102 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



owner of an estate near his home in Wiltshire. He had 

 walked home from Dover, a hundred and fifty miles, often 

 sleeping under ricks. 



In May, as Aymer is lying amid brake on the Downs, 

 reading ' the tiny edition of Shakespeare's '■' Songs and 

 Sonnets," published by William Brown thirty years 

 since, and now out of print,' Violet Waldron rides up on 

 a black horse. She lives with her father, who is fond of 

 his trees (' those who plant trees live long,' he quotes), 

 his yew hedge and filbert walk — as Felise Goring lived 

 with her uncle in ' The Dewy Morn.' Aymer snares 

 twenty hares and sells a gold pencil-case, and then, 

 walking to Reading, buys jet bracelets for Violet's wrist. 

 Jefferies praises Violet not for her features, hair and e3^es, 

 so much as for ' the life, the vitality, the wonderful 

 freshness which seemed to throw a sudden light over her, 

 as when the sunshine falls upon a bed of flowers.' She 

 plays Mendelssohn to him ; he gives her lessons in draw- 

 ing, which she repays in music and French. Old Waldron 

 gives him a horse, and suggests that he should marry 

 Violet and live in his house. At the altar ' her dress was 

 good — it was nothing to the belles who flourish in Bel- 

 gravia ; but at World's End — goodness, it was Paris 

 itself.' But the marriage is interrupted by the murder 

 of Waldron ; the ring rolls away. ' Of all that the 

 ancients venerated and feared,' remarks Jefferies, ' neces- 

 sit}^ alone remains a factor in modern life.' Violet is 

 penniless now. Aymer tries in vain to write while his 

 hands and body are numbed by cold, as Amaryllis tried 

 to draw, and as Jefferies must have tried to write by 

 the northward lattice in the cheese-room at Coate Farm. 

 He becomes a clerk in a lawyer's office, and in the courts 

 he sees jobbery and corruption, ' class prejudice operating 

 in the minds of those on the jugdment-seat.' Aymer 

 writes a book, is advised to bring it out at his own 

 expense, and it goes into three editions without his 

 knowing it — which is a point where Aymer's career is 

 unlike Jefferies'. Then among some old newspapers he 



