CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 45 



on the top of a hill and was ' lost in his dreamy mood,' 

 and ' he did not think, he felt.' 



He had become a great reader, too. I have seen his 

 copy of ' Percy's Rehques,' with ' J. R. Jefferies, 1863,' 

 on the fly-leaf. The ballad of King Estmere is often on 

 Bevis's lips. At Coate Farm there were many old books, 

 and many more at the grandfather's house in Swindon, 

 bound in eighteenth-century leather and early nineteenth- 

 century boards. The children had the run of these, and 

 that is perhaps why so few of them survive. There was 

 certainly a Culpeper, loved — before Linnaeus and Gerarde 

 — for his poisons and fantastic properties — Orchis Mas- 

 cula, for example, credited with the power to call up the 

 passion of love.'* There would be books like that ' small 

 quarto, A.D. 1650, a kind of calendar of astrology, medi- 

 cine, and agriculture, telling the farmer when the conjunc- 

 tion of the planets was favourable for purchasing stock or 

 sowing seed.'t Favourites also were the ' Odyssey,' in, I 

 believe, James Morrice's translation, as well as Pope's ; ' Don 

 Quixote,' Shakespeare's poems, Filmore's ' Faust.' These 

 are mentioned again and again, especially the ' Odyssey ' 

 and ' Faust.' There was an ancient encyclopaedia, with a 

 page ' of chemical signs and those used by the alchemists, 

 some of which he had copied off for magic '; and one giving 

 all the alphabets — ' Coptic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Syriac, and 

 so on '; and ' the Arabic took his fancy as the most mys- 

 terious — the sweeping curves, the quivering lines, the blots 

 where the reed pen thickened, there was no knowing 

 what such writing might not mean. 'J The encyclopaedia 

 often lay open at ' Magic,' and his mind — Bevis's mind — • 

 worked from some of the untruths and half-truths to the 

 truth :— § 



"* . . . I wish we could get a magic writing. Then we 

 could do anything, and we could know all the secrets." 



' " What secrets ?" 



* " Why, all these things have secrets." 



* Toilers of the Field. \ Ibid. % Greene Feme Farm. 

 § Bevis. 



