48 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



' looking for summat,' or as if he ' weren't doing any 

 work.' He was, says another, admiring his capacity for 

 doing apparently nothing, ' cut out for a gentleman if 

 only there had been money.' He was in a ferment of un- 

 divined and growing powers which isolated him, of ambi- 

 tions, of needs, which presents of books from his aunt 

 could not satisfy. His father was not a man of books, 

 though far from illiterate. For a time the boy would get 

 into the habit of overlooking the wisdom of the unlearned. 

 Probably he had begun to write as early as 1864, and a 

 letter of that year shows the beginning of self-conscious- 

 ness about style.* 



But however bitter the days of poverty, loneliness, 

 misunderstanding, and constraint, the time when he was 

 sixteen and seventeen had probably as great sweetness 

 as bitterness, since the two go together in their extremes 

 at least as much at that as at any other age. They say 

 that, though he often carried his gun, he was less and less 

 fond of shooting after he was fifteen or so. Yet he would 

 still bring home a snipe on a frosty day, or a jay's wing 

 in the spring from Burderop. He hung about on stiles by 

 Maxell and Great Maxell fields, on the footpath to Bad- 

 bury Lane, or by the brooks, or on the Reservoir, or on 

 the Downs, and dreamed and thought. With his finger 

 on the trigger, he ' hesitated, dropped the barrel, and 

 watched the beautiful bird,' and ' that watching so often 

 stayed the shot that at last it grew to be a habit. . . . 

 Time after time I have flushed partridges without firing, 

 and have let the hare bound over the furrow free.'f And 

 yet I should not be surprised if he shared little John's 

 delight in ' wristing ' the rabbit's neck, ' as the neck gave 

 with a sudden looseness, and in a moment what had been 

 a living, straining creature became limp. 'J He tells us 

 that he shot many kingfishers and herons ; he shot the 

 redwing as it sang, to make quite sure of it. I dare say 

 the eagle which he once saw going over was lucky in being 

 at a great height. 



* To Mrs. Harrild, October 27, 1864. j Amateur Poacher. 



\ Ibid. 



