one hand. In the crush he was driven forward 
 helpless till the police went in and brought him out 
 white, and short of breath it seemed. I asked an on- 
 looker whether it was soup tickets the crowd was 
 ravening for, but he said with a eavage snarl, " No, 
 it's the clappers, of course !" Clappers, or the boards 
 of the sandwichman. 
 
 Tom Pride, the birdcatcher, carries his clappers 
 too, a terrible heavy burthen of them sometimes 
 boxes, and cages, and stakes, and hammer, and nets
 
 148 This Realm, This England 
 
 for his six or eight mile struggle to and from the 
 saltings. These saltings are the no-man's-land of the 
 islet harbour. The whole of this flat sand and shingle 
 place is scourged for days and weeks at a stretch by 
 wind ; and near the flash or kench, where the saltings 
 lie, it blows often as fierce as anywhere on this islet 
 of ^Eolus. It blows during the winter and autumn 
 from all the quarters, and in a way which suggests 
 that the wind has an undying spite against men and 
 trees. 
 
 It is not only the black north and east that vent 
 this hatred. The south and south-west show it 
 through the tortured trees all along that low, bare, 
 shelterless coast more even than the other winds. It is 
 hard when on the islet to resist the idea at times that 
 in the wind is an evil spirit howling and whipping 
 viciously at every human being it can catch fairly in 
 the open. There surely must be hate in such a wind, 
 and the hate is reciprocated by the victims who will 
 exclaim against the wind aloud to themselves and 
 even curse it. 
 
 Often in the full lash of these winds the birdcatcher 
 is working and watching at the saltings for hours 
 together at his nets. The whole of the implements 
 must be carried on his shoulders from his home in the 
 town to the saltings, for there is not a friendly cottage 
 or shed at this lonely place where he can leave them 
 at night. The nets or traps with their decoys must be 
 constantly shifted from day to day, for what is mud
 
 Pride y the Birdcatcher 149 
 
 in the morning may be water ere night ; and a little 
 farther out on the harbour those gleaming flats where 
 purre and plover and redshank wade and whistle one 
 hour are deep enough sea a few hours later to suck 
 down and drown a strong swimmer. Stakes have to 
 be hammered in at dawn and pulled up before dark, 
 and all this work of trap and net laying will some- 
 times bring a paltry prize of only a few linnets, or 
 some greenfinches and other odd birds, casual visitors 
 at the saltings, that are scarcely worth carrying away. 
 
 Not every day, of course, wind or no wind, foils 
 the birdcatcher thus. There can be heavy hauls of 
 these nets as well as light. There are evenings when he 
 can shoulder his burden, a weight on the back and a 
 weight on the breast, and go home by way of the 
 ferry, light enough in heart, for that one day's work 
 has brought in a week's wage. Still, though linnets 
 so abound in England to-day, almost anywhere in 
 England, that any favouring day may bring in a good 
 prize of them, the birdcatcher's calling is not what 
 it was on the islet. For one thing, he has lost the gold- 
 finches : they are on the forbidden list to-day all 
 through the year, and goldfinches were once his 
 chief prize. If a flock settled on the saltings and the 
 decoys worked well he might carry home gold, in- 
 deed, that day. 
 
 A man is judged by the company he keeps, but 
 who shall judge him wisely by the calling he follows ? 
 
 There may be trades so pure in their environment
 
 150 This Realm, This England 
 
 and so innocent of hurt to any live thing that we can- 
 not think of a downright bad man following them all 
 his days. I could never imagine a good hurdler a bad 
 man. Work in a wood from dusk till dusk all through 
 the seasons of a man's life should at least tend to 
 strengthen and sweeten the worker. We can all agree 
 to that. But what of the calling that brings pain ? 
 The birdcatcher follows a trade like this. We have 
 been brought up to see in him a cruel if not down- 
 right bad man. We associate him, rightly, with nets 
 and nooses, with decoys, with limed twigs, and all 
 that sly device of a robber of liberty. What the 
 liberty of linnets means one may best understand by 
 going to the bird-fancier quarter of a great town and 
 seeing the prisoners fresh from the wild. 
 
 A birdcatcher, then, ought to be a bad one, yet 
 this man Pride is full of a tenderness and charity over 
 many things outside his harsh trade ; whilst for faith 
 in spiritual matters he might put to shame many 
 whose calling is that of the spirit. Tom Pride believes 
 in God. There never could be a doubt about it among 
 those who have talked to him whilst he is snaring the 
 linnets to whom a cage is all torment and terror, 
 and freedom to fly and to nest and to sing in the gold 
 gorse in spring the most exquisite joy known to a 
 living thing. Nor could anyone doubt who had heard 
 him hold forth in his chapel on Sunday, for the bird- 
 catcher is a deacon there. 
 
 Tom Pride believes. He takes Holy Writ as it is
 
 Pride, the Eirdcatcher 151 
 
 written. 'Those winged mysteries in divinity," he 
 might claim with Sir Thomas Browne, "and airy 
 subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains 
 of better heads, they never stretched thepia mater of 
 mine." There are no wingy mysteries for this bird- 
 catcher he long since clipped them. 
 
 He no more needs to set eyes on the Red Sea to 
 believe the miracle than Browne needed. He knows. 
 
 He knows that there was a tree with the fatal fruit, 
 though plants were not yet grown, and the gentle rain 
 had not yet fallen on the earth ; and he knows that 
 the serpent went upon its belly before the curse. 
 These things present no more difficulty or doubt to 
 him than the Work of the Fifth Day fowls that 
 fly above the earth, every winged fowl after its kind, 
 down to the linnets and finches which come to his 
 decoys and harsh nets spread on the islet saltings. 
 
 Tom Pride is strong on the word then, but he has 
 not stopped at the word. No one who knows his 
 manner of life, away from the nets and nooses, will 
 doubt that he can be strong in the act. Who ever 
 reported him, on his hard trudge home from the salt- 
 ings, to have entered the shop where they sell fire to 
 put out the cold within a man ? There is a long wait 
 sometimes at the ferry when the tide is rushing out 
 and the boat on the other side, and most of the 
 workers spend a few pence on fire fishermen and 
 wildfowl shooters, and even those forlorn, only half- 
 civilized creatures who search out some trifling shell-
 
 152 This Realm, This England 
 
 fish or crabs in the creeks and mud flats, the true 
 beachcombers of coast society. 
 
 The birdcatcher never tasted fire at the ferry. The 
 fire to quench his cold he kindles at the chapel on 
 Sunday. 
 
 All that is the hard, unyielding side of a man, 
 virtue but virtue with the sword and shield. He 
 wrestles in prayer, an intense believing prayer, much 
 as he wrestles with and throws the tempter. It is 
 moral rectitude : all men respect and all men get out 
 of the path of one who shines on this side alone. But 
 the birdcatcher has the spirit of charity besides the 
 spirit of combat. Dogs and children are drawn to him, 
 and there is a tenderness about this rough man where 
 many weak or suffering things are concerned. Per- 
 haps he puts the bird in the cage, as the old fisher 
 put the bait on the hook as though he cared for it. 
 Anyhow, here is the fact of a good man engaged all 
 his working years in a calling that seems nothing if 
 not harsh. It is one of the ironies of life from which 
 we cannot escape for long.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 GILES CHAWBACON 
 
 I CONFESS to a lifelong admiration for the least 
 refined figures of all in this gallery of the unre- 
 fined. It is impossible to deny the roughness, the 
 absence of refinement, spiritual, physical, in the 
 peasant mass of a country, those who are born and 
 live and die Clodpole and Giles Chawbacon. Arnold 
 divided the bulk of English people into three groups : 
 Barbarians, the aristocrats by birth and possession who 
 hunted, and fished, and shot ; Philistines, enemies of 
 his culture ; and Plebs, the body of the people. But 
 the absolute peasant, the field-worker who all his 
 days is hoeing, ploughing, or haymaking, deserves a 
 group to himself in any classing of the kind by the 
 superior people. Arnold might in that vein have 
 named this group the Brutes, in recognition of the 
 immense burthen of slow, patient work they support. 
 Barbarian, it appeared, was not chosen by him in 
 scorn, or for a reproach ; he admitted, I think, to a 
 certain sneaking kindness for the leisure and pursuits 
 of this class. Barbarian is a sort of debased word, 
 and so is brute often. Brute is, perhaps, a falsified term, 
 one of Trench's " immoral words," and need mean 
 '53
 
 154 This Realm, This England 
 
 nothing ignoble ; it can certainly stand for strength, 
 constancy, toil, and immense service to mankind. 
 These things on the whole we can claim with as- 
 surance for the plain field-worker of England, who 
 never rises above that station. 
 
 Flint, the small-holder on the chalk and sainfoin 
 fields, Tarpaulin the carrier, the skilled hurdler too, 
 the odd job man, the village shopman of all wares, 
 and Pride the birdcatcher, have been born or have 
 lifted themselves out of this class. The blacksmith 
 and the gamekeeper are equally clear of it. Anybody 
 who has mixed at all in village society knows well 
 that these callings give a man a higher rung on the 
 ladder which narrows always towards its top. 
 
 It is the swaying heights of the ladder, the fine- 
 tapered top, that give grace and beauty to the whole, 
 but the solid support and weight lie about the lowest 
 rungs. If that part gives the whole is flung. The bulk 
 and strength of this ladder of the English village world 
 is simply the English peasantry, that does not rise 
 above its own thick, lowly rung so close to the earth. 
 
 Some people to-day would like to alter this. They 
 wish to have the ladder the same size all the way 
 up ; whilst others speak and write as if they would 
 like to pull down the ladder, set the heavy end upper- 
 most, and try how that worked. But the worker him- 
 self, the man on the spot, has usually little faith in 
 plans like these. He knows the ladder of life must 
 taper from the coarse end to the fine. I was reminded
 
 Giles Chaw bacon 155 
 
 lately of a true example of this in a remote spot in 
 the wild land of combe and hanger. An old friend of 
 mine rode to the market town in the carrier's cart for 
 the first time, and at the foot of the great hill of roll- 
 ing flint he was ready to get out and walk with his 
 fellow passengers, plain field folk. But Tarpaulin, the 
 carrier, firmly waved him back to the bench. 
 
 " No !" said the carrier. "Quality drives t' others 
 walk." 
 
 The unrefinement of the absolute field-worker 
 the worker below the carter, far below the shepherd 
 is what no one can doubt for a moment. It is stark. 
 Not the most Philistine of Arnold's Philistines was 
 farther from culture, from the sense of the beautiful, 
 than the solitary worker in our fields of old-fashioned 
 farming England in the south, the turnips, the sain- 
 foin, and the corn. Yet by a curious kind of paradox 
 nothing in the landscapes of that land of lovely land- 
 scapes makes a surer appeal to the aesthetic sense in 
 us than those same farm-workers. 
 
 Millet, a giant, may have got the French field- 
 worker on to his supreme canvases, but no one has 
 ever shown us in art the plain English field-worker. 
 Artists often idealize the mower and the group, 
 England-old, in the haymaking field : the English 
 artist who can realize the mower and that haymaking 
 act has not yet been born. At most the drama of it 
 can be presented in a pretty or picturesque light. The 
 nobility of the toil, the sense of immense age and
 
 156 This Realm, This England 
 
 weight and force about it, and the mystery of it, 
 seem to defy all art. The art of the engraver, perhaps, 
 comes nearer to realizing something of the sombre- 
 ness and mystery of this drama of heavy toil than 
 the art of the painter, monochrome suiting the sub- 
 ject better than the glow or brilliancy of colours. 
 But it comes only a very little nearer. The effect is 
 never really fortunate. There seems to be no escap- 
 ing the pitfall of presenting the workers in a senti- 
 mental light or in a brutal or in a banal one. 
 
 Is it not much the same in literature ? Robert 
 Burns, a giant like Millet, shows the cottar of the 
 North no doubt very near to Nature, and Shake- 
 speare's songs show the lighter side of the peasant 
 of his time. But I know of nothing else that is 
 supreme. Smart might have done it had his genius 
 turned that way. Gray was too soft and Crabbe too 
 grim, whilst Bloomfield and on the whole Clare 
 were tame. 
 
 Richard Jefferies' story of John Brown the mower 
 who stumbled one day and ended at the lintel of his 
 cottage is perhaps the most moving thing in modern 
 print about this field-work. It is finely felt and true 
 and alive, but it is only a few lines touching one 
 phase. John Brown the mower stumbled and fell just 
 in time, for soon afterwards the scythe ended, and 
 before the Eighties were out it had ceased to be one 
 of the symbols of immense physical labour in the field. 
 To-day, of course, it is hardly more significant than
 
 Giles Chawbacon 157 
 
 the flail or the reaping-hook. It is fast degrading into 
 a picturesque thing. One is glad to be able to recall 
 great fields of heavy swishing corn going down before 
 the rhythm of mowers. I recall a particular field of 
 wheat going down in the swinking heat : one can 
 realize somewhat the force and weight of the work 
 in that field on the hillside after so many years. 
 Machines are very good in the fields. It is all wrong 
 to imagine they take from the excellence of land- 
 scape : they add to it ; yet I think England lost some- 
 thing great in losing the work of the scythe there 
 was a test of immense endurance in it. 
 
 However, a test of the kind, if not quite its equal 
 almost its equal, is in other forms of field-work. 
 Sometimes, but not often, it breaks down the most 
 seasoned and weather-proof of the workers. Great 
 heat at the close of summer can hit terribly hard at 
 those who toil hour after hour in the open. From 
 shelter and under trees by the stream I have watched 
 with wonder the hoer at work in the roots through 
 the fiercest hours of the afternoon, when the leaves 
 of the turnip or swede drooped under the stroke of 
 the sun. 
 
 In the miry lanes and heavy soils of December and 
 onward the feat of English workers shows, too, an 
 almost equal endurance to that of the mower. To 
 be up at dark and driving the plough till dusk on 
 some soils, in hard weather or sodden, can be a test 
 of manhood equal perhaps to that old one "of 'the
 
 158 This Realm, This England 
 
 mower at his prime. One knows this by watching the 
 plougher jolting through the furrow of heavy soil 
 that has been touched overnight by a sharp frost. 
 Work with the wain and at the ploughshare in dark 
 and dank, and with the hoe in the burning heat 
 that is the main part of the life of the plain field 
 hand, the rank and filer. 
 
 It appears to be a kind of Homeric battling from 
 year's end to year's end with the elements, with sun, 
 frost, rain, wind, and with winter mud and summer 
 dust dust in the turnip-field and dust of the hay- 
 pook. 
 
 But the whole life of these field-workers, pure and 
 simple, is elemental. It is life shorn of nearly every- 
 thing that is not elemental. Here we are down at the 
 few root necessities of human life. Coarse victuals 
 such as a hunk of bread and cold, greasy bacon, and 
 a large clasp knife to eat them with ; drink in a jar 
 or tin can ; shelter and sleep at night ; some clothing 
 to shield the worker from the wind and rain and sun, 
 and if thought at all for to-morrow, none whatever 
 for the day after this is the part of the plain field 
 hand's life that is not work. 
 
 Put the two together, the work and the wage of 
 the work, and the sum total really is a life elemental- 
 plain. It is something to shame us out of all amiable 
 notions about living " the simple life." Sandals and 
 caravans, and doing without servants and two 
 ordinary workman's cottages knocked into one
 
 Giles Chawbacon 159 
 
 these cannot stand the comparison. \\ alt Whitman's 
 poetry appears suspiciously like art when contrasted 
 with this life of the clouted shoon to-day in our 
 midst ; and a little varnish may be perceived on 
 Thoreau's own cedar-wood pencils.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE TRUE WATER-DIVINER 
 
 THERE are figures I could not for a moment 
 separate in thought from the scenes in which 
 they work. Environment is sometimes almost the 
 man. A child's natural surroundings, sky and hill and 
 wood and water, can play a great part in making 
 character, perhaps not less than training and heredity. 
 How fine in Wordsworth's "Excursion" is that open- 
 ing passage about the shepherd boy among the wild 
 woods and hills of Athol, and how the foundations of 
 his mind were laid in that communion, " not from 
 terror free " ! Minds like this, with their fine sensi- 
 bility to the scenes and changing moods of Nature, 
 may be rare among the English peasantry our South 
 Country peasantry at least but who can doubt that 
 these things do influence some of our hard workers 
 in the woods and fields and on the great billowy 
 downs ? No one disputes the power of the sea over 
 the mind and disposition of many rough people whose 
 -work is on the coast, and the downs and marshes 
 and wild woody places may likewise be potent in this 
 as the sea. The wood reeve and the water-bailiff, 
 who spend the whole of their working lives in lonely 
 1 60
 
 The True Water-Diviner 161 
 
 spots, must often be as steeped in the spirit of the 
 great Nature that lies about them as are the fishers 
 and coast-workers in the spirit of the sea. 
 
 It is this one has in thought when saying that no 
 good hurdler, working all his days in a great wood, 
 can be wholly a bad man. The genius of the place, 
 the strength, and rest, and sweetness of all things 
 around, must work within him, however little con- 
 scious he may be of it. 
 
 Natural surroundings can effect the water-bailiff not 
 less than the shepherd on the downs or the wattle 
 hurdler in the wood, when not his work alone, his 
 home too, is on the marsh or river common. The 
 prevailing note of the South Country river, with 
 large beds of reed and bullrush, where it widens on 
 the flats and draws in little streams and springs from 
 lesser valleys, is one of mystery ; and that note is in 
 the life of the worker. Even broad daytime can be 
 mysterious among swampy meadows and osier beds. 
 The evenings and nights are made of mystery there. 
 The lights and shadows on the water and on the 
 swampy spots, the voices of the water and marsh 
 fowl, grebe and mallard and moorhen and red shank 
 and snipe and rail sharming, drumming, laughing, 
 shrieking, whistling voices and the flames of sun- 
 sets and the great lulling star scenes on dewy nights 
 never lose their strangeness. 
 
 It is wrong to think that we want immense ex- 
 tents of land and water for mystery. Most familiar
 
 1 62 This Realm, This England 
 
 and "tame" landscape in homely English country- 
 side has it in abundance. The scene on the water- 
 bailiff's river and common in December, soon after 
 sundown, when on a clear evening Orion's suns are 
 lit and pulsing intensely in the south over the little 
 reedy swamp of the water-rails, can hardly be dwarfed 
 in this by any scene of great spaces in an uninhabited 
 country. 
 
 The water-bailiff should live by the water not 
 less than the gamekeeper in the wood. This man I 
 have in mind is hardly ever out of the swamp. After 
 a wet summer or autumn, or after a white winter, 
 his cottage floor is often under water. It is the out- 
 lying cottage of the outlying hamlet, where in some 
 seasons not one cottage, not the inn, and not the farm- 
 house, is really dry. The founders of the hamlet, 
 some time between Alfred's and the Conqueror's 
 time, chose to plant themselves a foot or so above 
 the summer level of the streams and springs and flush 
 with the winter level, though by going a hundred 
 yards or so farther from the marsh they could have 
 grounded themselves high and dry for all time. The 
 castle on the hill, the church on the knoll, the city by 
 the big river ; but the hamlet right down in the 
 hollow often, or level with the swamp. 
 
 Perhaps they set their hamlet at the edge of the 
 river marsh for health. Certainly it is many years 
 since the mud and plaster cottage, with the reed- 
 thatched roof, was without its tenants ; and the
 
 The True Water-Diviner 163 
 
 tenants there livelong. I seem to remember hearing 
 there wasasuccession of them in thisand the neighbour 
 cottage, each of whom was far in his or her seventies 
 or eighties before the end came. They died of a 
 fatal complaint in those parts old age. Many of the 
 hamlet folk hamlets on the hills, hamlets in the 
 hollows have a name for nearly every disease that 
 flesh is heir to the name "rheumatics." "Thehead- 
 ache" is rheumatics. It is "i* the nerve," as one of 
 these workers explained to me, and therefore is 
 the " rheumatics." It twists the hands and feet out of 
 all shape. It crooks the body, so that the carriage of 
 a great knitch of birch underwood stuffed with chips, 
 or a bavin of heavy, thick oak and hazel, from the 
 copse, up and down hill may be an easier burthen 
 than it looks to a straight-backed man. The disease 
 pricks and burns and chills. Still, they die not of 
 rheumatics, but of being over eighty. 
 
 They often begin with the rheumatics which 
 might seem to be almost a prophylactic against disease, 
 seeing how it includes the aches of so many diseases 
 in early middle age. The water-bailiff, with all his 
 strength and endurance, has it already. Waterproof 
 a man from head to foot, he yet must have the rheu- 
 matics if he works and lives in the river swamps and 
 commons. There is no waterproofing " the nerve." 
 
 A man out from dawn to dusk every day of the 
 year in a place like this should, we imagine, be a 
 natural historian. What may he not know of the birds
 
 1 64 This Realm^ This England 
 
 and the small beasts that at one season or another, or 
 throughout the seasons, inhabit the banks of the 
 streams, the osier and reed beds, and the bits of dry 
 gorse common that rise clear of the water ? Yet these 
 men often have little lore of the kind. The larger 
 features of Nature, the solemn moods and mysteries 
 of these marsh and river scenes, do touch them, how- 
 ever little they may know it. But there the intimacy 
 with Nature often ends. The whole of this man's 
 working life is summed up in the word " trout." 
 
 Trout is victuals, drink, clothing, and housing to 
 the water-bailiff. He is a specialist, and this is his 
 branch of Nature and of history. 
 
 To know the trout is first and foremost to know 
 the water, and this man's knowledge of the water is 
 like the natural small-holder's peculiar lore of the 
 land. Most people, even those who live within the 
 sight and sound of running water, and rejoice greatly 
 in it, know next to nothing of its ways. They know 
 when a flood comes, and they may notice sometimes 
 if the stream is flowing foul. To all the finer, subtler 
 changes of a clear running water that is ever chang- 
 ing they are blind. But the water-bailiff notes from 
 day to day, and perhaps several times in the day, the 
 smallest changes in the flow and level of the stream. 
 It rises an inch or falls an inch or less in the course 
 of the morning or afternoon, and he knows it at a 
 glance. Faintest signs on the stems of reed or bull- 
 rush or willow herb or other river plant serve for
 
 The True Water -Diviner 165 
 
 sure and exact measures to him. His constant study 
 is with things that concern the flow of water, dams 
 and mills and carriers and hatches. 
 
 He has an eye for the watermarks of a stream 
 that an expert at Threadneedle Street has for the 
 watermarks of a Bank of England note. It is the 
 troutkeeper, not the magician with the hazel wand, 
 who is the true water-diviner. 
 
 The old sense of spoor and stalk is not quite gone 
 out of everyday human life and use, and may not have 
 gone with the last of the American Indians and the 
 African hunters hunting for livelihood. It lives to- 
 day in these men who watch in our own little English 
 woods and by the trout streams. The water-bailiff's 
 work is to watch the waters for the least signs of the 
 enemy as it is the woodkeeper's work to watch the 
 soil. The enemy of enemies is the fresh-water shark. 
 It seems beyond the wit of man to root out pike and 
 jack in a trout stream once they have flourished there. 
 The pike is like the sparrow and the rat. The pike 
 might make us believe in that old faith of spon- 
 taneous generation, or at least in the theory that out 
 of pickerel weed come pike. Many think they can 
 see into clear water. But if they spend a day by the 
 clearest of waters with this man they know better. 
 The water-bailifPs eye will find a jack where no jack 
 was. With his wire and pole he has thrown hundreds 
 of pike and small jack in a few seasons which the 
 trained eye of an angler missed. A pike when it finds
 
 1 66 This Realm, This England 
 
 itself watched will sometimes fade into deep water or 
 weeds, but the illusion cannot cheat this watcher with 
 the wire. He has an eye, too, for the heron in the 
 sky which a swallow has for a hawk. He never missed 
 the spoor of an otter on the mud or sand of the river 
 bank. 
 
 The water-bailiff differs in one matter from most 
 of my other worthies. He is the hired man, the 
 dependant. He differs from Tarpaulin the carrier, 
 and from the man of all jobs, and from the man of 
 all wares. Where they go free through serving 
 many, he is bound through serving one. Even those 
 humblest of workers, the mole-catcher and the rabbit 
 skin hawker, taste more of the luxury than he : the 
 lowlier, the more luxury it is one of the paradoxes 
 of freedom. Taking livery, this watcher of the trout 
 did doubtless in some degree forgo a liberty of sorts. 
 But the luxury can be bought too cheap and at the 
 wrong market altogether. Everyone who knows 
 anything of the world of the village knows that 
 loafing sometimes passes for liberty. The hired man 
 of outdoor English life is often one of the best of all 
 these hard strivers. England is what it is in no small 
 degree through the trusty serving man.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 BAKKY BERKSHIRE 
 
 THE first man I remember seeing in a smock, and 
 the one man in real working life I can to-day 
 distinctly picture in a smock, was Bakky Berkshire. 
 The smock in the land where I was bred about ended 
 with Bakky. It might almost have died of ridicule 
 through him. A book, named Akerman's "Wiltshire 
 Tales," which held the sayings of a certain Wiltshire 
 moonraker, William Little, was printed some sixty 
 years ago by Russell Smith, in Soho Square. It was a 
 little classic of its kind, a classic of Clodpole, and 
 deserved to live on and be reprinted far better than 
 prouder books that have overwhelmed the author, 
 John Yonge Akerman, in the gross competition of 
 literature. Having known Bakky Berkshire in my 
 childhood, I know how entirely true to life were those 
 sketches and stories about William Little and others. 
 Bakky was a country clown. I doubt if anyone is 
 now living who could pick this strange creature's 
 grave out of the rows of nameless mounds at the old 
 burying-place of the village. (Those nameless ones 
 having grown so thick in the churchyard that the 
 bones began to push up at a new burying, they took 
 167
 
 1 68 This Realm, This England 
 
 in a plot from the next field.) Nature alone keeps his 
 grave green ; it is Nature's pleasantry to keep greenest 
 graves that are most nameless and unknown. But, 
 though no one can call to mind to-day exactly where 
 Bakky Berkshire was put away, there must be still a 
 good many folk in those parts who can tell a tale at 
 his cost. Bakky, indeed, was a butt for every wit in 
 that group of remote villages. 
 
 I have tried to sketch the barest outline of him in 
 a story of the race-course of Wildmoor,* which was 
 done away with because it encouraged local betting 
 and horseplay. But how much greater was the fact of 
 Bakky than any fiction of him could be ! I was a little 
 part of Bakky's life when he was in his prime; and I 
 bird's-nested and ferreted and shot and gloriously idled 
 with garden boys and keepers' sons who were full of 
 stories of him and sayings by him. If I had only kept 
 a faithful record of Bakky, I know it would be a thing 
 to hoard and treasure now. The man was an original. 
 He was somehow secure, had been rapt away from 
 influences which sap individuality. If he had ever been 
 inside a school, which I doubt, he had not unlearnt 
 there any of the odds and ends of early years and en- 
 vironment which it is the business of "Education " 
 to clear right away. There was not an atom of com- 
 pulsory Greek in Bakky. He had no more been refined 
 than he had been forced. 
 
 I never heard who for sure was his father or his 
 
 * "The Welsher " in "The Leaning Spire."
 
 Bakky Berkshire 169 
 
 mother, or in which of the group of hill and hollow 
 hamlets he was born. But he seems to have been wild 
 from an early age. He could not read or write a word. 
 He made a cross for his name if called upon to sign. 
 The sign of the cipher would have been fitter than 
 the sign of the cross, for in all branches of learning 
 or scholarship he did stand for zero. All he knew he 
 knew through Nature. 
 
 Bakky seems to have had no revealed religion. He 
 was a pure pagan. He was one of the heathen whom 
 in middle life no missionary could ever have really 
 touched. Had he been caught in early childhood in 
 his wilds, there was, perhaps, no reason save his 
 obstinacy why he should not have been converted ; 
 and the soil of the man's soul being virgin soil it 
 might, who knows, have grown a crop of good acts. 
 In all the stories of that countryside told against the 
 clown I do not think there is one that points to any 
 deed of sheer ill-nature by him. In his cunning was 
 no malice. But his obstinacy was a bar which, I think, 
 no missionary could have broken through. No reason- 
 ing could shake him. 
 
 He had managed to save a small sum out of his 
 earnings as cowman, pig and poultry attendant, and 
 from other lowly callings ; and when an aunt or 
 sister died for he seems to have had obscurely a few 
 obscure relations outside the neighbourhood and 
 left him a hundred pounds his mistress begged him 
 to put the whole into the savings bank at the village
 
 170 This Realm, This England 
 
 shop. But Bakky scoffed at the idea. Put it in a little 
 shop like that ? A pretty plan, indeed ! And how was 
 he to know that they would not make off with it ? 
 Why, the whole shop and stock were scarce worth 
 a hundred pound ! He was told that, if the shop 
 went, the State remained. But no assurance could 
 assure him. 
 
 A crafty old dog will scrape a hole in the ground 
 and bury the bone which he does not want to eat 
 at the moment, Bakky had the natural animal craft. 
 He made up his mind to bury his bone. He put it 
 into a bag and scraped a hole in the thatch and there 
 hid it. But a thief came one day when Bakky was 
 away from the cottage where he rented his room 
 and stole it all. A little later the village shop that 
 stood for the savings bank was broke too, and the 
 owners did actually make off with the till. What 
 foresight in folly was Bakky's ! It must have been 
 ordered that this child of Nature should never be 
 won over to the way of man. 
 
 The loss of a fortune will beat down many men 
 in a station past all measure above that of Bakky 
 Berkshire and his type type which still lingers and 
 crops up here and there in England to-day. It did 
 not overthrow this man for a moment. He was at 
 his daily round, smocked and in his right mind, an 
 hour or two after the loss was discovered, and when 
 every tongue but his was full of it. The loss of the 
 fortune left him as the gain of it had found him,
 
 Bakky Berkshire 171 
 
 with only this difference it left him a little craftier 
 and a little more obstinate ; had a second fortune 
 come to him, he would have chosen quite another 
 hole in the thatch, and have been a good deal more 
 secret in the hiding of his treasure. 
 
 Whatever he had done with it there would have 
 been no weak resort to the State. Bakky knew too 
 much about the State after his shrewd suspicion as 
 to the soundness of the village savings bank had been 
 borne out. Besides, in that very neighbourhood at 
 that time there was another object lesson in the risk 
 of dealing with the State. A field hand, rummaging 
 one day among the great barns on the chalk down 
 above the village, lit on a pot full of gold pieces. He 
 put them by in dull excitement till his working week 
 was done, then walked eight miles into the market 
 town, and sold them to the goldsmith. They were 
 good spade guineas of the eighteenth century, and 
 with them he bought a gold watch and chain. One 
 or two guineas he kept and fixed to the chain, but 
 they glittered so brightly that the State came right 
 down into that hamlet and there was a great ado 
 about treasure trove. So the watch and chain went 
 back to the goldsmith, and another fortune was lost 
 to World's End. 
 
 All the people there had laughed at Bakky Berk- 
 shire for thinking so little about his gold that he did 
 not take it to the State for safe keeping. Now they 
 could laugh at the other man who had thought so
 
 172 This Realm, This England 
 
 much about his gold that the State came down and 
 took it away from him for safe keeping. 
 
 Bakky was no braggart. Before he lost his fortune, 
 through the thatch being too thin, he had never, like 
 that vain finder of treasure trove, thought of wearing 
 it on his waistcoat. He had not spoken a boasting 
 word about it. A certain added cunning to his stock 
 of cunning was the only change about him one could 
 mark. Bakky was all animal, and this cunning and 
 mule-like obstinacy were his chief traits. Deeper in 
 his nature was a third quality which only appeared 
 at a crisis. To the cunning of the dog over its victuals 
 he joined the faith of the dog in its master. 
 
 The loss of his bone never dazed him. But the loss 
 of his mistress utterly confounded him. He had long 
 had charge of the key the " kay " he called it of 
 the cowhouse ; and, while he had it, there was no 
 getting rid of him for acts of gross disobedience all 
 caused by the mule and hog in his strange nature. 
 The key was hung up by Bakky each evening at the 
 close of his work on a nail under the thatch of the 
 cowhouse. At length his mistress took down the key 
 herself, and put it in her pocket. That ended him. 
 Round and about the place next day he wandered, 
 searching under the thatch, trying every rusty nail, 
 and asking where was the " kay " of the cowhouse ? 
 All his life was on that nail. He left the place after 
 this, and I cannot recall seeing him again. Perhaps 
 like the worker bee, whose hive has been moved 
 whilst it is out, he should have died in the evening.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THE WORKING ENGLISH FARMER 
 
 GOING to Cornwall I missed the Camelford 
 train at Okehampton and had to stay the night 
 there. Next day, after a walk on Dartmoor, I went 
 into the old White Hart Inn. It was market day, but 
 lunching early I found only one man at the board. 
 Though not a giant in stature, he had the thews of 
 Anakim. The whole of him bespoke the knit perfec- 
 tion of manhood, and a certain vibrant force that 
 recalls my old shooting friend Barehills, who farmed 
 chalk and flint on the sainfoin downs. I began to talk 
 to my companion, and soon found him a true man in 
 head and heart as well as in build. He told me of his 
 grass and clover hopes and fears, and of the nature 
 of the soil and lie of the land in that part of England ; 
 and in exchange I told him of our downs and clear, 
 slow streams in the meadows. He spoke well and in 
 good English, and had an eye and thought for land- 
 scape. But what after a while chiefly interested me 
 about the man was the way he dealt with food. A 
 great cold pasty was on the board between us, dis- 
 closing, when a portion of the lid was raised, ex- 
 cellent meat and gravy. He laid to, as we talked, and 
 '73
 
 174 This Realm, This England 
 
 I felt a mean thing paltering with a bit of stale bread- 
 and-butter and a scrap of meat whilst he did his duty. 
 There was nothing coarse in the way he ate and 
 drank ; no sign of surfeit at the close of the meal 
 when he rose and bid me good-day, and went briskly 
 into the market to buy or sell. There was just the 
 glow of perfect animal health : soundness in head, 
 hand, and heart of an English farmer. 
 
 This man was no doubt above the average of his 
 class, in mind and body alike, but I know that I have 
 not to go far on a market day in an English farming 
 town, or search curiously, to find the type. Is there 
 any vainer criticism of a whole class than that which 
 decries the English farmer as one who has failed, and 
 merely cumbers the land, and should be thrust out 
 to make room for hairbrained Socialism ? The thing 
 strikes me as a jest without point to it. Those who 
 insist on taking the jest gravely, and believing im- 
 plicitly in the paper, could be cured if they chose. 
 They need not travel so far as the White Hart at 
 Okehampton. If they live in London they can go 
 down on market day to almost any small farming 
 town in Wiltshire or Berkshire, where the main crop 
 still is corn and the meat mutton. The man of sense 
 -or the man of feeling has only to sit down at the 
 "ordinary" or go into the market to watch the 
 bargaining, or later in the day return in the evening 
 train for a few miles with a party of these fathers of 
 the soil he will find his scorn for the working
 
 The Working English Farmer 175 
 
 English farmer even in the most old-fashioned farm- 
 ing districts already modified. It is impossible to sit or 
 travel for an hour or so with these worthies without 
 finding they have some of the great essentials of man- 
 hood. I know little enough about the right order of 
 crops, about roots and corn and grass and fallow, but 
 I reckon a hard English farmer's talk about these 
 things, still more his sheep talk, very well worth hear- 
 ing. It stimulates and refreshes, being full of the true 
 stuff of knowledge, hard original experience. An 
 argument between these men gets right down at the 
 root of things. 
 
 One can learn more about sainfoin and swede by 
 listening to half an hour's argument at the ordinary, 
 or in the evening train between the market town and 
 the village four hundred feet on the North Downs, 
 than by studying half a dozen scientific or botanic 
 handbooks. The real handbook is in the man who 
 draws a living for himself and circle from flinty 
 fields and bare windy downs, where four inches below 
 the surface is white rock ; who fights ill seasons some- 
 times by the series, and always the chance of wheat 
 falling below thirty shillings. I know this, because I 
 was constantly with these men when corn was below 
 twenty-five, and can recall a week when it came down 
 to seventeen shillings and ninepence a quarter in my 
 own country. 
 
 If they turn to the theme of sheep as they are 
 sure to turn you must recognize then that you never
 
 176 This Realm, This England 
 
 knew before what a ewe was : it is a strange beast to 
 you, like the okapi or the armadillo about which you 
 have only a little second or thirdhand knowledge 
 through travel books. 
 
 The idea that the working farmer in these ordinary 
 soils that grow bread and milk and mutton is an un- 
 knowing man in soils and crops, slow-witted and pig- 
 headed, is a strange, absurd delusion. He is at school 
 all day long, the great school of the open, with the 
 elements as teachers that simply never relax. 
 
 But a better thing than the intimate lore of plants 
 and beasts a lore, in many of these men, large and 
 exact in detail is the character of the farmer of the 
 downs whom one meets at the ordinary or in the 
 market square on Friday or Saturday. All through 
 crises of fortune, which in most callings shake and un- 
 nerve men more or less, a fair example of a working 
 farmer keeps a good heart. It is the same through a 
 long drought that threatens to leave him with no keep 
 for his cattle, as through spells of wet at hay-time and 
 harvest. Either means a heavy loss on the year to him 
 if it lasts a week or so longer, often downright ruin. 
 Yet he shows none of that fever and fret that are 
 common to other callings to-day. He taps the glass 
 once a day when many of us must be tapping it at 
 each hour. 
 
 I think anyone who truly knows our ordinary kind 
 of working farmer in his everyday life must agree he 
 is not a man on wires. Through a crisis for his crops
 
 The Working English Farmer 177 
 
 he can talk with friend or stranger equably enough 
 about matters other than the supreme matter to him. 
 It is a good thing for a country to have a large body 
 of men who are not on wires even at the crisis of 
 their fortune. It is gold reserve, bullion, at the bank 
 of a nation's manhood. 
 
 The type of man I have had in thought is the corn 
 and hay and sheep farmer on ordinary or light land, 
 who works anything from, say, three or four hundred 
 to a thousand acres. He was very likely born and bred 
 on the land, and may have followed his father in the 
 very holding he works to-day. The " second genera- 
 tion " falls away from merit, we know too well, in 
 many a calling ; often it is burdened too heavily with 
 a capital which it had no part in making ; besides, it 
 seems that character, like genius, can exhaust itself in 
 a generation where the output has been large. No 
 doubt the next generation does fail at times in this 
 calling of the earth as in the industries of city life, and 
 in art, and pure intellect, and invention. But I think 
 that, if we could go deep enough into the fortunes and 
 failures of families, we should find that good man 
 more often follows good man in this way of life than 
 in the more artificial callings. 
 
 Does it not really appear as if there were some 
 secret virtue in the soil, which can pass into those 
 who have been long and closely in touch with it ? 
 
 This striving man of sheep and corn has two sides 
 to his soul, like my friend in the shop of all wares,
 
 178 This Realm, This England 
 
 and on first thought they seem to conflict somewhat. 
 One part of him is given up to the study of the earth 
 and growing things ; the other to hard-fisted bargain- 
 ing in and out of the markets. The man who through 
 his calling, simplest, eldest, and nearest of all to 
 Nature, might seem the securest from competition, 
 yet lives in its constant clash ; and if he fails in that 
 ordeal he must go under, however well he knows and 
 treats the soil. 
 
 A good farmer must be a hard bargainer. It is not 
 a happy thought for those who desire something like 
 the man in Pope's lines who lives the self-contained 
 life, supplied with his own food and fuel, and fleeces 
 for his homespun, by his own piece of ground. But 
 there is no escape from it. In the minute attention to 
 the nature and need of soils and the growth of green 
 things, the working farmer reaches up to the idealist; 
 in the plain plenty of his food, too, in the fostering 
 of his flocks, in the life in the open in all weathers 
 and seasons, and often in the site and simplicity of 
 his home. But at this point Utopia ends; for the 
 farmer must leave the world of Nature and come 
 down to do battle in the world of men. A dreamer 
 may deplore the fall. I cannot see it so in dreams or 
 awake, because I feel that to put away the market is 
 simply to put away the manhood.
 
 PHASE THREE 
 ENGLISH WILDS
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 MAGIC OF THE MORN 
 
 i 
 
 BIRDS, singing birds especially, what a feature 
 they are of English scenes ! I have an enthusiasm 
 for them that varies somewhat like one's enthusiasm 
 for books and for friends. It is not a confession of 
 fickleness in taste or in faith : we come back with a 
 new onset of enthusiasm to the old books or friends 
 as we come back to the prime bird favourites after 
 we have missed them for a while. Our faith does 
 not falter, it only rests a time to recreate itself it 
 is not falser than that. It spares us from a dead level 
 plain of appreciation, the level of monotony that can- 
 not allow of any of the peaks and high places of vivid 
 feeling and glow. 
 
 The case of the favourite birds seems to be quite 
 analogous to that of the favourite books, except that 
 one's enthusiasm for certain kinds of birds varies almost 
 regularly according to the season. In later May or 
 in early June in England I find no bird to excel a 
 blackcap at the top of his form though there was 
 probably a week or so earlier in May when black- 
 ili
 
 1 82 This Realm, This England 
 
 birds were the best birds of the English year. But it 
 is sure that months after one will come back with 
 fresh zest to the magic of the redbreast and the red- 
 breast strain when it has grown anew to be the most 
 ruling and poignant note the very key indeed to 
 which the whole composition of an autumn day 
 seems tuned ! 
 
 That redbreast feature, first in the calm and serene 
 stage of English autumn and then in the wrack and 
 ruin of it, and in the wretched drenching storms of 
 mould and death, is one of strange power and insis- 
 tence. It is hard to understand how such an incident 
 apparently so trifling as a short passage of most 
 familiar song in a small bird can impress itself alike 
 on ears that know many birds' songs and on ears that, 
 ordinarily, care very little for such things. Yet so it 
 is. A reference which I once made to renewal of the 
 full redbreast strain brought me a letter from a 
 reader who recalled some lines in Keble's" Christian 
 Year " for the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity, and 
 an extract from some verses by George Cornish 
 given in a note. I do not know Keble's book, but I 
 can easily understand that a man of his feeling would 
 be stirred by the redbreast renewal. It can affect even 
 natures that seem the least sensitive to such influ- 
 ence. I remember returning home as a boy after 
 a long day's partridge shooting with one who knew 
 very little, and cared perhaps even less, for natural 
 magic : a redbreast perched on an outer twig of a
 
 Magic of the Morn 183 
 
 great lime-tree breathed into the stillness of the 
 early autumn day with the deliberate drawn-out 
 strain, complete from start to finish. My companion 
 stopped to listen, and, turning to me, said, " I love 
 that !" Setting aside nightingales, which have a kind 
 of universal appeal, partly by force, partly by fame, 
 that is about the only word of praise for a bird song 
 I remember hearing from the same lips. The inci- 
 dent and the whole scene have often recurred to me as 
 a sign of Nature's power to enter, even through doors 
 that seem locked and bolted against the lesser things. 
 
 I think that the effect of the redbreast strain on my 
 sporting companion at the close of that late September 
 afternoon may well be common to a great many 
 people who do not even know what the bird is that 
 is singing. It is common also, I doubt not, to many 
 peasants who are taken up in fields and woods from 
 dusk till dark with hard hand and foot toil that cannot 
 make for aesthetic feeling, though among them it will 
 remain subconscious and unexpressed. 
 
 The power of the weak redbreast strain is, indeed, 
 a constant wonder of the commonplace natural 
 world around one, recognized anew each September 
 and October with fresh homage unimpaired by fre- 
 quent use. It is a chief feature of an English year. 
 I do not know whether the same thing is true of any 
 other countries. Abroad I have only heard the red- 
 breasts at the close of winter or at the start of spring ; 
 the effect of the song then and there is good, but of
 
 184 This Realm, This England 
 
 quite another quality ; the spring redbreast is good 
 sometimes in March very good in England, but 
 it wants the impressiveness of the September and 
 October strain. 
 
 The power of the redbreast strain is masterful, 
 then it will often seize the attention of people who 
 have not the instinct or the patience for detail, for 
 " small deer," outside human affairs. One comes back 
 to the old strain with unfailing homage each Sep- 
 tember in England after one has forgotten all about 
 redbreasts for months, or the best part of a year. 
 
 But there is another bit of Nature magic that 
 may touch the fancy even more than the redbreast 
 strain. I mean the renewal of the willow warbler's 
 song about this time. I have known willow warblers 
 since I first began to watch birds at all closely ; but, 
 oddly enough, I did not know that the willow warbler 
 renewed its song in late summer and early autumn 
 till a few years ago. Since I learned that it does re- 
 new, I have found a growing charm about the willow 
 warbler. A delightful thing about the willow warbler 
 is that after an absolute silence of six weeks or two 
 months it starts to sing again near the eve of its de- 
 parture. It sings even on its journey, the opening 
 stages of the way when it is dropping south towards 
 the coast, leaving its spring and summer home. 
 
 Mr. Ralph Hogdson, who has got these " leaf 
 warblers," as well as the goldfinch and the blackbird, 
 into his poetry with a touch of magic to match their
 
 Magic of the Morn 185 
 
 own, told me he woke one day in August to hear the 
 willow warbler singing outside his window in a small 
 back London garden ! Three mornings running it 
 sang in the same spot. Then, doubtless, it passed on 
 south. The willow warbler is heard every spring for 
 a few days in the London parks, after it has come 
 from Africa and is working north to its nesting 
 quarters, but a willow warbler singing in August in 
 a dingy and small back garden in London was new 
 to me. 
 
 One day I heard its autumn song early in Septem- 
 ber. It was just outside my open window, and the 
 song was the first thing I heard on waking. It was as 
 if the song had roused me ; I thought, how could a 
 willow warbler rouse the lightest sleeper ! The sylph 
 sang for a bare half-hour or so, and next morning, 
 waking soon enough, I could count on the same 
 charm. Later, at half-past seven or eight o'clock, if 
 the morning is bright and sunny, there is the con- 
 fused bird babble of starling chatter and castanet, with 
 the call of greenfinch and the ditty of wren and 
 the blatant chirrup of the sparrows ; and if the willow 
 wren is still singing then, the effect of it is quite spoilt. 
 
 It is thus a very trifling measure of song the willow 
 warbler gives me on a September morning, and, to 
 know its worth I must have it before the sparrows have 
 aroused or when they are happily absent. But with 
 the air and other conditions favouring, the willow 
 wnrbler's half-hour of September song soon after full
 
 1 86 This Realm, 
 
 light, is an exquisite little experience. The thing is 
 fay-like, delicate beyond all reasonable explanation ! 
 
 You may as soon translate to satisfaction a burn- 
 ing lyric of Shelley's " Hellas" or "Prometheus " into 
 cold prose as account exactly for the pleasure felt in 
 listening after daybreak to the farewell notes of this 
 willow warbler. It is in the bird, but subtly, too, it is 
 in the magic of the morn. 
 
 * * * * # 
 
 The song of the redbreast at dawn as, indeed, all 
 through the autumn day and the song of the willow 
 warbler at dawn have most distinctly a quality in 
 common pathos. The redbreast has the pathetic 
 suggestion to my ear more than any other bird. No 
 doubt the nightingale and the ringdove have it, but 
 they have other qualities in a longer measure which 
 make me less conscious of the pathos. The nightin- 
 gale has the brilliance that masters and suppresses all 
 other qualities in the song. The ringdove has intensity. 
 
 There is no mote of an English bird, I doubt if 
 there is a note of any bird in the world, to approach 
 the ringdove's in intensity. I have noticed this especi- 
 ally at the close of summer. The ringdoves are heard 
 to fine effect on late summer and early autumn 
 afternoons, but they are very early wakers, and about 
 their notes, too, is often the magic of the morn. 
 
 I never woke with real grudge against any bird but 
 two : first, the voluble house-sparrow ; second, the 
 loud, unmuffled cuckoo. Shakespeare wrote of
 
 Magic of the Morn 187 
 
 " The plain-song cuckoo gray, 
 Whose note full many a man doth mark 
 And dares not answer, ' Nay.' " 
 
 But one is pained by the shout of cuckoos at the 
 first gleam of light in May and June for quite another 
 reason than that which tortured the heroine of "The 
 Woodlanders." It has a cruelly wakeful ring. There 
 is nothing drowsy, and nothing low or soothing in 
 the call. After the sparrows and the cuckoo have 
 started with a vengeance, there is rarely any turning 
 of the key softly in "the oiled wards" of sleep. It 
 grates and clangs. Whereas the willow warbler and 
 the redbreast may bring the boon that is deferred till 
 light. They never took it away. 
 
 Had Wordsworth added to his sound of rain and 
 flock of sheep and white sheets of water the meek 
 song of the willow warbler at dawn, it might ere the 
 third night have given him his desire. 
 
 II 
 
 If the redbreast is /'/ penseroso in the magic of 
 the morn the wren is I* allegro. I know of no small 
 voice in Nature through an English year in every 
 month that suggests joy and pure mirth quite as the 
 wren suggests them. He never knew or had forgot 
 the wren who found in the cricket the creature of 
 incomparable happiness. The gold of this extra-
 
 1 88 This Realm, This England 
 
 ordinary little bird's joy rings absolutely true. It was 
 minted without the least alloy. In the songs of most 
 or all the best singing birds I can recall there is some 
 " sadness in the sweet, and sweetness in the sad." It 
 is so with the blackbird and both thrushes, with the 
 redbreast, the blackcap, the nightingale, and the 
 willow warbler. Something pathetic is found even in 
 the shrill of the skylarks at dawn and through a May 
 morning I mean there is a suggestion of pathos for 
 human ears and thought. 
 
 But I never found a trace of it in the song of 
 wrens. It is the same at all seasons of they ear and 
 at all hours of the day. The redbreast's song in early 
 spring expresses something to my sense quite different 
 from the redbreast's song in autumn ; the wren's 
 song seems to express exactly the same at both seasons. 
 
 It is the same at " the first low matin chirp *' as 
 it is at full quire an hour later when the sun is right 
 up and the mystery of things dispelled by the familiar. 
 The note of the wren is simply joy bubbling, brim- 
 ming over. 
 
 Nor when the lively rattle of the irrepressible bird 
 is once acquired in July and perhaps for a week or 
 two of August it may be rather broken and frag- 
 mentary does the quality or excellence between 
 wren and wren vary. I have never been struck by 
 the excellence of any particular wren at any season. 
 True, the wrens in Italy, both on the mainland and 
 in Sicily, seem to me to sing louder than English
 
 Magic of the Morn 189 
 
 wrens. The Rome wrens, for example, about the 
 gardens and precincts of St. Peter's and the ruins of 
 the Forum, sing louder in spring than ours, quite a 
 clatter and little din of them among the old walls ; 
 but there is nothing like the variation in excellence 
 which I constantly remark among thrushes, black- 
 birds, chaffinches, and nightingales. 
 
 The wren is not, I think, a late evening singer 
 like the song-thrush and the redbreast of summer, 
 but he starts early in the day, and, as I have found 
 in Sussex, he is wide awake soon after the first glimmer 
 of light on a late August morning. The wren wakes 
 and at once gives his whole sparkling ditty : it is not 
 first the low matin chirp and then the full quire 
 it is full quire from the start. 
 
 Size, we could recognize, has nothing to do with 
 spirit. Many of the smallest things in Nature, cer- 
 tainly among birds and butterflies, stand out as 
 Spartans in spirit. The smallest English butterflies, 
 as the Bedford blues and the coppers, and the purple 
 hairstreaks which linger on almost through Sep- 
 tember on some of the oaks, seem all valour and 
 impetus. But, not the less because there are so many 
 examples of the mite exceeding in spirit the mighty, 
 the charm and humour of it always touch us when 
 we find the great heart housed within the tiny thing. 
 Among English birds at least I should say the cock 
 wren singing hard or the cock wren building hard 
 and singing hard at the same time gives the greatest
 
 190 This Realm, This England 
 
 display of spirit. He looks the part he sings the 
 blithest of them all ! 
 
 He has no undersong like a blackcap or blackbird. 
 A wren does not drop casually a few low, lisping notes 
 among the leaves whilst he is searching for food. At 
 dawn and at dark he does not give a drowsy note 
 like some peepy song-thrush or crooning blackbird. 
 Like the cuckoo, he is never half sleeping in his 
 song though he can pass almost instantly from full 
 song to sleep, I know but one could not regard the 
 wren as one regards the cuckoo an enemy of sleep 
 at dawn. The song of the wren, in England at least, 
 is too sweetly pitched for that. 
 
 The wren's song has not much of that sense of 
 mystery which other notes are steeped in then 
 " the earliest pipe of half-awakened birds." But it is 
 very fresh and delicious, and I suspect it has the merit 
 of constancy, and that if we attended carefully we 
 should find the wren in many spots singing at early 
 light on and off throughout the English year. 
 
 In autumn and winter this magic music of English 
 birds at early light is nothing like what it is in late 
 spring and summer ; the " full quire " of it makes a 
 very small book indeed compared to the great volume 
 then. But its value is enhanced by its scarcity. There 
 is not much more than half an hour, or on very 
 favouring mornings perhaps in all an hour of it just 
 the redbreast and the wren, with now and then a
 
 Magic of the Morn 191 
 
 starling, a song-thrush, a goldcrest, and a ringdove, 
 and a fragment or two at rarer intervals of the 
 chaffinch. The winter day once full lit, it is over. By 
 half- past eight o'clock the air is as songless as it was 
 before the first glimmer of light. 
 
 What leads the wren and redbreast to sing thus 
 when the light of shortening days is creeping in at 
 dawn and to cease though the redbreast breaks out 
 anew later when it is full tide flooding all the world ? 
 I never can determine this. It may be that light after 
 dark affects the musical part of a bird, as sound at other 
 times affects it and urges it to song. A second ex- 
 planation is that the bird is restored after sleep, and 
 on waking has all the happiness and heart to sing. 
 Yet the redbreast and the thrush sing with fine 
 expression and spirit before they retire to sleep in 
 spring and summer eves, which seems to tell against 
 the theory of song thanks to sleep. I have sometimes 
 thought of quite another explanation, rather grosser 
 that they sing in the dusk before they sleep and 
 again in the dusk after they have been roused by the 
 first glints of light, because they cannot see then well 
 to feed. But the singing habit at dawn and dusk seems 
 really to be obscure. One can only hazard a guess 
 about it " We are here to guess." I know this alone 
 for sure that it is one of the best things in the 
 natural world. There is an anodyne in this magic of 
 the morn.
 
 192 This Realm , This England 
 
 For a few weeks in the year the magic is the 
 blackbird's. If you sleep with windows wide open 
 and the blackbird is the bird of the neighbourhood, 
 he can actually wake you at dawn unless the sleep is 
 very sound and deep. I cannot think a willow warbler 
 really ever roused at dawn the lightest sleeper, though 
 when we wake the song may be in the ear and 
 thought. Here, by the way, is an odd little coinci- 
 dence of willow warblers. Mr. Ralph Hodgson's 
 willow warbler that sang soon after dawn in a back- 
 garden in Chelsea in August had a forerunner that 
 sang in the street just outside Elm Park Mansions in 
 Chelsea in August. Another friend wrote to tell me 
 of it. It sang at 7.30 a.m. "There are a few trees, a 
 very few, in the street ; imagine my amazement and 
 delight." What is new under the sun about birds or 
 song ? 
 
 No ; the willow warbler never woke a man the 
 man only woke to the willow warbler ; but I can 
 believe it easily of the blackbirds after hearing them 
 in one or two Mays in gardens by the south coast 
 of England full of cluster pines. At first light in May 
 and June the blackbird, beginning somewhere the 
 other side of the house, or in the shrubbery or copse 
 two hundred yards away, seems to sing at least half 
 asleep. It is a gurgle of low-pitched notes. It has not 
 the silver sequence of his flute when the sun is right 
 up, but it has a rare sweetness and mystery. The 
 drowsy blackbird must have been in that strange
 
 Magic of the Morn 193 
 
 medley of birds which, in "The Princess," is 
 imagined for dying ears : 
 
 " When unto dying eyes 
 The casement slowly grows a glimmering square." 
 
 In the same mysterious medley I put the red- 
 breast always the redbreast and the wren, the 
 ringdove, the song-thrush, the willow warbler, the 
 starling at the eaves, the swallow on the chimney- 
 stack ; whilst in downs and fields I add, of course, the 
 lark. There are others less assured ; the goldcrest, for 
 example, and in September or October the pied wag 
 tail. The song-thrush is not, like the redbreast, in the 
 magic of the morn in all twelve months of an 
 English year. He leaves out two at least ; and when 
 towards the close of September he starts again with 
 a little string of loose and unphrased notes, he 
 chooses, I think, not the grey of morning but the 
 full light of a mellow day.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 CORBIES 
 
 i 
 
 THE Twa Corbies " is one of the truly wonder- 
 ful songs in English literature, a thing all 
 genius but it is not kind to my old friend the 
 carrion crow. The corbies find a noble knight who 
 lies new-slain in a ditch. Only his hound, and his 
 hawk, and his lady know he is there ; and his hound 
 has gone hunting, his hawk is after the wild fowl, 
 and his lady has found another mate. So, says one of 
 the corbies to the other, let us make our dinner 
 sweet 
 
 " Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane, 
 And I'll pick out his bonny blue een : 
 Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair 
 We'll theek our nest when it grows bare." 
 
 There we have the carrion crow's harsh reputa- 
 tion. Many things have gone to give him the ill 
 character he bears and always will his blue-black 
 dress for one thing, his wicked-looking beak for 
 another. There is his croak, too, to tell against him, 
 hoarse and abysmal beyond that of any other English 
 194
 
 Corbies 195 
 
 bird. The rook is " mellow music when compared 
 with him " ; the rook, indeed, can at seasons sing 
 and croon softly, whilst there is a certain grandeur, 
 and a weirdness, about the note of the raven, the 
 bird of Odin, which is wanting in the crow. 
 
 Besides the fancy, there is fact against the crow. 
 Seen from the gamekeeper's and the game-preserver's 
 standpoint, a crow is the blackest sinner of all. A 
 good word can be found for the peregrine, an excuse 
 at least for such a swift and glorious raider, and to- 
 day even the sparrowhawk has found a few friends in 
 the least likely quarters. But I never heard a kind 
 word spoken of the carrion crow. Few dare or 
 care, perhaps to propose him for the protected list. 
 Nobody denies that he robs a hen roost when the 
 chance offers, or that he is the proven foe of all 
 young game birds, or that he hunts at times for the 
 eggs of pheasant and partridge on something like a 
 system. In truth, no one who knows the life of the 
 carrion crow in or near a game covert, or near a 
 poultry run, could deny these habits. They are too 
 well known to us all. The crow is a robber and a 
 raider beyond question in some country places. He 
 is a bird of prey though, when one comes to think 
 of that, so is the redbreast or the song-thrush. 
 
 The crow is all things that they say, but he is a 
 great deal more than they say ; and it is because he 
 is so much more that I have dared and dare again to 
 speak a work for him. All these corbies have strong
 
 196 This Realm, This England 
 
 character none, I believe, stronger than the carrion 
 crow. The jay, a cousin to the corbies, is artful and 
 cautious if noisy and flustering in his caution ; and 
 the daw is canny too. But an old carrion crow 
 which has outlived a stricken band of colleagues 
 for the crow is by no means always a solitary or un- 
 sociable bird can develop a wariness that seems 
 more than corvine. 
 
 There was a crow I knew about that had con- 
 trived to outlive a band which foraged and nested 
 and roosted in a thick wood. There was matched 
 against him one who warred restlessly against vermin 
 with gun and trap and a small phial with a staring 
 red label. Yet, when all his companions or rivals 
 had been accounted for, this bird lived on and was 
 often heard calling at dawn and again at dusk for a 
 mate who did not come. He lived on, and ere the 
 end if, indeed, that long life is ended now a 
 mate did come to this super-crow, and there was 
 once more a nest in April. 
 
 It is partly because, as a boy, I put my finger into 
 so many crows' nests in April and early May, in 
 oaks and once or twice in a yew-tree on the beech 
 hanger, that I have a good word for the bird. A 
 crow's nest is quite a beautiful thing to see and 
 touch. The stories about the crow patching up 
 another bird's old nest are ill told, I think. All the 
 crows' nests I have seen have been new nests of the 
 year, well made and finely furnished. The crow is
 
 Corbies 197 
 
 no sloven builder, and the cup within is smooth and 
 cosy. 
 
 There is a feature in the flight of the crow which 
 is common to all these corbies that I have in thought 
 carrion and grey or hooded crows, raven, rook, 
 and daw. Each has a most untidy, ragged-looking 
 wing, with the tips of the rowing feathers or prima- 
 ries turned up when in action. The effect oddly 
 reminds me of a sleeper who has passed an ill night, 
 tossing from side to side, so that when he wakes in 
 the morning he finds his hair turned up at the edges 
 so stiffly as to defy the brush and comb that day. I 
 noticed this feature in the carrion crow first, but later 
 I found it common to rooks and daws. It is just the 
 same with the raven, as I learnt on watching the bird 
 in Sicily and in Switzerland. 
 
 Another feature common to them all is the gap 
 between the tips of these rowing feathers of the wing. 
 It can be seen without field-glasses even, at a con- 
 siderable distance. About the corbie's wing is none of 
 that fine and even edge that is so beautiful in the 
 wings of many sea-birds. Yet the crow, carrion or 
 grey, is no mean performer on the wing. I have 
 watched carrion crows now for years about the 
 reaches of the Thames at Chelsea, and for several 
 years there was a pair that often aped the feeding 
 habits of the blackheaded and herring gulls. One 
 winter a grey crow appeared in Chelsea and fed on 
 the shore at low tide between the bridges, but I never
 
 198 This Realm, This England 
 
 saw him hovering and swooping like the others, and 
 I have not seen him at all of late years. The watchful 
 carrion crows would sweep out from the little wooden 
 pier opposite the Royal Hospital Gardens, hover in 
 the air for a few instants over some scrap of refuse 
 carried down on the swirling tide, and diving down 
 seize and carry it off to the Battersea shore, though 
 chased and struck at by the gulls. Sometimes the crow 
 would miss his aim, and the whole feat suggested a 
 certain ludicrous discomfiture, as if he were afraid of 
 falling in the water and being sucked under. What is 
 grace in a gull is grotesque in a crow. Still, the ad- 
 venture, however clumsy, often succeeded. It suc- 
 ceeded, too, with the starlings, which aped the gulls 
 in the same way and to still better effect. 
 
 For a year or two I missed these Chelsea crows 
 from the shore between the bridges and the Hospital 
 Gardens, but they then reappeared, or others took 
 their places ; and, indeed, this wild thing of wild 
 places has become a regular London bird. I meet with 
 it at various places in or just without the town. For 
 several months one winter I walked from Richmond 
 to Ham once or twice in each week, and passing 
 through the little oak wood by Ham House and the 
 fields beyond I nearly always saw or heard a pair of 
 carrion crows which lived there. The antics of the 
 carrion crow in mild weather in January and Feb- 
 ruary are one of the most extraordinary bird exhibi- 
 tions. When the crow falls in love he acts as the rook
 
 Corbies 199 
 
 and the pigeon act : he takes to bowing. He is quite 
 content, when this mood is on him, to sit all alone 
 on a dead branch of an oak or plane-tree, and bow 
 and "karr " for ten minutes or longer at a stretch. 
 
 I have often watched this strange display of the 
 melting mood, but I must tell again* of a bizarre 
 version of it I saw in the oak wood by Ham House. 
 A crow sat on a blasted limb of an old tree and bowed 
 low and karred his hoarsest three or four karrs, three 
 or four low bows, then a pause, then the whole gro- 
 tesque business afresh. A tramp slouched by with his 
 hands in his tattered clothes, a picture of bitterness 
 and destitution the outcast complete. He heard and 
 saw the crow, and seemed to think the croak a re- 
 proach aimed at himself, for he stopped for a minute 
 or so, and looking up at the bird mimicked it till he 
 tired. Then he slouched on his way again, but the 
 crow was still bowing and karring when I left the 
 wood. The carrion crow has sometimes struck me as 
 a sort of Quilp among birds, though here perhaps 
 Quilp was the tramp. The whole scene remains fresh 
 in my mind. How well it would have suited one of 
 those little woodcuts at the end of a chapter in which 
 a lost English art excelled ! 
 
 * "The Airy Way," p. 208.
 
 2oo This Rea/m, This England 
 
 II 
 
 The crow was a familiar of mine in days when a 
 rook was a far-off rarity. I never climbed up to a 
 rook's nest in boyhood, and in boyhood the nest is 
 the greater part of a bird. Even to this day I have 
 not looked down into a rook's nest nor handled the 
 warm eggs. Rooks scarcely began for me till I was 
 given a gun and a pocketful of cartridges and turned 
 loose in an old park in May with leave to shoot. I 
 not only shot on that wonderful day, but, marvel of 
 marvels, I shot flying. What a preposterous dream 
 the dead past is, an adventure like this seems to 
 prove. Were I put to it to prove that I shot rooks 
 on that day in that old park I could not produce an 
 atom of evidence worth considering. The house, for 
 one thing, is clean gone it was burnt. All the 
 people are gone they are dead, I think. The group 
 of old elms under which I was posted by the old 
 gentleman who played croquet so well three hoops 
 sometimes at a break, especially the two in the 
 " lady's mile " these are gone, too, I believe. The 
 evidence, indeed, has all been so tampered with by 
 time that I begin to be rather shaken myself when I 
 recall the incident. 
 
 After that reality or dream of rooks I again lost 
 sight largely of the birds, and it was not till about 
 nine years ago, when I lived part of the year close to 
 a large rookery, that I settled down to watch them
 
 Corbies 201 
 
 in earnest. There I found myself at all times of the 
 year in the midst of the rooks. The great thing at 
 first was to walk down the village just before dusk 
 and be present at their evening prayers, as the little 
 girl described it to White at Selborne. In the 
 evening service of rooks during the spring and 
 summer I dare say through the whole year, though 
 I often missed them from the rookery trees in the 
 winter the jackdaws answer to cheeky, irreverent 
 village boys. The pert note of the daw is quite out 
 of keeping with the solemn, mysterious rites of the 
 rook at this hour ; and yet it serves by contrast to 
 heighten or accent the scene. The sound and scene 
 at the rookery at dusk and just before absolute dark 
 remind me in a way of the scene and sound of the 
 honey bees at this time. It is a dull imagination that 
 is not affected by the bee drama when the workers 
 and the sleek lolling drones are all back under cover 
 for the night, and the whole hive sings itself to 
 rest if the worker bee in its feverish heat can be 
 said ever really to rest from the first days of pollen to 
 the last days of honey. The hive never sounds 
 louder every bee, it seems, humming with excite- 
 ment than when the city is full at the end of the 
 spring or summer day. Touch the top of the hive 
 no / ^matter how lightly, raise the roof, no matter how 
 gently, half an inch or less, and the hum is instantly 
 an uproar. The whole packed city simmers and 
 seethes.
 
 2O2 This Realm, This England 
 
 It is the same with the rooks. For half an hour or 
 more, when all the inhabitants are back from the 
 fields, the whole city is thrown into a high fever of 
 excitement. It is with the rooks, then, as with the 
 starlings at dusk now every bird takes part in the 
 extraordinary continuous chorus. All the old rooks 
 are exclaiming, expostulating, protesting ; all the 
 young rooks which are able to utter a sound are 
 uttering it without ceasing ; every jackdaw is cutting 
 in. But the city of the rooks is not only like that of 
 the bees at dusk in a ferment of sound ; it can no 
 more keep still than it can keep silent. The whole 
 rookery, whether disturbed or not by human intru- 
 sion, is always being swept off the trees into the 
 air, where the turmoil will be redoubled. I used to 
 go down to the rookery in the high elms and beeches 
 eve after eve to watch this scene, for the fascination 
 of it grew on me. It differs from the evening service 
 of the bees and of the starlings very notably in this : 
 the hum of the bees and the sing-song or murmur of 
 the starlings is a monotony, the sound uttered by one 
 bee appearing to be identical with that uttered by 
 another bee, and so, too, with the starlings ; whereas 
 there is a variety of notes uttered by the rooks. 
 
 A language of rooks is really no fantastic idea. I 
 think very little of the stories about rooks having 
 to themselves a code and a high court. When I 
 believe that, I shall believe too there are aristocrats 
 and democrats in the rookery, socialists and individ-
 
 Corbies 203 
 
 ualists, or that when a party goes off to nest in a 
 tree or group of trees a little apart from the main 
 body it has carried rook home-rule. Such stories are 
 the result, perhaps, of not watching rooks. But the 
 language of rooks is quite another thing. Standing 
 under a great rookery at dusk, the swishing of wings 
 all round us, the clang of hundreds of tongues re- 
 sounding through the calm evening air, we cannot, 
 and need not, resist the idea that a great deal is 
 going on here which we know absolutely nothing 
 about. 
 
 I know that watching it time after time in those 
 great hours of full summer, serene and scented hours, 
 with a lull over everything around save these agitated 
 birds, I am always impressed by the feeling that there 
 is much about rooks which we know nothing of. 
 These are not merely the random cries of creatures 
 excited about nothing. The scene is common to every 
 rookery. It has been repeated eve after eve for 
 hundreds and thousands of years. Nature is not fond 
 of mere senseless muddle and confusion where there 
 is no need in the world for confusion. The rookery 
 uproar at dusk must be an important drama, a thing 
 of meaning ; and I believe there is something like a 
 cosmos in all this seeming chaos of "caws" and 
 "cawks." Only we cannot translate the language ; 
 we do not know the grammar of it ; we have 
 not the vocabulary ; we cannot guess even at the 
 alphabet.
 
 2O4 This Realm, This England 
 
 That is one of the three distinctive scenes in the 
 life of this strange and passionate and brainy bird 
 which interest me. Another scene relates to courting 
 and nest-making. The courting business has already 
 begun. So early as the third week of January, before 
 the snipe is drumming or the peewit tumbling, whilst 
 the breast of the cock chaffinch is as yet scarcely rose- 
 tinted, the rook's fancy has lightly turned to thoughts 
 of love. I hear a kind of falsetto cawk in the elm, 
 look up through the wretched drizzle, and see two 
 pairs of rooks wooing. The birds sit as near each 
 other as they possibly can as close as roosting ring- 
 doves sit though the twig rocks uncomfortably be- 
 neath the burden. 
 
 The male makes a kind of obeisance to his partner, 
 and as he does so his tail goes up and opens like a fan. 
 He raises his voice and it breaks. 
 
 Then both pairs fly off in ecstasy, with an un- 
 attached rook keeping them close company, to some 
 trees where nests have often been built. It may re- 
 mind one of William Blake's little song of the nest- 
 ing birds : 
 
 " Come ! on wings of joy we'll fly 
 To where my bower is hung on high." 
 
 So all through February that delicate flutter and 
 tail-play will last, the male sitting on a twig close to 
 the nest, and declaring his rapture while his partner 
 piles stick on stick or fetches soft lining.
 
 Corbies 205 
 
 The gallantry is not always mere show, a bow and 
 a tail turned into a sprightly fan, with a high-pitched 
 accent of adoration. It takes a much more practical 
 shape when in the grass-fields the male bird digs up 
 a grub, such as the " leather jacket," and, straddling 
 towards his partner, puts it into her bill. She stands 
 sweetly expectant, quivering with emotion at his 
 approach, and uttering little notes of pleasure. Her 
 fancy lightly turns to thoughts of food. 
 
 The third of these distinctive scenes in the world 
 of rooks is one of the most beautiful things I have 
 ever seen whilst watching birds, though it has not 
 that strange mystery and fascination which hold one 
 under the rookery at roosting-time in summer. The 
 scene I mean is when in the autumn or winter morn- 
 ing, after perhaps a period of mist that has at length 
 lifted, the whole rookery takes the air. It has hung 
 about its city for hours, it may be, undecided on its 
 plans for the day. But now, as the mist melts and 
 the sun shines out brightly, the rooks with loud 
 clangour sweep into the skies, and here, before they 
 settle finally on their route and feeding-ground for the 
 rest of the morning or day, they spire and coil and 
 cut and glide and tumble in the air with a grace that 
 many of us never imagined in rooks. They bathe in 
 the sunshine, they exult in the exercise. 
 
 So, very slowly, they sweep away from their city 
 in immense loops and circles, some of them moving 
 stately and slow, others darting swift as a falcon in
 
 206 This Realm, This England 
 
 and out among their sedater fellows these swift ones 
 being rooks at frolic. 
 
 The whole scene* is one of enchanting beauty. 
 The aerial curves of the birds and the play of light 
 and shade on them as they sweep round and round, 
 and often up and up, are wonderful to see. It is a 
 revelation in rooks. They melt away at length in the 
 distance, and the last sound of them dies on the ear 
 
 I have under, not over, rated the beauty and grace 
 of rooks, and I am quite unable to give any notion 
 of the peculiar charm of their multitudinous music, 
 but I can understand what a spell it exercises over 
 those who have passed their youth under a rookery. 
 
 * This cene is described in "The Airy Way," p. 191, as 
 I saw it one autumn day at Oakley.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE CORBIES' LITTLE BROTHER 
 
 MY title may get me into disrepute, for has there 
 not been an indignant outcry of late against 
 the "humanizing" of birds and beasts? Has not 
 Mr. Roosevelt raised his voice against the habit ? 
 Mr. Roosevelt is very fond of birds. He has watched 
 them closely in his own country, and can speak and 
 write of them, and of many forms of wild life, with 
 loving authority. Mr. Roosevelt is an intimate of wild 
 life. Those who have been in touch with him, how- 
 ever slight or distant, over such things know how he 
 throws into them a pure enthusiasm : the boy in him 
 is father of the man. But I had rather not march off 
 the humanizers, whoever they be, to stern justice till 
 I know exactly how they have broken the law and 
 what the law is. Besides, I have humanized birds and 
 brutes too often myself to join in the outcry. The 
 lines from the little Scottish poem humanized birds, 
 I suppose. It humanized the " Twa Corbies " who 
 discussed to one another what should be done with 
 the knight who lay slain in the ditch ; and I suspect 
 if we searched English literature we should find that 
 207
 
 208 This Realm, This England 
 
 many of the best things in it about birds and beasts 
 humanize wild life. 
 
 The old, inhuman way was to shoot the bird and 
 then label it with a very long name, such as gave 
 Waterton the jaw-ache, and to describe how many 
 times it has been " obtained " a euphemism for 
 destroyed in such and such a place. That is the way 
 of a generation which liked to have its birds in a 
 glass case, and I cannot help thinking that by crying 
 out against the humanizing of wild life we are in- 
 viting a reaction. 
 
 Humanizing birds or beasts or butterflies is quite 
 safe and sound we have only to humanize them right. 
 It is true one corbie never said to another, in corbie 
 speech or in human : " Here is a slain warrior in a 
 ditch whom nobody knows of save his faithless hound 
 and hawk and lady ; let us go and feast on him and 
 pluck out his golden hair to warm our nest with." 
 Yet how truly and finely is that bit of humanizing 
 done and how excellent the effect ! It is worth 
 volumes of Latin names and classifications, and will 
 live long after they are all dead and forgotten. 
 
 As to corbies, anyhow, it would be hardly possible 
 to write of them with any sympathy, yet not 
 humanize them. One must humanize the jackdaw 
 from the very start. He is a rook's little brother. No 
 one can doubt this who has watched for any time 
 the intimate relations between the two birds. I wrote 
 of him once as a kind of privileged parasite of the
 
 The Corbies' Little Brother 209 
 
 rookery, but I withdraw " parasite." It is altogether 
 too harsh a word. The jackdaw lives with rooks, by 
 no means on them. 
 
 He nests well under the rookery, in the holes and 
 hollows which rooks have no use for. He sallies out 
 with them in the morning, perhaps, though I think 
 he does not commonly feed in their company ; in the 
 incessant trivial bickerings among the rooks which 
 go on in a field full of food I have never seen the 
 jackdaw engage he has perhaps too much respect 
 for his big brothers to care to dine with them. But 
 he often returns home in the winter afternoon in the 
 last rook train. That long, black, musical train of 
 rooks wending home just before dusk to their roosting 
 trees is one of the most charming sights of the winter 
 day in English countryside ; and as we mark it week 
 by week, starting a little later as the days grow 
 longer, our thoughts begin to be spring thoughts. 
 
 The jackdaws take the train on its route, and join 
 in the music of caw and quarr. Howard Saunders, in 
 his " Manual of British Birds," gave the note of the 
 jackdaws "wrangling daws," Tennyson called 
 them as " cae," which is as near as one can get to 
 it. But though this is the distinctive cry of the bird 
 as he travels in the last rook train, and later joins in 
 the evening hymn at the rookery, he has more notes 
 than one. The jackdaw is a conversationist a 
 brilliant one, I should say, compared to such dull 
 little talkers as most of the buntings or pipits, or the
 
 2io This Realm, This England 
 
 spotted flycatcher, which can hardly improve on the 
 squeak of a bat. 
 
 I knew of a party of jackdaws, a dozen or a score 
 of them, that were so talkative very early in the 
 morning that they became intolerable to the other 
 people in the house. They were settled in a stack or 
 two of chimneys in a lonely house, which they 
 littered with their sticks at nesting-time. They woke 
 long before the house-sparrow whose little redeem- 
 ing-point is that he wakes late and they jabbered 
 and crooned to one another long before light. These 
 birds seemed to have taken the house on a long lease. 
 They throve and no doubt threw out colonies to 
 other houses in the neighbourhood, or perhaps to two 
 or three of the rookeries a few miles off. It was 
 pleasant to watch them at sport in the skies in the 
 sunshine of a clear winter day ere they set out in 
 earnest to their feeding-grounds. They toyed and 
 trifled with one another in pairs, and played the game 
 of aerial chase, catch as catch can, as it is played 
 among romping rooks. 
 
 In the spring the male jackdaw pays delicate atten- 
 tion to the female of his choice. She responds prettily, 
 and in the elms just beginning to turn green the love 
 business goes forward with spirit. I have not seen 
 affection take the form of food, as it so often does 
 with the rook, but I suspect the jackdaw sometimes 
 digs up a grub and offers it to his mate. He might 
 even offer her an egg, say a missel-thrush's egg in
 
 The Corbies' Little Brother 211 
 
 March, though this would be putting his gallantry 
 to a great strain an egg being to any of these cor- 
 bies or their cousins, the pies and jays, the delicacy 
 of delicacies. I should not be at all surprised to learn 
 that the carrion crow or the hoodie digs up dainties 
 for his partner in much the same way as the rook, 
 and that the raven has a like habit. These customs 
 are often general throughout a family or group of 
 birds. 
 
 There are not gallant and ungallant rooks, egoist 
 and altruist rooks. If we say there are, we humanize 
 rooks all wrong, and Mr. Roosevelt is justified in 
 handing us over to the beaks. In treating of a bird 
 a true wild bird we are treating of it not individ- 
 ually but collectively. Despite that iron rule in wild 
 life of the survival of the fittest the " Get-on or 
 Get-out " rule which an American took for his office 
 motto and framed on the wall there is little sign 
 of individualism in birds or beasts or butterflies. 
 
 Roughly, one rook is as another rook, this jackdaw 
 the same as that jackdaw ; or, if otherwise, the 
 differences in character between them are on a scale 
 too minute for human ken. 
 
 As an example of how these habits run through a 
 family : I read long ago that ravens in the courting 
 and nesting-time will fly out a little way from their 
 rock or cliff side and purposely lose their balance, 
 turning a kind of grotesque somersault in the air. 
 One day I saw a raven perform this feat by Monte
 
 212 This Re 'aim , This England 
 
 Pellegrino, and I saw a crow do it likewise. It is a 
 common corbie custom, I dare say, a love blandish- 
 ment. 
 
 The jackdaw must have the social life. A carrion 
 crow can live as a solitary, though I question whether 
 he ever does so from choice, for where crows are 
 abundant they gather in roosting companies at about 
 dusk in winter, and seem to enjoy half an hour's 
 aerial exercise and conversation somewhat in the rook 
 way. I believe that the raven, too, king of corbies, 
 is no recluse by nature. But a jackdaw cannot live 
 in his own company. He seeks not only the society 
 of his fellow, but that of rooks or gulls or men. 
 
 The scene which this most restless and flighty of 
 the corbies seems to fit best and yet fit least is the 
 iron coast of North Cornwall. As we near the little 
 village of Trevalga, whilst driving or walking from 
 Camelford, the sound of a vast concert of sea-birds 
 floats to us from the Lye Rock and two or three 
 stacks near by. At first, a mile or so away, it is soft 
 and low and very mysterious. We might not guess 
 it came from birds at all but for knowing the sea is 
 near, and that sea the haunt of a myriad of wildfowl 
 all through the nesting-season. This is a scene of 
 excitement that might make the rookery seem phleg- 
 matic. Through May and June the concert, the 
 feverish turmoil, of sea-birds seems not to cease for 
 an hour. Wake up any time in the night and, if the 
 air is still and the coast is near, you will hear the
 
 The Corbies' Little Brother 213 
 
 voices of countless thousands of sleepless creatures. 
 It is the mystic music of the herring gulls that 
 whiten Lye Rock, and the colonies of razorbills and 
 guillemots that people that noble coast in nesting- 
 time. 
 
 Here at daytime is a pageant of dreamlike glory, 
 fabulous as Kubla Khan ! And here among rocks 
 and skies and waters steeped in colour, the jackdaw 
 is in his element living with gull and sea-parrot the 
 restless life.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 COUSINS TO THE CORBIES 
 
 FOR feats of the body it is we, not the birds and 
 beasts, who rank as the " lower animals." In 
 running and leaping and swimming, matched against 
 even moderate performers in wild life, a man shapes 
 as one of the awkward squad. Take two out of the 
 many master athletes in Nature, the salmon and the 
 flea, and imagine a contest between, say, the record 
 high jumper in human sports and any flea ; or a con- 
 test between Webb or Holbein and any salmon. 
 Might not the human athlete look rather ineffective 
 after the result, as viewed by some detached observer 
 in another sphere ? 
 
 Not only in the robuster feats of action, feats of 
 speed and of endurance, are men absurdly outstripped 
 by wild life ; they are worsted still more in all the 
 refinements and delicacies of at least four out of the 
 five physical senses. We are the awkward squad with 
 a vengeance, compared with the mole for hearing, 
 the deer for smelling, the woodcock for touch, the 
 hawk or gull for seeing. 
 
 I have had even in London a good example of the 
 eye magic of a bird. Someone had flung down into a
 
 Cousins to the Corbies 215 
 
 Chelsea street a few morsels of broken food. A black- 
 headed gull, soaring and winding high above by the 
 river, saw these scraps in the slush and came swoop- 
 ing down instantly with three companions as quick 
 and eager as itself, to pick them off the ground. It is 
 the same with the gnll as with the falcon. To give the 
 idea of piercing vision, how can one improve on the 
 saying that So-and-so has " the eye of a hawk" ? 
 
 All human achievement of the body therefore fails 
 utterly against the achievement of wild life. But we 
 turn to matters of the understanding to find the 
 balance out of all comparison the other way. It is 
 wild life that is then seen to be the awkward squad. 
 In body the wild thing is a genius, in mind less than 
 a mediocrist. 
 
 It is just possible sometimes to match the man 
 against the bird or beasts in the feats of the body ; it 
 is never possible to match the bird or beast against 
 the man in feats of mind. 
 
 The corbies and the two cousins of the corbies, jay 
 and magpie, are a good example. I think there is very 
 little doubt this group raven, crow, rook, jackdaw, 
 jay, and magpie is on the whole the most knowing 
 of any group of birds in England. House-sparrows 
 are artful and extremely persistent at times, and there 
 is a titmouse intelligence well above the bird level, as 
 all seem to agree who have watched blue tit or ox- 
 eye pull up a string holding a bit of meat. But the 
 corbies are craftier than any of these small birds. Yet
 
 216 This Realm, This England 
 
 when one has given full credit, and perhaps a little 
 more than credit, to the wisest of the corbies, which- 
 ever he be some may say the rook, others the crow, 
 or magpie the concession is not a great deal. I do 
 not say that we have plumbed a bird's nature and 
 discovered all that is in it. We have plumbed it in- 
 deed very little. We have hardly begun a study of 
 bird speech a true live language and we know 
 next to nothing about bird passion and emotion, 
 which are intense and masterful from eagle down to 
 wren. But, so far as we have gone in the study, it 
 really does seem clear that the thinking part of bird or 
 beast or butterfly is a small matter. 
 
 With these corbies, as with the others, mind mainly 
 takes the form of wariness. How to baffle the foe, how 
 to get a good living by hook or crook, is what the 
 corbies and their cousins concentrate on. Virtually 
 all the feats of mind of a jay and of a magpie are 
 feats to this end. Once this is granted, I willingly will 
 go a long way with those of my friends and readers 
 who in their enthusiasm write to me gravely to 
 claim special character for this corbie or that. There 
 is no doubt that the members of this group are dis- 
 tinguished by strong character. Slyness is a feature of 
 the jackdaw and the magpie. It would really seem as 
 though the magpie and the daw had, too, something 
 akin to the sense of humour. The daw has at least a 
 turn for mischief, and mischief can figure as a poor 
 relation of humour. No doubt the mischief is some-
 
 Cousins to the Cor dies 2 1 7 
 
 times unconscious. How the daws carried off the 
 plant labels from the Oxford Botanical Gardens is 
 touched on in Howard Saunders's book, and a friend 
 has written to me giving the story in detail. At the 
 spring seeding-time the test seeds were duly sown and 
 neatly labelled with little wooden slips. Next day the 
 labels were all gone. Fresh ones were put in, but 
 these, too, mysteriously disappeared. Then a watch 
 was kept and the police were called in. But a police- 
 man is no match for a jackdaw. No arrest was made, 
 and for some months the thieves were undiscovered. 
 Later in the year some visitors went up into the 
 tower of Merton, and, behold, the missing labels ! 
 Hundreds littered the steps near the roof, and on the 
 top of the labels were jackdaw nests. The birds had 
 drawn heavily on the Botanical Gardens' supply, in 
 early morning perhaps when the policeman dozed at 
 his post ; and, as they built, the smooth bits of wood 
 had slid down, till at length there was a firm founda- 
 tion on which the daws reared their nests. 
 
 The broad American humourist seems to have 
 been wiser than he knew when he wrote of the nest- 
 building blue jay which set to work to drop acorns 
 into a hole in a roof till all the blue jays in the neigh- 
 bourhood crowded to the scene to watch and gaffaw 
 at a fool trying to fill up a house. 
 
 But intense slyness is more the feature of the wild 
 jackdaw than a spirit of mischief. I have seen him 
 haunt a spot where a pair of missel-thrushes had a nest,
 
 2i 8 This Realm, This England 
 
 and it was hard to resist the idea that he watched 
 them and awaited his chance, whilst they, by harsh 
 cries of wrath and alarm, showed they knew he was 
 hanging about to get the eggs if they left the nest 
 for a short time. In the end the eggs were taken and 
 the nest ruffled and spoilt.* 
 
 The jay and the magpie are egg thieves, I should 
 say, quite as hardy and as artful as the daw. But the 
 jay joins to his slyness a kind of ludicrous caution. 
 Surprised in his nest-making or his egging forays or 
 in his amours, he can never slip off steathily. He 
 raises his voice to a loud shriek. A jay appears in a 
 perpetual panic. The slightest step in the woodland 
 sets him going. Safety for a jay can only be assured 
 by sound, and every shriek sets every other jay in the 
 neighbourhood shrieking in unison. How the poacher, 
 croaching and crawling through the brakes with his 
 wires or nets and ferret, must dread that tearing cry ! 
 And how swiftly all the wild life around takes the 
 warning up goes the head of the nibbling rabbit, 
 the ring-dove smartly claps a wing and is off, the 
 blackbirds are all chinking. 
 
 I cannot believe in birds setting sentinels; that is 
 humanizing them all wrong ; I do know, through 
 watching him for years, that every jay is born a 
 sentinel. 
 
 The corbie cousins are master builders. Those 
 prickles which the magpie works into the outside of 
 
 * " The Birds in our Wood," p. 9.
 
 Cousins to the Corbies 219 
 
 her nest are worth inquiring into. Can she really 
 know the nature of a prickle and use it for an 
 armour ? Or does she only use the thorny sticks be- 
 cause they make good binding stuff to hold the large 
 domed nest together ? 
 
 I remember the first magpie's nest in a high oak 
 which I climbed to as a boy. Out of years all blurred 
 and illusive that great adventure comes back so 
 strangely fresh and distinct ! After all, childhood, 
 enchanted or not, may have been such flashes of 
 reality point to the thing. In those days one never 
 doubted that the magpie used the prickles for defence 
 and the hand was thrust very delicately into the nest. 
 But years bring the philosophic doubt. If she does 
 fend with these prickles the roses of her life, know- 
 ing their nature, this argues a discretion I have 
 scarcely reckoned with. It reminds me of a bit of folk- 
 lore which, in childhood, I had from the villagers : 
 that the nightingale, to keep awake at night and sing- 
 ing to his mate, sets his breast against a thorn. This 
 more than humanized, it spiritualized, the nightin- 
 gale. 
 
 The jay's nest is quite unlike the magpie's. It has 
 not the thorny walls without or the firm clay floor 
 within, but none the less it is a lovely bit of work. I 
 have found hundreds of jays' nests, some in ivied 
 oaks or on the trunks of scrubby trees, others in white 
 or black thorn or low firs, but most in the stems of 
 birches wearing that vivid fresh green of early May
 
 22O This Realm, This England 
 
 in the deep woodlands. Whether the jay lines with 
 rootlets almost hair fine or with thin twigs of dead 
 wood, the cup within is in its perfect shape and 
 smoothness a work of natural art not surpassed by 
 many things we find in a world all wonders in design. 
 In 1911 I found one again after many years, and 
 watched it growing from day to day till the last deli- 
 cate root was weaved into the lining. Unlike the 
 magpie and all the English corbies, the jay is secretive 
 in her nest site, choosing, where she can, the inner 
 depths of woodlands. 
 
 It is in these thickets that the jays gather for court- 
 ship in early May. All the corbies are droll in court- 
 ship, but the jay I think the chief comedian of them. 
 What a fluster of wings and tails, raising of the crests, 
 helter-skelter pursuit of two or three females by a 
 dozen males, and all the while a gabble which ceases 
 not for a moment till the choice is made ! How that 
 choice is reached among courting corbies such as 
 jays, the males of which do not fight but merely 
 fluster, I never could determine. One jay is so exactly 
 like another ! The jay crest, the jay wing pattern, the 
 jay eye, the jay voice how is it possible to judge 
 between bird and bird in such things ? Yet the female 
 must discriminate by some standard of jay perfection 
 too subtle altogether for our understanding. 
 
 This is where Evolution fails us. Evolution is great 
 and prevails, but it cannot teach us to see with the 
 eye of a jay.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 HINTS OF SPRING 
 
 THE harsh words the ancients spoke of winter 
 were after all not so ill chosen. " Black " and 
 " horrid " may no longer be used in poetry to describe 
 the season, and winter ceased " to reign tremendous 
 o'er the year " when Thomson's or Erasmus Darwin's 
 adjectival school of verse ended. About the same time 
 our forefathers ceased to represent the South Downs 
 as "a vast range," though Cobbett did a little later 
 write of Hawkley Hanger as a kind of "wonder of 
 the world." But the change is hardly more than a 
 change in word fashion. Our feeling about winter is 
 very much the feeling of people in Thomson's day, 
 or even in the world of the ancients. The natural 
 human dislike of winter is well shown in the effect 
 which the first hints of spring have on nearly all of 
 us. These hints and early signs are among the most 
 delicious experiences in life. The keenness of the 
 appetite for spring never loses edge. Later in the 
 season, after the thing has been actually realized, the 
 edge grows blunter; but at the beginning, with days 
 perceptibly lengthening, it is like the hunger of re- 
 turning health.
 
 222 This Rea/m, This England 
 
 The last part of winter is a sick part. The opening 
 part of winter is quite different ; that, indeed, is often 
 a sort of cure for the sickness of autumn. The first 
 pinch which fetches down soaked, worn-out leaves, 
 and ends plant life that has outlasted its time, is quite 
 welcome. That is often felt to be the winter of health. 
 We feel this especially in wooded spots, where the 
 first sharp night frost leads to a bright and keen morn- 
 ing. The trees and the whole scene then wear that 
 clean look of health and vigour which is a feature of 
 early winter in England. Often I have noticed this 
 whilst passing through the New Forest, and been 
 impressed by it. 
 
 But the waning winter is a world removed from 
 the waxing winter. " Horrid" and "black," and every 
 term of reproach and shrinking which the old world 
 heaped upon the season are often well deserved. It is, 
 like the winter of man in Keat's sonnet, a " pale mis- 
 feature." The waning end of winter is an illness ; and 
 this whether it takes the form of east and north wind, 
 raw rain, and clammy air, or leaden skies. 
 
 The supreme cure and the overmastering hope and 
 wish are in spring, so that every small hint or earnest 
 that the season is really changing at this time is very 
 good. The wonderful thing about all these small signs 
 of a certain change is their absolute newness every 
 year in February and March in England. We per- 
 haps noticed all of them, or most of them, last year 
 and the year before, and any year since early child-
 
 Hints of Spring 223 
 
 hood, yet next year it will be exactly as if one were 
 seeing them for the first time. It is clearly impossible 
 for a single one of them ever to stale through constant 
 use. Its freshness even seems to grow a little some- 
 thing being subtly added to it with each added year. 
 
 It is all a mistake to imagine that this change 
 begins only decidedly towards the close of March or 
 even is delayed till the time of swallows. It always 
 begins most distinctly in February. The lengthening 
 of daylight is the prime sign, absolute and conclusive, 
 of the approaching end of the sick part of winter I 
 mean that notable lengthening of light which comes 
 about the middle of February. Light and life, I have 
 said, are synonyms : more of one means more of the 
 other. We need not search behind this to explain why 
 every human being to whom life is worth anything 
 finds some good in lengthening days at this time of 
 year. 
 
 But the last week or so of February is marked in 
 most years by many of the lesser signs of the change 
 in the season. To find them one need not search in 
 sheltered or favoured spots. Go up among byroads and 
 lanes in quite a high-lying country in the south of 
 England, in a country of large cornfields and fallows 
 with little shelter away from the elmy villages except 
 clipped thorn hedges, with here and there to break 
 the force of the wind a planted clump of beeches or 
 pines and firs and undoubted hints of spring are 
 everywhere. It wants not more than a mild morning
 
 224 This Realm, This England 
 
 and afternoon, with three or four hours of weak sun- 
 shine, to bring out the sulphur butterfly. March is this 
 sulphur's real month for arousing in earnest, the first 
 mild day of sunshine bringing out the butterflies then 
 by hundreds. I believe it would be impossible on such a 
 day to miss rinding many sulphurs on the wing among 
 the hollies and oaks of Sway and Setthorns in the 
 New Forest. But I often see this butterfly out in 
 quite high and unsheltered districts elsewhere a fort- 
 night earlier. 
 
 In the third week of February one season I met 
 with one at fully five hundred feet above the sea, 
 and it was strong in flght and lovely in colour as any 
 new hatched sulphur of late summer. This was a 
 male very beautiful in colour, and it struck me as a 
 most natural mistake people not learned in these 
 things make when they imagine that these February 
 and March butterflies are fresh from the chrysalid. 
 Wherever the sulphur sleeps through the late 
 autumn and winter its quarters must be perfectly 
 secure : this particular sulphur could not have been 
 fresher and brighter in tint when it hatched in 
 August or September it was a bright canary 
 yellow. I saw a few days later in the South of 
 Europe, and again on the coast of Africa, Cleopatra, 
 the southern cousin of this sulphur. Cleopatra is one 
 of the examples which Professor Bateson discussed in 
 his lectures on Evolution, and on the little help the 
 theory gives us when we try to account for the
 
 Hints of Spring 225 
 
 minute set differences between species in the main 
 so extremely like one another. I find that a year or 
 so since I took this example myself in the same 
 matter, and asked what could there be in the laws 
 of natural selection to explain the rich orange on the 
 wings of Cleopatra, the southern sulphur butterfly, 
 and the lack of it on the wings of Rhamni, our 
 English insect ? I did not, however, mention this 
 curious fact that sometimes our sulphur does, in its 
 varieties or freaks, develop streaks or strains of Cleo- 
 patra orange. But it ends at that. The colour born 
 in mystery fades out in mystery ; and thereafter, for 
 every English sulphur born with something of the 
 orange glow of Cleopatra, a million English sulphur 
 butterflies, I suppose, are born plain Rhamni 
 canary yellow in the male and much paler greenish 
 yellow in the female, with one small spot of saffron 
 on each wing. 
 
 I must say that these minute differences in things 
 so nearly alike minute, yet probably tremendous 
 in significance do not seem to me to bring Evolu- 
 tion or Natural Selection, its agent, into discredit : 
 only they often suggest to me that some other 
 unknown agency may have been helping in the 
 work of species making. 
 
 My sulphur in the hills was a solitary. It passed 
 down the road, and I saw no more butterfly life. 
 Yet I found that hours of that day belonged wholly 
 to spring. Far too many larks sang between twelve 
 
 5
 
 226 This Realm, This England 
 
 and two for any winter afternoon. In May the 
 whole sky in this place of large cornfields and 
 sparse hedges seems packed with larks. The air on 
 some days brims with their song absolutely continu- 
 ous for hours together ; though, as we know, a 
 single lark can keep it up only for a minute or so at 
 a stretch. February has nothing like that but still, 
 every time I stopped to attend, there was a lark or 
 two shrilling overhead. Wherever there were village 
 or farmyard elms and other trees, the thrushes and 
 missel-thrushes were singing. 
 
 The hedge-sparrows, some of them so tame that 
 I could walk within a yard or two and not alarm 
 them, were singing snatches in most of the hedges, 
 and the yellowhammers were in something like full 
 song if the rather mincing music of the yellow- 
 hammer can ever be called full. Spring is not notably 
 suggested by the song of either of the thrushes, it is 
 true, whilst the hedge-sparrow nearly always begins 
 to sing about the turn of the year. But spring is sug- 
 gested by the bulk of song among these birds and by 
 the improving quality of the music.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PERFECT THING 
 
 CAN perfection be more fitly expressed than in 
 terms of a bird's-nest ? True, there are some 
 nests at this season in which it could not well be de- 
 fined. Nothing, for example, could be much remoter 
 from perfection than the nest of several of the titmice 
 though, oddly, the nest of one member of that 
 family, the long-tailed titmouse, is the loveliest found 
 in England. There is the house-sparrow, too, which 
 can hardly be said to build at all, but gathers care- 
 lessly and heaps into some hole or corner of brick- 
 work a mass of rubbish. When the house-sparrow 
 builds in a tree, it may give a very distant sign of 
 skill in building, skill of the prehistoric sort, such as 
 men had in the Stone Age. It is not, however, be- 
 cause it uses rubbish in building that the sparrow fails 
 to express perfection far from it. One can safely say 
 that the matter worked in by all the nest-builders of 
 high skill is rubbish. A bird's-nest is made of odds 
 and ends, many of them faded, shrivelled, rotten; 
 things spent and cast and worthless. Nothing is used 
 that by any effort of imagination could be termed 
 precious. I doubt if, setting aside feathers for lining, 
 227
 
 228 This Realm, This England 
 
 things are used often or ever, in England at least, 
 which can be rightly termed ornamental or beautiful. 
 
 The nearest approach to beauty in the building 
 stuff of an English bird is the fruithead of moss, which 
 the chaffinch sometimes lines her nest with, and the 
 scraps of grey lichen with which she very often, and 
 the long-tailed titmouse I think always, mats the 
 outside. But these fragments are scarcely in them- 
 selves things of striking beauty either on the chaffinch 
 or on the titmouse nest, and I imagine the same is 
 true of most or all of the lovely nests of humming 
 birds. 
 
 Out of rubbish, then, the bird contrives perfection. 
 It is perfection in many forms, one of which I came 
 upon for the first time, or at least noticed closely for 
 the first time, in April. I felt sure a pair of grey wag- 
 tails had chosen an old mill for their nesting-place, 
 for just before twilight I saw by chance a pair slip 
 by me with that bounding flight of wagtails the 
 flight that may be likened to long, smooth rollers, 
 undulating flight and disappear through the de- 
 cayed wood or wall. Certain actions of birds at this 
 season declare quite unmistakably a nest in making, 
 or a nest with eggs or young. I knew instantly that 
 a grey wagtail's nest was to be, or already was, in 
 this spot, and a week later I set about to find exactly 
 where. But it was not to be found at once. The only 
 nests which I found at first on or in the mill were 
 two song-nests of the wren. One of these was inside
 
 The Perfect Thing 229 
 
 the mill, near the top of the wheel, and inside a last 
 year's swallow's nest. The wren, a cock bird doubtless, 
 had not tried to dress up the hard-caked mud of the 
 swallow's nest, but had contented himself with adding 
 to it a cover or roof of moss and twisted bents. I 
 must admit the effect of this was odd, almost ridicu- 
 lous that wren had not expressed himself perfectly. 
 
 The same bird I doubt not it was the same 
 had done better in another song-nest he had pressed 
 against the ivied wooden wall outside the mill shed ; 
 for here he had worked up his materials of moss and 
 bents to the usual pitch of wren perfection in the 
 doorway or entrance. The firmness and hardness of 
 that door were as usual with the doors of the wren 
 a kind of marvel ; it could stand weeks of ill 
 weather and not give. You can put two fingers into 
 the firm-knit nest of the wren, where the building 
 stuff is moss and bents, without risk of spoiling it. 
 
 I call these " song-nests " because they are built 
 and, commonly, after the building has reached a cer- 
 tain point, abandoned by cock wrens that through 
 March and April are constantly brimming over with 
 song. Outside the nest, on twigs almost touching it, 
 on the doorway of the nest, and probably right inside 
 the nest at times before the roof is done, the cock 
 wren sings amidst his labours. I know nothing like 
 it in the world of birds, though I dare say there is the 
 same thing among other races of the wren in other 
 countries.
 
 230 This Realm, This England 
 
 The great majority of these song-nests are never 
 business nests never completed, never even lined 
 with the inner bedding of feather or moss. For every 
 wren's nest found in early April or in March with 
 eggs, one will, on searching, find half a dozen nests 
 that have not and never will have eggs. It is very easy 
 to find these song-nests of the wren. One has only to 
 mark the bird in song, then search about a little in 
 sheds or ivied walls or masses of dead bracken or 
 bramble and find a nest or two. 
 
 ***** 
 
 In rather a dark corner of the mill shed, on a narrow 
 shelf of bricks, four inches of which jut out rrom the 
 wall, lay a little heap of moss. At this spot a few 
 trailers of ivy had come indoors from the light, after 
 the curious habit of ivy, which sometimes seems as 
 willing to leave the light as to seek it ; the trailers 
 sprawl over and below the moss heap which I took 
 for the old nest of a mouse or rat. Five feet or so 
 beneath, in the channel walled off from the mill- 
 wheel's channel, there is the constant rush and roar 
 of water, for the wheel no longer works. Chancing, 
 whilst I climbed about the rotting walls inside the 
 shed, to come quite close to this spot I saw, to my 
 surprise, that this bit of moss was a bird's-nest and 
 on it a grey wagtail was warming her eggs. She sat 
 so close it seemed as if one might put one's hand 
 upon her. 
 
 What a perfect thing, was here, quite apart from
 
 The Perfect Thing 231 
 
 the making of the nest ! I dare say that by a time ex- 
 posure I might have got a kind of picture of the nest 
 and the bird on her eggs, for, within a few feet, was 
 a wall to place the kodak on, and she gave no sign of 
 stirring whilst I stood or knelt within little more than 
 a yard of her. But there was that in the scene which 
 no film could truly reproduce ! She lay low in the 
 cup, her back almost flush with the rim of it. Her 
 body and head, even her wide-open and watching 
 eye, were quite motionless. 
 
 Her tail stirred slightly. It was tilted up above the 
 rim of the nest at an angle perhaps of forty, and its 
 narrow and clearly defined white edging along the 
 outside feathers on either side was very distinct 
 indeed, the first I saw of the bird was this long up- 
 tilted tail. I have sometimes wondered whether the 
 tail of a wagtail can be absolutely still. It moves on 
 springs so extremely sensitive that the slightest move- 
 ment of any part of the bird must set them going. 
 Here the bird was at absolute rest, and the upper 
 end, the body end, of the tail was rested on the nest. 
 Yet the last inch or so of tail was stirring palpably, 
 if ever so slightly ! 
 
 Some faint movement in the still air at this sheltered 
 spot may have stirred it, or perhaps the fine vibration 
 of the wall unregistered by my sense through the 
 rush of the water underneath. 
 
 When at length she did move, she slipped off her 
 nest so lightly as surely not to disturb the set of one
 
 232 This Realm, This England 
 
 fine hair therein. She seemed up and away with one 
 action of grace and of supreme ease. A long wave or 
 two of streaming flight took her from the nest be- 
 tween the ivy trailers and the wall to the other end 
 of the shed, whence she turned through the open 
 door into the fields ; and that without doubt is her 
 unvarying path through the air from out of doors to 
 her nest and the reverse. 
 
 She went without a moment's faltering or con- 
 fusion ; and along the same route she would return a 
 little later when I left the spot, and along the same 
 route in a month or so she will lead out her young. 
 Some birds in an enclosed place like this will bungle 
 on the wing. But the swallows, knowing the aerial 
 roadways so well, are never at an instant's loss, and 
 the grey wagtail is as much at home in such a spot 
 as the swallow. 
 
 After she had sped away light and quiet as a 
 shadow of a bird, I looked down into the nest and 
 saw its four eggs. They lay in a cup that had all the 
 smoothness and the symmetry which are such a 
 lovely feature of a bird's-nest. 
 
 I had stood and watched not long before a potter 
 at the wheel, working at a spot where a potter with 
 the same material had been working, they told me, 
 for two thousand years at least. It was a fascinating 
 thing to see ; for working merely with his simple 
 wheel and some scrap of stick, he made out of mud- 
 rubbish forms with curves and whole shape unerring as
 
 The Perfect Thing 233 
 
 anything moulded by the most complex machine. In all 
 the art that has grown from the time of Greece, one 
 could find nothing truer and purer than these curves 
 and ovals. They were at the beginning of kallaes- 
 thetics, and will be there till the close. Now, the grey 
 wagtail, without the scrap of stick, yet worked as 
 truly and as surely, and curved and shaped her nest 
 as perfectly, as the potter his vessels. What is far 
 more wonderful, she worked with that which to 
 human touch and management feels the least 
 promising of materials. 
 
 The art of the swallow, which cements its nest to 
 the woodwork above, is another thing than that of 
 the wagtail. The swallow at least has, like the potter, 
 a plastic stuff to create from, where the wagtail has, 
 if she is to secure a perfect round or oval and an un- 
 erring curve, to all appearance the contrary. But, 
 thinking the matter over, one sees that the wagtail 
 has a wheel for her work, though it does not revolve 
 like the potter's. It is the wheel of her breast.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 "SMALL, BUT A WORK DIVINE" 
 
 THERE is a passage in Sir Thomas Browne I 
 have touched on more than once, but must 
 touch on once again, for I think it holds a small 
 philosophy of Nature. I mean the passage in which 
 Browne argues that human reason may well go to 
 school to the wisdom of bees and ants and spiders. 
 Let ruder heads be amazed by whales and prodigious 
 creatures, says he : " these, I confess, are the colossus 
 and majestic pieces of her [Nature's] hand." But 
 the narrow engines, he continues, offer more curious 
 mathematics Regio Montanus's Fly being more 
 admirable than his eagle. Certainly it is often true 
 that the smaller the natural engine in the world of 
 flower or bird or insect one looks into at this time of 
 year the larger the wonder of it seems and the rarer 
 and more curious the beauty. The less includes the 
 greater is a lesson taught by an almost endless variety 
 of the minuter forms of life. 
 
 It is a lesson taught us by the whorl and spire of 
 
 the tiny shells, which can be gathered almost by the 
 
 handful out of small and clear English streams in 
 
 summer scarcely less than along the shore of an 
 
 234
 
 "Small, but a Work Divine" 235 
 
 African lagoon ; taught, too, by the flower and seed 
 mechanisms of miniature plants on the downs ; by 
 the humble undersides of many moths' and butterflies' 
 wings ; by the whole build and faery beauty of the 
 smallest birds. We must agree there is no need to 
 go for wonder to whales and elephants and drome- 
 daries though I admit I would give a good deal to 
 see the flap of an elephant's ear, the actual beast in 
 the actual forest, not the excellent imitation of it in 
 a zoological garden. 
 
 I have enjoyed watching for a little while three of 
 these narrow engines in Nature, any one of which 
 might have furnished Browne fully for his argument 
 first my pair of grey wagtails by the edge of the 
 brook, where they nested in the old mill in April ; 
 next, the butterfly styled Duke of Burgundy fritillary ; 
 third, the gold-crested wren at its nest. The grey 
 wagtails have done with their first brood, and are 
 hunting water-flies and other small insect food all day 
 along the banks of the brook. Perhaps the true home 
 of this lovely little bird the smartest, sprightliest of 
 all our English kinds, save the redstart is not in the 
 South, but by the rocky pools and cascades of a 
 Highland mountain stream. But the grey wagtail is 
 commoner than some writers on English birds have 
 thought. Both in summer and winter I find it by the 
 slow, clear, and quiet streams in the South. It cannot 
 well be confused with the yellow or summer wag- 
 tail of the water meadows a common bird in the 
 South and Midlands because to the sulphur of its
 
 236 This Realm, This England 
 
 breast is added the bold slate-grey of its mantel and 
 crown. Besides, the male has a black throat. The 
 other yellow-breasted wagtail of the riverside has none 
 of this slate-grey and black. 
 
 This grey wagtail, like the common pied wagtail 
 or dishwasher, which everybody knows by sight, is a 
 wading bird ; but how deep it dares to wade I only 
 learnt when I saw it in the stream almost up to the 
 breast. Then there happened quite the prettiest in- 
 cident I have seen in the life of wagtails. The even- 
 ing sun came strong through the trees and fell full 
 on the shallows where the birds were wading and 
 balancing with that ceaseless up-and-down action 
 of their white-edged tails. At once the two grey wag- 
 tails turned to four ! Four yellow breasts showed in 
 the glittering stream all close together, and the two 
 just added were every bit as bright and well-defined 
 as the pair they sprang from. It was the effect that 
 Wordsworth gives us in " Yarrow Unvisited." 
 
 " The swan on still St. Mary's Lake 
 Flcat double, swan and shadow !" 
 
 But where Wordsworth's picture was in black and 
 white, this one was a thumbnail in colour, exquisite 
 in detail. Every tint, the ruffle and the smooth of 
 plumage that were in the real birds reappeared in the 
 mock birds. Not only this, but the life of the wag- 
 tails above was exactly limned in the wagtails below 
 so that the shade birds below the surface balanced, 
 though upside down !
 
 " Small, but a Work Divine " 237 
 
 The Duke of Burgundy is a very small butterfly 
 for such a big name. There is about him little enough 
 of the pomp one associates with such an exalted 
 title. Which Duke, I wonder, was he christened 
 after ? Was it Pension's pupil, who grew gentle and 
 patient and for whom " the day was ever too short," 
 or Charles the Bold, or which other of the long 
 succession ? But I am afraid the christener of this 
 butterfly wanted a sense of humour, for however one 
 views it the name is absurd. Latin names are often 
 worse than English for butterflies ; but at least the 
 Duke's classic name, Lucina, is shorter than many, 
 and I prefer it. I met with Lucina on the north 
 slope of the railway embankment. Hitherto this was 
 one of the butterflies I had not succeeded in touching 
 whilst it sunned or sucked sweetmeat on a flower- 
 head. It is nimble and shy. You can disarm some 
 butterflies and moths of their fear by very quiet 
 movements, and end by touching their wings or 
 body, or even having them sometimes on the finger- 
 tip. But Lucina has always left its hazel leaf in haste 
 when I came very close. However, I contrived not 
 only to touch Lucina on the railway slope, but I in- 
 duced it to come to my finger and cling there. 
 
 A cloud passed across the sun, and Lucina fell 
 drowsy, and when I touched it, flitted to my finger- 
 tip, shut its wings tight, and slept. I carried it over 
 to the south side of the embankment, when the sun 
 reappeared, and at once Lucina awoke, spread its 
 wings, and was oft. Was ever a thing more quickly
 
 238 This Rea/m, This England 
 
 numbed and unnumbed by shade and sun as a butter- 
 fly ? It is almost automatic as a spring. 
 
 Carrying Lucina over the slope, I could look well 
 into its pattern. Edward Newman, who did not fear 
 to write in human terms of butterflies, and saw in 
 them live things, spoke of these undersides of 
 Lucina's wings as "very beautiful." I can quite agree 
 after scanning this one close. The colour is far from 
 brilliant, just rust-brown, on which are laid spots of 
 white or yellowish-white. But the pattern here is 
 everything, and with Lucina it appears in the form 
 of refined mosaic work, three series of tesserae, oblong 
 and wedge-shape, set with such curious care. 
 
 What do they mean, how and why were they laid 
 there ? I do not think that natural selection or sexual 
 selection solves for us the how or even the why of 
 the undersides of many insect wings ; for there is no 
 sign here in Lucina that they are for a guard guard 
 through invisibility or for sexual show. Yet this 
 mosaic work must be or have been essential to the 
 life of this insect ; it is repeated in varying and intri- 
 cate patterns on the wings of many dozens of butter- 
 flies outside Lucina's family. 
 
 ***** 
 
 If the fly Browne writes of is more admirable than 
 the eagle one might say the same of the gold-crested 
 wren in some ways. This bird, the smallest we have 
 in England and the smallest that sings in Europe, is 
 an early nester as a rule. But a pair hatched their
 
 " Small, but a Work Divine " 239 
 
 brood in a spruce-tree just outside my garden in 
 Sussex and they were feeding the young in June 
 almost from dusk till dusk. The nest was a good 
 specimen of the goldcrest's art as builder. It was 
 the size of a cricket ball and almost, I should say, a 
 perfect sphere. It hung right under a branch of the 
 spruce with absolutely no prop beneath. Moss, with 
 a few shreds and silky hairs of cocoons and insect 
 webs is all the goldcrest used to make the outside of 
 the nest and swing it securely in the air from the 
 needle leaves of the fir. But it would need a very high 
 and persistent wind to dislodge the nest or young. A 
 chaffinch's will sometimes be blown to the ground, 
 or a goldfinch's, but the goldcrest's is stable because 
 it gives with each stir of the branch it swings from. 
 It allows for the wind with a nice science. 
 
 The hen began to feed the brood soon after three 
 each morning ; and her mate attended, hurrying out 
 song after song. The spirit of this midget thing, three 
 inches about from tip of beak to the end of the tail, 
 was masterful. He charged with a shrill challenge 
 such small birds as chanced to approach too near the 
 branch that swung the nest. I saw him dart out like 
 a flash at a blue titmouse with an angry cry and 
 drive it off the next branch, and redbreast and finch 
 would be assaulted with equal courage. They were 
 quite harmless, but this bit of the tree was a goldcrest 
 preserve from the time the nest started till the day 
 the young flew.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 PHILOMEL 
 
 DID not our ancestors of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries sometimes know more 
 truth about the natural world than we allow them ? 
 Reading delightful old Fuller for the sweetness of 
 his style, I lit on a passage wherein he warns us not 
 to be "over-expecting" happiness in marriage. It is 
 not all romance. Its Olympus has clouds. Some- 
 times its music must be mute, and for a metaphor he 
 turns to the nightingale. Remember, says he, the 
 nightingales sing only some months in the spring, 
 " but commonly are silent when they have hatched 
 their eggs, as if their mirth were turned into care 
 for their young ones." 
 
 I had no notion that this truth about the nightin- 
 gale was familiar to men in Fuller's generation, but 
 supposed it was first known about the time of 
 Colonel Montagu and Gilbert White. Early in 
 April we always begin to think and talk of nightin- 
 gales, for they are coming across the sea. I believe in 
 none of the stories of cuckoos calling in English 
 woods in March. The cuckoo knows its season as 
 well as any stork, and that season never begins in 
 140
 
 Philomel 241 
 
 England till April is well in. We might with 
 Wordsworth look a thousand ways for the cuckoo 
 that called in March and never get a glimpse of it : 
 the England of a March cuckoo being indeed "an 
 unsubstantial faery place." But a nightingale in the 
 first week of April I could believe in without great 
 effort, though I never heard one quite so early ; 
 whilst a nightingale before the second week is out, I 
 often listen for and have sometimes if not lately 
 found. 
 
 # * * * * 
 
 Turning over bird-life studies I came upon two or 
 three which I made on a pair of nightingales in June 
 ten years ago. I did not find the nest till the young 
 were hatched, and then I settled down to watch the 
 birds closely. The nest was on the ground among 
 birch stems at the edge of the coppice. It is a strange 
 thing, which I have never been able to explain, that 
 many birds among them even some of the shyest 
 prefer the edge of a wood or a woodland path or 
 lane to the thickets within. I watched both the 
 nightingales bringing food for their young, and after 
 a little time I heard the cock bird indulge in several 
 short bursts of song. It was certainly the same bird 
 that had been helping to feed the young in the nest, 
 which proved to me that nightingale song does not 
 of necessity end absolutely at the hatching of the 
 eggs. Virtually, the thing is over by then, but it 
 seems a few bars can be given now and then for 
 
 16
 
 242 This Reatm, This England 
 
 perhaps a few days afterwards. These young had 
 been out of the shells for two days or so, scarcely 
 more. 
 
 Why does the nightingale's song end automati- 
 cally at the hatching of the eggs little, magic 
 brown eggs in which sleeps "the music of the 
 moon " ? It is not the same with many other of the 
 chief and of the lesser singing birds in England. I 
 am sure from long and close watching that most, if 
 not all, of the English " warblers " that are birds of 
 passage like the nightingale, coming to us and leaving 
 us about the same time, often sing after their eggs 
 are hatched. The blackcap notably sings on, so that 
 I always hear him through June, whilst I have 
 heard him at his best in July. The garden warbler 
 likewise sings into July ; so do both whitethroats, 
 and I have seen and heard the male lesser white- 
 throat singing its low delicious undersong in a thick 
 hedge when in company with his mate and full- 
 fledged family. 
 
 The willow- wren and the chiff-chaff sing through 
 July, and both, after a pause in August, open anew 
 at the close of summer. The wood warbler sings far 
 into July ; but this bird is a very late breeder, and I 
 dare say he has ceased by the time the young are 
 hatched or ready to fly ; at least, I have not heard the 
 wood warbler sing at the close of summer or early 
 in autumn like these other two leaf warblers. 
 
 But there are many other English birds that sing
 
 Philomel 243 
 
 on more or less after the hatching of the young, and 
 I am sure that amongst them are plenty which, like 
 the nightingale, rear only one brood in the season. 
 We may safely take it that song does not end auto- 
 matically with them as it ends with the nightingale. 
 When I first knew of this habit of nightingales, I 
 took on trust the belief that Philomel stops singing 
 that he may not give away the secret of where the 
 young are hid. I do not take it so to-day. That is an 
 example of humanizing a nightingale wrongly ; if he 
 ceased to sing from the motive of secrecy, why should 
 he not, instead, choose a singing-place well removed 
 from the nest and young ? This might serve his ends 
 still better. But in truth the reason is not one of 
 secrecy at all otherwise it would begin before the 
 young were hatched, whilst the nest held only one 
 cold egg. 
 
 A likelier theory is that he ceases at the hatching 
 because henceforth he is busy with the task of feed- 
 ing the young ; though this one, too, has weak spots, 
 for the blackcaps and garden warblers do not stop 
 their songs; besides, at night the young need no 
 food and attention from the male bird. On the whole, 
 I would rather offer no theory as to why the song 
 ends suddenly with rare exceptions such as I have 
 given when the young are out of the shells ; but I 
 strongly incline to think that the reason why the 
 nightingale's singing season is so soon over is that 
 the strain is too great to keep up. There is nothing
 
 244 This Realm* This England 
 
 like that strain in any bird I have heard. Much or 
 the blackcap's lovely music is desultory. Many of 
 the airs he whistles can mean no strain at all. He 
 flings them out casually, whilst he moves from twig 
 to twig, and is more intent on his food than on 
 music. Moreover, his merit as singer depends on 
 other qualities than the nightingale's. There is abso- 
 lutely nothing of the nightingale rattle and volley in 
 him. His voice has none of the amazing carrying 
 power of the nightingale's, which travels on a still 
 night three-quarters of a mile over uneven ground, 
 and may travel even a mile. 
 
 There are birds in plenty which sing far longer 
 at a stretch than any nightingale. The skylark's songs 
 last longer and perhaps the skylark is the English 
 bird that in strain and effort comes nearest the 
 nightingale, save for the longer outbursts in the June 
 night by the river of that fiery-hearted little thing, 
 the sedge warbler. The garden warbler's songs last 
 sometimes much longer. There is a polyglot, too, in 
 almost every European country but ours, or two 
 polyglots, melodious willow warbler, and Icterine 
 warbler, the German's mocking-bird, that need not 
 pause for breath so often as the nightingale. I roughly 
 timed one of these, I think I do not know them 
 well enough to distinguish between them and the 
 song lasted without the least break for a hundred 
 and fifty seconds ! But here again the strain is slight 
 compared with the nightingale's ; against him the
 
 Philomel 245 
 
 melodious willow warbler or the Icterine warbler is 
 quite a weak singer. 
 
 In the wild state the nightingale ends by or before 
 mid- June in England. A few late nesters or perhaps 
 unmated birds continue another week ; and some 
 years ago I knew of one that sang on well into July 
 in the long spinney of underwood and timber by 
 Micheldever Station, a spot in some years full or 
 nightingales. But a nightingale singing in July is 
 extremely rare. Mid-June is really the end of it 
 and the last song the bird gives has often his full 
 strength and glory. I grant this does not argue that 
 the strain is telling and that the effort in such a 
 narrow engine cannot be sustained. But it may be 
 because the feat is kept within strict time limits that 
 it is possible at all in so small a creature, a bare six 
 inches from head to tail ! I have read that to get song 
 out of a caged nightingale beyond the set allowance 
 of it, the seven or eight weeks, in Nature, the bird 
 has to be given special fare for a stimulus ; and even 
 then many nightingales keep mute. 
 
 There is another point about the song and nesting 
 of Philomel that has been overlooked. What is the 
 motive at this season of that habit I call the night- 
 ingale thrill ? I touched on it imperfectly in "The 
 Glamour of the Earth," but beyond this I know of 
 nothing written about this striking habit. It is 
 common, I imagine, to both sexes, though I have only 
 seen it in the hen bird. " Soon a hen nightingale flew
 
 246 This Realm ^ This England 
 
 into a hazel stem near where I lay, and her bearing 
 told me she brad just come from her nest. She took no 
 notice of me, as I remained perfectly still. Her body 
 vibrated intensely for a few seconds, as in an ecstasy ; 
 and several times she spread out a red-brown tail like 
 a fan, deliberately opening and shutting it." This 
 was repeated once or twice later after the cock bird 
 had brought green caterpillars to the young. 
 
 The blackbird, the cock bird early in the spring, 
 has a delicate action of somewhat the same nature, 
 as he spreads his tail and raises and lowers it ; though 
 the action in the blackbird is sprightly rather than 
 subtle like the nightingale's. Akin, too, is the tail 
 play in the redstart. I hardly know a more fascinating 
 thing to watch in small bird life. Abroad I saw 
 Moussier's warbler or redstart one of the most local 
 birds in the world and I noticed that he, too, had 
 the tail shiver of our redstart, though Canon Tristram 
 and Mr. Whitaker have described it, I think, as 
 more like that of the chat than of the redstart family. 
 These movements of the nightingales and redstarts 
 and others of their frail-built kind, point, I think, to 
 a sensitiveness most fine and curious. 
 
 These birds live an intense life at this season, as 
 indeed at all seasons things full of nervous power 
 and feeling. Perhaps no bird is really phlegmatic, but 
 contrasted with the nightingale, many seem so such 
 as a pipit or a bunting. 
 
 Many people come to England to hear nightingales
 
 Philomel 247 
 
 they will cross an ocean to that end and it is a 
 great song, amazing in power and rapture ! But I 
 promise the enthusiast that by watching these birds 
 at close quarters between mid-April and mid- June 
 he may almost double the pleasure. There are not 
 many things perhaps that can take us so securely 
 from the world and its " low-thoughted cares " as 
 watching nightingales in May and June in English 
 coppices.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 LILLIPUT 
 
 TO get a good idea, very simply, of the life with- 
 out limit in green English places at mid- 
 summer, it is enough to take a little stick and strike 
 a few oak or hazel boughs at the edge of the wood. 
 Instantly the air a yard or two about the bough 
 touched is showered with tiny moths. They flick out 
 into the open, and, finding no shelter there, drop to 
 the field grasses or swiftly retreat to their cover. I do 
 not think it much matters where the wood of Lilliput 
 is, if only it holds a good sprinkling of oak-trees, 
 with plenty of undergrowth. We may tap each low 
 bough we pass, and at each stroke the air is lively for 
 a few seconds with the same crowd of startled and 
 alert creatures fleeing from the possible foe. The 
 majority of the crowd is made up in many places of 
 a green tortrix, theoak moth. " Tortrix viridana " is the 
 scientific name of one of the prettiest members of the 
 great group of minute moths called "Micro-lepidop- 
 tera." It has not the fine speckled and wavy system 
 dot, band, line, andfascite y which makes up the pen- 
 cilled patterns so exquisite in detail that are features of 
 many of its kind; but its front wings are painted
 
 Lilliput 249 
 
 apple-green ; and here we may end an error once for 
 all about the colour of the oak moth it does not con- 
 fuse its wearer with the leaves around. One may 
 easily test this by tapping a bough or two, picking 
 out of the fleeing crowd a few oak moths and mark- 
 ing where they alight. What do they look like when 
 at rest again r Whether they alight and set flat their 
 wings on the upper or lower side of the leaf of oak 
 or hazel, elm, maple, cornel tree, or any other 
 common bush of the mixed English underwood 
 they are in distinct contrast with that leaf. Our 
 apple-green tortrix, indeed, is clipped or bitten out very 
 cleanly on the oak-leaf ; and if at a careless glance he 
 does not seem to be an insect at rest, he may be 
 taken for a small shed bit of leaf of another kind of 
 tree, or even a small key or samara of maple or ash 
 kind ; that he is not part of his perch is clear in a 
 moment. 
 
 The true armour of oak tortrix was never forged 
 in the factory of colour. Rather it lies in a swift re- 
 sponse to the smallest shock of the branch on which 
 the moth sits. No sooner has the possible foe in the 
 form, say, of a small bird lit on that branch than 
 the tremor has flashed, as by electric current, to each 
 leaf and slender twig and warned off all tiny moths 
 resting there. 
 
 Not in the winged insect alone but in its grub we 
 find the same prompt response to the least shock or 
 stir in the branch. Tap the oak stem in May and
 
 250 This Realm, This England 
 
 down comes a shower of small green caterpillars, each 
 dangling by a long, fine, silken thread. Each was hid 
 in an oak leaf rolled round to a tube, and before the 
 bird's bill could be thrust into that tube unless that 
 bird's feet trod the branch with a more than willow 
 warbler lightness the caterpillar was swinging in 
 mid-air seven or ten feet below. 
 
 The grub in this act is automaton, we may say : 
 tortrix shoots down when the twig is touched, as a 
 little lid flies up when the spring in good working 
 order is pressed. 
 
 With this apple-green tortrix half a dozen other 
 members of this strange world of mystic moths will 
 often scatter from the oak or hazel bough. Some are 
 many times minuter even than itself moths among 
 them that came from mites of grubs that tunnel within 
 the thin leaf of the bramble and other plants. There 
 is at least one member of a group of these minim 
 miners Nepticula that with its wings full spread 
 can barely cover the eighth of an inch. 
 
 So that in this lovely Lilliput of real life Lilliput 
 for the lucky lepidopterist ! even the Bedford blue, 
 smallest of our English butterflies, might almost bulk 
 as an inhabitant of Brobdingnag. 
 
 A few shakes of the bough on one of the longest 
 days of the year.and we can scarcely fail to drive out 
 a variety of these hasty little things that with their 
 palpi and antennae set more problems than a school 
 of philosophers can solve. There are some in which
 
 Lilliput 251 
 
 these obscure palpi are far longer than the head from 
 which they project like doubled beaks ; in one kind 
 quite straight perhaps, in another curved upward. 
 
 We name them palpi, and our knowledge ends at 
 this for our knowledge of a minim moth, tinea or 
 tortrix, can hardly be said to have begun. 
 
 It is the antenna of Lilliput that always appeals to 
 me chiefly. No doubt we must turn to the microscope 
 if we wish to value fully the amazing variety of form 
 and the extreme perfection of finish which are com- 
 mon to this realm of life. An antenna can be taper 
 an antenna can be toothed. It can be serrated, can be 
 pectinated. An antenna can be clubbed, as all must 
 see who have glanced at the horns of a butterfly. It 
 can be haired or it can be plumed. 
 
 A little of all this, and more than this, can be 
 gathered without the aid of a glass. But what I think 
 we cannot fail to appreciate, though the moth is not 
 larger than this green tortrix or adela longhorns or 
 one of the odd little crambidae which in myriads lie 
 head down along the grass stems in every meadow 
 at midsummer, is the sensitiveness of these often 
 ornamented organs. 
 
 I know of no feature in a live thing, large or small, 
 so eloquent of subtle sense and mystic action as these 
 quivering, refinest threads of matter. Might not the 
 brains of a butterfly be in the antennae ? It wants no 
 great effort of imagination to seat the heart of a moth 
 there too.
 
 252 This Rea/m, This England 
 
 Surely it must be through the antennae that the 
 fiery-hearted emperor moth is led, swiftly and surely, 
 on its love errand ? Forel, a great German scientist, 
 in his work on the senses of insects, told how the 
 emperor moths could be brought to besiege his closed 
 window, right in the town of Lausanne, through this 
 blind, unerring pursuit sex; and every artful collector, 
 I believe, knows well how easy it is to play upon the 
 same passion in the emperor " the desire of the moth 
 for the star." 
 
 The long, grey, quivering antennae of the oak tor- 
 trix, or the far longer antennae of the green adela, 
 that often flies by day in the bright sun, tell one the 
 same tale. Whether they are largely or wholly love- 
 finders or not, one is sure they are the seat of some- 
 thing supremely essential to this moth life. 
 
 What a powerful part the moth one of the hum- 
 blest and perhaps most despised things in creation to 
 most of us plays in the drama of Nature, may in 
 some degree be realized if we look at the oak woods 
 at midsummer. Earlier in the season, in passing the 
 woods at the western edge of the New Forest, I have 
 been struck by the vivid freshness of the young foliage. 
 Scarcely a leaf seemed to have suffered the smallest 
 hurt. But a week later a scourge fell on the mass or 
 the oaks in ten thousand woods. The caterpillar of 
 the green tortrix had hatched. In a few nights whole 
 trees were struck by a blight that turned the foliage 
 to a wretched, lifeless-looking brown. On some trees
 
 Lilliput 253 
 
 a bough was spared here and there, its radiant green 
 only emphasizing the sick appearance of the rest of 
 the tree. If a killing black frost had struck the oak 
 woods it could not have nipped and spoilt the leaves 
 more completely than these tortrix grubs had done in 
 these few nights. They rolled and shrivelled up some 
 of the fresh green leaves so that no shape or design 
 was left ; others they shredded so that nothing re- 
 mained but midribs and rags and tatter. All this ruin 
 was done by grubs so trifling that a willow warbler 
 or chiff-chaff will gather several in its bill one of the 
 smallest in bird build before she flies with the food 
 to her young ; and were the insect eaters a hundred 
 times as numerous as they are in England the oaks 
 would still turn brown and sick in May and early 
 June from the scourge of tortrix. 
 
 What must the numbers of this green oak moth be ! 
 This life is, to all human reckoning, infinite ; and, so 
 far as we can grapple with such numbers, the minim 
 moth is boundless at the spheres. 
 
 What lasting harm the tortrix does to the tree I 
 cannot say ; I am not sure that of necessity it harms 
 the tree at all, though it strips it for weeks of all 
 beauty and brightness. It is usual, of course, it is our 
 common form, to say that these scourges are wholly 
 evil but are they really ? If we look at all closely at 
 the oaks to-day we see at once the blight is over. The 
 shreds and rags and tatter still hang to the twigs, and 
 the brown still sicklies the whole face of the wood.
 
 254 This Realm, This England 
 
 But on every branch a new spring is starting. The 
 oaks are budding again, and the most forward of them 
 those that were struck earliest by the blight of the 
 tortrix are already beginning to put out new leaves. 
 
 Strength Through Struggle this would make a 
 motto for the whole green world. I am not sure I 
 might not apply it to the oak-tree struck by this 
 scourge. The struggle may well retard the oak some- 
 what in its growth to perfection, to the ultimate 
 hardness and soundness of the heart-wood ; but it 
 may, too, ensure an upkeep of the strength. 
 
 Nothing lasting, nothing strong, nothing beautiful, is 
 known in God's Creation that has not come and is not 
 conserved through struggle. We dare not overlook this 
 truth, in the management of men's affairs.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 STORM SPRITES 
 
 I. THE GULLS 
 
 A CRITIC, writing about a book of mine named 
 " The Airy Way," charged me with not under- 
 standing natural flight, for I had not seen the albatross. 
 Separated, both charges would be too true. I have 
 never seen an albatross on the wing ; whilst as for 
 natural flight nobody does understand it, nobody ever 
 has : Borelli did not, nor did Michael Angelo, nor 
 Pettigrew, nor Marey that brilliant, confident 
 French mind. Men of mathematics, men of mechanics 
 are constantly working at the problem to-day, and 
 are baffled by the soaring of an eagle or a vulture, or 
 by the mystic feats of a sea-gull, just as their fore- 
 bears were baffled. But though I would go far and 
 give far more than I can afford to see the glorious 
 albatross, the sight, alas ! does not help one to guess 
 the secret of the way of a bird through the air. In- 
 deed, may it not make the secret it makes only harder ? 
 Long ago Bennett watched the wandering albatross 
 in Southern seas. He worked out its flight against the 
 wind with the sailing of a ship against the wind, and
 
 256 This Realm, This England 
 
 found that the bird, tacking in its evolutions like 
 a ship, could sail within two points of the wind; 
 whereas, in like conditions, a cutter close-hauled could 
 only sail within four and a half points and another 
 ship within six points. What this means is well shown 
 by a diagram in Bree's " Birds of Europe " for the 
 albatross reaches European, sometimes even British, 
 seas and the wonder of the thing is very great. 
 
 I hope to see this bird of God if I live long enough. 
 Meanwhile, I have seen the Arctic skua in European 
 waters, and the common black-headed gull on the 
 South Coast of England in a wild storm. Now, if we 
 could understand the flight of the skua in calm and 
 of the gull in storm, we might, I fancy, easily guess 
 the albatross's secret without seeing the albatross. 
 Their secret is one and the same. 
 
 The skua and the common swift, the golden eagle 
 and the griffon vulture, the herring gull and the lesser 
 black-backed gull, and this black-headed gull, by their 
 wingship, only put the same riddle in varying phrases 
 in the language of flight. Which phrase is the most 
 expressive and beautiful I never can determine for 
 long together. I thought the eagle's best when I 
 watched the eagle in the Grampians, and the vulture's 
 best when one day I watched the vultures in Sicily. 
 On other days the Arctic skua and the English swift 
 surpassed the eagle and the vulture. 
 
 On the Cornish cliffs in mid-June the lesser black-
 
 Storm Sprites 257 
 
 backed gulls was to me the act of all these acts when 
 he rose from his stack-rocks, and swung round and 
 round me in his miles of mazy motion ! 
 
 But in a wild storm that beat one day on the coast 
 between Poole and Christchurch, the black-headed 
 gull, just the ordinary bird we can see any winter 
 day in London, was the master of them all in this 
 wizardry of wing. 
 
 I wondered when I went out on the front to watch 
 the storm if any bird could brave it. Right up the high 
 crumbling cliffs, what looked like an endless shower 
 of scraps of torn white paper was scudding, darting 
 fleetly through the air, and being swept away inland. 
 This was the spume of the ravening storm. It ap- 
 peared snow-white as it whirled through the air, but 
 when I reached the strand, I found it was yellowish 
 or amber-coloured froth. 
 
 Instead of flying, it was flowing inland like a 
 shallow and swift stream ; and where any obstacle 
 dammed its course, the froth gathered into masses 
 absolutely like snow in a lane or against a hedge. The 
 drifts lay two and three feet deep in places, and men 
 were sweeping them from the doorsteps just as 
 snow is swept. But for the yellow tinge the illusion of 
 snow, snow of the sea, would have been complete. 
 It was only when one looked closely at these drifts 
 that a jelly-like tremulousness was seen, and the 
 extreme tenuity of the whole quivering mass became 
 apparent. 
 
 17
 
 258 This Realm, This England 
 
 The fury of a storm can be measured by its spume, 
 and I should never have believed, had I not seen 
 them at this very spot, that the black-headed gulls 
 could ride with ease on a wind that tortured the sea 
 like this. But the gulls not only rode on this storm, 
 they poised on it, rested in it, faced it full, and con- 
 stantly drove clean into and through it. Watching 
 Arctic skuas once in the Med iterranean during calm or 
 a moderate breeze, I could only rarely see a few strokes, 
 or half-strokes of their narrow, rigid wings. I saw them 
 glide many hundreds of yards just above the water with- 
 out the slightest sign of a stroke, or a half or quarter 
 stroke ; and they changed their course constantly, 
 and swerved round and flew back, and then swerved 
 again and returned and caught up the ship still on 
 those rigid wings which all but touched, yet never 
 touched, the surface of the sea. So that watching them 
 was an enchantment, and I was put out of love with 
 all other birds. The wonder of the thing was to me 
 the nearness of the bird to the water swimming 
 with never a fault, and always tireless, in only a few 
 inches of air. 
 
 A swift has heights at least to bear him, heights 
 in which he rushes and screams and revels as only a 
 swift can in those wild summer evening parties. An 
 eagle has a whole empire of air, a heaven of it, in 
 which to wind and coil himself, out of ken above the 
 forests and hills. Either of these acts of flight is a 
 tour d'aile. Yet, watching the black-headed gull in
 
 Storm Sprites 259 
 
 the storm, one is out of love with swifts and eagles 
 even. 
 
 Almost the first thing I notice about the gull in 
 the storm is the perfect tidiness, smoothness of its 
 plumage. It is all the same whether the gull move 
 against the storm, across the storm, or with it not 
 a feather is ruffled or awry. I have read that birds 
 do not like flying with the wind, as it ruffles their 
 feathers ; the man who thought this forgot the gull. 
 The gull is groomed to perfection. The cut and fit 
 of his clothes for feathers were made for clothes 
 as well as for oars are a constant wonder to me. 
 
 A human tailor is a bungler compared with the 
 tailor Evolution. There is no doubt about the prime 
 importance of exact cut and fit in this establishment. 
 On the Fifth Day the scissors of Creation must have 
 cut exceeding fine and true. Otherwise the black- 
 headed gull would fail in the storm. 
 
 Next I notice the perfect serenity of the gull in a 
 gale, across or against or with which men are stagger- 
 ing on land and small ships are in peril at sea. After 
 flying, say, a hundred yards with or across it, he 
 swings round and on rigid, full-spread wings slides 
 straight out into it ; and he can slide so for a hundred 
 yards or more. He appears, as I have noted before, 
 in high winds at the edge of the cliffs to be 
 drawn out into the gale by some strong, invisible 
 wires. 
 
 I watch this act over and over again, and cannot
 
 260 This Realm, This England 
 
 see enough of it for delight and the wonder that 
 never grows less. How is it done ? Every theory 
 about natural flight I have hugged myself fails to 
 assure me when I watch the gull acting thus in not 
 a high wind but a raging storm. Figure-of-eight 
 action, inclined planes, the screw, the wedge, momen- 
 tum, and the rest of our stock-in-trade about a bird's 
 way through the air all seem so absurd in the actual 
 presence of the miracle. We may go to Bertram or 
 to Maskelyne and Cook and convince ourselves we 
 know how their sleight of hand is done. There are 
 always those who know how the trick with the watch 
 or ring and napkin is done ! 
 
 It is another matter when we get to gulls. 
 Sleight of hand is the way of men, sleight of wing 
 the way of Gods. 
 
 There is, I admit, a difference, a shade of a 
 difference, between the flight of the black-headed 
 gull in the storm and in the calm or moderate 
 breeze. When the gull is sliding into the gale and 
 across it, the strokes or half-strokes of the wings 
 are made more often than they are in the calm. 
 Besides, there is a trifle of difficulty, always soon 
 overcome, still a difficulty in balancing. A black- 
 headed gull never loses his balance in the storm. That 
 to me is unthinkable. On his unseen tightropes of 
 the sky he is ten thousand times securer than Blondin 
 in Blondin's easiest feat. But now and then, when 
 he brings up in the storm that he may drop to the
 
 Storm Sprites 261 
 
 surface of the white surf and pick a morsel of 
 food off it, or when he is swerving round to enter 
 on a new course, there is an agitation of wing- 
 tips which tells how even a gull must look to his 
 balance. 
 
 In a second or less he is sliding again into the gale 
 or across it, serene and featly as ever. 
 
 Of the petrel I will write immediately : the alba- 
 tross I only know from hearsay. The petrel and the 
 albatross may well stand for storm life and all lithe- 
 ness in it. But I do not believe the albatross himself, 
 even with that immense and noble wing, can ride 
 much easier on the gale than this black-headed gull. 
 The gull at least, like the petrel and the albatross, is 
 a true sprite of the storm. 
 
 II. THE PETRELS 
 
 Beyond the Scillys in true Atlantic I made the 
 close acquaintance of the stormy petrels, Mother 
 Carey's chicken, and I think these swallows of the 
 ocean are quite as good to watch as the swallows of 
 the earth. Of course, there is no affinity between 
 petrel and swallow in the scientific classing of birds. 
 They are far less related in the line of evolution, I 
 suppose, than the swallow and the swift. But I differ 
 altogether from the authority which tells me that 
 the storm petrel looks rather like a swallow only to 
 the eyes which view it casually or carelessly. The
 
 262 This Realm, This England 
 
 likeness between them is irresistible. It is the petrel, 
 not the tern, that should be styled " sea-swallow." 
 One thinks of the swallow or the house-martin on 
 first seeing the storm petrel, and the idea of swallows 
 of the sea remains strong as long as one watches the 
 tireless, wonderful flock in the wake of the ship. 
 
 A man-of-war, to one, at least, who has never 
 before made a voyage in a man-of-war, is not a good 
 spot for watching the life and movement of a bird. 
 It is too full of the stir and sound of human life, and 
 of the stern, splendid rite of war in peace-time, for 
 us to attend to such matters as those of the flight and 
 habit of a bird. I know, through one or two friends 
 who write to me, that things of Nature are by no 
 means always overlooked by seamen ; but, then, what 
 is stately ceremony to a landsman new to a ship of 
 war must be commonplace to the sailor ; what to 
 me is romance, beautiful, and very moving about the 
 work and array of casting and securing the huge 
 anchors, or about the open muster or the clockwork 
 drill and duty, is to a seaman simple routine. So 
 that I can understand a seaman having more thought 
 and sight for things of Nature, whilst on a voyage or at 
 anchor, than the landsman. Yet I found a spot on the 
 quarter-deck where it was possible to watch without 
 distraction for an hour or so at a stretch the petrels 
 that followed us for the best part of two days in the 
 Atlantic. Sometimes I would lose sight of them 
 almost entirely for a minute or thereabouts. One
 
 Storm Sprites 263 
 
 petrel had discovered some fragments of refuse flung 
 out of the ship, and swiftly alit to paddle with its 
 web foot at the surface of the sea ; whereupon it 
 would be instantly joined by the whole eager flock. 
 
 But a ship must be moving at very high speed to 
 leave these sea sprites for long behind, though they 
 may stop and dally many minutes over refuse or 
 some natural food churned up by the screws. Soon 
 the whole flock come into sight again, and, for every 
 knot which the vessel makes, the petrel, I think, must 
 make two or three. His course is quite like that of 
 the swallow hawking for flies over the land or the 
 sea-cliff or lake. With, across, or dead against the 
 wind the petrel is ever turning, tacking. His tan- 
 gents how endless ! 
 
 A petrel was not made to fly in a straight course 
 for many yards together. It was never meant that he 
 should do in one mile of wing-ship what can be done 
 as easily in many. He might, perhaps, find quite as 
 much food by following more or less in a straight 
 course the path of the ship as a gull will sometimes 
 follow when the ship is not travelling too slowly. 
 But such a course entails an economy of exertion, 
 and that is the last thing called for in a petrel. 
 
 So far as flight is exertion, a petrel's store appears 
 to be almost boundless. An extra ten miles an hour, 
 an extra hundred miles of motion a day, is of no 
 moment to a petrel. It has seemed to me, whilst 
 watching the bold, clean rushes and the swishing
 
 264 This Realm , This England 
 
 curves and long-drawn-out glides of the swifts, that 
 these unearthly creatures must actually rest in action 
 and in speed. A petrel scarcely gives the idea of 
 tremendous speed on the wing, " skiey speed," as a 
 swift gives it. Still, he is very quick can leave the 
 ship for five minutes to overtake it when he chooses, 
 eliminating a mile of space perhaps two miles, 
 allowing for a petrel's glancing, fluctuating course 
 as if it really did not count. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Where I met with the petrel party I reckoned 
 that about a hundred of them followed the ship 
 it was real ocean. I did not see them till we were 
 far from any land, and I lost sight of the last of them 
 before we dimly sighted land again next day. The 
 stormy petrel's element is air and ocean, and far the 
 greater part of his life is spent out of touch with the 
 least vestige of land. In that sense he is more un- 
 earthly than the swift, though he has none of the 
 swift's demonic aspect on the wing, being quite a 
 familiar-looking little bird on the whole, formed on 
 extraordinary bird lines of perfect loveliness and 
 grace these things being ordinary in that fay-like 
 world of feather. 
 
 For months together in his wondrous year, prob- 
 ably for a full ten out of the twelve, no perch or cliff 
 or rock is possible for him. I suppose that the petrel, 
 like the gull or the skua, does either at night or day 
 float from time to time in water instead of in air, but
 
 Storm Sprites 265 
 
 I am clear that he can fly for hours at a stretch with- 
 out the least fatigue, and that he can fly thus even 
 though a gale blows fresh enough to rock the 
 heaviest ship of war. 
 
 The swift has a perching nook at least at night ; 
 the swallows of the earth and the sand martins, after 
 flitting for hours up and down the river where it 
 broadens nobly as it nears its solemn, shining estuary, 
 will retire now and then for a few minutes' rest to 
 the wooden rails or the telegraph wires, and sit there 
 in their lively, sociable parties. But surely the petrel 
 does outstrip them all in ceaseless energy, though he 
 is outstripped by swifts in speed. The storm petrel is 
 quite a small bird. He is scarcely more than six inches 
 from beak to tail all told : that is, he is an inch less 
 than a skylark. Nor is the wing that works these 
 wonders a long one it is but a fraction, indeed, 
 longer than the skylark wing ; it is a fraction shorter 
 than the earth swallow's. 
 
 I do not think there is anything obvious in the 
 special cut of the petrel's wing and tail I am sure 
 there is nothing in his measure that gives us the 
 clue to his secret of incessant motion, alike in calm 
 and in wild and stormy winds that rock great ships 
 and heave up the ocean. There are only two ways 
 to explain the secret of the petrel's endurance hour 
 after hour, day after day, in lashing storms far out in 
 the ocean. Either the petrel is endued with an ex- 
 traordinary strength of pinion and driving muscle
 
 266 This Realm, This England 
 
 compressed into a very small space, or we are quite 
 deceived by appearance, and what looks like active 
 exertion in the bird is really next to no exertion. 
 
 I incline to think that it is in the latter we 
 had better look for the petrel's gift of untiring motion 
 in stormy air. No doubt his mechanism of flight is 
 extremely fine, exactly calculated and adjusted. He 
 has not a weak point in his six inches. Petrel signifies 
 perfection. But even so I cannot think that his powers 
 are great to strive with hard winds and to sustain 
 him for years in the struggle. The better explanation 
 is that in reality the petrel need not and does not 
 exert himself to keep afloat so long in ocean storms. 
 
 I believe a petrel does not fight with the wind. 
 He fits into the wind. 
 
 What I have often said of the black-headed or of 
 the herring gulls is equally true of the petrels if the 
 bird in some degree flies the wind, the wind in great 
 degree flies the bird. 
 
 What seems the difficulty of a petrel is, in fact, 
 his ease. So we may rid ourselves of the error that 
 assumes a miracle of endurance in the bird. I should 
 say that the skylark's few inches is as strongly knit 
 and about as enduring as the petrel's, only almost 
 infinitely less enduring in a storm because Nature 
 does not fly the lark in the storm. The lark does not 
 fit into the high winds, but, if it finds itself therein, 
 strives to fight them, and, of course, must fail. 
 
 The stormy petrel, unlike so many of our birds,
 
 Storm Sprites 267 
 
 was well christened. By its web foot it can dabble or 
 patter at the surface of the sea in storm. Hence petrel, 
 or the little Peter, an image taken from the miracle 
 at the Sea of Galilee. But the sailor long since gave 
 it another and less kindly name, Mother Carey's 
 Chicken. In the folk-lore of the sea the petrel still 
 has an evil repute, though I suspect the idea of its 
 announcing the storm is dying out. 
 
 A petrel must fly and seek its food in the calms of 
 the sea as well as in the storms, though the storm no 
 doubt stirs to the surface more of the tiny molluscs 
 and crustaceans on which the bird lives. Perhaps a 
 petrel is more active in a troubled than in a still sea 
 I doubt if there is awe more truth than this in the 
 notion that his appearance in the wake of the ship 
 foretells a storm.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 FASCINATION OF FUR 
 
 AS the wild cat is an absolutely disappearing 
 animal in Scotland I dare to express a hope that 
 henceforth we shall get our wild cats outside the 
 British Isles when we need them for Zoological 
 Gardens or for Museums. This is putting mildly what 
 some of us feel rather strongly. I confess I am one of 
 those who read with distaste of Inverness sending one 
 of its last true wild cats to Regents Park. I had rather 
 Inverness had got a thousand cats from London than 
 London one from Inverness. There is no special value 
 in showing to people in London or in any city, either 
 in its live form or its dead form, a real British example 
 of a very rare animal ; and this applies equally to beast 
 and bird and butterfly. If we need honey buzzards or 
 wild cats or Glanville fritillary butterflies to show to 
 people in towns who would not otherwise see them, 
 why cannot we fetch them from some country where 
 the wild stock is still large and the species safe ? 
 
 The wild cat and such rare birds as honey buzzard 
 
 and sea eagle that is, true British specimens of them 
 
 should be put on a forbidden list so far as all public 
 
 bodies go. Museums and Zoological Gardens should 
 
 268
 
 Fascination of Fur 269 
 
 pass a self-denying ordinance. They should do so for 
 an example to private people, and in the interest of 
 science too and this ought to be a strong induce- 
 ment with such bodies ; for science always must 
 greatly desire that the wild creatures which it 
 studies be not ended. 
 
 It is the same too with the polecat and the pine 
 marten. I fear that when these creatures are found in 
 England to-day they are nearly always " obtained." 
 The pine marten, some say who have studied the 
 matter, was never, within historical times, at home 
 in the South of England and has only been a chance 
 visitor there. I dare say that is so, yet the marten is 
 certainly mentioned by at least one old writer as an 
 animal of the Southern Counties. I cannot recall 
 whether one reference to it which I found some years 
 ago was in Michael Drayton's " Polyolbion " or in 
 some forest perambulations. But I remember a note 
 on the " marten cat " as a wild animal of Chute 
 Forest, and I should hardly think that by marten cat 
 any animal but the pine marten was meant. 
 
 The polecat, little doubt, in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries was a wild animal of Chute and 
 the great wild woodlands that lay about that district 
 in Wiltshire and the neighbouring shire. Indeed, it 
 must have been, I think, a native of many of our 
 remoter hills and woods till late in the last century. 
 I have spoken with country folk who take some 
 interest in these matters, and they have " heard tell "
 
 2 jo This Realm, This England 
 
 of the polecat running wild, the source of their infor- 
 mation being grandfather or even father though, 
 perhaps, father heard tell from grandfather, and grand- 
 father from his father. These heard-tells sometimes 
 go very deep into a past century, for very likely father 
 was eighty and grandfather was eighty, too, and his 
 father about the same age. Whether native or not 
 such a creature as the pine marten would clearly have 
 stood no chance of living on in these Southern Coun- 
 ties through the nineteenth century. The stoat or 
 ermine and the weasel belong to quite another class 
 in this matter. Few people want to own a stoat's fur 
 (unless it chances to be ermine white in winter), and 
 nobody in the world, I suppose, wants a weasel's coat. 
 It is the valued vermin that goes always in danger of 
 extermination. Stoat and weasel are in many districts 
 not in the remotest danger of being trapped out. A 
 war of extermination against weasels would be as 
 likely to succeed to-day in England as a war of 
 extermination against the pike and jack of our trout 
 streams. 
 
 I am sure that in some places the stoat is quite a 
 useful creature. It is of service, for instance, to the 
 owner of a trout fishery where the banks are much 
 honeycombed by rats and water voles. The stoat 
 preys on both these animals, and a large percentage 
 of all the stoats in the country are, I believe, attached 
 always to rivers. Now and then they may wander a 
 short way from the banks where they were born and
 
 Fascination of Fur 271 
 
 bred, and may seize a rabbit or a young game bird, 
 but their ordinary prey is rat or water vole. The stoat 
 that preys on these animals is almost an amphibian. He 
 can swim and he can dive with perfect safety and 
 ease. I have heard of a stoat turning himself into a 
 miniature otter and taking to a fish diet, but I have 
 no experience whatever in this, and I should think 
 that stoat was a freak. But at the water's edge, and 
 at times even over the brink, a stoat is in his element. 
 Sitting down by the stream one summer day, and 
 waiting for a good trout to rise, I heard a singular 
 little chattering noise coming from the grass and river 
 plants right opposite. I did not recognize the note at 
 first as a stoat's ; it was entirely unlike the sound I 
 have heard stoats utter when they have been chased 
 or are otherwise excited. It was more like a bird 
 sound. The jarring continued, and several times I 
 heard a slight plash in the water as if a trout were 
 " tailing " there among the weeds. Presently I caught 
 sight of a bit of white and brown fur, and then the 
 avid face of a stoat. A pair of these creatures were 
 frisking in and out among the vole or rat holes in the 
 bank opposite, and if ever a thing in wild life looked 
 like a game of hide-and-seek this was it. 
 
 Again and again one of the stoats darted out of a 
 hole half under water, and after a quick spy round 
 darted up into another hole a foot away. The 
 plash must have been repeated half a dozen times, 
 and the chattering or jarring note of pursuer and
 
 272 This Realm, This England 
 
 pursued went on for ten minutes or more. It may have 
 been a love lyric and a love chase, or simply a bit of 
 frolic for the sake of frolic; and watching the play 
 I inclined to think it was pure stoat abandon, irre- 
 pressible fun in a creature full of joy and spirit. 
 
 That is not the only time I have watched a stoat 
 game of hide-and-seek by a trout stream. Some years 
 ago I saw a pair of stoats not, however, uttering 
 the same jarring note whip about after each other 
 by the Lambourne stream in Berkshire. Their game 
 was on the dry land and wholly above ground. They 
 chivvied one another in and out among the grass and 
 sedges in a meadow, and all the while they cried out 
 gleefully. I have watched a stoat, too, carrying her 
 young by the skin of the back across a river plank, 
 and doing it bravely even after she saw I had dis- 
 covered her. That was an idyll of stoats ! 
 
 Again, I have seen these animals hot on the scent 
 of a doomed water vole. The keenness of a stoat or 
 weasel is one of the most expressive things I know 
 in the life of wild creatures. A stoat or a weasel it 
 matters not which is keener than the word "keen." 
 
 Litheness, suppleness in the extreme, is another 
 feature of these little beasts, a true ferret feature. A 
 friend told me of a fierce fight on the Buckingham- 
 shire downs he had seen between two stoats a fight, 
 he believed, to the death, for in the end, when inter- 
 rupted, one of them half-limped, half dragged itself 
 off to cover in a way that seemed to show its wounds
 
 Fascination of Fur 273 
 
 were mortal. They wreathed and wrapt about each 
 other, as if neither had a bone in its whole body. 
 They spun round and round each other, teetotum- 
 like, so that the eye could not separate them. 
 
 There is a stoat superstition among some workers 
 in woods and fields which is not hard to understand. 
 A worker told me gravely of a man who came upon 
 a party of stoats on a road one day and it was the 
 man who was attacked. That was an iliad of stoats. 
 I think this countryman Achilles was indeed attacked 
 about his weak point, the heel, but he lived to tell 
 the tale. 
 
 There is a thing I have never seen the stoat or 
 weasel do which I can no longer doubt is one of the 
 common habits of its life ; I never saw it juggle with 
 its tail and body, or with a scrap of rabbit fur, to a 
 spellbound circle of little birds. At the end of that 
 wise foolery a little bird sometimes gets into the 
 mouth of the acrobat. It is his fee. There is not the 
 faintest doubt about it ; the thing has been seen too 
 often by many eyes for doubt. It is quite another story 
 than that of the little vipers that go down the throat 
 of the mother viper which, I think, is one of Nature's 
 little juggles at the expense of man. 
 
 The stoat or the weasel for they are one, how- 
 ever many million years have parted them has an ill 
 name and deserves it. Yet he deserves the contrary, 
 too. We cannot deny he has been fashioned with a 
 skill minutely wonderful. So fell so fine ! He is, 
 
 il
 
 274 This Realm, This England 
 
 like the cat, one perfect piece. But he is more than 
 the cat ; in his sinuousness the stoat has something of 
 the serpent. Cat and serpent and stoat the union 
 seems past perfection physically. The stoat is, 
 humanly, one of those contrarieties that face us 
 almost anywhere in the world of wild life ; on one 
 side all beauty on the other, all bane.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 FASCINATION OF FEATHER 
 
 T? VERYBODY is familiar with the idea of the 
 -L' fascination of the snake. It is one of the most 
 primitive things in all Nature lore, playing its part 
 in the very story of creation. " Like birds the 
 charming serpent draws " is a simile taken as good 
 and true, I imagine, by all people. But if the serpent 
 can fascinate, why not other wild creatures ? It was 
 suggested to me by a great collector of birds that a 
 spell or fascination works in the glitter of the green 
 and red eyes of diving birds, by which small fishes 
 are drawn to their doom ; he plays quite gravely 
 with this idea, and, though it does not appeal much 
 to me, I admit we do want some explanation for 
 these high-coloured and flashing lights in the jewel- 
 like eyes of divers. 
 
 I wish to suggest, however, quite another bird of 
 prey which, I believe, often fascinates its victims. 
 For years I have noticed the tawny owl attended 
 closely, whenever it stirs by day or at the beginning 
 of twilight, by many small birds. Of course, it may 
 be objected at once that my idea of fascination or 
 charm about the owl would apply more or less to
 
 276 This Re.alm^ This England 
 
 quite a number of birds, even in England alone, 
 besides the owl. I may be told that I have myself 
 described the mobbing of the golden eagle in the 
 Grampians, of the sparrow-hawk by bodies of ex- 
 cited small birds, of the cuckoo perhaps for his 
 likeness to a hawk, perhaps through his own bad 
 repute and of the carrion crow, and even at times 
 the rook. It is true that to be a bird of prey that is, 
 to prey on other birds or their eggs is to be closely 
 waited on by an excited throng, and even struck at 
 and mobbed. It seems as if this rule were invari- 
 able if we leave the shrike out of the list of birds of 
 prey and, by the way, it says much for the kestrel 
 or windhover in his real home in the South that he 
 is so free from the notice of small birds. I saw hun- 
 dreds of kestrels in Algeria, in the spring of 1912, 
 and I did not once see a kestrel mobbed or attended 
 by small birds. The kestrel there, at least, seems to 
 be innocent. 
 
 But the attendance on the tawny owl when he 
 moves in the afternoon or early evening strikes me 
 as quite a different thing from the mobbing of the 
 hawks or the eagles or the crows. It is so extra- 
 ordinarily keen and sustained. I have watched the 
 business often where the tawny owl is concerned, 
 and twice where the chief actor has been the large- 
 eared owl, and the play has been in every case 
 identical. So long as the tawny or the long-eared 
 owl keeps perfectly still on his perch, the crowd of
 
 Fascination of Feather 277 
 
 small birds are quiet, and if he remains still long 
 enough they gradually drop away and leave him to 
 himself. But the least sign of activity by the owl 
 brings the crowd around him again with renewed 
 din and flutter. The mobbing of the tawny owl is 
 far more marked than the mobbing of the cuckoo or 
 the sparrow-hawk, save perhaps when the cuckoo 
 gets involved with quite a pack of pipits on the open 
 heath, or when the hawk has to fly through a net- 
 work of swallows high in the air. 
 
 The tawny owl may rest during the day in a very 
 thick plantation of firs or a shrubbery well screened 
 from the sun. In the afternoon he stirs perhaps a 
 few yards, noiselessly flying from one dark fir head 
 to another only a few yards off. It is winter, let us 
 say, and one might suppose that there were not half 
 a dozen small birds within an ambit of a hundred 
 yards or so. Yet he has scarcely stirred, no matter 
 how silently, gliding ghost-like a few yards through 
 the thick evergreens, before the finches, the titmice, 
 and the blackbirds, with cock-robin and jenny wren, 
 are up and after him. 
 
 There is a spot where I might make almost a nice 
 itinerary of the owl, and time it quite correctly, 
 without seeing the owl at all : I should work it out 
 by seeing and hearing the bird crowd he gathers and 
 carries along with him. He draws them to him as 
 irresistibly as the magnet draws steel. I must not 
 forget the missel-thrush. He is sure to be drawn in,
 
 278 This Realm, This England 
 
 and he is the' noisiest of all, noisier even than the jay 
 that sometimes joins in the general hubbub. 
 
 Going up close to watch the scene, I find the 
 tawny owl the centre of attraction, the small birds 
 and the thrushes and the absurd jay all around, 
 some of them undoubtedly within striking distance. 
 
 Now note the curious aspect of the owl, as we 
 find it seated solemn, imperturbable, amidst all this 
 clatter and flutter of creatures which beyond question 
 form at times its prey for nobody can deny that 
 those owls feed on small birds as well as on mice and 
 insects. Note the large, beautiful eyes, and the hooked 
 bill set in the facial disk, which is surely the most 
 peculiar feature of any English bird. Then the deli- 
 cate pencillings and curious vermiculate markings of 
 the exceedingly soft and thick plumage. 
 
 A hawk seems to be the expression of hardness and 
 severity only : the owl seems at once all that is soft 
 and all that is severe the soft and severe, and, to the 
 human fancy too, the sage bird bird of Athene. 
 
 Is it imagining quite wildly to suppose that this 
 extraordinary, eccentric figure which the owl cuts in 
 the daytime in itself exercises a strong fascination over 
 the nervous and highly sensitive nature of many of 
 these small birds ? If the hooded serpent fascinates by 
 its bizarre and sinister aspect may not the owl exercise 
 in some degree a similar power through his glittering 
 and blinking eye, and with some species his horn- 
 like ears, horns of Satan for his victims ? May he not
 
 Fascination of Feather 279 
 
 fascinate, too, by the wonderful facial disc, and the im- 
 mense mass of quaintly patterned and fluffy feathers ; 
 as well as by the extreme, almost uncanny, silence of 
 his flight, and the uncouth attitudes of stillness which 
 he adopts on his perch ? 
 
 In this tout ensemble of the tawny owl or of the 
 long-eared owl it seems to me that we may, without 
 forcing the imagination too much, presume a kind of 
 sinister fascination for small birds. It may not be that 
 fascination of fear which the serpent wields over its 
 victim, or the stoat over the hunted rabbit. It is not, 
 clearly, the fascination by frolic which the stoat or 
 weasel, writhing, twisting, capering, exercises over 
 the gallery of excited small birds. It may be some- 
 thing, rather, in the nature of fascination through 
 oddity or bizarre appearance. Yet the charm may 
 work not less effectually. 
 
 Now, I may be asked, have I ever seen the owl 
 strike when thus encircled by a crowd of agitated 
 spectators ? I never have. But it is very hard, in cases 
 like these, for the human watcher to see the play 
 played right out. For one thing, he usually intrudes 
 only to break the spell. It is so with the stoat and the 
 rabbit, and no doubt with the serpent and its prey. 
 Again, how few if any who have seen the stoat or 
 weasel capering to a gallery, have seen the fell spring 
 that ends the play ! There is no fascination about a 
 man intruding there is only fright. But we do know 
 for sure that the owl strikes small birds, and it is likely
 
 280 This Realm , This England 
 
 that he withholds when hungry and his prey is flutter- 
 ing and agitated all around him ? 
 
 Talking with a friend who is most interested in 
 birds, I got from him two bits of evidence that cer- 
 tainly do not tell against this theory of fascination in 
 an owl. We were discussing Italy and bird-life there, 
 when he asked me had I seen the owl used by some 
 of the people about Viterbo for sport ? There, and no 
 doubt in other places in Italy, the custom is for two 
 men to walk along the hedges and woodsides, one 
 with a gun, the other carrying a pole on which a cap- 
 tive owl this same tawny owl, I think sits. The 
 owl is made now and then to rise off its perch and 
 flutter in the air, whereupon down to it come the 
 small birds with a din, crowding into the bushes and 
 trees so thick and so near the owl that the gunner can 
 often shoot at his ease. When my friend saw this lure 
 being used against the small birds it was autumn or 
 early winter. In spring, when the small birds have 
 nestlings, or young lately fledged and flown, the lure, 
 I should say, would be still deadlier. If this does not 
 point to fascination in an owl over its prey, I scarcely 
 know whether we can believe in anything of the kind 
 in Nature ; and we must surely give up the notion 
 that the stoat or weasel draws down the small birds 
 by the charm of capering. 
 
 The captives of Viterbo are not the only birds that 
 argue for a fascination in the owl. In Trinidad, my 
 friend told me, there is a little owl which used to be
 
 Fascination of Feather 281 
 
 named Athene phalaenoides, but is now known as 
 Glaucidium phalaenoides, that seems to put to con- 
 stant service its power to draw small birds. A native, 
 who was with my friend when going through a 
 Trinidad forest, pointed out this owl, and said: "He 
 catches little birds." Athene flies much by daylight, 
 like our own short-eared or woodcock owl, and is 
 regularly attended by the small birds on which it 
 preys. I suspect there are owls, large and small, 
 throughout the world which draw small birds as 
 Athene and our tawny owl, wild or captive, draw 
 them. 
 
 Therefore, I suggest that the tawny and many 
 another owl may often win its prey through charm- 
 ing it within striking length. But I go no further. It 
 would be going a great deal further to argue that the 
 owl has been equipped to this end, or that the facial 
 disk was evolved to fascinate. Still less would one care 
 to suggest the owl knows its power and sagely uses it 
 that would be adding too much to the myth of 
 Athene.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE FLOCK OF FAYS 
 
 ON my bookshelf is a little childish black note- 
 book, bought at Dublin, in which I was used 
 to make all manner of odd scribblings, thumb-nail 
 bits, about beasts and birds and butterflies. Some of 
 the entries are not to be quite trusted : the facts in 
 them were not well enough founded, or the theories 
 of them have gone the way of most theories about 
 Nature and about men they have been exploded 
 into thin air. Yet the notebook has points. Its leaves 
 are exactly numbered, and before the middle of the 
 book is reached comes the index, which, so far as it 
 goes, is a good deal more exact and thorough than 
 anything of the sort I have been able to work out 
 since I took to professional bookmaking. But I flatter 
 myself, or what was myself in those days the most 
 strenuous days, the old end of one's life that the 
 entries about at least one of the birds therein are 
 minutely faithful. The book has some notes, easily 
 found through the index in the middle, about the 
 long-tailed titmouse, the bottle titmouse, as it was 
 styled in my particular garden- boy, cow-boy, keeper's- 
 son bird-nesting set; and memory and experience 
 282
 
 The Flock of Fays 283 
 
 tell me that each one of these entries is quite to be 
 trusted. 
 
 The notes relate, of course, especially to the nesting 
 of the long-tailed titmouse for it was always the 
 egg that began the bird then. One note tells how a 
 pair of the birds had tried to build in the thatched 
 the reed-thatched roof of an outhouse ; another 
 note how a pair actually succeeded in building a nest 
 in the inside of a squirrel's " drey " in the high wood, 
 and how the hen laid quite a number of eggs therein. 
 I recall the nest, the exact site, and I recall climbing 
 up to it and finding the eggs. It is all perfectly and 
 absurdly distinct to-day. The truth is I specialized in 
 the long-tailed titmouse in those bird-nesting days, and 
 I have more or less specialized in the bird ever since. 
 
 It is worth specializing in, for it is one of the 
 drollest little things, and at the same time it is one 
 of the most exquisite little things in Nature in Eng- 
 land in Nature probably anywhere. There is a 
 fascination about long-tailed titmice there is such a 
 faery fascination about them. 
 
 I see long-tailed titmice at all times of the year in 
 England oddly enough I have never seen or heard 
 one of them abroad as I have cole, great, and blue 
 titmice and I have seen them again just lately, and 
 fairly revelled in the sight. Long-tailed titmice really 
 appear to me to grow droller and droller the longer 
 I know them ; and also they appear to get bonnier 
 and bonnier. I advise anyone who wishes to please
 
 284 This Realm, This England 
 
 an eye and thought for loveliness in feather form to 
 go out any fine day in winter when the mixed tit- 
 mouse flock is a common sight and it is common 
 enough in most wooded parts of England that I know 
 at all and see the loose string of these long-tails. 
 
 The best scene, perhaps, in the year of a long-tailed 
 titmouse is that in April, and in the second half of 
 March, the scene of the nest and at the nest. I have 
 watched them as they move to and fro between the 
 nest and the spot where, with a great deal of liveliest 
 chitter-chatter, they gather the material : moss and 
 webs for the wall, silver lichen to embellish or to 
 help bind or both perhaps the outside, feathers for 
 the eider-down bedding within. Then in gusty 
 weather I have seen them tossed about in the air 
 above the nest, if it is in a spot at all exposed, like 
 scraps of paper or dead leaves caught up in a whirly- 
 puff. 
 
 There is the late summer or autumn scene in the 
 life of long-tailed titmice which I have only been 
 lucky enough to see once the scene where a whole 
 large family of them, perhaps even two families come 
 together for the purpose, form themselves into a close 
 feathery bundle, and go to sleep on a branch, very 
 much like one fair-sized bird a jay or magpie 
 which has tucked its head into its breast and puffed 
 out its feathers for the night. I took the long-tail tit- 
 mouse bundle asleep in a bare tree for a magpie one 
 evening, and only discovered my mistake on tapping
 
 The Flock of Fays 285 
 
 a branch, when instantly the thing split up into ten 
 or twenty parts, and scattered in all directions with 
 commotion. 
 
 Again, I know the scene of the sitting long-tailed 
 titmouse when sometimes she is so trustful, or so 
 devoted to her treasures, that she will suffer one to 
 touch her head and yet not slip off the eggs and away. 
 I have seen the bird sitting thus and lightly touched 
 her, and she has not stirred, but I suspect the ex- 
 perience is rather rare. I have in April watched her 
 weaving or webbing her nest, and watched within 
 such a few paces that eventually she discovered me, 
 and yet, after a period of hesitation and suspense, 
 came back to the nest not more than half built up, 
 ventured within, and forgot me and worked on as if 
 she were alone ; her mate, so long as I stayed, coming 
 near and fidgeting and scolding, but not actually 
 braving it out like her. These things are truly of the 
 rarest charm and beauty. Watching them in English 
 woods and commons, when the year is getting on to 
 what Shakespeare felt to be " the sweet," is, when 
 we are in the right mood, is a pleasure that never 
 loses its keenness." 
 
 But there is no need to wait for the sweet, or the 
 bitter sweet, of March and April to enjoy long-tailed 
 titmouse scenes. December indeed is as good a time 
 as any to see the winter flocks of them. The best 
 place is a wood, and they appear to pass and repass a 
 favourite spot, a favourite group of birch-trees or oak-
 
 286 This Realm, This England 
 
 trees in that wood two or three times a day, always 
 finding plenty of food in the bark chinks and on the 
 twig tips which is perfectly imperceptible to any 
 human eye. I can go up the woodland ride any day 
 sure to find one of the mixed titmouse flocks it is 
 hardly possibly to miss the thing. The best sight of 
 the flock is when the long-tails keep more or less dis- 
 tinct from the rest, from blue and cole and great and 
 marsh titmice and from nuthatches, tree-creepers and 
 goldcrests for these eight kinds of birds make up the 
 full winter flock that flies and feeds and roosts to- 
 gether for six months each year. 
 
 Then as the long-tails pass from tree to tree, they 
 cross the ride in a line of long, straight strings. The 
 effect of it is singular and delightful. The long-tail's 
 string is not quite like that of any procession I know. 
 There are other creatures certainly that move in a 
 line, and which move in a much more orderly manner 
 than the long-tail. The caterpillars of the " procession 
 moth," which I found in the Aleppo pines in the 
 South spun up in their curious tow-coloured nest, 
 move, Indian file, in straight lines. Various large birds 
 seem to move through the sky as on taut lines. The 
 long-tails cross the ride, whip from tree to tree, in 
 no order, but the impression they give and leave on 
 one is always that of the straight line, the string after 
 string of them ; so that the undulation of the flight, 
 the end of one dropping bound, and the upspring and 
 arc of the next, are somewhat masked.
 
 The Flock of Fays 287 
 
 It is the length of the tail, I suspect, and the fact 
 that the tail is the most striking feature of the bird, 
 which give this effect of strings of titmice. 
 
 Crossing the ride, and alighting in some birch 
 underwood stems, they pay no heed to me : one or 
 two pass so near they might almost have brushed me 
 with their tiny wings wings one could almost 
 measure conveniently, as their eggs have often been 
 measured by, not the inch, but the line. The nearest 
 is so near I can distinctly see the red glitter of its eye. 
 The books say that the long-tail's eye is hazel, but 
 ruby seems to me nearer the colour. The books say 
 that the colour about the back and underparts is a 
 dull rose, it is a faint rose certainly, but the last thing 
 I should call this delicate flush spread among the 
 black and white of the long-tail would be dull. 
 
 The delicate redstart is a fay, the grey wagtail in 
 his slate and gold is a fay ; and the finery of the long- 
 tail, I grant, is not so striking as theirs. The long-tail 
 has no more their bold colour contrasts than he has 
 their dance and balance or their butterfly frolic in 
 the air for food. A grey wagtail is a tour de force 
 of the small bird creation and a redstart runs 
 him very fine ! The long-tail is perhaps not that, 
 rather he is an oddity, a peculiar among the fays 
 which are flocking now through the commons and 
 woods. 
 
 He is a spry, whimsical, muffied-up little bundle 
 of down, his featherlets in a constant state of ruffle,
 
 288 This Realm, This England 
 
 as himself in temperament seems in a constant state 
 of fluster. 
 
 When with mousy movements the long-tail 
 creeps in and out among the twigs of the birch-tree, 
 slithers from tip to tip, seeking and always finding 
 the minutest atom of a grub or particle of mould, 
 he does not strike one as a fay of spirit. He seems to 
 express meekness and weakness like a willow warbler. 
 But he has mettle. The great heart is housed within 
 this tiny and weak thing, as I have found it in the 
 goldcrest, in the copper and Bedford-blue butterflies. 
 
 It is the passion of a few moments, perhaps, with 
 the long- tails, but in those moments it is fierce and 
 valiant. When the fatal sparrowhawk, often waiting 
 on these flocks, swoops down to strike home they rise 
 in a body and make a demonstration before which 
 even the marauder may sometimes retire. In those 
 moments the long-tail is transformed. The gentle 
 fay is become a fury.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 HENGISTBURY 
 
 HENGISTBURY HEAD, as I have known it 
 and cared for it, is at an end. I suppose the 
 Finance Act has ended it, for where severely human 
 questions as to building value, undeveloped land duty, 
 and the increment come in Nature goes. Nature can- 
 not abide " the rate." Two of her creatures do some- 
 times linger on among the plots of yellow brick and 
 half-made roadsand hoardings that advertise " eligible " 
 estates suited for " residential " neighbourhoods the 
 wall butterfly of late summer and the common bunt- 
 ing of the whole English year ; and the wall butter- 
 fly at least, whether seen in the shimmer of Sicilian 
 sea cliffs or in the squalor of the environs of a grow- 
 ing English town, is a thing all joy and loveliness. 
 But even they are soon gone. The wall butterfly 
 must have at least a dusty footpath through grass 
 and a few flowers to settle on, and strike the attitude 
 that seems to be common to all butterflies the 
 attitude of sun ecstasy ; the bunting must have a clod 
 of earth in an open field or a patch of wild scrub 
 from which to sing that extraordinary song of his, a 
 song that is made up of wheeze and stutter. 
 289 19
 
 290 This Realm, This England 
 
 Hengistbury Head and the bit of wild and wet 
 ground between the estuary of the river and the 
 strange bastions and embankments of the great mass 
 on the land side have been sold : and the question of 
 "the rate" forthwith becomes acute. It must be 
 developed and improved. I foresee a row of new 
 bungalows at one end of the place, that secret end 
 where, a world away from everybody, I have watched 
 the winter flocks of black coot and scoter sailing and 
 dozing at the bar of the river, and parties of dancing 
 water wagtails, fresh in from a long journey in spring 
 or autumn, tripping on the miniature island beach. I 
 foresee at least a golf links of eighteen holes at the 
 other end, near the warren and the field of the ringed 
 plovers ; whilst it is quite possible to picture the Head 
 itself crowned by a great hotel having the finest site 
 on the south coast of England. For Hengistbury 
 Head, indeed, read Hengistbury Hotel ! One never 
 much believed in the story of Hengist and Horsa in 
 childhood, perhaps because it was told in such a 
 wooden way. Now I know it a myth. The Finance 
 Act and the growth of Bournemouth and Boscombe 
 make this clear to me. 
 
 I have often written about the wild life of Hengist- 
 bury Head, but for purely selfish ends have not 
 named the spot. Named places of the kind, when 
 they lie too near railway stations or cities, have a 
 way of not living long. But there is no longer any 
 need to hide the name. Hengistbury will so soon be
 
 Hengistbury 291 
 
 harnessed to civilization that the wild life of it is no 
 more a thing to be secret about. Its natural history 
 period is nearly over ; its history proper begins if 
 history is the record of human things. 
 
 The headland itself has never been to me the chief 
 attraction of the place. The scene there, I know, is 
 magnificent on a clear day Alum and the Needles, 
 and the narrow strip of shingle that ends in Hurst 
 Castle, where Charles lay on his last journey from 
 Carisbrooke to Whitehall. It is a great sea, though 
 such a small one measured in mere miles. Nor is it a 
 sea very easily surpassed in variety of colour and 
 beauty of coast scene by any other I know. The 
 dove-grey downs at Purbeck at the moment when 
 the sun is on their horizon, or again in the dusk of 
 early morning, are wonderful ; and so are the huge 
 weather-stained chalk walls of Alum and Scratchel's 
 Bays appearing gradually through a dissolving sea 
 mist. But there are many other points all along that 
 coast where the scene is quite as fine as the scene 
 from the headland. There is no other spot from the 
 Old Harry Rocks to Hayling so alluring to those 
 who value wild life in a wild scene as the great 
 "ham" immediately under the headland, and the flats 
 and swamps there the tract that belongs half to the 
 land and half to the water. I have never been to this 
 place, and I have been there many times, without 
 seeing something worth remembering. The estuary 
 of the Avon and the Stour may be nothing to-day to
 
 292 This Re aim , This England 
 
 the wildfowler. The great flocks of wild duck, teal, 
 and widgeon that came there of old have gone, yet on 
 winter days and spring days I have walked across the 
 " ham " and then along the bank of the estuary, or 
 climbed down from the headland into the withy wood 
 beneath nestling right against the crumbling hill, and 
 found a whole population of land and water birds. 
 
 I named the wood the " Merlin's Wood," because 
 in winter I know the bird has sometimes been seen 
 harrying a lark or even a snipe from the place. It is 
 a strange and aloof place, lichened like the stunted 
 oaks in a Cornish hollow. In dry weather in spring 
 the dead leaves crackle under foot, but the wood is 
 seen at its best when the whole ground betwixt head- 
 land and estuary is heavy with water. Water is more 
 than half the mystery and the spell of a spot like this, 
 all the green swards treacherous with it. Water, too, 
 means wild life. 
 
 When Hengistbury has in due time its hotel and 
 golf links and bungalows, and by-and-by when the 
 wastes are all drained and the town that begins some- 
 what near the haven at Poole stretches to the end of 
 the headland, and on the other side of the estuary, 
 from Mudiford, say, to Lymington, I wonder where 
 the willow warblers and chiff-chaffs will land each 
 year in April. To see the earliest willow warblers 
 and chiff-chaffs I have gone more than once to the 
 wastes under Hengistbury or to one of the little 
 bunneys or glens across the estuary, and I have not
 
 Hengistbury 293 
 
 gone there in vain. By mid-April I have found the 
 withy scrub and the bramble alive with parties of 
 willow warblers just in from Africa. 
 
 After one has seen and heard willow warblers and 
 chiff-chaffs for a week or two each spring the pleasure 
 of the thing may be a little blunted. A willow 
 warbler in May does not count for a great deal per- 
 haps. But the sight of the first willow warblers of 
 the year is another matter. It is impossible to tell 
 the charm about the earliest of these little exquisites. 
 It is all incommunicable. One never noticed before 
 on what fine lines a willow warbler is cast. Some 
 word is needed finer than faery to fit him. The arch 
 of his breast and head, the spindle of his leg, the trifle 
 of his beak so searching true, and the brightness of 
 his tiny eye and the quick flip of the neatest little 
 wing that ever winnowed the air : this is the earliest 
 willow warbler or the earliest chiff-chaff it matters 
 not at all which of the year. 
 
 If willow warblers came through Evolution, ought 
 we not to revise our view of Evolution as a hard and 
 relentless method ? The survival of the fittest in- 
 cludes, it seems, the survival of the most sensitive 
 forms and delicate lives that the mind can imagine. 
 Is it not an impossible paradox that unkindness made 
 the willow warbler and the chiff-chaff what they are 
 to-day all sweetness and light ? 
 
 I never saw the osprey by Hengistbury, nor the 
 erne or sea eagle, which a local story associates with
 
 294 This Realm, This England 
 
 the headland. The erne at Hengistbury may be a 
 fable, like the eagle-tree inland where,! have been told, 
 he roosts at nights whenever he visits the estuary ; 
 and the osprey or mullet hawk has long since gone 
 with the mullets. But when the tide is out, and long 
 bars of sand lie high and dry on the Mudiford side, 
 the gulls in winter and early spring are wonderful to 
 see from some point near the withy wood. I have 
 watched the giant of them, the great black-backed 
 gull, flying up and down the estuary with slow, 
 solemn strokes of a huge wing and hoarse, abysmal 
 cry. But it is the herring and black-headed gulls that 
 gather on the spits in immense companies, and in 
 some lights exactly resemble a storm of large, soft 
 snowflakes as they flutter down on to the sand in a 
 body. Sanderlings and other winter sandpipers and 
 waders have their wild, lightning races up and down 
 the estuary ; and on the stonier bit of dry soil at the 
 warren the ringed plover in March and April scatters 
 in pairs, and exults in speed and in dazzling cut and 
 twist through the air not less than the dunlin itself. 
 The cormorant is always there through the winter, 
 seated on one of those estuary stakes black as him- 
 self, and the black and grey crows feed and play at 
 the edge of the water, or visit the spits of sand to sit 
 among the snowy gulls. The redshank never leaves 
 the water wastes at Hengistbury ; it will, I think, be 
 one of the latest of all to go when the new age begins 
 there.
 
 Hengistbury 295 
 
 A few of us may regret the beginning of this new 
 age, the working of a Finance Act on Hengistbury, 
 and even think unreasonably that some Corporation 
 might have bought the waste and withy wood and 
 kept them for water-fowl and wader and the birds 
 of passage in spring. But a Corporation does not deal 
 in sanctuaries and sentiment. Its business is strictly 
 material. A Corporation is a body, not a soul. We 
 must console ourselves with thoughts of what Hen- 
 gistbury has been to us. However prosaic its new 
 age prove, it has had an old age full of a rare 
 romance and wonderment. It was there, with its 
 swamps and its " ham " and its braken-covered head- 
 land, an aeon before England was ; and, if this in- 
 tensely individual and distinctive place had a memory, 
 the building of the Church at Twynham and the 
 work of the mysterious Builder who lengthened the 
 beam would be events of yesterday. 
 
 Hengistbury broods on a time to human reckon- 
 ing infinitely earlier than Twynham or Hengist and 
 Horsa, the chronicle of which is written in shark's 
 tooth and fossil fish in the cliffs near by of Barton 
 and of Milford.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 THE BLACK REDSTART 
 
 IT is very well known to those who know English 
 coast scenery that we can have azure skies and 
 seas in November as we have them in June. We can 
 even have them, and we indeed often have them, on 
 mornings and early afternoons during spells of harsh 
 and foul winter weather. An hour or so of sun, with 
 a litttle wind to break up and scatter the dark cirro- 
 stratus clouds, is often quite enough at the seashore 
 at this time to make the sudden complete change 
 from gloom to glory. I came full upon this azure one 
 day in November after I had climbed the north side 
 of brown Hengistbury Head and walked over its 
 summit of burnt heather and dead brake fern about 
 the brownest thing, after hazel coppices in some mid- 
 winter lights, I know in English landscape. I found 
 the shade of azure and immense spread of it as true 
 as on any day in summer at this place ; only the 
 shade was fainter than we have it then. Where the 
 ruled sea-line met the sky, the azure paled away into 
 that pearl-like whiteness which in English seascapes 
 we often find about the horizon at this time of year, 
 296
 
 The Black Redstart 297 
 
 however clear the air and bright the day. Moreover, 
 the horizon itself was bitten out less hard and in- 
 cisively than we often have it in summer rather 
 it appeared pencilled or softened down. 
 
 At the crumbling corner of the headland I came 
 down the path on to a lower, grassy shelf, and stood 
 there to look at the Needles. I never saw them from 
 the mainland much distincter, and I never saw the 
 rock of Scratchel's little bay show purer white. Seen 
 from this point at the coast opposite, it appears to be 
 scooped out from the downs in the form of a narrow, 
 deep concave, quite clean and regular. The white rock 
 in the immense belt of azure sky and sea made a 
 noble pageant, and I felt I had never set too high the 
 splendour of these cliffs. Looking from beacon to 
 beacon across the water in this winter sheen, you 
 find it has all the fineness you remembered of it 
 and how much more ! 
 
 Whilst walking across the estuary waste below 
 and through the strange withy wood and over the 
 headland I found few signs of life only a pair of 
 silent hoodie crows and a rock pipit or two. But, 
 standing here on a shelf just below the headland's 
 summit, I got a glimpse almost at once of a chest- 
 nut tail of a small bird, and an instant later a black 
 redstart settled a dozen yards away at the edge of the 
 cliff. That is the only black redstart I have seen in 
 England, but never was a small bird easier to identify. 
 I knew what the bird was even before it settled,
 
 298 This Realm y This England 
 
 though the last thing I was expecting to see was the 
 black redstart. 
 
 The chestnut or bright bay of the tail as it flashed 
 through the air in swift action can only mean " red- 
 start " in such a place, and in November in England 
 redstart must be black redstart. I should have been 
 quite as sure of the bird even if I had not seen the 
 black redstart abroad. I have seen it both in 
 the Alps and in African hills, but the pleasure of at 
 length finding it here in its winter quarters is peculiar 
 and delicate. In one's first black redstart on an Eng- 
 lish cliff is a sense of discovery which the Swiss bird, 
 nesting and singing in almost every Alpine village, 
 could never give. Besides, the black redstart in Eng- 
 land is a bird of curious questions why should it 
 come to us all in autumn and winter ? and why, once 
 having come and scattered in small numbers here and 
 there along our coast, should it not stay to nest here 
 like the other redstart, the regular English summer 
 visitor and bird of passage ? 
 
 This black redstart was a solitary, and I fancy by 
 its tameness that it had lately crossed the water and 
 was still feeling the strain of the journey. At first 
 glimpse I was not struck by its beauty. I took it 
 indeed for a dowdy ; but after a very few minutes 
 of watching I discovered it an exquisite. When it 
 alit on the sand and turf a few yards away from me 
 I saw that its plumage was not shabby, as I had 
 thought, but neat and bright after, I imagine, its
 
 The Black Redstart 299 
 
 first autumn month. It was a young male redstart 
 and had not yet put on that black vest over the grey, 
 which is the full livery of the cock-bird of two years 
 old. But the grey of the head and neck and under 
 parts was perfectly clean and even, and the chestnut 
 of the flashing tail was fresh. 
 
 The whole form of the bird was as faery-fine 
 as the form of our summer redstart, and so near was 
 it to me once that I could note the dance and bright- 
 ness of its eye. 
 
 I watched the bird for half an hour, and I learnt 
 in that time things about a black redstart's habits of 
 motion and food which entirely escaped me whilst 
 watching the family at Murren and at Montana in 
 the Alps. At Montana all I saw of the black red- 
 starts answered absolutely to what I know of our 
 summer redstart ; but this bird in its pursuit of 
 insects and in its wingship reminded me of a grey 
 wagtail on a bit of close turf by the waterside. It 
 constantly made sudden little rushes and leaps into 
 the air to seize some midge or gnat that was out in 
 the sun. Some of these excursions were on a tiny 
 scale ; the black redstart would dart straight up three 
 inches or so into the air, seize a midge, and instantly 
 alight on the sward again. 
 
 That was a singular, if simple, little feat which I 
 do not know that I have seen in a wagtail, grey or 
 pied, on the turf. But another feat was purely in the 
 wagtail style : the black redstart would often dart
 
 300 This Realm, This England 
 
 two or three yards into the air, seize an insect, make 
 as if he were returning to the ground, but instead of 
 returning straight he would dart off at a tangent and 
 seize another insect, then, swift as thought, execute 
 a third tangent, seize a third insect ! 
 
 All this excursion might take two or three seconds, 
 if as much, and whilst the black redstart was tumb- 
 ling about in the air, whisking off from midge to 
 midge, I could hear -he was so close the smart 
 snap of his little piercing beak just as I hear it when 
 a wood-warbler or chiff chaff is taking gnats or 
 midges in the air. 
 
 The charm, the swift grace of these limber feats 
 by this minute frail bird on the huge cliff-side are for 
 sight and feeling they never could be for words. I 
 fail, I know, to get the thing on to paper, but those 
 who have watched wagtail action of the kind will 
 know what I mean. On the wing, in the midst of 
 its tangents, the black redstart does not look quite 
 such a bundle of loose feathers, brilliant feathers, as 
 the grey wagtail looks in this feat ; he has not quite 
 the aerial distinction of that fay in grey and gold ; 
 but, still, he is a thing of a lovely spright and beauty. 
 There is no refining on the redstart ! 
 
 That is the black redstart in the air and in motion. 
 Then there is the black redstart at rest if at any 
 time from dawn to dusk he can be said truly to rest. 
 His rest at least is all animation. When he rose from 
 the shelf of turf and sand, and flashed off to the top
 
 The Black Redstart 301 
 
 of the cliff and perched there, I saw his tiny form 
 darkly silhouetted against the pale azure. There he 
 was, by comparison, in repose for half a minute ; but 
 the volatile nature of a redstart is shown in that 
 position almost as much as it is in aerial action, for 
 on his perch he is constantly ducking or curtseying, 
 like the redbreast on the garden Lough or on the up- 
 turned soil. 
 
 Moreover, there is the tail action of the black red- 
 start. This appears to be a thing quite peculiar to the 
 family of these exquisite redstarts. I did not notice 
 it even in the bird of the desert, Moussier's redstart, 
 which is outside this little group. It has been described 
 in the common redstart as a shake of the tail, but that 
 is only rudely expressive of the thing. In the black 
 redstart I should rather describe it as the most sensi- 
 tive shiver, the tail feathers being quickly, ever so 
 slightly, agitated from side to side rather than up and 
 down like those of the wagtail. It is a much fainter 
 movement and a smaller one and harder to follow 
 than the wagtail's, and it does not look at all like a 
 balancing one. 
 
 The act is so slight that one cannot see it in any- 
 thing like a sexual display. The tail of a black redstart 
 may be his chief adornment, but this shivering of it can 
 scarcely help in the display of the bright bay or chest- 
 nut colour. It only adds to the black redstart's beauty 
 as a whole by the added touch of vivacity and refined 
 motion which it gives.
 
 302 This Realm, This England 
 
 A reader of mine wrote one day to upbraid me for 
 often seeking the meaning and use of beauty in various 
 forces of wild life. Why not accept it all thankfully, 
 she asked, instead of trying to probe into the evolu- 
 tion and object of it ? Well, I think one may let it 
 rest at that, so far as the black redstart on the cliff 
 goes. The origin of the thing, the use of it if any 
 to the black redstart, are perhaps too obscure to profit 
 us ever as a problem though the baffling problem 
 of this black redstart's migration is another matter. 
 
 But at least there is nothing obscure, no uncer- 
 tainty or remoteness of profit, in the sight of the bird 
 on the cliff. If a thing of beauty in Nature is ever a 
 profit to us, we are secure enough of gain in watch- 
 ing the black redstart in its natural scene a bird out 
 of that scene is nothing to see or to hear. Such sights 
 have a rare lasting quality. Many people come to feel 
 the cutting truth of the least sentimental poet 
 
 " Years following years steal something every day ; 
 At last they steal us from ourselves away." 
 
 But some of the most enduring things in one's ex- 
 perience of what is fine in Nature or in Art are these 
 excellent, small forms of life in their great settings of 
 hill and sky and water.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 SHAKESPEARE'S MIDWINTER 
 
 NO one in English literature from the start of it 
 to this time ever expressed midwinter in Eng- 
 land so well as Shakespeare did in two or three of the 
 songs in his plays, just hitting off in a few perfectly 
 simple touches the main features of it. The winter 
 of Shakespeare is hard-bitten winter, of course, snow 
 and frost and a shrewd wind ; for the other kind of 
 winter, the green and spongy and morbid season, is 
 not for a poet, indeed is not for literary form at all. 
 It is the spurious season, too familiar perhaps in our 
 own time, which, to judge by their writings and 
 records, did not enervate England in the great day of 
 the Elizabethans. 
 
 Shakespeare's winter tale is told in the little songs 
 in " Love's Labour's Lost " and in " As You Like 
 It." The fresh cheer and jollity and robustness of it, 
 and the bite and roughness of it, are expressed with 
 all the insolent ease of silpreme genius. They do not 
 look or read as if they had been in the least degree 
 wrought or laboured over, and in all likelihood they 
 were not, for Shakespeare did not live long enough 
 and the bulk of his work was too large surely to allow 
 303
 
 304 This Realm, This England 
 
 of his giving much time and thought to a few small 
 odds and ends in the plays. They are almost childish 
 in their simplicity, as genius usually is. Some of the 
 most exquisite Nature touches are spoken by fools 
 though Shakespeare's fools are not what we call fools 
 to-day. Icicles hanging by the wall, and Dick the 
 shepherd blowing his nails, and Tom bringing logs 
 into the hall for the fire, and milk coming home 
 frozen in the pail, and foul roads and birds sitting 
 brooding in the snow, and Marian's nose looking red 
 and raw these things really seem more fit for a 
 child's account of winter than an immortal song of 
 the master. 
 
 Equally childlike and simple, when one comes to 
 examine it, is the magic bit that follows about the 
 tawny owl, that bird of midwinter nights : 
 
 " Then nightly sings the staring owl, 
 
 To-who ; 
 
 To-whit, to-who, a merry note ; 
 While greasy Joan doth keel the pot." 
 
 Yet magic, sheer magic, it is ; and, incidentally, one 
 remarks to oneself on reading for the hundredth 
 time, that nobody has ever succeeded in improving 
 on, or even in equalling, Shakespeare's version of 
 what the brown owl says. 
 
 That is Shakespeare's view of the merry and in- 
 vigorating side of midwinter, all the cheer and the 
 humour of it. The bite of it, its keen tooth and rude
 
 Shakespeare's Midwinter 305 
 
 blast come out in the marvellous, small lyric on 
 holly and the wind in " As You Like It," with its 
 blend of joy and bitterness alternating from line to 
 line. Shakespeare makes one of his characters say : 
 
 " In Nature's infinite book of secrecy 
 A little I can read." 
 
 There is no sign that he had himself peered at all 
 minutely or deep into that book of secrecy. There is 
 not a passage in the songs or the plays or the sonnets 
 that suggests for a moment that he was a searching 
 scholar in the study of Nature apart from man. For 
 instance, the knowledge of minutiae in Shakespeare 
 could not compare with the curious minutiae in 
 some of our modern masters. 
 
 The point about him is the glorious way in which 
 he grasped the few great essential things whenever 
 he turned to natural sights and sounds. 
 
 All through English literature poets and prose 
 writers have been striving to capture and write down 
 evening in England and its monochrome, the tint and 
 the tone of it. Collins and Shelley and Milton and 
 Gray may have felt they at least had approached 
 success. But Shakespeare reached it. His "light 
 thickens, and the crow makes wing to the rooky 
 wood " is evening in our landscape ; whilst, if any 
 emphasis were needed to a thing that is all emphasis, 
 there is another line " The shard-borne beetle, with 
 his drowsy hums " the " wild airel " of a poem
 
 306 This Realm, This England 
 
 by Hogg and that, too, is evening in our land- 
 scape. 
 
 Shakespeare laid hold of and secured the essential 
 and the childishly simple in just the same way when 
 he turned to the small birds. There is a pure and lovely 
 line in Spenser's " Faery Queen " " To take the 
 air and hear the thrush's song," a cure for one who 
 had lain ill for a time. But there are lovelier ones in 
 Shakespeare's songs of the singing birds. In " A 
 Midsummer Night's Dream " he hit them off as no 
 one has ever done : 
 
 " The ouzel-cock, so black of hue, 
 
 With orange-tawny bill, 
 The throstle with his note so true, 
 The wren with little quill." 
 
 Others have tried to paint the blackbird, and one 
 has given him a " gold dagger of a bill," but there is 
 no list of the birds to equal Shakespeare's little child's 
 list. Any day in midwinter one may go out and see 
 at once these three, and recognize the genius of 
 Shakespeare's description, a description of the per- 
 fectly obvious in Nature. 
 
 Scores of little Nature touches, not so essential, 
 perhaps, as these, but exquisite often and happy, 
 probably flash on the memory of anyone who knows 
 the plays well. What a delicate and lovely conceit 
 that is about the " fairies' coachmaker " in " Romeo
 
 Shakespeare's Midwinter 307 
 
 and Juliet " and the empty hazel nut ! I imagine 
 the harness was made from the gossamer of the 
 woods. I believe in a book I have somewhere there 
 is actually a picture of Queen Mab driving with 
 reins spun by a spider. His metaphors and similes 
 founded on Nature prove just the same grip of the 
 essential and simple. It is not possible, it seems, to 
 hackney them. How, by the most excessive repeti- 
 tion, could the worm in the bud be hackneyed ? 
 
 " She never told her love ; 
 But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, 
 Feed on her damask cheek. 
 
 Some people may find the spring descriptions the 
 best things in Shakespeare's Nature. I incline to 
 think his winter is the finest, but the vivid freshness 
 of the spring in Shakespeare is great indeed. It acts 
 on one as a thing physically felt in the daffodil song 
 in " A Winter's Tale," with its sweet of the year 
 and "the white sheet bleaching on the hedge." 
 Though he had read but a little in the secret book 
 of Nature outside human life, Shakespeare was 
 clearly an intimate of Nature. His lore was wholly 
 his own, personal and direct and pure from the 
 source. 
 
 Whatever else is known or denied about Shake- 
 speare, we can know for sure that the lyrics and 
 songs and the lines scattered through his work came
 
 308 This Realm, This England 
 
 straight from his own experience. Their immense 
 vigour and lasting freshness prove it. In these de- 
 scriptions he does not merely hold up the glass of 
 Nature. The glass is a device of literature. But the 
 effect of Shakespeare's genius in the songs is this 
 he is constantly able to create for us, when we are 
 absent from it, the real thing.
 
 PHASE FOUR 
 ENGLISH SEA
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE PAGEANT OF PORTSMOUTH 
 
 THE truest test of scenery may be long, old inti- 
 macy with it. True, this is not always a trust- 
 worthy test in the case of a man's native place where 
 he spent his childhood and early years, on which he 
 may look back as years of paradise. The native scene, 
 even to the discriminating eye of taste, may appear 
 very good simply through the magic of association, 
 the illusions of memory. The garden along whose 
 gravel paths once again Rogers walked in thought 
 may not have been so distinguished among gardens 
 as he imagined, and as the poem makes us picture it. 
 Without old friendship with them, the quiet small 
 landscapes of the country about Olney would never 
 have drawn from Cowper such lines of praise as he 
 wrote in pain when he was leaving them for ever. 
 Some people, with deep attachment to their native 
 scenery, have fully recognized this part association 
 plays, and half feared to return lest they should find 
 so much of it an illusion the rivers shrunk sadly, 
 little more than brooks; the great trees stunted 
 there never were trees equal to those that grow about 
 311
 
 312 This Realm, This England 
 
 the long-lost home the hills and valleys not out 
 of the common run. 
 
 " We'll turn aside from Yarrow." 
 
 Many people have had a chilling experience in this. 
 Some feeling of the kind touched Hood perhaps when 
 he thought of the house where he was born and of 
 the fir-trees around it whose tops once seemed almost 
 to touch the sky it might be a mistake to go there 
 and find himself much farther from Heaven than 
 when he was a boy. 
 
 Old intimacy with a native scene, then, may de- 
 ceive or half-deceive people as to its intrinsic merit 
 of beauty. But when the scene we come to know well 
 is not the half-enchanted one of early, wholly happy 
 years, where it has stabbing thoughts some oppres- 
 sion even of the dull aching weight of death still kept 
 for us there as well as store of good memories, the 
 test is much more to be trusted. 
 
 It is truest and surest where we become slowly 
 conscious of the beauty of the scene, steeped in it 
 little by little, each visit we pay it, even each day we 
 see it, new glories unfolding themselves; always some- 
 thing exquisite, subtle, surprising being revealed, the 
 exact likeness of which we cannot remember seeing 
 and wondering at before. 
 
 This is how I grew to know the sea and landscapes 
 between Hayling and Poole Harbour. They are not 
 native scenes, though I have known some parts of the
 
 The Pageant of Po rtsmouth 313 
 
 district most of my life ; and only by degrees has a full 
 awakening to their beauty come to me. To-day I can 
 see nothing tame or cramped about these scenes, nor 
 any other scenes quite to match them in blend and 
 national feeling, the pageant and expression of 
 England an empire. 
 
 This appreciation, then, has been a somewhat slow 
 growth. The glory of the Solent did not flash upon 
 me all at once ; for a long while breezier open seas on 
 the East Coast or rockier, wilder seas of Devonshire 
 and the West of Ireland appealed more directly to me. 
 The Solent seemed very pretty and gentle, full of 
 halcyon calm, where these other seas had bracing 
 force, wild spray and rough wave, the strong salt of 
 sea life all about them. This is a view common to 
 many who have seen and cruised about the Solent 
 from time to time, and found it, in the summer, often 
 unruffled as the millpool of one of the chalk streams 
 that make Southampton Water; but it is a view 
 which most people can modify or put aside wholly 
 when they come to study the scene closely and often, 
 in all its moods and lights, and to think of its wonder- 
 ful national story, and of the fleet that rides it, 
 guardian of an "awful and magnificent cause." 
 
 For English empire in almost perfect microcosm 
 I know of nothing which quite equals that lovely 
 ribbon of water between mainland and island, with 
 a narrow strip of country on either side, from the flat 
 coast of Hayling to the crumbling cliffs of South-
 
 314 This Rea/m, This England 
 
 bourne, and from Needles and white cliffs of Alum 
 Bay to Foreland and to Culver. Into this little space 
 are compressed the supreme things of empire : Might, 
 the battle-ship its symbol; World-Commerce; His- 
 tory in some of its most moving, most significant 
 passages; and that setting of Beauty, in natural scene, 
 land and sea scape without which a complete nation 
 is unthinkable. 
 
 As to scenery, natural beauty and ever-changing 
 look of water, cloud, light and land, the worth of 
 these things on the life and character of people can 
 hardly be over-valued there is no danger of our 
 over-valuing them to-day. It is sentiment in a way 
 no doubt, but the appreciation of beautiful scenery 
 is also of great practical service ; indeed, sentiment 
 that is not at the root a practical thing, helping to 
 make men complete and better, is worthless rubbish ; 
 it is sentimentalism a wretched affectation. I do not 
 see how anybody can deny that, by rightly valuing 
 and being moved by it, men and women tend to be 
 happier and of a higher mind ; it must follow that 
 these things are of solid, practical use by making 
 better citizens. It would be wrong-headed utili- 
 tarianism to question the practical good we get by 
 dwelling on and valuing to the full beautiful English 
 scenery. 
 
 Hayling, which I call the islet, lies to the extreme 
 east of the British Sea, a slip of a place, not much 
 more than four miles across at its broadest, which is
 
 The Pageant of Portsmouth 3 1 5 
 
 by the sea, and scarcely over five miles in length. 
 When the tide is fully up over the mud-flats of 
 Chichester Harbour on the east and Langston on the 
 west, only a mile of dry land divides water from 
 water at the middle of the islet, its wasp waist. 
 Chichester Harbour lies outside our chart, but 
 Langston is not an unimportant point upon it. To- 
 day Langston carries no ship of war; not even a 
 torpedo-boat can be seen there, only small fishing- 
 smacks and the like. It would need vast toil to clear 
 and deepen the harbour for ships, even for yachts and 
 the smallest vessels of the Navy ; a very long, to some 
 almost an unimaginable, work to dredge and carry 
 away to sea the millions of years of sand and mud 
 which have silted and settled here. Many people say 
 it can never be done. But imagine England con- 
 tinuously growing as a ship empire, and cast the 
 mind not more than a century ahead ; may not 
 Portsmouth by then be dredged to its utmost carry- 
 ing capacity for ships ? Or suppose Langston Harbour 
 to-day actually were able to carry ships who could 
 doubt that it would be covered with them at times ? 
 Remembering the rise of modern Portsmouth and 
 Southampton, and the way in which huge works ot 
 land and water have been done in a single generation 
 or a short lifetime, it seems rash to say that Langston 
 must always be for sea-bird and fisher-boat. Is it not 
 just a question of whether England's power and com- 
 merce is to grow within the next hundred years at
 
 316 This Realm^ This England 
 
 all as it has in the last ? Take the view it is ; then 
 you think quite easily of Langston and Portsmouth 
 as twin harbours. 
 
 It is natural to play with such thoughts about the 
 future of Langston and its islet when one is walking 
 from Eastney and crossing the narrow channel by 
 the ferry-boat ; but not less it is very good to be able 
 in spring, or in the heat of midsummer, when the 
 oak copses and spinneys are June-perfect, to leave 
 the town and spend a long day on the islet. The re- 
 freshment of it is realized all the more that, from 
 Portsmouth or Gosport, to reach the ferry one has 
 passed through street after street where life seems as 
 packed, and beauty in building or garden as far to 
 seek, as in many of the environs of far larger English 
 cities in London itself : miles of houses, outwardly 
 unexpressive of home, nothing about their faces to 
 touch or cheer the imagination. Wherever we are 
 great and rich in commerce, there is this dark side 
 of things, and no overlooking it. The oppression of 
 life overcrowded, denied its share of earth, sky, and 
 water, is not quite shaken off till we are in the ferry- 
 boat. We left the last row of houses every house so 
 aggressively like its neighbour a mile or two back, 
 but they are too near to be shaken off the mind till 
 we are on the water or have landed on the other side. 
 The islet has a little railway across the bridge, but 
 the simple way to reach it is from Portsmouth by the
 
 The Pageant of Portsmouth 317 
 
 ferry-boat. The moment we land we are free of all 
 oppression of town life, so effectual is that narrow 
 bar of deep water. On such an islet life strikes us as 
 quite different from life on the mainland the stress 
 and anxiousness of it have gone.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 ISLET AND ISLE 
 
 DURING winter the islet may be sombre, wind- 
 swept, and desolate compared with other places 
 along this coast, certainly with the island whose 
 western point we see nearly opposite when we look 
 out to sea. Being so windy and exposed along the 
 whole of its little low coast, it is slow to take on the 
 full spring look. In May the marram grass, that binds 
 and keeps together the poor soil close to the sea edge, 
 is in most places still winter-white or sand-brown. A 
 little inland, however, on the common that lies 
 between sea and harbour, the gorse is in a great glow 
 early in May, and the meagre turf in some seasons 
 has thick little patches of a flower of deep rare blue, 
 Dillenius's dog violet. The sturdy stonechat, a bird 
 spread along the whole of the coastline of the British 
 sea and living there throughout the year, flits and 
 softly warbles in this wonderful glory of gorse ; and 
 once or twice I have seen its nest deep down among 
 the thorns, five faint-blue freckled eggshells, delicate 
 treasures, just showing in their cup set in the gold. 
 Here is one of Nature's tiny, dainty pictures, something 
 that turns us, for the first few moments of surprise, 
 318
 
 Islet and Isle 319 
 
 all eye and finger-tip. The islet in May and June has 
 many secret treasures of the same kind as the stone- 
 chat's nest. Wandering among the saltings, when the 
 harbour tides have been low, I have found the thrush's 
 nest blue set in gold here too at the very edge of 
 the mud-flats. By these flats we may lie for hours 
 where there is a bit of dry ground or shingle, and 
 have all the harbour and the islet within sight to our- 
 selves. There are often quiet places close to crowded, 
 sounding ones, but I know few to match in its gift 
 of loneliness parts of the sea beach or the harbour's 
 edge of this place. Tide in, tide out, this untenanted 
 harbour, hospitable in its far recesses only to the great 
 black- backed gull, in size the English albatross, and 
 green cormorants of the island opposite, is wonderful 
 to the eye always, and in many lights steeped in 
 mystery. Mud in little, churned by human works, is 
 the ugliest, least inspiring thing in matter we know ; 
 that is mud polluted. It is very different with these 
 great flats, miles of gleam and glitter over which the 
 salt tide runs and creeps. After dark there is an awe 
 and an aloofness about them, the thought of which 
 will strike on the imagination of all people who have 
 feeling for the wild scenes in Nature ; then it is as 
 though some spirit that brooded over them were 
 awake and moving, but even in the familiar daytime 
 and the cheerful sunlight they are never quite with- 
 out their touch of mystery. 
 
 Nothing out of keeping with Langston is ever to
 
 320 This Realm, This England 
 
 be seen on the water or about the spits of sand and 
 the eyots of mud and rushes : the rough, tarred boats 
 of some fisher, who earns a bare living from the 
 scanty harvests of the sea hereabouts, silvery bass or 
 flat fish ; distant roving figures searching at low tide 
 for still smaller prizes ; the wild mew of the gulls at 
 the harbour-bar often so thick and restless in the air 
 just above the water that their wings in the sunlight 
 are a shower of dazzling white these are the only 
 signs of life about the waters here, each one in perfect 
 accord with the scene. 
 
 This islet, with its broad belt of shingle, stretching 
 for the south of England far back from the sea, 
 and with its unreclaimed harbour and to the south and 
 south-east outlook on open sea, always strikes me as 
 the rudest and wildest spot on this little chart of 
 waters. True, if we glance at it on the map of 
 England, it does not give the impression of a place of 
 this quality. It looks on the map almost as if set in a 
 small sheltered bay, Selsey on one side, Wight on the 
 other. But, lying on one of the shelving beaches of 
 Hayling when the wind is coming in hard from the 
 sea and it will blow hard even in the late spring and 
 summer for weeks together here we get a truer idea 
 of its character. A mile or two inland, where the islet 
 grows green and there are bluebell woods with shelter 
 and warmth for summer birds, the scenery is idyllic 
 rather than rough and seaworthy, but down on the 
 shingle we have something of the tonic and robust
 
 Islet and Isle 321 
 
 feeling of the English coast of tradition. For the 
 lotus isles and waters we must turn westward to 
 Spithead and Solent scenes. 
 
 Everybody knows of the fame of the Isle of Wight 
 as a winter place, one of the gardens of England 
 where delicate flowers and shrubs will live and 
 flourish in the open the year through myrtles, 
 lemon-plant, and other more fragile things that in- 
 land we can in winter only keep under glass ; but, 
 even so, the time to see the Island and its waters at 
 their best is the summer. It is then, say from June till 
 October, that the colouring of the coasts and sea is 
 so rich and rare, endless in variety and swift change, 
 and in the undertones and gradations, the finest 
 pencilled lines, and the most filmy effects that can 
 be made by light, land, air, and water. 
 
 The straight, clean lines of this scene often appeal 
 to me. It is an error which rules the straight line 
 out of Nature that is, out of our vision of Nature. 
 The straight, hard line of artifice is often an offence 
 to the eye, but the straight lines, often unflinchingly 
 hard and clean, clipped or bitten out on the water 
 or the horizon, sometimes on the land, which Nature 
 presents to the eye, part of her perspective of distance, 
 are very different. There is often the hard, clean line 
 of the sea from the Freshwater cliffs to the Dorset- 
 shire coast, or rather to a point opposite that coast. 
 Looked at from the mainland, somewhere midway 
 between the east and west points, at Hengistbury
 
 322 This Realm, This England 
 
 Head or the Southbourne cliffs, this horizon of sea 
 forms a slight curve scarcely removed from a dead 
 straight line. If it appeared to the eye actually a 
 straight line, absolute and severe, I doubt whether it 
 would be less beautiful. If not the sea line for any 
 length, at least the land line often is ruled straight 
 and severe, and the effect is fine. 
 
 Standing on the Island, I have wondered at the 
 straight and ruled low coast opposite. Look at Hay- 
 ling from the shore about Sea View or nearer Ryde. 
 In some lights the line is ruled not only absolutely 
 straight to the eye, but clean as of something cut 
 with the sharpest instrument. No eye surely could 
 ever be displeased with this straightness and sharp 
 definition. We may get the same effect, the same in 
 straightness if not quite in sharpness, looking across 
 a marsh or great water meadow at a long line of 
 reeds by the river a mile or two distant. We know 
 that the river is not really straight ; on the contrary, 
 that its course is sinuous, and the belt of reeds sinuous 
 with it. But distance rules both of them straight, and 
 in winter, especially when the dead reed-stems are 
 blanched and hoary, they stand up as a regular, in- 
 flexible line. But there is nothing stiff" or tiring to 
 the eye in this array. The effect of sharply cut or 
 hard lines of water and land in Solent scenes is not, 
 of course, invariable. Often when the lines are straight 
 to the eye they are softened by the atmosphere and 
 light so that quite another effect is produced : then
 
 Islet and Isle 323 
 
 they take the form of the vague rim or edge of matter 
 that seems etherealized. You will see the same thing 
 at Naples, Capri, Sorrento. 
 
 From this coast about Sea View, a coast full of 
 idyllic land as well as seascape, we often find the 
 water arranged in lines or bands of colour, so charac- 
 teristic of the Solent. These colours are not so fixed 
 and surprising in brilliance as those of many waters 
 famed for colour, such as the Sogne and the Har- 
 danger Fjords of Norway. They are not Sicilian 
 blues and sea-greens. It is easy to imagine brighter, 
 more striking colour than is seen here, but greater 
 variety, subtler tone or tinting, never. From the 
 coast of the Island or the downs behind it, looking 
 northwards and east and west, you can see on bright 
 and overcast days alike bands of distinct colour laid 
 one beyond the other in the precise orderly way that 
 Nature often chooses for seascape. Towards sunset 
 the bands sometimes disappear, and instead nearly 
 the whole water becomes a sheet of deep indigo. 
 Beyond and above this grand layer of colour you see 
 a low, long line of purple hill from Cosham and be- 
 yond to the New Forest ; above and beyond this 
 purple is a band of pale grey the filmy hills of the 
 far horizon ; finally over all the pure faint blue of 
 the sky. 
 
 That is an afternoon scene on the Solent. An hour 
 or two later, and the sunset begins. The whole sky 
 to the west and north-west has a wonderful lustrous
 
 324 This Realm, This England 
 
 look. It is not colour so much as glow then, a certain 
 indescribable luminous appearance : in the exaltation 
 of such sunsets we want no brilliant effects of colour 
 colour might in these magic minutes be thought 
 of as almost a material, unrefined thing compared 
 with this glow and afterglow. This is a full summer 
 sunset, about mid-June or July, and when the sky is 
 cloudless has not even a wisp of cirrus in the ice- 
 heights of the air. Earlier in the year, in stormy 
 spring weather especially, one can enjoy cloud and 
 sundown scenes from the water or the land, mainland 
 or island coast, that prove how absolutely faithful 
 was the art of Turner. When loose storm clouds, the 
 gauzy shrouds and veils of the cirro-stratus cloud of 
 a thousand different forms are floating in the west, 
 the sun, still an hour above the horizon, will turn 
 them over the water to a fine dust of gold. It is in 
 such a gold dust that I have seen the whirl of puffins 
 on the North Cornish coast.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 ILLUSIONS OF THE ENGLISH SEA 
 
 IN May I have seen the sea off Hengistbury and 
 Poole and Southbourne striped and ribboned with 
 all imaginable shades of purple and blue, each stripe 
 or ribbon lying parallel with the land. The light 
 streak of the sand-dunes with the palest green of the 
 marram grasses sand and marram grass going al- 
 ways so well together completes this colour scene. 
 The beach of the Dorsetshire coast beyond Poole 
 Harbour is drawn out with the utmost fineness and 
 delicacy, and here, as at Hayling, the land, at a dis- 
 tance of a few miles, looks as if cut into and raised a 
 little above the level of the sea, an illusion constant 
 but always remarkable. May is a great month for 
 this western part of the Solent, for the steep sides of 
 the chines, or bunneys,are gold with hot-scented gorse 
 then, as later some of them will be coral with heather. 
 Standing a few hundred yards up one of these old 
 water-courses, and looking down to the sea and up 
 to the sky what a sight of gold and blue for us ! 
 The earth has many painful riddles ; here is a riddle 
 that baffles but never distresses the mind why is it 
 so marvellously beautiful to look at ? That there is 
 3*5
 
 326 This Realm, This England 
 
 some vast, hidden aim and end in this beauty of the 
 world is a thought that often takes hold of us in such 
 summer scenes as these ; but we have no science or 
 theory of life that offers the smallest clue. 
 
 At dawn in May, the sea dead still and the line of 
 undulating downs across the bay at Poole may seem 
 to be one substance ; the distinction between water 
 and land at this hour disappears. Waking then, and 
 looking through the window westward, I have taken 
 the downs to be part of the sea; after all, they are sea- 
 coloured often enough, now blue, now deep purple, 
 and in form ilike a great swell of the sea suddenly 
 struck still. 
 
 In autumn the sea and landscapes of the Isle or 
 Wight towards evening and in very still weather 
 grow etherial, all the familiar passing from them. 
 The hills of the Island, seen from the water, grow 
 utterly unsubstantial then. They turn dove-coloured, 
 and so soft and light is their appearance that they 
 might, to a stranger to the place, pass for clouds on 
 the horizon. The sea, with the mild sun on it, is 
 emerald, and the band of colour that adjoins it to the 
 north, given by the wooded shores of Hamble and 
 Southampton Water, is a splendid purple. At other 
 times, on an autumn evening like this, but with some 
 imperceptible difference in the atmosphere, the faint 
 outlines of hills far beyond Portsmouth and its land 
 forts have the peculiar appearance of being partly 
 covered with a thin coating of stained snow. Every
 
 Illusions of the English Sea 327 
 
 shade of blue and green touches these waters between 
 mainland and island in early autumn as in summer, 
 often changing with a changing sky from minute to 
 minute. 
 
 These transformation scenes of grey May morn- 
 ings and of autumn, turning matter to mist, or mist 
 to matter, are not, of course, peculiar to this part of 
 England. We notice them inland in vague lights, as 
 well as about the coast. Who has not seen the great 
 restful cumulus clouds at the close of day banked on 
 the horizon like a range of distant hills ? And as 
 there are mock hills made of mist, so in a thicker 
 atmosphere there are mock clouds made of matter : 
 seen from my window, on a veiled October morning 
 after a night of frost, the row of beech-trees across 
 the meadow have appeared a bank of clouds on the 
 skyline gathering for a heavy storm. But here on the 
 coast such effects are more frequent and surprising in 
 mimicry. Of many such scenes I recall an autumn 
 one of haunted beauty close to Ryde of the kind 
 that takes complete hold of us and leaves a lasting 
 impression on the mind. As we came near the Island 
 the west sky and sea were steeped in fire and copper. 
 To the south-west, in strong contrast with all this 
 colour, the dark, almost black, line of trees on the 
 Island stood out ; and over them was a blotched out- 
 line in grey of a giant forest made of cloud. Some 
 trees in that wood of phantasy phantasy it little 
 seemed in those moments of glory and wonder
 
 328 This Realm, This England 
 
 were massive limes in shape ; and there were con- 
 torted trees of no particular species, but generally 
 resembling the wind-tossed and twisted trees of wild 
 coasts ; finally, there were firs of delicate, feathery 
 leafage. 
 
 To the east and south-east the scene was wholly 
 different. Here the water was highly polished and 
 darkly calm, with a white gleam here and there of 
 seagulls. The gauzy veil of autumn mist was mixing 
 with the smoke of a passing steamer. The town, the 
 woods about it, the bare hills beyond each was pre- 
 sented in the softest, the least material form ; here 
 were no clean-cut outlines, no heavily blotched masses 
 of tree foliage, no splendour of sunset. Softness and the 
 deepest calm prevailed ; the kind of calm that is felt 
 as if it were a presence, a power to fill and rule us, 
 masterful and benign, smoothing out all the rough- 
 ness or uneasiness of the mind and subliming 
 pleasure. 
 
 I suppose that very many strenuous natures are 
 affected at times by these transcendental calms that 
 haunt the woods in summer, and the downs and 
 mountains, but especially the creeks and harbours 
 of the sea when the lights of day and night are 
 mixing. The effect on the mind is of some gracious 
 white sheet drawn down, shutting us off from the 
 turmoil of things. It reminds me of the beehive, 
 eager, unresting, perhaps up in rebellion, when the 
 bee-master comes and draws his cloth gently over the
 
 Illusions of the English Sea. 329 
 
 seething combs, and forthwith the whole uneasy 
 community is charmed to peace. 
 
 Not all the illusions of this sea are kept for the 
 hush of sundown and the shade of coming night. 
 The sea blooms of the Solent, films and hazes, at all 
 seasons glorify and mystify every ship they touch, 
 clumsy coal barge, harbour dredger, graceful racing 
 yacht. They can turn every ship to a phantom ship. 
 I saw the Discovery coming into Portsmouth through 
 a thin veil of grey or purple mist hard to say for 
 sure whether more grey or purple, the transitions 
 from shade to shade and colour to colour being subtle, 
 and the vocabulary for such gradations of light not 
 existing. The Discovery came out of a region of un- 
 reality, taking little by little the form of matter and 
 the familiar features of a ship. Even when the air to 
 the horizon seems clear and the sun isshining brightly, 
 the magic of sea and light is never gone for long. 
 The sea has no monotony of the kind. Besides 
 phantom ships turning to real, we may often see real 
 ships turning to phantom. In clear fine weather this 
 is so with any ship or boat that carries a sail. The 
 last thing we shall be tired by here is plain objects 
 presented in a plain way. 
 
 It must have been a supreme ship spectacle to 
 watch the great wooden walls under anything like a 
 press of sail leaving Portsmouth ! Fancy the Victory 
 passing through the Solent on the way to Trafalgar 
 her plumage of canvas, some sails bending, others
 
 330 This Realm, This England 
 
 flapping, and the dazzle of the light and the shadow 
 on them, and the thought of what was the Victory's 
 mission. Even unemotional men may have lain on 
 the hills or by the shore to watch those ships from 
 the moment they left the harbour till the tops of their 
 gallant masts went under the'* sea line. We have 
 nothing quite equal to this now, but even those 
 butterflies of the Solent, the racing yachts, running 
 before the breeze or tacking, manoeuvring, straining, 
 are fine to see. A ship sail is one of the most beauti- 
 ful things which man ever invented. Are there half 
 a dozen other inventions in the whole output of art 
 and civilization to equal in this a sail spread before 
 the wind ? The wheel may surpass it in ingenuity ; 
 equal it in service to man ; the ploughshare may ; but 
 neither touches the sail in beauty. We have done 
 little to increase the beauty of the natural world, but 
 the sail does really seem to add to the sea, as the 
 Early English church spire adds to landscape made 
 of elms and little hills and valleys and cressy streams. 
 
 The man who first made the sail and spread it to 
 take the wind rivalled Nature. It seems as if the sail 
 in its perfect beauty, simplicity, and necessity should 
 have been made by Nature. 
 
 The loss of the old wooden walls, of the galleons, 
 and galleasses before them, can never be made good ; 
 but it is something that in these pleasure argosies we 
 are uniting grace and strength and fleetness in a way 
 our seaworthy forefathers never dreamed of. The
 
 Illusions of the English Sea 331 
 
 racing yachts, as we watch them to-day in the British 
 Sea, have grown in these qualities, till they do appear 
 to have touched perfection. Watch them from the 
 shore of the Island, at Ryde or Sea View : they file 
 past in a straight line as straight as the low coast 
 opposite, or as those stripes of Prussian blue, indigo, 
 ultramarine, that in bright summer days lie across 
 the green and purple waters, always parallel with 
 the land, an effect often produced by the floating sea- 
 weed masses. Now their sails are grey, now white 
 as the gulls showered about the spit of sand a mile 
 out at sea. The racing craft put the finishing-touch 
 to this scene. 
 
 On the folded downs of the Isle of Wight, where 
 there are high-lying cornfields, wheat-gold at the 
 beginning of August, we may see much beauty and 
 variety of tone and colour if there are a few clouds 
 moving. Sun and shadow races over the corn will go 
 on for hours of a fine day. The lightest breeze sweep- 
 ing across these wheatfields, swinging gently the 
 heavy ears, brings with it swift changes of light. But 
 the earth even in these sensitive places is not so re- 
 sponsive to the blue sky and cloud as the water is. 
 Where the corn and heavy hayfields reproduce the 
 changes in shade of the sky, the sea on some days 
 will sympathize with the sky in the least change of 
 colour and tint ; though it does not merely copy or 
 repeat the colours there ; in receiving, it subjects 
 them to certain changes and mixing processes, so
 
 332 This Rea!m y This England 
 
 that it can improve on the glory of the vast ceiling. 
 This seems to be the exclusive property of the sea. 
 Looking into a quiet lake among the birch and pine 
 woods of the mainland, or into the crystal-clear chalk 
 streams that flow into the Solent, I find only a faith- 
 ful copy of the sky and clouds and the trees hanging 
 over the water. The sea, alone among these waters, 
 receiving and absorbing, can in the act transcolour.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE LOVELINESS OF ENGLAND 
 
 WATCH the racing yachts from the water itselr 
 at Cowes or at Ryde. From the sea near 
 Ryde the sight is perhaps more imposing, because 
 the boats file away almost to that clean-cut line that 
 moves us so deeply, no matter how often or in what 
 part of the earth or water we look at it, the end ot 
 the visible world. Over there lies the lightship, and 
 round it the yachts swing one by one, for their line 
 has grown long and straggling, and the gaps are wide. 
 I have spoken of the swift racers as butterflies, and 
 the image seems to fit them well enough in the 
 idea of lightness and unsubstantiality as well as or 
 spright which it carries. They look fairy-like at a 
 little distance, but there is nothing on the sea more 
 deceptive than these boats in seeming bulk. The 
 largest of them looks as if it might well be contained 
 in one of the smaller steam packets which ply be- 
 tween mainland and island in a Stokes Bay boat. 
 But really a Stokes Bay boat is scarcely half the ton- 
 nage of a racing yacht of the Ingomar class. One for- 
 gets the canvas the yacht has to carry. This canvas 
 333
 
 334 This Realm, This England 
 
 is subject to transformation scenery strange and 
 wonderful as that of the hills and coasts. 
 
 There was an August race which we watched from 
 the sea near Ryde. The Ingomar led the way from 
 the starting-point by Ryde to the Warner Light- 
 ship. Extent and weight of canvas were unmistakable 
 when we were within a hundred yards of the yachts. 
 Again, half a mile from the starting-point, when the 
 yachts were drawn close together and getting into 
 line against the signal, the mass of sail was most 
 striking. But a few minutes later, when instead or 
 this stately group we saw a lengthening line stream- 
 ing eastward at Spithead, these glorious sails were by 
 play of light reduced to shreds and tatters. This 
 was when we saw the boats clipped out on the 
 sky. As each boat reached the point where this was 
 first noticed in regard to the leader, exactly the same 
 effect was produced, till presently we were looking 
 at a fleet of toy boats not one of which showed a 
 whole sail. 
 
 ***** 
 
 These are random sketches, slight and faulty, or 
 sea and seascape which, in its marvellous and delicate 
 and quick-changing beauty, has a thrall over all people 
 who know the place and care for such scenes and for 
 the drama of Nature. I never tried to put into words 
 my thoughts and impressions of any scene of natural 
 loveliness in England wood, waste, or water 
 without knowing after the attempt that I had failed
 
 The Loveliness of England 335 
 
 more or less entirely. The best part of our apprecia- 
 tion has no language. He that but half sees actually 
 sees and enjoys more than the man with twice his 
 power to see and appreciate, furnished, too, with a 
 gift of words, can set on paper. This is easily illus- 
 trated. Two passages of supreme descriptive merit of 
 different quality occur to me. Ruskin in " The 
 Crown of Wild Olive " described the springs of the 
 Wandle before their pollution, in a passage which 
 seems as near inspiration as anything in our empire 
 of print, lifted up like Shelley's lyrics. The other is 
 those three words in " Hyperion " "Eve's one star." 
 In the one passion, in the other art, can go no farther. 
 These are master touches in the cunning of words. 
 Yet thousands of ordinary people have seen and en- 
 joyed more of the wellhead of a pure stream, or of 
 Venus in the afterglow at sundown, than is brought 
 out in Ruskin's passage, in Keats's crystal of word 
 perfection. If, then, the masters fail to tell what they 
 have seen and felt, why should we without any 
 special art of words make the attempt ? At first 
 thought it seems presumption and a useless thing. 
 But I believe that would be bad judgment of effort 
 that is instinctive and earnest. Earnestness is para- 
 mount ; one cannot lay too much stress on it ; en- 
 thusiasm for natural and national scenery which does 
 not come straight and clean from the wells of feeling 
 is odious ; a cult of nature or of patriotism, the least 
 suspicion of it, would be too repulsive. Given the en-
 
 336 This Realm, This England 
 
 thusiasm, and the instinct to tell, it is a kind of right 
 in those who have had intense pleasure from such 
 scenes to help impart a little of the thing to others. If 
 we send a few people to find the treasure, we dis- 
 charge some of our debt. Debt and duty are terms 
 that properly apply to this, especially where the 
 scenes are our own country's. The delusion that to 
 see and enjoy fine scenery we must go abroad may 
 not be so common as it was ; still, it cheats many 
 people, and we should do what is in our power to 
 dispel it. 
 
 English sea, sky, and hills soon exhausted ot 
 their variety and beauty or wanting in either ! One 
 summer day spent on these waters, or along their 
 coast, proves the error. Climb Hengistbury Head and 
 look out to sea from the braken of its summit, or 
 inland across the estuary to old Twynham and the 
 Forest this assures a man he need not go beyond 
 England for beauty and marvellous colour in un- 
 named, indescribable tint and gradation. Barton Cliffs 
 to the west of Hengistbury or Culver on the Island 
 will serve as well, or the wooded reaches of the Beau- 
 lieu River when the tide is in and at the full. I scarcely 
 know a spot along this coast or on this sea that will 
 not serve the purpose Netley, Hamble, Hayling, 
 Bembridge, Yarmouth, Freshwater. 
 
 No one could exhaust the beauties of England, no 
 eye could be educated above them. As this applies to 
 England as a whole, so it applies to single counties
 
 The Loveliness of England 337 
 
 and districts. The problems of origin and destiny, of 
 life, mind, and matter, press closer on the thoughts 
 of each succeeding generation ; but the riddle of 
 beauty, its source and end, is to us at times as deep 
 and wonderful as any. Beauty exercises such a sway 
 over us, and is so widely spread upon earth and sky 
 and water, that we must be in a dark mood to ques- 
 tion some highness in its origin and end. 
 
 Never is this riddle of beauty more insistent for me 
 than when I think or look at these few miles of calm 
 English sea.
 
 INDEX 
 
 AKEKMANN'S "Wiltshire Tales," j Carrier's carts, 119-123 
 
 I(5 7 ! Chalk, 6, 7, 8, 10, 127 
 
 Albatross, the, 255, 256 j Chapels, Nonconformist, 133 
 
 Albion, 3, 4, 12 Chelsea, birds in, 192, 197 198 
 
 Alps, redstarts in, 298 Chichester Harbour, 315 
 
 Alum, 3, 8, 9, 291, 314 Chiff-chaff, the, 242, 292 
 
 Angling. See under Fish and \ Christchurch, 76 
 
 Fishing 
 Arnold's division, 153 
 Association, the magic of, 311 
 Autumn, 38, 62, 63, 102-107, ^5 
 Aylmer Aylmer, Sir, 28, 29, 30 
 
 Bakky Berkshire, 167-172 
 Bateson, Professor, 224 
 Beachy Head, 4 
 Beauty : its riddle, 337 
 Birdcatcher, the, 147-152 
 Birds, favourite, 181 
 Bird's-nests, 227-233 
 Boundaries, natural, 122, 123 
 Bracken, 18 
 
 Brickhill Woods, 102, 103 
 Brown, John, the mower, 156 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 151, 234 
 Butterflies, the sulphur, 224, 225 
 
 the Cleopatra, 224, 225 
 
 Rhamni, 225 
 
 Duke of Burgundy fritillary 
 (Lucina), 235, 237, 238 
 
 Canning, 41, 42, 44 
 Carlyle, 69 
 
 " Christian Year," Keble's, 182 
 
 Cobbett, 42, 48-54 
 
 Colonies, the, 70, 81 
 
 Cormorant, the, 319 
 
 Country squire, the, 45, 46, 47 
 
 Cowes, 333 
 
 Cowper, William, 311 
 
 Cow's milk, the man who rose by, 
 
 39 
 
 Crow, the carrion, 194 
 Cuckoo, the, 187, 240, 241, 277 
 
 Dips, 134-136 
 Discovery, the, 329 
 Dover, 4 
 
 Downs, the chalk, 10-16 
 Drayton, Michad, 269 
 
 Eastbourne, 4, 224 
 Environment, the influence of, 160, 
 
 161 
 
 Erne, the, 293, 294 
 Evolution, 220, 224, 225, 259, 293 
 
 Farmer, an English, 173-178 
 Farm labourer, the English, 155- 
 158 
 
 338
 
 Index 
 
 Finance Act, the, 289, 293 j Magpies, 215-220 
 
 Fish and fishing, 64, 118, 144, 165 Maps, ordnance, 124-126 
 
 Flint, 127-129 
 
 339 
 
 French and English homesteads 
 compared, 99 
 
 Ghost moth, the, 96 
 Gold-crested wren, the, 238 
 Gulls, 255-261, 294 
 
 Handy man, the, 139-144 
 Hardy, Thomas, 5 
 Harvest scene, 25-28, 39 
 Hayling, 312-314, 322 
 Headon Hill, 3 
 Hengistbury, 289-295, 325 
 Hereditary professions, 177 
 Hinton, Admiral, 76 
 Hodgson, Ralph, 184 
 Hueffer, Ford Mad ox, 50 
 Humanizing of wild life, 207, 208 
 Hurdles, 111-115 
 
 Ingomar, the, 334 
 
 Jackdaw, the, 208-213, 2I 7 
 Jays, 215-219, 278 
 Jefferies, Richard, 156 
 June evenings, 95-97 
 
 Keats, 335 
 
 " Kelly," 124-126, 130 
 Kestrels, 276 
 Kingsclere, 13 
 Knife-grinder, the, 41-43 
 
 Land system, the English, 26, 27 
 L;mes, English, 100, 101 
 Langston, 315, 316, 319 
 Little, William, 167 
 London, birds in, 192 
 
 Marten, the, 269 
 
 May in England, 75-81 
 
 Midwinter in Shakespeare, 303-308 
 
 Milford, 3 
 
 Montana, 299 
 
 Mud flats, 319 
 
 Murren, 299 
 
 Nationalization of land, the, 34, 
 
 35. 36- 37, 58, 60, 61 
 Needles, the, 4 
 New Forest, the, 76, 77, 252 
 Newman, Edward, 238 
 Nightingale, the, 241-247 
 Noblest view in England, the, 3 
 Normandy, chalk soil in, 6 
 Notebook, an old, 282 
 
 Oak moth, the, 248-253 
 Old families, 20, 21, 22 
 Olney, 311 
 
 Owl, the tawny, 275-281 
 Owners, old stvle and new, 31 
 
 Parish Councils, stories of, 55 
 
 Petrel, the stormy, 261-267 
 
 Pike, the, 165 
 
 Polecat, the, 269 
 
 " Polyolbion," the, 269 
 
 Poole, 3 
 
 Portland, 4 
 
 Portsmouth. 315, 316, 326 
 
 Rabbits, 56-61 
 
 Redbreast strain, the, 182-184, 186 
 
 Redstart, the black, 287, 296-302 
 
 Rhamni, 225 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, 50
 
 34O This Realm y This England 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 207 
 Rooks, 200-206 
 Ruskin, 335 
 Ryde, 327, 331, 333, 334 
 
 Sainfoin, 17, 18, 175 
 
 St. Rouan's Well, 23, 29 
 
 Scents of the woodland, the, 112 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 22, 23 
 
 Scratchels Bay, 4, 8 
 
 Sea View, 322, 323 
 
 Selsey, 320 
 
 Seven Sisters, the, 4 
 
 Shakespeare, 5, 9, 303-308 
 
 Shop, the village, 132-138 
 
 Skylark, the, 188 
 
 Small holdings, experimental, 70- 
 
 74 
 
 Small owners, the need of, 39 
 Smith, Assheton, 31, 49 
 Smock, the, 167 
 Socialism and sport, 58-66 
 Solent, the, 313, 323, 325, 332 
 Southampton Water, 313 
 Sparrows, 226, 227 
 Sport and Socialism, 8-C6 
 Spring, 221-223 
 Stoat, the, 270-274 
 Stonechat, the, 318 
 Struggle, the spirit of, 254 
 Superstition, 273 
 Swallow's nest, the, 233 
 
 Swansea, 4 
 Swiss scenery, 
 
 Tarpaulin, 120 
 
 Tenants, old style and new, 33 
 
 Titmouse, the long- tailed, 283-288 
 
 Totland Bay, 3 
 
 Trout, the, 164 
 
 Twynham Church, 295 
 
 Victory, the, 329, 330 
 Village shop, the, 132-138 
 Viper, the, 273 
 
 Wagtails, 230, 235, 236, 287, 300 
 Water-bailiff, the, 162-166 
 Wattle, 112, 113 
 Wheat, picturesque and practical, 
 
 82-88 
 Wight, the Isle of, 321-324, 326, 
 
 33i 
 
 Wild cats, 268 
 Willow warblers, 184, 185, 192, 
 
 292, 293 
 Winter, 222 
 
 Wordsworth, 14, 160, 236, 241 
 Wrens, 187-191, 228, 229, 235, 
 
 2 3 8 . 2 39. 242 
 
 Yachting, 333 
 i Zoological Gardens, 268 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORU
 
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