CHAPTER IX 



FIRST COUNTRY BOOKS — ' THE GAMEKEEPER AT 

 HOME'— 'WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY'— 

 'THE AMATEUR POACHER ' — ' ROUND ABOUT A 

 GREAT ESTATE' 



The two or three country essays of 1875 and 1876 would 

 have been forgotten as certainly as ' The Scarlet Shawl ' 

 had they not been followed soon after his removal to 

 Surbiton by many more in the Pall Mall Gazette, some of 

 which were reprinted as ' The Gamekeeper at Home ' in 

 1878. The rest, poorer as a rule than the reprinted 

 papers, are easily to be found, though all unsigned. As 

 early as December, 1876, in a letter to Mr. Oswald Craw- 

 furd, editor of the New Quarterly, Jefferies had begun 

 to think about this book and its successors. His first 

 thought was to make the Reservoir at Coate definitely 

 the centre of the book. ' li,' he writes, ' the birds which 

 I and others have shot there had been preserved — as I 

 now wish they had been — they would form a little 

 museum. My brother shot a brace of grebes [crested 

 grebes] there last week.' In this letter he expands more 

 than he usually does. ' I used/ he continues, ' to take 

 a gun for nominal occupation, and sit in the hedge for 

 hours, noting the ways and habits even of moles and 

 snails. I had my especial wasps' nest, and never was 

 stung. The secret with all living creatures is — quiet. . . . 

 The great Downs . . . are literally teeming with matter 

 for thought. I own that the result has been a profound 

 optimism — if one looks at Nature metaphysiccJJy. Since 



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