'THE DEWY MORN' 225 



walking in the superb sunlight gave an unusual sparkle 

 and gaiety to the writing. In ' Bevis,' in ' The Field 

 Play/ and in the early ' Midsummer Hum ' he sketched or 

 suggested several labourers' daughters of great freshness, 

 courage, and health. His ' Golden Brown ' is a pure piece 

 of worship of the peculiar beauty of young labouring 

 women, perhaps of gipsy blood (he was interested in gipsies 

 whom he often saw at Crowborough, and he read Smart 

 and Crofton's * Dialect of the English Gipsies ') : — 



' Two young women, both in the freshness of youth 

 and health. Their faces glowed with a golden-brown, and 

 so great is the effect of colour that their plain features 

 were transfigured. The sunlight under their faces made 

 them beautiful. The summer light had been absorbed 

 by the skin, and now shone forth from it again ; as certain 

 substances exposed to the day absorb light and emit a 

 phosphorescent gleam in the darkness of night, so the 

 sunlight had been drunk up by the surface of the skin, 

 and emanated from it. 



' Hour after hour in the gardens and orchards they 

 worked in the full beams of the sun, gathering fruit for 

 the London market, resting at midday in the shade of the 

 elms in the corner. Even then they were in the sunshine 

 — even in the shade, for the air carries it, or its influence, 

 as it carries the perfumes of flowers. The heated air 

 undulates over the field in waves which are visible at a 

 distance ; near at hand they are not seen, but roll in 

 endless ripples through the shadows of the trees, bringing 

 with them the actinic power of the sun. Not actinic — 

 alchemic — some intangible, mysterious power which can- 

 not be supplied in any other form but the sun's rays. 

 It reddens the cherry, it gilds the apple, it colours the 

 rose, it ripens the wheat, it touches a woman's face with 

 the golden-brown of ripe life — ripe as a plum. There 

 is no other hue so beautiful as this human sunshine tint. 



' The great painters knew it — Rubens, for instance ; 

 perhaps he saw it on the faces of the women who gathered 

 fruit or laboured at the harvest in the Low Countries 



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