drudgery, lifelessness and, at a more personal level, 

 illness and social isolation. In * Golden Brown' he 

 writes with unashamed envy (and a new kind of 

 blinkeredness) about the health and habits of the 

 Kent fruit-pickers and *the Hfe above this Ufe to be 

 obtained from the constant presence with the sun- 

 light and the stars.' It is a theme taken up again in 

 *Sunny Brighton': *You do not care for nature now? 

 Well! all I can say is, that you will have to go to 

 nature one day - when you die. You will find nature 

 very real then.' 



Nature, to the mature Jefferies, was above all 

 redemptive. To immerse yourself fully in it was a 

 kind of baptism that could wash away the distortions 

 of civilization. Humans themselves could even be 

 an expression of nature, when not politically or 

 economically corrupted; the *base labourers', about 

 whom he had once written with barely disguised con- 

 tempt, appear in * Beauty in the Country' as un- 

 blemished as figures from a Greek pastoral. 



Had Jefferies lived longer, he would almost 

 certainly have resolved the inconsistencies in his 

 views of landscape and labour. As it is, he veers - 

 still looking for a way of escape - between abstract 

 aesthetics and social criticism. But there are hints of 

 how he might have developed in those pieces where 

 his detached, painterly skills and philosophical 

 musings are marshalled in service of an argument, 

 where he is prepared to stand up for a worldly 

 delight. An open-hearted nostalgia for *the old road, 

 the same flowers' Ufts the final paragraph of *Wild 

 Flowers' above mere description. And we find a 

 more human (and more contemporary) Jefferies in 



