36 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



old Swindon Church. And among men there were John 

 Brown, the milker ; Thomas Smith, who worked at Day 

 House and cobbled at home ; and the millwright and 

 blacksmith by ' The Sun ' ; old Day, the bailiff at the 

 Reservoir ; old Mrs. Rawlings, the widow of a Burderop 

 keeper ; and later, the gamekeeper himself, named Hay- 

 lock. And he had but to follow the brook a little way out 

 of his father's land to come to the bridge at Wanborough 

 Nythe, an old Roman station, where he must early have 

 felt the contrasts and the harmonies of sunlight on running 

 water with the vestiges of long- vanished men. 



' Bevis,' ' Wood Magic,' * The Gamekeeper at Home,' 

 and ' The Amateur Poacher,' reveal pretty certainly what 

 use Jefferies made of these surroundings as a child. Of 

 the childish sayings in the forty-ninth chapter of ' Bevis ' 

 it is rash to attribute any to Jefferies himself, since when 

 he wrote the book he had a boy of his own. Some, I like 

 to think, are certainly his, such as :* 



' " Ah !" said he thoughtfully. " He [the Deity] got a 

 high ladder and climbed up over the hedges to make the 

 thunder. ..." 



' At Brighton he was taken over the Pavilion. . . . By- 

 and-by, in the top stories, rather musty from old carpets 

 and hangings : " Hum !" said he ; " seems stuffy. I can 

 smell that gentleman's dinner " [i.e., George IV. 's). 



' Visiting a trim suburban villa. ... " Don't think 

 much of your garden," said Bevis ; "no buttercups. ..." 



* The crucifixion hurt his feelings very much. ... "If 

 God had been there. He would not have let them do it." ' 



' Wood Magic ' gives us some unquestionably true things 

 about those early years — the wanderings in the Home 

 Field after butterflies, the talks with thrush and weasel 

 and hare, the spaniel his companion ; the love of the sky 

 as he lay in the grass and looked up, * as he always did 

 when he wanted someone to speak to,' and said, ' Sky, I 

 love you like I love my mother.' How early I do not know, 

 but it is likely that very early he feU, on occasion, into a 



* Bevis. 'I 



