THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

 RICHARD JEFFERIES 



CHAPTER I 



THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



Richard Jefferies was born at Coate Farm, in the North 

 Wiltshire hamlet of Coate and the parish of Chisledon, on 

 November 6, 1848. There he dwelt for the greater part 

 of the first thirty years of his life ; there and thereabouts, 

 and in the neighbouring county of Gloucestershire, dwelt 

 his ancestors for several, perhaps many, generations. This 

 country and its people was the subject of half his work, 

 and the background, the source, or the inspiration, of all 

 but all the rest. He, in his turn, was the genius, the 

 human expression, of this country, emerging from it, not to 

 be detached from it any more than the curves of some 

 statues from their maternal stone. He walked about the 

 hills and fields of it day and night, in pursuit of sport, of 

 health, of society, of solitude, of joy, of the dearest objects 

 of his soul ; and though he left it never to return, yet 

 three times before he died he lived in, or in sight of, country 

 not unlike it — at Brighton, at Crowborough, and at 

 Goring. 



It is a beautiful, a quiet, an unrenowned, and a most 

 visibly ancient land. The core and essence of it are the 

 Downs, which lie south and east and west of Coate. 

 Northward is Swindon, where Jefferies lived two years, 



I 



