Only to suffer a swift, brutal trot. Jouncing against 

 the servant's hip for forty miles. 



Arrived at a clot of houses on the shoulder ot 

 the downs, almost within scent of the sea. There 

 to spend forty years. As Timothy! As Tortoise! 

 Name bestowed by Mr. Henry Snooke. Exclama- 

 tion by Mrs. Rebecca Snooke, his wife. 



Brick-loam in the courtyard and clay beneath. 

 Like living in a china basin. Tiny, miserable king 

 dom of one. I lived under a tuft of hepaticas. To 

 hibernate was merely to daub myself in mire. 

 Whole winters bare-backed, no soil stiff 

 enough to cover me. Wrenched out of the 

 proper seasons. Preposterous rain. Murder- 

 ous frosts. Weather gone utterly awry. 

 Blood with it. When to dig and when to 

 rise. When to forget. 



Great events of those years? Drought that un- 

 dermined bviildings and walls. Black spring ot bar- 

 ren cows, whole dairies out of calt. Death by 

 lightning of a coach-horse at grass. Dog-plague 

 that killed them moping. Cannon of the King's re- 

 view at Portsmouth — firings at Spithead — thun- 

 dering about the house. Shaking the very earth. 



And the demise of Mr. Henry Snooke. Twenty- 

 three years of ignoring me after a chance pur- 

 chase. A few obvious witticisms among friends. I 

 was perhaps not discursive enough for his tastes. 



Mr. Gilbert White was always struck by the fact 

 that I recognized Mrs. Rebecca Snooke. She comes 

 into the courtyard waving a lettuce-leaf Calling 

 from on high, "Timothy! Timothy!" 



Who else could it have been? Only a few hu- 

 mans ever entered that courtyard. Was Mr. Gilbert 

 White never struck by the fact that Mrs. Rebecca 

 Snooke recognized me? If another of my kind had 

 walked up to her on that pebbled path, could she 

 have told the difference? Or would that tortoise 

 have been TiiHotliy too? 



She died, late one winter. Early March. Earthed 

 in still I lay. Aged nearly eighty-six 

 she was, ancient for a human. 

 Burying done. Mr. Gilbert 



White, nearly sixty years old, pries me out of my 

 winter's depression in Mrs. Rebecca Snooke 's 

 brick courtyard. Not the picture of resurrection 

 he preaches from the pulpit. He places me in a 

 wooden box filled with earth and moss. Ship- 

 board again for me, I think. Sea-borne back to 

 the Cilician coast, to my antique ciry. Great 

 wrong set right at last. 



But no. Eighty miles in post-chaises. Not to the 

 sea but to another clot of houses. To this place, to 

 Selborne. 



Mr. Gilbert White is a man of system. Natural- 

 ist, physico-theologist. He lives in inches and 

 ounces and hours and degrees. Weather on March 

 2(J, 1780, the day I was first set loose in Selborne? 

 Dark, moist, and mild. Fifty degrees. Southwest 

 wind. Full moon. Crocuses in high bloom. A 

 matter of record. 



^^^^r. Charles Etty, newly returned from a sea 

 ^voyage, and Mr. Gilbert White place the 

 female tortoise upon the grass-plot. Mrs. John 

 White at their side, garden shears in hand. 

 Thomas finds me among the poppies and sets 

 me beside the stranger. Sunlight embraces her 

 and everyone around her. 



"A very grand personage!" Mr. Gilbert 

 White says, stooping in admiration. "Very 

 grand!" says the young sailor, who has 

 seen her, far grander, where she natu- 

 rally belongs. 



I stand beside her. Nearly of a size, 

 though her shell rises like a haystack 



