IN LONDON AND THE SUBURBS 113 



birch, and ash — now vanished — where he used to watch 

 dove and pigeon, cuckoo, nightingale, sedge-warbler, 

 and missel-thrush. Once a pair of house-martins built 

 under his eaves, and the starlings were welcome, though 

 they dammed the gutter. Among many flowers here 

 was the fairest of those belonging to the Wiltshire down- 

 land — the ' blue meadow geranium,' or crane's-bill. He 

 was the first to point out that the flowers have sought 

 sanctuary on the sides of railway' cuttings and embank- 

 ments. 



The cart-horses of the neighbouring farms wore ' the 

 ancient harness, with bells under high hoods, or belfries — 

 bells well attuned, too, and not far inferior to those rung 

 by hand-bell men.' The farmhouses, the stone staddles 

 for the corn-ricks, were old ; so, too, the broad and red- 

 faced labourers, with fringe of reddish whiskers. ' Could 

 we look back three hundred years, just such a man would 

 be seen in the midst of the same surroundings, deliber- 

 ately trudging round the straw-ricks of Elizabethan da3's, 

 calm and complacent, though the Armada be at hand.' 

 The Irish, some of them without a word of English, came 

 harvesting in their long-tailed coats, breeches, and 

 worsted stockings, ' with a quick, easy gait and springy 

 step, quite distinct from the Saxon stump.' There was 

 a village shop among cherry and pear orchards — ' the 

 sweets, and twine, and trifles are such as may be seen in 

 similar meadows a hundred miles distant.' 



It was no wonder, then, that Jefferies kept his love 

 of walking, though Northern Surrey has not the same 

 temptations to long walks as the Downs. He walked 

 regularly for an hour and a half in the morning, and for 

 the same time in the afternoon, and would rise from his 

 work at odd times to stroll round Tolworth. He liked 

 to repeat his walks again and again, as he did in Wiltshire. 

 ' From my home near London I made a pilgrimage almost 

 daily,' he writes, ' to an aspen by a brook '; and this would 

 probably be the Hogsmill near Tolworth Court Farm. 

 By those walks he not only escaped from the ' constant 



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