Field and Hedgerow

R >> Richard Jefferies >> Field and Hedgerow

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It is summer, and the wind-birds top the furze; the bright stonechat,
velvet-black and red and white, sits on the highest spray of the gorse,
as if he were painted there. He is always in the wind on the hill, from
the hail of April to August's dry glow. All the mile-long slope of the
hill under me is purple-clad with heath down to the tree-filled gorge
where the green boughs seem to join the purple. The corn-fields and the
pastures of the plain--count them one by one till the hedges and squares
close together and cannot be separated. The surface of the earth melts
away as if the eyes insensibly shut and grew dreamy in gazing, as the
soft clouds melt and lose their outline at the horizon. But dwelling
there, the glance slowly finds and fills out something that interposes
its existence between us and the further space. Too shadowy for the
substance of a cloud, too delicate for outline against the sky, fainter
than haze, something of which the eye has consciousness, but cannot put
into a word to itself. Something is there. It is the air-cloud adhering
like a summer garment to the great downs by the sea. I cannot see the
substance of the hills nor their exact curve along the sky; all I can see
is the air that has thickened and taken to itself form about them. The
atmosphere has collected as the shadow collects in the distant corner of
a room--it is the shadow of the summer wind. At times it is so soft, so
little more than the air at hand, that I almost fancy I can look through
the solid boundary. There is no cloud so faint; the great hills are but a
thought at the horizon; I _think_ them there rather than see them; if I
were not thinking of them, I should scarce know there was even a haze,
with so dainty a hand does the atmosphere throw its covering over the
massy downs. Riding or passing quickly perhaps you would not observe
them; but stay among the heathbells, and the sketch appears in the south.
Up from the sea over the corn-fields, through the green boughs of the
forest, along the slope, comes a breath of wind, of honey-sweetened air,
made more delicate by the fanning of a thousand wings.

The labour of the wind: the cymbals of the aspen clashing, from the
lowest to the highest bough, each leaf twirling first forwards and then
backwards and swinging to and fro, a double motion. Each lifts a little
and falls back like a pendulum, twisting on itself; and as it rises and
sinks, strikes its fellow-leaf. Striking the side of the dark pines, the
wind changes their colour and turns them paler. The oak leaves slide one
over the other, hand above hand, laying shadow upon shadow upon the white
road. In the vast net of the wide elm-tops the drifting shadow of the
cloud which the wind brings is caught for a moment. Pushing aside the
stiff ranks of the wheat with both arms, the air reaches the sun-parched
earth. It walks among the mowing-grass like a farmer feeling the crop
with his hand one side, and opening it with his walking-stick the other.
It rolls the wavelets carelessly as marbles to the shore; the red cattle
redden the pool and stand in their own colour. The green caterpillar
swings as he spins his thread and lengthens his cable to the tide of air,
descending from the tree; before he can slip it the whitethroat takes
him. With a thrust the wind hurls the swift fifty miles faster on his
way; it ruffles back the black velvet of the mole peeping forth from his
burrow. Apple bloom and crab-apple bloom have been blown long since
athwart the furrows over the orchard wall; May petals and June roses
scattered; the pollen and the seeds of the meadow-grasses thrown on the
threshing-floor of earth in basketfuls. Thistle down and dandelion down,
the brown down of the goat's-beard; by-and-by the keys of the sycamores
twirling aslant--the wind carries them all on its back, gossamer web and
great heron's vanes--the same weight to the wind; the drops of the
waterfall blown aside sprinkle the bright green ferns. The voice of the
cuckoo in his season travels on the zephyr, and the note comes to the
most distant hill, and deep into the deepest wood.

The light and fire of summer are made beautiful by the air, without whose
breath the glorious summer were all spoiled. Thick are the hawthorn
leaves, many deep on the spray; and beneath them there is a twisted and
intertangled winding in and out of boughs, such as no curious ironwork of
ancient artist could equal; through the leaves and metal-work of boughs
the soft west wind wanders at its ease. Wild wasp and tutored bee sing
sideways on their course as the breeze fills their vanes; with broad
coloured sails boomed out, the butterfly drifts alee. Beside a brown
coated stone in the shadowed stream a brown trout watches for the puffs
that slay the May-flies. Their ephemeral wings were made for a more
exquisite life; they endure but one sun; they bear not the touch of the
water; they die like a dream dropping into the river. To the amethyst in
the deep ditch the wind comes; no petal so hidden under green it cannot
find; to the blue hill-flower up by the sky; it lifts the guilty head of
the passionate poppy that has sinned in the sun for love. Sweet is the
rain the wind brings to the wallflower browned in the heat, a-dry on the
crumbling stone. Pleasant the sunbeams to the marigold when the wind has
carried the rain away and his sun-disc glows on the bank. Acres of
perfume come on the wind from the black and white of the bean-field; the
firs fill the air by the copse with perfume. I know nothing to which the
wind has not some happy use. Is there a grain of dust so small the wind
shall not find it out? Ground in the mill-wheel of the centuries, the
iron of the distant mountain floats like gossamer, and is drunk up as dew
by leaf and living lung. A thousand miles of cloud go by from morn till
night, passing overhead without a sound; the immense packs, a mile
square, succeed to each other, side by side, laid parallel, book-shape,
coming up from the horizon and widening as they approach. From morn till
night the silent footfalls of the ponderous vapours travel overhead, no
sound, no creaking of the wheels and rattling of the chains; it is calm
at the earth, but the wind labours without an effort above, with such
case, with such power. Grey smoke hangs on the hill-side where the
couch-heaps are piled, a cumulus of smoke; the wind comes, and it draws
its length along like the genii from the earthen pot; there leaps up a
great red flame shaking its head; it shines in the bright sunlight; you
can see it across the valley.

A perfect summer day with a strong south wind; a cloudless blue sky blown
pale, a summer sun blown cool, deep draughts of refreshing air to man and
horse, clear definition of red-tile roof and conical oast, perfect colour
of soft ash-green trees. In the evening, fourteen black swifts rushing
together through the upper atmosphere with shrill cries, sometimes aside
and on the tip of one wing, with a whirl descending, a black trail, to
the tiled ridge they dwell in. Fine weather after this.

A swooning August day, with a hot east wind, from which there is no
escape, which gives no air to the chest--you breathe and are not
satisfied with the inspiration; it does not fill; there is no life in the
killed atmosphere. It is a vacuum of heat, and yet the strong hot wind
bends the trees, and the tall firs wrestle with it as they did with
Sinis, the Pine-bender, bowed down and rebounding as if they would whirl
their cones away like a catapult. Masses of air are moving by, and yet
there is none to breathe. No escape in the shadow of hedge or wood, or in
the darkened room; darkness excludes the heat that comes with light, but
the heat of the oven-wind cannot be shut out. Some monstrous dragon of
the Chinese sky pants his fiery breath upon us, and the brown grass
stalks threaten to catch flame in the field. The grain of wheat that was
full of juice dries hard in the ears, and water is no more good for
thirst. There is not a cloud in the sky; but at night there is heavy
rain, and the flowers are beaten down. There is a thunder-wind that blows
at intervals when great clouds are visibly gathering over the hayfield.
It is almost a calm; but from time to time a breath comes, and a low
mournful cry sounds in the hollow farmhouse--the windows and doors are
open, and the men and women have gone out to make hasty help in the hay
ere the storm--a mournful cry in the hollow house, as unhappy a note as
if it were soaked February.

In April, six miles away in the valley, a vast cloud came down with
swan-shot of hail, black as blackest smoke, overwhelming house and wood,
all gone and mixed with the sky; and behind the mass there followed a
white cloud, sunlit, dragging along the ground like a cumulus fallen to
the earth. At sunset the sky cleared, and under the glowing rim of the
sun a golden wind drove the host of vapour before it, scattering it to
the right and left. Large pieces caught and tore themselves in the trees
of the forest, and one curved fragment hurled from the ridge fell in the
narrow coombe, lit up as it came down with golden sunset rays, standing
out bright against the shadowed wood. Down it came slowly as it were with
outstretched arms, both to fall, carrying the coloured light of the sky
to the very surface of the earth.

THE COUNTRY SUNDAY.

Roses bloomed on every bush, and some of the great hawthorns up which the
briars had climbed seemed all flowers. The white and pink-white petals of
the June roses adhered all over them, almost as if they had been
artificially gummed or papered on so as to hide the leaves. Such a
profusion of wild-rose bloom is rarely seen. On the Sunday morning, as on
a week-day morning, they were entirely unnoticed, and might be said in
their turn to take no heed of the sanctified character of the day. With a
rush like a sudden thought the white-barred eave-swallows came down the
arid road and rose again into the air as easily as a man dives into the
water. Dark specks beneath the white summer clouds, the swifts, the black
albatross of our skies, moved on their unwearied wings. Like the
albatross that floats over the ocean and sleeps on the wing, the swift's
scimitar-like pinions are careless of repose. Once now and then they came
down to earth, not, as might be supposed, to the mansion or the church
tower, but to the low tiled roof of an ancient cottage which they fancied
for their home. Kings sometimes affect to mix with their subjects; these
birds that aspire to the extreme height of the air frequently nest in the
roof of a despised tenement, inhabited by an old woman who never sees
them. The corn was green and tall, the hops looked well, the foxglove was
stirring, the delicious atmosphere of summer, sun-laden and scented,
filled the deep valleys; a morning of the richest beauty and deepest
repose. All things reposed but man, and man is so busy with his vulgar
aims that it quite dawns upon many people as a wonderful surprise how
still nature is on a Sunday morning. Nature is absolutely still every day
of the week, and proceeds with the most absolute indifference to days and
dates.

The sharp metallic clangour of a bell went bang, bang, bang, from one
roof; not far distant a harsher and deeper note--some Tartar-like bell of
universal uproar--hammered away. At intervals came the distant chimes of
three distinct village churches--ding dong, dong ding, pango, frango,
jango--very much jango--bang, clatter, clash--a humming vibration and
dreadful stir. The country world was up in arms, I was about to say--I
mean in chimney-pot hat and pomade, _en route_ to its various creeds,
some to one bell, some to another, some to ding dong, and some to dong
ding; but the most of them directed their steps towards a silent chapel.
This great building, plain beyond plainness, stood beside a fir copse,
from which in the summer morning there floated an exquisite fragrance of
pine. If all the angles of the architects could have been put together,
nothing could have been designed more utterly opposite to the graceful
curve of the fir tree than this red-bricked crass building. Bethel Chapel
combined everything that could be imagined contrary to the spirit of
nature, which undulates. The largest erection of the kind, it was
evidently meant for a large congregation.

Of all the people in this country there are none so devout as the
cottagers in the lanes and hamlets. They are as uncompromising as the
sectaries who smashed the images and trampled on the pride of kings in
the days of Charles I. The translation of the Bible cut off Charles I.'s
head by letting loose such a flood of iron-fisted controversy, and to any
one who has read the pamphlets of those days the resemblance is
constantly suggested. John Bunyan wrote about the Pilgrim. To this chapel
there came every Sunday morning a man and his wife, ten miles on foot
from their cottage home in a distant village. The hottest summer day or
the coldest winter Sunday made no difference; they tramped through dust,
and they tramped through slush and mire; they were pilgrims every week. A
grimly real religion, as concrete and as much a fact as a stone wall; a
sort of horse's faith going along the furrow unquestioning. In their own
village there were many chapels, and at least one church, but these did
not suffice. The doctrine at Bethel was the one saving doctrine, and
there they went. There were dozens who came from lesser distances quite
as regularly, the men in their black coats and high hats, big fellows
that did not look ungainly till they dressed themselves up; women as red
as turkey-cocks, panting and puffing; crowds of children making the road
odorous with the smell of pomade; the boys with their hair too long
behind; the girls with vile white stockings, all out of drawing, and
without a touch that could be construed into a national costume--the
cheap shoddy shop in the country lane. All with an expression of Sunday
goodness: 'To-day we are good, we are going to chapel, and we mean to
stay till the very last word. We have got our wives and families with us,
and woe be to any of them if they dare to look for a bird's nest! This is
business.' Besides the foot people there come plenty in traps and
pony-carriages, and some on horseback, for a certain class of farmers
belong to the same persuasion, and there are well-to-do people in the
crowd. It is the cast of mind that makes the worshipper, not the worldly
position.

It is written, but perhaps it is not true, that in old times--not very
old times--the parish clergyman had a legal right, by which every person
in the parish was compelled to appear once on a Sunday in the church.
Those who did not come were fined a shilling.

Now look at the Shillings this Sunday morning flowing of their own
freewill along the crooked lanes, and over the stiles, and through the
hops, and down the hill to the chapel which can offer no bribe and can
impose no fine.

Old women--wonder 'tis how they live on nothing a day--still manage to
keep a decent black dress and come to chapel with a penny in their
pockets in spite of their age and infirmities. The nearest innkeeper,
himself a most godly man, has work enough to do to receive the horses and
traps and pony-carriages and stow them away before service begins, when
he will stride from the stable to the pew. Then begins the hollow and
flute-like modulation of a pitch-pipe within the great building. One of
the members of the congregation who is a musician is setting the ears of
the people to the tune of the hymn that is about to be given forth. The
verse is read, and then rises the full swell of hundreds of voices; and
while they sing let us think what a strange thing the old pitch-pipe--no
organ, no harmonium--what a strange thing the whole scene is, with its
Cromwellian air in the midst of the modern fields.

This is a picture, and not a disputation: as to what they teach or preach
inside Bethel, it is nothing to me; this paper has not the slightest
theological bias.

You may tell when the service is nearly over by the stray boys who steal
out and round the walls to throw stones at the sparrows in the roads;
they need a little relaxation; nature gets even into Bethel. By-and-by
out come some bigger lads and tie two long hop-poles together with which
to poke down the swallows' nests under the chapel eaves. The Book inside,
of which they almost make an idol, seemed to think the life of a
sparrow--and possibly of a swallow--was of value; still it is good fun to
see the callow young come down flop on the hard ground.

When the church doors are thrown open by the noiseless vergers, and
patchouli and macassar, and the overpowering, rich smell of silks and
satins rushes out in a volume of heated air, in a few minutes the whole
place is vacant. Bethel is not deserted in this manner. All those who
have come from a distance have brought with them their dinner in a black
bag or basket, and quietly settle themselves down to take their dinner in
the chapel. This practice is not confined to the pilgrims who have walked
a long way; very many of those who live the other side of the village
shut up their cottages, bring their provisions, and spend the whole day
at their devotions. Now the old woman spends her Sunday penny. At the
back of the chapel there is a large room where a person is employed to
boil the kettle and supply cups of tea at a halfpenny each. Here the old
lady makes herself very comfortable, and waits till service begins again.
Halfpenny a cup would not, of course, pay the cost of the materials, but
these are found by some earnest member of the body, some farmer or
tradesman's wife, who feels it a good deed to solace the weary
worshippers. There is something in this primitive hospitality, in this
eating their dinners in the temple, and general communion of humanity,
which to a philosopher seems very admirable. It seems better than incense
and scarlet robes, unlit candles behind the altar, and vacancy. Not long
since a bishop addressed a circular to the clergy of his diocese,
lamenting in solemn tones the unhappy position of the labourer in the
village churches. The bishop had observed with regret, with very great
regret, that the labourer seemed in the background. He sat in the back
seats behind the columns, and near the door where he could hardly hear,
and where he had none of the comfort of the stove in winter. The bishop
feared his position was cold and comfortless, that he did not feel
himself to be a member of the Church, that he was outside the pale of its
society. He exhorted the country clergy to bring the labourer forward and
make him more comfortable, to put him in a better seat among the rest,
where he would feel himself to be really one of the congregation.

To those who have sat in country churches this circular read as a piece
of most refined sarcasm, so bitter because of its truth. Where had been
the clerical eye all these years that Hodge had sat and coughed in the
draughts by the door? Was it merely a coincidence that the clerical eye
was opened just at the moment when Hodge became a voter?

At Bethel Chapel between the services the cottagers, the farmers, and the
tradesmen break their bread together, and converse, and actually seem to
recognise one another; they do not turn their backs the instant the organ
ceases and return each to his house in proud isolation. There is no
dining together, no friendly cup of tea at the parish church. This Bethel
is, you see, the church of the poor people, most emphatically _their_
church. If the word church means not a building, but a society, then this
is the true country church. It is the society of all those who, for want
of a better expression, I may term the humble-minded, those who have no
aristocratic or exclusive tastes, very simple in their reading and
studies even if well-to-do, and simple in their daily habits, rising
early and retiring early, and plebeian in their dinner-hour. It is a
peculiar cast of mind that I am trying to describe--a natural frame of
mind; these are 'chapel people'--perhaps a phrase will convey the meaning
better than explanation. This is _their_ church, and whatever the
theology may be there is undoubtedly a very strong bond of union among
them.

Not only the old women with their Sunday pennies, but great numbers
beside, young and old of both sexes, take their cup of tea, for these
people take tea with every meal, dinner and supper as well as breakfast
and five o'clock, and if they don't feel well they will rise at two in
the morning to get a cup of tea. They are as Russian as the Russians in
this particular; they have cheese on the table, too, at every meal. The
pastor has, meantime, been entertained with a good dinner at some house
adjacent, where he goes every Sunday; by-and-by the flute begins to tune
again, the hymns resound, and the labour of the day is resumed. Somewhere
about four o'clock the summer-dusty roads are full again of the returning
pilgrims, and the crowd gradually sinks away by footpath and stile. The
black albatross is still wheeling in the upper atmosphere, the
white-barred swallow rushes along the road and dives upwards, the
unwearied roses are still opened to the sun's rays, and calm, indifferent
Nature has pursued her quiet course without heed of pitch-pipe or organ,
or bell or chalice. Perhaps if you chance to be resting by a gate you may
hear one of the cottage women telling her children to let the ants alone
and not tease them, for 'thaay be God's creeturs.' Or possibly the pastor
himself may be overheard discoursing to a bullet-headed woman, with one
finger on the palm of his other hand, 'That's their serpentine way;
that's their subtlety; that's their casuistry; which arguments you may
imagine to refer, as your fancy pleases, to the village curate, or the
tonsured priest of the monastery over the hill. For the tonsured priest,
and the monastery, and the nunnery, and the mass, and the Virgin Mary,
have grown to be a very great power indeed in English lanes. Between the
Roman missal and the chapel hymn-book, the country curate with his good
old-fashioned litany is ground very small indeed, and grows less and less
between these millstones till he approaches the vanishing-point. The
Roman has the broad acres, his patrons have given him the land; the
chapel has the common people, and the farmers are banding together not to
pay tithes. So that his whole soul may well go forth in the apostrophe,
'Good Lord, deliver us!'

There is no man so feasted as the chapel pastor. His tall and yet rotund
body and his broad red face might easily be mistaken for the outward man
of a sturdy farmer, and he likes his pipe and glass. He dines every
Sunday, and at least once a week besides, at the house of one of his
stoutest upholders. It is said that at such a dinner, after a large
plateful of black currant pudding, finding there was still some juice
left, he lifted the plate to his mouth and carefully licked it all round;
the hostess hastened to offer a spoon, but he declined, thinking that was
much the best way to gather up the essence of the fruit. So simple were
his manners, he needed no spoon; and, indeed, if we look back, the
apostles managed without forks, and put their fingers in the dish. After
dinner the cognac bottle is produced, and the pastor fills his tumbler
half full of spirit, and but lightly dashes it with water. It is cognac
and not brandy, for your chapel minister thinks it an affront if anything
more common than the best French liquor is put before him; he likes it
strong, and with it his long clay pipe. Very frequently another minister,
sometimes two or three, come in at the same time, and take the same
dinner, and afterwards form a genial circle with cognac and tobacco, when
the room speedily becomes full of smoke and the bottle of brandy soon
disappears. In these family parties there is not the least approach to
over-conviviality; it is merely the custom, no one thinks anything of a
glass and a pipe; it is perfectly innocent; it is not a local thing, but
common and understood. The consumption of brandy and tobacco and the good
things of dinner, tea, and supper (for the party generally sit out the
three meals), must in a month cost the host a good deal of money, but all
things are cheerfully borne for the good of the church. Never were men
feasted with such honest good-will as these pastors; and if a budding
Paul or Silas happens to come along who has scarce yet passed his
ordination, the youthful divine may stay a week if he likes, and lick the
platter clean. In fact, so constant is this hospitality, that in certain
houses it is impossible to pay a visit at any time of the year without
finding one of these young brothers reposing amid the fat of the land,
and doubtless indulging in pleasant spiritual communion with the
daughters of the mansion. Something in this system of household ministers
of religion reminds one of the welcome and reverence said to be extended
in the East to the priests, who take up their residence indefinitely, and
are treated as visible incarnations of the Deity whose appetites it is
meritorious to satisfy. Indeed, these young men, who have perhaps been
trained as missionaries, often discourse of Buddha with a very long and
unctuous 'Boo.'

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