A PORTRAIT OF GILBERT WHITE 143 
appearance to the author. Now upon this authority Mr. Bell 
named the figures (i) Mr. Yalden, (2) Mr. Etty, brother of the 
Vicar of Selborne, (3) Mrs. Yalden, (4) Thomas White. 
In 1893 the Rev. John Tahourdin White, a son of John 
White {filius Benjamin) told the present Lord Stamford that 
“ the figure coming out of the tent was Thomas White, those in 
the centre were Mr. and Mrs. Yalden, and the figure coming 
up the hill was Gilbert White himself.”* Now Dr. J. T. White 
was born seventeen years after Gilbert White’s death, and 
cannot prima fade be considered as good an authority as either of 
Gilbert White’s nephews Francis or Edmund, who were partly 
his contemporaries and knew him well. But there is a most 
undoubted error in this account of Dr. J. T. White’s, which 
casts a strong element of doubt over the accuracy of the whole 
of it, since, according to him, the picture contains the figures of 
two clergymen. White and Yalden, whereas it is quite clear that 
two of the three men’s figures are laymen, only one of them 
wearing the clerical bob wig ! For this reason I prefer to accept 
Mr. Bell’s account, which comes to us directly from an earlier 
source, and may be wholly correct, whereas Dr. J. T. White’s 
statement stands convicted of at least one error. 
It will be noticed that in both of the above statements the 
figure near the tent is given as that of Thomas White. He was 
not at Selborne during Mr. Grimm’s visit there ; but he knew 
Grimm personally, since he had visited him in London (see my 
“ Life ” vol. i , p. 288), and nothing is more likely than that he, 
who urged the inception of the “ Selborne,” and was constantly 
consulted by his brother during its progress and revision, should 
wish to be depicted in the general view of the place he knew 
and loved so well. I think, then, that he may have been sketched 
into the view by Grimm after the latter’s return to London, 
when possibly the tent was added to the picture ; for I do not 
believe that Grimm, or anyone else, ever saw it standing upon 
common land at Selborne, and at some distance from Gilbert 
White’s grounds, as it appears in the foreground of the view. 
It may be recollected by readers of Miss Catharine Battie’s 
‘‘Journal at Selborne” that she “ drank tea under the tent in his 
[i.e. G. W.’s] sweet fields ” — a much more likely locality. 
The suggestion that the figure sitting under the tree in the 
view of the Plestor given in the original edition of the “ Sel- 
borne ” is intended to represent Gilbert White is now, as far as 
I am aware, made for the first time. This figure is that of an 
apparently elderly clergyman ; but here all resemblance to 
White ceases. He himself tells us in the letters which I 
published that he had “ short stumps,” i.e., legs, and that he 
was incorrigibly thin ; whereas the figure in question does not 
seem to be either short or thin. As for the dog represented, it 
* I quote from a full report of Lord Stamford’s speech, which I listened to at 
the Centenary Meeting at Selborne in 1893. 
