For years two books have lain unread in my bookcase, both by Richard Jefferies, an author I knew little about apart from the fact that he had lived in the 1800’s near Swindon, which wasn’t too far from my own childhood village in adjacent Oxfordshire. They had come into my possession many years ago from two different sources. The first was a gift from a neighbour, a naturalist who had encouraged my early boyhood bird watching, this gift being part of that encouragement. I have indeed kept on bird watching but this little book Life of the Fields kind gesture that it was, had not played any part in the process. So it had kept on sitting there unread in the book case, tiny little hard back that it was, for all those years.
The second book came much later and by way of my wife. Her father had been a teacher at Baessaleg Grammar School near Newport, Monmouthshire. A novel by Jefferies, entitled Bevis had come into his possession by way of the school library and now years later sat in our book shelf also unread.
Earlier this year, or perhaps it was late last year, the Guardian ran a series on “must read novels” with books divided into about five different categories. In the category devoted to ‘futures’ the name Richard Jefferies caught my eye, particularly as the book, After London or Wild England was regarded as being just about the best of this particular genre. Intrigued by this and also the fact that I was aware of having these other works by the man, I ordered a copy of After London from a rare book publisher.
It was to be my project to finally read the long neglected books in my study and from them build up to this claimed classic. What I discovered and the impression, if any, they made was to be the subject of this essay.
I started off with Bevis principally because of its sub title ‘the story of a boy’. I had been reading and enjoying a lot of books, ostensibly for and about children by Michael Morpurgo and David Allmond so it kind of followed on from that. The hand drawn child’s map on the inner cover of islands, seas, fortifications and voyages spurred me on even at the age of fifty nine. What did I find? Well a lot and an impression was made, but how and why?
Well without wishing to spoil things for any reader who might want to get to know Bevis themselves, the story recounts his friendship with Mark and their life and adventures in a rural Wiltshire community in the late eighteen hundreds. And it is quite an adventure spanning around ten days and involving the making of boats, dens, bows and arrows and even a rudimentary musket. There is much hunting and an encounter with a mysterious unwanted guest towards the end. There is however more to Jefferies’s depiction of Bevis than a rip roaring tale. Other, broader and deeper, dimensions colour the work.
In order to explore these one needs to ask certain questions of the work and its author.
The first of these is to discern the ‘grounds’ which informs Jefferies’ approach to this story of a boy. We need to look for the motifs which drive the work, those ‘auspices’ which make “what is said possible sensible and conceivable” (1) One major spin off of asking this and other questions is that one can begin to appreciate just what the story has meant for oneself, the reasons why it has resonated. Thus as part of this process of analysis one will need to be alive to the specific ways in which the grounds are crystallized and brought to life. The deeper dimension will have different manifestations so the detailed and diverse “usage” of the grounds will serve as a window onto that deeper level. Of course as John Donne famously said “No man is an island”(2) and whatever story is told it is not done so in isolation. The grounds that have informed it are themselves rooted in a broader social context “a form of life” (3). Bevis and his exploits can tell us much about the way of life which has in fact made his own exploits possible.
These dimensions of the story, the grounds or auspice, the usage, and form of life are, as one can see, interconnected; each shedding light on the other. Together their exploration makes clear just what the story is articulating and perhaps even more interestingly how that articulation connects to the life and experience of the reader, of oneself. Just why the story strikes a chord is an intriguing question that promises an answer.
The specific aspects of the adventure are all rooted in a rural and socially privileged way of life. Bevis and Mark have access to resources, such as tools, they are free to roam over Bevis’s fathers land, they are educated in a classical tradition and Bevis has been inspired by the adventure stories he has found there. It is a form of life characterized by a stratified rigid social hierarchy which allows Bevis free rein and which for the purposes of the story allows him to fabricate a plausible account of a ten day absence from home.
Now some of the usage, the incidents and activities of the book, were particularly evocative for me. Although it was maybe eighty years later, I too was brought up in a rural setting, with a strong, stable community spirit, and freedom to roam across fields, through woods and by ponds and rivers. I too had access to tools and had been taught how to use them. Thus many of the episodes found parallels in my own childhood and this made their reading all the more enjoyable.
Inner tube boats, dens made with willow herb stems, weapons whittled and carved, bows and arrows, dressing up as Apaches and mock battles with rival gangs all occurred back then in the 1950’s pretty much as they had done for Bevis and friends in the 1870’s. His eager curiosity, zest for life, and spirit of adventure all took me back to my own pastoral playground. There was though another dimension to Bevis’s freewheeling exploits, and that was a keen knowledge of the world of nature in which his adventures took place. Jefferies repeatedly takes the opportunity to remind the reader that amidst all his imaginings of being in a tropical rainforest amidst exotic creatures Bevis is in fact totally immersed and alive to the world around him. He sees and feels it. Jefferies puts it thus and offers an illustration.
“It was living not thinking. He lived it, never thinking, as the finches live their sunny life in the happy days of June ... Upon the shore they breathed light, and were silent till a white butterfly came fluttering over, and another white butterfly came under it in the water ...'Magic,' said Bevis." (4)
Such immersion and awareness brought with it knowledge so that things could be spotted with ease. Hence Mark recognized at once the ‘jack’ (common term for the pike) basking by a willow bush “the markings on his back were like the watermark on paper ... or the mark on silk and somewhat remind you of the mackerel.” So evocative was this precise observation that I took out my own childhood diary and noted the first ‘jack’ that I caught in the river Evenlode. I had seen it swaying with the flowing water crowfoot and trotted bait down to it; my first pike weighing in at eleven ounces and caught at the age of eleven.
Engagement with a text works in different ways of course and while in this instance benign evocative recollections were conjured up one can equally be made aware of ones own value orientations. Given the huge time lag some are little more than a general cultural clash. Hence Bevis’s patriarchal, feudal high handedness with others will jar for many. Others may find the fixation with hunting and shooting wearing while for me the culmination of this in eager trophy hunting of birds, their eggs and animals was distinctly discordant. There was magic in the natural world for Bevis but this did not necessarily imbue him with unconditional reverence. There was a lot of shrieking and shouting and lust for hunting in the story not all of it with survival in mind. In short he liked killing which can be jarring for some contemporary readers.
Overall, though, while the usage describes in detail the hunting exploits, Jefferies also dwells at length on the beauty of nature. This for me was the lingering impression; a man giving voice to his sense of awe through the adventures of a boy. That awe was manifested in some fine descriptive passages.
“just beyond the raft the swallows glided, dipping their breasts and sipping as they dipped; the touch and friction of the water perceptibly checked their flight. They wheeled round and several times approached the surface , till having at last the exact balance and the exact angle they skimmed the water, leaving no more mark than a midge ... the swallow, pure artist of flight , feels the air with his wing tips as with fingers , and lightly fanning, glides.” (5)
Later on he is no less observant and eloquent on the subject of rooks. “Afar above a flock of rooks soared, winding round and round a geometrical staircase in the air; with outstretched wings like leaves upborne and slowly rotating edge first. The ploughshare was at work under them...filling the breeze with the scent of the earth. Over the ploughshare they soared and danced in joyous measure.”
What do we have then in Bevis? In essence it is a story grounded in a janus-faced auspice. We see Bevis playing amidst a bountiful, beautiful natural arcadia and are deeply touched by it while on the other he willfully and mindlessly exploits it for his own gratification. No where does Jefferies pass judgment on this form of life. Only now are we seeing that a judgment is required! Is it a theme though which Jefferies returns to in his essays? Was he perhaps more attuned to the paradoxes than he allowed Bevis to give voice to? More of this later. First of all let’s address a deeper auspice within the essays.
At a personal level, for sure, the essays didn’t disappoint, essentially because though written over a hundred years ago they reported and recorded things that can still be seen. Again, for me this has an added resonance and significance for the things Jefferies saw and recorded were seen by me and can still be seen even though for me the Cotswold river valley has long been exchanged for the swifter waters of an upper Pennine river. Common threads link them both and span my years. That fact offers a modicum of optimism and hope in an age summed up by Neil Young’s prophetic and pointed lyric of “Mother Nature on the run”.(6)As we shall see, when we come to review his later prophetic work, this is an important albeit latent part of Jefferies’ auspice . Firstly though the essays.
‘The Pageant of Summer’ was a joy to read, no surprise I suspect for students of Jefferies who will have long appreciated this masterful and evocative piece of prose. It has to be read in its entirety of course in order for its author’s concluding sentiments to be empathized with. “I cannot leave it ... these are the hours not wasted ... this is real life and all else is illusion or mere endurance.” As I write I can see the fast maturing blackbirds, hatched from our own mini garden reserve, hopping over the lawn. It is a moment of connection with Jefferies for in that same essay he writes “the blackbirds when listened to are the masters of the fields ... like a great human artist the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious that his liquid tone cannot be matched” And the more I read of the essays the stronger that sense of affinity and connection became. Here, beneath the Cheviots we have naturalized a lawn with cowslips. Jefferies knew why. “There is nothing so pleasant to stroll among as cowslips. This mead was full of them so much so that a little way in front the surface seemed yellow”. So it is here all those years later and there too on the hills when I am out and about that I know that Jeffries saw what I see too, “the brightest bird, the stonechat perched on a thistle, his blackest of black heads, the white streak of his neck and the brilliance of his colouring contrasted with the yellow gorse around”. Jefferies observes all with the sharpest and most knowledgeable of eyes. On the river pebbles he sees a dipper or water colley as it is known in the south and instantly likens its colouring to that of a young starling. Why does that have significance for me? Well he is articulating something that rings particularly true in my here and now for our own starling brood has fledged and flown and those nut coloured birds are all round the garden, something to be proud of as they are a declining species in our modern hurly burly world. Therein lays Jefferies’ deep auspice. He exhorts us all to “open our eyes and see things which are around us at this hour.”(7) In particular he longs for us to see the detail; “the water colley and its soft brown young starling like plumage, its straight line flight, its constant bobbing up and down,”(8) the golden crest of the tiny wren , the white breasts of lapwings on the dark ploughed ridges, and always dew flashing emerald and ruby.”( 9)
These gems of observation often embellish broader discourses which range from the translation of vernacular phrases such as ‘cack handed’ (one of my fathers own favourites), his perceived brutality of hunting and a long lament on the assault on the countryside by commercial fish and game enterprises. Even back then and notwithstanding his own ambiguities as evidenced in the enthusiasms of Bevis, Jefferies finds much to get exercised about. In ‘Bye the Exe’ he describes game keeping practices whereby stoats, jays and buzzards are lured to their death. Then a few pages on we learn of the depravities of the otter hunt though depravity might be too strong a word for Jefferies opinion. He makes a half hearted apology for it all until finally nailing his colours to the mast. “The truth is the otter is a most interesting animal and worth preservation, even at the cost of what he eats. There is a great difference between keeping the number of otters down by otter hunting within reasonable limits and utterly exterminating them”. Then in ‘Nature and the Gamekeeper’ he notes that as a result of persecution “eagles are gone ... the peregrine extinct ... barn owl disappeared from some districts ... (So that overall)... twenty creatures, furred and feathered have undergone severe persecution since the extension of pheasant covers”. He attempts a little even-handedness by citing other causes of disappearance yet returns to the theme in ‘Sacrifice to the trout’ where he lists sixteen creatures “killed in order that one trout may flourish ... herons, kingfishers, moorhens, coots, grebes, ducks, teal, various divers are all proscribed on behalf of trout”.
Yet for all this hard empirical observation he is not downcast. Such is his faith in the fecundity and power of nature that he feels sure that if commercial shoots and fisheries were reined in or preferably abandoned “in ten years most of the creatures would be plentiful again” and a balance restored to the form of life in which he is embedded.
At heart then Jefferies is an optimist. This outlook is grounded in his faith in the power and fertility of the natural world and its capacity to enchant and enlist us in its service and protection. It is for this reason that he exhorts us “open our eyes and see... The petal of the buttercup (with its) enamel of gold ... a blue kingfisher by the brook” so that then we might come to value and protect them.
Well how have things turned out? Was Jeffries optimism well placed? Have we opened our eyes in these intervening years? Locally I can report peregrines, barn owls, kingfishers and dippers to name a few from Jefferies’ endangered list. Glimmers of hope, then, yet barely 100 miles north and south raptors are under severe pressure from the game fraternity and globally species loss is the definitive story. Such double edged usage within the essays echoes down the years indicating that a form of life that was real for Jefferies enfolds us still today.
One final usage shapes Jefferies’ later futuristic novel After London or Wild England. Here he conjures up a post apocalyptic scenario, an England set in the aftermath of an encounter with “a dark body in space”. That encounter has left the country deluged, the Thames estuary dammed forming a massive inland sea. London is underwater and feeds a vast fetid swamp. What people remain have regrouped in small communities around the pure inland waters. It is in this setting that Jefferies places his hero, Felix, who Bevis-like, sets out on a voyage and a quest. Again the result is a good story and a page turning read so I’ll say no more.
What is significant for our purposes is Jefferies’ portrayal of nature in the story. His trademark powers of observation are in full display as Felix journeys through the wilderness. And this is the heart of the matter for Jefferies, his fundamental auspice: civilizations may perish but the natural world will survive. Moreover, once detached from the clutches of human kind, it will indeed flourish. It has the inner capacity and power for rebirth.
Furthermore Jefferies offers grounds for further optimism in his description of the works and ambitions of Felix. Without revealing the plot, Felix exhibits what today we would call ecological sensitivities. This appears as a marked contrast to the depiction of the unfettered exploitation of the natural we saw at work in the essays. That scenario is given graphic and symbolic presence in the story by the lurking lure of the submerged London “an oozy mass from which exhales a vapour no animal can endure.” Yet even here in this post apocalyptic time lessons have not been learned, “eyes have not opened” and “many men ...carried by their desire for gain ... from the treasures therein..perish (all for the getting) of a few jewels.”(10)
The auspice of After London is two dimensional. On the one hand we have Felix immersing himself in the wilderness and seeing opportunities for harmonious living while on the other we have the spectre of a corrupted natural world, a stygian gloom with its lure of easy pickings drawing the blind onward to perdition. What the submerged London signifies for Jefferies is a form of life going wrong, a form of life where nature is no more than a means to an end, an inexhaustible servant to the needs of human kind. Thus After London is a long lost touchstone for modern ecologism.
In the “Essays” Jefferies consciously chooses London to emphasize further this message. “We labour on and think and carve our idols and the pen never ceases from its labour; but the lapse of centuries has left us in the same place ... If any imagine they shall find thought in many books, certainly they will be disappointed. Thought dwells by the stream and sea by the hill and the woodlands, in the sunlight and free wind where the wild dove haunts ... In the sunshine by the shady verge of woods by the sweet waters where the wild dove sips, there alone will thought be found”.(11)
That thought at its very heart is a reverence for and a feeling of awe in the presence of nature. Jefferies lets Bevis and Mark do his philosophizing for him:
“Magic” said Bevis, “Enchantment” said Mark. For Jefferies “there was magic in everything, blades of grass and stars, the sun and the stones on the ground”. Unsurprisingly then he concludes ruefully “the greatest wonder on earth is that there are any not able to see the earth’s surpassing beauty”. (12)
Contemporary observers see little to be optimistic about: natural rebirth in tandem with a Felix-type crypto ecologism seems a long way off. Indeed the gloom has darkened with novels such as Cormack McArthey’s The Road. And yet it is Jefferies’ intrinsic message that many cling to as the main route off the road to nowhere. That message has been reiterated by David Abram in a recent volume of essays
“We are human only in contact and conviviality with what is not human. Only in reciprocity with what is other do we begin to heal ourselves.” (13)
Jefferies put it thus “under the oak that warm summer night Bevis looked up as he reclined at white pure light of Lyra and forgot everything but the consciousness of living, feeling up to and beyond it. The earth and the water, the oak went away; he himself went away, his mind joined itself and was linked up through ethereal space to its beauty.” (14)
Within the three pieces of work then I discovered a number of things. On a personal level there was the gratifying feeling that he was speaking at times directly to me. Bevis’s adventures had been mine, Jefferies observations had been mine too and through my allotment and wildlife gardening I identified with his futuristic figure Felix. The different usages within the three works, a childrens’ story, essays and a novel all draw on a three dimensional auspice. Jefferies identifies a principal feature of the form of life in which he is embedded and it is one which he is critical off. Commercial game and fishing interests and their related hunting pursuits are all criticized for their assault and ravaging of nature. That Bevis seems drawn to such activities points up their appeal and the greater vision that is required to combat the loss that Jefferies documents. Explicating that vision by way of describing the natural beauty that can be seen and felt is the second aspect of Jefferies’s auspice. It is the counterweight to the loss he feels, the antidote to it. For with the spread of that consciousness Jefferies roots his hope that things could be different, that there could be harmony between humankind and nature. It is a relationship that is rich with promise for Jefferies’s final auspice reminds us throughout of the intrinsic powers of recovery and rebirth that is inherent in the natural world. Nature is more than capable of meeting humankind more than half way if only the latter has “the eyes to see.”
I started off by relating how Jefferies had called out to me. I’ve ended up with an awareness of something infinitely more important. Jefferies surely calls out to us all with a message of qualified hope. Turn to him then for some solace in these troubled times.
Christopher Archer
2009
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Raffel S et al 1974 On the Beginnings of Social Inquiry
Routledge & Kegan Paul London
2. Donne J ‘Vocations’
3. Raffel S 1974 op cit
4. Jefferies R Bevis : The story of a boy
Illustrated by E H Shepard, New Illustrated edition 1932, Jonathan Cape. p324
5.Jefferies R ibid p465
6.Young N lyric from the album ‘ After the Goldrush’
7. Jefferies R 1908 The Life of the Fields, London: Chatto & Windus, p214
8.Jefferies R 1908 ibid p 111
9.Jefferies R 1908 ibid p 90
10. Jefferies R After London or Wild England, Echo Library 2005
11. Jefferies R 1908 op cit p217
12. Jefferies R 1908 ibid p 323, 356, 465-8
13. Abram D The Ecology of Magic, from Ecopsychology 1995 Ed Roszak T et al
Sierra Club books San Francisco
14. Jefferies R Bevis op cit p 312
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