CHAPTER VI 



FIRST NOVELS 



Parallel with journalistic activity, Jefferies' life went 

 on in ways which his admirable articles in Fraser's 

 and the New Quarterly never once suggest. He had not 

 yet emerged from the womb of the Wiltshire earth ; it 

 was with difficulty that he was being born ; he lay yet 

 involved in the soil, only half of the man or earth-spirit 

 that he was to become. His subjects lay outside of him, 

 quite apart ; or they had entered into his heart, but not 

 his mind. As he walked in the dewy fields, with the early 

 morning sun behind him, or under the moon, he saw the 

 shining halo on the grass which Benvenuto Cellini records 

 having seen. He was taking those daily pilgrimages in 

 which there came to him ' a deep, strong, and sensuous 

 enjoyment of the beautiful green earth, the beautiful sky 

 and sun . . . inexpressible delight, as if they embraced 

 and poured out their love for me. . . . After the sen- 

 suous enjoyment always came the thought, the desire : 

 that I might be like this ; that I might have the inner 

 meaning of the sun, the light, the earth, the trees and 

 grass, translated into some growth of excellence in myself, 

 both of body and of mind ; greater perfection of physique, 

 greater perfection of mind and soul ; that I might be higher 

 in myself.' Summer and winter he went to the same 

 oak to escape the loneliness of ordinary life. There were 

 several of these ' thinking places ': on the Hungerford 

 road near Liddington, or on the Marlborough road near 

 Badbury, where the iiills were well in view ; in one of the 



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