74 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



the Reservoir ; his brother Henry is the best skater 

 of all. 



In July he is busy, and earning money from the North 

 Wilts and the Swindon Advertiser, but chiefly thinking 

 of his book — the book of which Disraeli thought the 

 subject ' of the highest interest.' But home is still un- 

 happy : his mother is ' very unwell . . . nervous and 

 liable to make herself miserable over the merest trifle . . . 

 we live so unsociably in this house.' And he is off to 

 Sydenham again ; his mother, on the other hand, is too 

 poor and too busy with the haymaking to go. At the 

 end of the month he is excited and delighted because 

 Disraeli has recommended him to send his manuscript to 

 a publisher. This * favourable opinion of the man who 

 stands highest in an age for intellectual power ' over- 

 comes the sneers and taunts of his friends — ' my own 

 father amongst them ' — for idleness and incapacity ; he 

 begs his aunt to write and rejoice with him. In August 

 Messrs. Longman, Green and Company are giving ' full 

 consideration ' to a novel, and he thinks that hopeful. 

 He is writing a magazine article ; has written a play ; 

 has sent the manuscript of a history of Swindon to a local 

 paper ; and is going to Gloucester to report a trial. ' Now 

 the haymaking is over,' he adds, ' we are going to walk to 

 Marlborough Forest.' 



Messrs. Longman declined the book. It appeared to 

 them that he had ' gone too much into detail on frequent 

 occasions.' But this ' will not, with a considerable portion 

 of the public, in any degree take away from the interest of 

 a work so thoroughly practical, and which displays so 

 much knowledge of human nature, perhaps not in its 

 highest, but in its general aspect.' It is to be wished that 

 some trace remained of a work which forced this publish- 

 ing firm to confess itself ' a firm of primitive, if not even 

 immaculate, elderly gentlemen.' It went in vain to 

 Messrs. Sampson, Low ; Messrs. Smith, Elder accepted it, 

 but it was never published. The title of it was ' Fortune.' 



In August he was ' completely prostrated for a day or 



