i6 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



One of the noblest views of the Downs and the northern 

 country towards the Cotswolds and Malvern Hills is to 

 be had from the roof of the Elizabethan manor-house at 

 Upper Upham ; the legend is that Wales, too, can be seen. 

 This handsome, remote house, high on the hills, reputed 

 to be on the site of a hunting-lodge of John of Gaunt, 

 was described at length by Jefferies as a young man and 

 archaeologist. He knew the tenant. It is empty now ; 

 several of its windows are blocked up and fruit-trees grow 

 over them ; within, the antique fireplaces and dais are 

 degraded by stale wall-paper ; yet the lawn is mown and 

 kept level before the lofty porch. Jefferies knew the 

 neighbouring fields well, and Snap and Woodsend and the 

 British settlements, and Lower Upham, the farm to be 

 passed between Chisledon and Upper Upham ; he re- 

 marked, in one of his early papers, on the ' strange avenue 

 of sycamores ' at Lower Upham, where also is a line of the 

 same trees trooping beautifully without purpose across 

 a field, planted there, I suppose, for their state, by some 

 curious lover of trees. Upper Upham is even more 

 pleasantly to be reached by forsaking all roads (save where 

 many sheep-tracks go side by side, and the eyebright 

 flowers in the narrow strips between) and crossing the 

 Downs from Liddington ' Castle,' then through Shipley 

 Bottom, where stands a barn and stacks under ash and 

 sycamore and elder, in the midst of corn, and walled on 

 every side by Down and sky. There the painted lady 

 butterfly comes to the scabious flower and the bee to the 

 sweet basil in perfect solitude. 



It must have been on these hills that Jefferies and 

 Dickon ranged with their greyhounds for hares. Some- 

 times their silence retreats for a little while before the 

 crying of foxhounds. ' Yander they goo, up to Barbriam 

 Caastle !' says the ploughman, checking his homeward 

 jingling team. But the March afternoon is at an end, and 

 it is too late to follow farther over the hill. The wind 

 has fallen, and the blackbird sings at ease ; the far-away 

 missel-thrush is almost as mild and sweet. A hare has 



