CHAPTER XIX 



RECAPITULATION 



Richard Jefferies was, then, always a child of the 

 soil, as well as of the earth in a larger sense. From 

 father and mother he had the blood of Wiltshire and 

 Gloucestershire farmers. He was the second child (the 

 eldest child, a daughter, died young) of a younger son 

 of a younger son. But it was country blood with a 

 difference : both Gyde and Jefferies had been dipped 

 in London, and had followed there the trade of printing ; 

 and though old John Jefferies, the grandfather, retired 

 early, and not quite contentedly, to the mill and the 

 bakery and the farm, and Charles Gyde ' of Islington ' 

 was buried in Pitchcombe churchyard, they had been 

 troubled by this change from the fields to Fleet Street 

 and back again. Richard's mother, in spite of her good 

 butter, was not a countrywoman, and she was soured by 

 the hfe of one. His father left Wiltshire as a young man, 

 and travelled roughly, seeing the cities of the United 

 States. Of their sons, the two younger worked on the 

 farm till it was given up ; then the second of them went 

 to America and stayed there. The youngest lives in a 

 town. Richard Jefferies, the eldest son, would hardly 

 ever work on the land. Some of his schooldays and 

 most of his early holidays he spent near London, at Syden- 

 ham, and when he was very young began to be interested 

 in his uncle's printing-works. Most of his relations had 

 seen more of books than the majority of country people 

 Two of his uncles were men of unusual accomplishment 

 — John Luckett Jefferies, a draughtsman and musician ; 



317 



