62 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



could learn from one who was with him on the North 

 Wilts Herald was that the staff once signed a roundrobin 

 against his handwriting. At Coate, he says, ' a blind 

 man married his cousin — I suppose you will say that 

 none but a blind man would do that, by way of hint. 

 He has set up in the tea, snuff, tobacco, and fish line, as 

 a rival to old Job Brown, who has enjoyed a monopoly at 

 Coate for the last forty years.' 



In April, 1868, Richard's grandfather, John Jefferies, 

 died ; instead of leaving Coate Farm purely and simply 

 to James Jefferies, Richard's father, he added a cumber- 

 some provision, and it was not long before the son 

 began to borrow on it. The bakery passed into other 

 hands. Thus the home life was no easier ; Richard was 

 discontented and not well. He would, he writes in June, 

 1868, like a Civil Service clerkship. Reporting is too 

 exciting and uncertain, for he is not strong, and has been 

 fainting in church. Later in the same month (it is a 

 Sunday, and he remarks, ' I can always write more easily 

 on a Sunday — I don't know why, except that other 

 people generally try to write on any other day than that, 

 and that I must be different from them, must be a poppy 

 in the cornfield ') he says that he would think himself 

 lucky to get an engagement on the Daily News. But he 

 has ' been very queer for some time — so much inclined to 

 faint ; but there is no need for a doctor : Time's the great 

 physician and Nature the best nurse,' and last spring 

 he took nothing for a cold and cough ; he will have nothing 

 to do with physic. He knows that his mother has been 

 discussing him with Mrs. Harrild, and wishes she would 

 let him alone. ' I don't believe she knows half the time 

 what she's about ; she walks into a room, stares round, 

 and then asks herself what she came there for.' She has 

 been seeing Mr. Piper, editor of the North Wilts, and 

 ' making a mess of it.' But he thinks she is learning that 

 ' it is best to leave her self-willed son alone.' 



In July he is expecting a box of books and an electric 

 machine from Mrs. Harrild, which would help him in his 



