272 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



firs, or caught in the wide-stretching arms of the oak ; she 

 rested among these things, they were to her mind as sleep 

 to the body. The few good pictures she had seen pleased 

 her, but did not rouse the emotion the sunhght caused ; 

 artificial music was enjoyable, but not like the running 

 stream. It said nothing — the stream was full of thought. 



' No eager desire to paint like that or play like that was 

 awakened by pictures or music ; Amaryllis was a passive 

 and not an active artist by nature. And I think that is 

 the better part ; at least, I know it is a thousand times 

 more pleasure to me to see a beautiful thing than to write 

 about it. Could I choose I would go on seeing beautiful 

 things, and not writing.'* 



Or she kneels and prays that her father and mother 

 shall be richer and happier, while downstairs the creditors 

 cry aloud : ' Pay me that thou owest !' — ' the very sum 

 and total,' says Jefferies, ' of rehgion.' Or, at the end, 

 she sits with Amadis in the garden. 



Jefferies was doubtless thinking of his own early troubles 

 when he wrote : ' How unnatural it seems that a girl like 

 this, that young and fresh and full of generous feeling as she 

 was, her whole mind should perforce be taken up with the 

 question of money ; an unnatural and evil state of things. ' 

 And Amarylhs is, in fact, a pretty and happy-natured 

 country girl with the character of the youthful Jefferies, 

 in its quick temper, independence, sensitiveness, and 

 worship of beauty. She has beautiful hair, but is not yet 

 more than the promise of a beautiful woman. She is 

 tall, and has strong ankles. Of her appearance he tells 

 us little more, for she is in the passage between childhood 

 and womanhood, strong, eager, and full of life, but some- 

 thing dim, as one of her age often is within the cloud of 

 possibilities. For the rest she is a Flamma {i.e., a Gyde), 

 a revolutionary Flamma, and not an Iden (a Jefferies). 

 As with Felise, so with Amaryllis, Jefferies is in perfect 

 sympathy ; he enters into her life, he sorrows and enjoys 

 with her, and not only with her, but with the other 



* Amaryllis at the Fair. 



