Afoot in England

W >> W.H. Hudson >> Afoot in England

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At once he set about interviewing all the old men he came upon
in his rounds, describing to them the farm tenanted by a man
named Dyson about forty years ago, and by and by he got hold
of one who knew. He listened for a few minutes to the
oft-repeated story, then exclaimed, "Why, sir, 'tis surely
Woodyates you be talking about!"

"That's the name! That's the name," he cried. "Woodyyates-
how did I ever forget it! You knew it then--where was it?"

"I'll just show you," said the old man, proud at having
guessed rightly, and turning started slowly hobbling along
till he got to the end of the lane.

There was an opening there and a view of the valley with
trees, blue in the distance, at the furthest visible point.
"Do you see them trees?" he said. "That's where Harping is;
'tis two miles or, perhaps, a little more from Thorpe.
There's a church tower among them trees, but you can't see it
because 'tis hid. You go by the road till you comes to the
church, then you go on by the water, maybe a quarter of a
mile, and you comes to Woodyates. You won't see no difference
in it; I've knowed it since I were a boy, but 'tis in Harping
parish, not in Thorpe."

Now he remembered the name--Harping, near Thorpe--only Thorpe
was the more important village where the inn was and the
shops.

In less than an hour after leaving his informant he was at
Woodyates, feasting his eyes on the old house of his dreams
and of his exiled father's before him, inexpressibly glad to
recognize it as the very house he had loved so long--that he
had been deceived by no false image.

For some days he haunted the spot, then became a lodger at the
farm-house, and now after making some inquiries he had found
that the owner was willing to sell the place for something
more than its market value, and he was going up to London
about it.

At Waterloo I wished him happiness in his old home found again
after so many years, then watched him as he walked briskly
away--as commonplace-looking a man as could be seen on that
busy crowded platform, in his suit of rough grey tweeds, thick
boots, and bowler hat. Yet one whose fortune might be envied
by many even among the successful--one who had cherished a
secret thought and feeling, which had been to him like the
shadow of a rock and like a cool spring in a dry and thirsty
land.

And in that host of undistinguished Colonials and others of
British race from all regions of the earth, who annually visit
these shores on business or for pleasure or some other object,
how many there must be who come with some such memory or dream
or aspiration in their hearts! A greater number probably than
we imagine. For most of them there is doubtless
disappointment and disillusion: it is a matter of the heart, a
sentiment about which some are not given to speak. He too, my
fellow-passenger, would no doubt have held his peace had his
dream not met with so perfect a fulfilment. As it was he had
to tell his joy to some one, though it were to a stranger.

Chapter Fifteen: Summer Days on the Otter

The most characteristic district of South Devon, the greenest,
most luxuriant in its vegetation, and perhaps the hottest in
England, is that bit of country between the Exe and the Axe
which is watered by the Clyst, the Otter, and the Sid. In any
one of a dozen villages found beside these pretty little
rivers a man might spend a month, a year, a lifetime, very
agreeably, ceasing not to congratulate himself on the good
fortune which first led him into such a garden. Yet after a
week or two in this luxurious land I began to be dissatisfied
with my surroundings. It was June; the weather was
exceptionally dry and sultry. Vague thoughts, or "visitings"
of mountains and moors and coasts would intrude to make the
confinement of deep lanes seem increasingly irksome. Each day
I wandered miles in some new direction, never knowing whither
the devious path would lead me, never inquiring of any person,
nor consulting map or guide, since to do that is to deprive
oneself of the pleasure of discovery; always with a secret
wish to find some exit as it were--some place beyond the
everlasting wall of high hedges and green trees, where there
would be a wide horizon and wind blowing unobstructed over
leagues of open country to bring me back the sense of lost
liberty. I found only fresh woods and pastures new that were
like the old; other lanes leading to other farm-houses, each
in its familiar pretty setting of orchard and garden; and,
finally, other ancient villages, each with its ivy-grown grey
church tower looking down on a green graveyard and scattered
cottages, mostly mud-built and thatched with straw. Finding
no outlook on any side I went back to the streams, oftenest to
the Otter, where, lying by the hour on the bank, I watched the
speckled trout below me and the dark-plumaged dipper with
shining white breast standing solitary and curtseying on a,
stone in the middle of the current. Sometimes a kingfisher
would flash by, and occasionally I came upon a lonely grey
heron; but no mammal bigger than a watervole appeared,
although I waited and watched for the much bigger beast that
gives the river its name. Still it was good to know that he
was there, and had his den somewhere in the steep rocky bank
under the rough tangle of ivy and bramble and roots of
overhanging trees. One was shot by a farmer during my stay,
but my desire was for the living, not a dead otter.
Consequently, when the otter-hunt came with blaze of scarlet
coats and blowing of brass horns and noise of barking hounds
and shouts of excited people, it had no sooner got half a mile
above Ottery St. Mary, where I had joined the straggling
procession, than, falling behind, the hunting fury died out of
me and I was relieved to hear that no quarry had been found.
The frightened moorhen stole back to her spotty eggs, the
dipper returned to his dipping and curtseying to his own image
in the stream, and I to my idle dreaming and watching.

The watching was not wholly in vain, since there were here
revealed to me things, or aspects of things, that were new. A
great deal depends on atmosphere and the angle of vision. For
instance, I have often looked at swans at the hour of sunset,
on the water and off it, or flying, and have frequently had
them between me and the level sun, yet never have I been
favoured with the sight of the rose-coloured, the red, and the
golden-yellow varieties of that majestic waterfowl, whose
natural colour is white. On the other hand, who ever saw a
carrion-crow with crimson eyes? Yet that was one of the
strange things I witnessed on the Otter.

Game is not everywhere strictly preserved in that part of
Devon, and the result is that the crow is not so abhorred and
persecuted a fowl as in many places, especially in the home
counties, where the cult of the sacred bird is almost
universal. At one spot on the stream where my rambles took me
on most days a pair of crows invariably greeted my approach
with a loud harsh remonstrance, and would keep near me, flying
from tree to tree repeating their angry girdings until I left
the place. Their nest was in a large elm, and after some days
I was pleased to see that the young had been safely brought
off. The old birds screamed at me no more; then I came on one
of their young in the meadow near the river. His curious
behaviour interested me so much that I stood and watched him
for half an hour or longer. It was a hot, windless day, and
the bird was by himself among the tall flowering grasses and
buttercups of the meadow--a queer gaunt unfinished
hobbledehoy-looking fowl with a head much too big for his
body, a beak that resembled a huge nose, and a very monstrous
mouth. When I first noticed him he was amusing himself by
picking off the small insects from the flowers with his big
beak, a most unsuitable instrument, one would imagine, for so
delicate a task. At the same time he was hungering for more
substantial fare, and every time a rook flew by over him on
its way to or from a neighbouring too populous rookery, the
young crow would open wide his immense red mouth and emit his
harsh, throaty hunger-call. The rook gone, he would drop once
more into his study of the buttercups, to pick from them
whatever unconsidered trifle in the way of provender he could
find. Once a small bird, a pied wagtail, flew near him, and
he begged from it just as he had done from the rooks: the
little creature would have run the risk of being itself
swallowed had it attempted to deliver a packet of flies into
that cavernous mouth. I went nearer, moving cautiously, until
I was within about four yards of him, when, half turning, he
opened his mouth and squawked, actually asking me to feed him;
then, growing suspicious, he hopped awkwardly away in the
grass. Eventually he permitted a nearer approach, and slowly
stooping I was just on the point of stroking his back when,
suddenly becoming alarmed, he swung himself into the air and
flapped laboriously off to a low hawthorn, twenty or thirty
yards away, into which he tumbled pell-mell like a bundle of
old black rags.

Then I left him and thought no more about the crows except
that their young have a good deal to learn upon first coming
forth into an unfriendly world. But there was a second nest
and family close by all the time. A day or two later I
discovered it accidentally in a very curious way.

There was one spot where I was accustomed to linger for a few
minutes, sometimes for half an hour or so, during my daily
walks. Here at the foot of the low bank on the treeless side
of the stream there was a scanty patch of sedges, a most
exposed and unsuitable place for any bird to breed in, yet a
venturesome moorhen had her nest there and was now sitting on
seven eggs. First I would take a peep at the eggs, for the
bird always quitted the nest on my approach; then I would gaze
into the dense tangle of tree, bramble, and ivy springing out
of the mass 'of black rock and red clay of the opposite bank.
In the centre of this rough tangle which overhung the stream
there grew an old stunted and crooked fir tree with its tufted
top so shut out from the light by the branches and foliage
round it that it looked almost black. One evening I sat down
on the green bank opposite this tangle when the low sun behind
me shone level into the mass of rock and rough boles and
branches, and fixing my eyes on the black centre of the mass I
encountered a pair of crimson eyes staring back into mine. A
level ray of light had lit up that spot which I had always
seen in deep shadow, revealing its secret. After gazing
steadily for some time I made out a crow's nest in the dwarf
pine top and the vague black forms of three young fully
fledged crows sitting or standing in it. The middle bird had
the shining crimson eyes; but in a few moments the illusory
colour was gone and the eyes were black.

It was certainly an extraordinary thing: the ragged-looking
black-plumaged bird on its ragged nest of sticks in the deep
shade, with one ray of intense sunlight on its huge nose-like
beak and blood-red eyes, a sight to be remembered for a
lifetime! It recalled Zurbaran's picture of the "Kneeling
Monk," in which the man with everything about him is steeped
in the deepest gloom except his nose, on which one ray of
strong light has fallen. The picture of the monk is gloomy
and austere in a wonderful degree: the crow in his interior
with sunlit big beak and crimson eyes looked nothing less than
diabolical.

I paid other visits to the spot at the same hour, and sat long
and watched the crows while they watched me, occasionally
tossing pebbles on to them to make them shift their positions,
but the magical effect was not produced again.

As to the cause of that extraordinary colour in the crow's
eyes, one might say that it was merely the reflected red light
of the level sun. We are familiar with the effect when
polished and wet surfaces, such as glass, stone, and water,
shine crimson in the light of a setting sun; but there is also
the fact, which is not well known, that the eye may show its
own hidden red--the crimson colour which is at the back of the
retina and which is commonly supposed to be seen only with the
ophthalmoscope. Nevertheless I find on inquiry among friends
and acquaintances that there are instances of persons in which
the iris when directly in front of the observer with the light
behind him, always looks crimson, and in several of these
cases. the persons exhibiting this colour, or danger signal,
as it may be called, were subject to brain trouble. It is
curious to find that the crimson colour or light has also been
observed in dogs: one friend has told me of a pet King
Charles, a lively good-tempered little dog with brown eyes
like any other dog, which yet when they looked up, into yours
in a room always shone ruby-red instead of hyaline blue, or
green, as is usually the case. From other friends I heard of
many other cases: one was of a child, an infant in arms, whose
eyes sometimes appeared crimson, another of a cat with yellow
eyes which shone crimson-red in certain lights. Of human
adults, I heard of two men great in the world of science, both
dead now, in whose eyes the red light had been seen just
before and during attacks of nervous breakdown. I heard also
of four other persons, not distinguished in any way, two of
them sisters, who showed the red light in the eyes: all of
them suffered, from brain trouble and two of them ended their
lives in asylums for the insane.

Discussing these cases with my informants, we came to the
conclusion that the red light in the human eye is probably
always a pathological condition, a danger signal; but it is
not perhaps safe to generalize on these few instances, and I
must add that all the medical men I have spoken to on the
subject shake their heads. One great man, an eye specialist,
went so far as to say that it is impossible, that the red
light in the eye was not seen by my informants but only
imagined. The ophthalmoscope, he said, will show you the
crimson at the back of the eye, but the colour is not and
cannot be reflected on the surface of the iris.

Chapter Sixteen: In Praise of the Cow

In spite of discontents I might have remained to this day by
the Otter, in the daily and hourly expectation of seeing some
new and wonderful thing in Nature in that place where a
crimson-eyed carrion-crow had been revealed to me, had not a
storm of thunder and rain broken over the country to shake me
out of a growing disinclination to move. We are, body and
mind, very responsive to atmospheric changes; for every storm
in Nature there is a storm in us--a change physical and
mental. We make our own conditions, it is true, and these
react and have a deadening effect on us in the long run, but
we are never wholly deadened by them--if we be not indeed
dead, if the life we live can be called life. We are told
that there are rainless zones on the earth and regions of
everlasting summer: it is hard to believe that the dwellers in
such places can ever think a new thought or do a new thing.
The morning rain did not last very long, and before it had
quite ceased I took up my knapsack and set off towards the
sea, determined on this occasion to make my escape.

Three or four miles from Ottery St. Mary I overtook a cowman
driving nine milch cows along a deep lane and inquired my way
of him. He gave me many and minute directions, after which we
got into conversation, and I walked some distance with him.
The cows he was driving were all pure Devons, perfect beauties
in their bright red coats in that greenest place where every
rain-wet leaf sparkled in the new sunlight. Naturally we
talked about the cows, and I soon found that they were his own
and the pride and joy of his life. We walked leisurely, and
as the animals went on, first one, then another would stay for
a mouthful of grass, or to pull down half a yard of green
drapery from the hedge. It was so lavishly decorated that the
damage they did to it was not noticeable. By and by we went
on ahead of the cows, then, if one stayed too long or strayed
into some inviting side-lane, he would turn and utter a long,
soft call, whereupon the straggler would leave her browsing
and hasten after the others.

He was a big, strongly built man, a little past middle life
and grey-haired, with rough-hewn face--unprepossessing one
would have pronounced him until the intelligent, kindly
expression of the eyes was seen and the agreeable voice was
heard. As our talk progressed and we found how much in
sympathy we were on the subject, I was reminded of that
Biblical expression about the shining of a man's face: "Wine
that maketh glad the heart of man"--I hope the total
abstainers will pardon me--"and oil that maketh his face to
shine," we have in one passage. This rather goes against our
British ideas, since we rub no oil or unguents on our skin,
but only soap which deprives it of its natural oil and too
often imparts a dry and hard texture. Yet in that, to us,
disagreeable aspect of the skin caused by foreign fats, there
is a resemblance to the sudden brightening and glory of the
countenance in moments of blissful emotion or exaltation. No
doubt the effect is produced by the eyes, which are the
mirrors of the mind, and as they are turned full upon us they
produce an illusion, seeming to make the whole face shine.

In our talk I told him of long rambles on the Mendips, along
the valley of the Somerset Axe, where I had lately been, and
where of all places, in this island, the cow should be most
esteemed and loved by man. Yet even there, where, standing on
some elevation, cows beyond one's power to number could be
seen scattered far and wide in the green vales beneath, it had
saddened me to find them so silent. It is not natural for
them to be dumb; they have great emotions and mighty voices
--the cattle on a thousand hills. Their morning and evening
lowing is more to me than any other natural sound--the melody
of birds, the springs and dying gales of the pines, the wash
of waves on the long shingled beach. The hills and valleys of
that pastoral country flowing with milk and honey should be
vocal with it, echoing and re-echoing the long call made
musical by distance. The cattle are comparatively silent in
that beautiful district, and indeed everywhere in England,
because men have made them so. They have, when deprived of
their calves, no motive for the exercise of their voices. For
two or three days after their new-born calves have been taken
from them they call loudly and incessantly, day and night,
like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be
comforted; grief and anxiety inspires that cry--they grow
hoarse with crying; it is a powerful, harsh, discordant sound,
unlike the long musical call of the cow that has a calf, and
remembering it, and leaving the pasture, goes lowing to give
it suck.

I also told him of the cows of a distant country where I had
lived, that had the maternal instinct so strong that they
refused to yield their milk when deprived of their young.
They "held it back," as the saying is, and were in a sullen
rage, and in a few days their fountains dried up, and there
was no more milk until calving-time came round once more.

He replied that cows of that temper were not unknown in South
Devon. Very proudly he pointed to one of the small herd that
followed us as an example. In most cases, he said, the calf
was left from two or three days to a week, or longer, with the
mother to get strong, and then taken away. This plan could
not be always followed; some cows were so greatly distressed
at losing the young they had once suckled that precautions had
to be taken and the calf smuggled away as quietly as possible
when dropped--if possible before the mother had seen it. Then
there were the extreme cases in which the cow refused to be
cheated. She knew that a calf had been born; she had felt it
within her, and had suffered pangs in bringing it forth; if it
appeared not on the grass or straw at her side then it must
have been snatched away by the human creatures that hovered
about her, like crows and ravens round a ewe in travail on
some lonely mountain side.

That was the character of the cow he had pointed out; even
when she had not seen the calf of which she had been deprived
she made so great an outcry and was thrown into such a rage
and fever, refusing to be milked that, finally, to save her,
it was thought necessary to give her back the calf. Now, he
concluded, it was not attempted to take it away: twice a day
she was allowed to have it with her and suckle it, and she was
a very happy animal.

I was glad to think that there was at least one completely
happy cow in Devonshire.

After leaving the cowkeeper I had that feeling of revulsion
very strongly which all who know and love cows occasionally
experience at the very thought of beef. I was for the moment
more than tolerant of vegetarianism, and devoutly hoped that
for many days to come I should not be sickened with the sight
of a sirloin on some hateful board, cold, or smoking hot,
bleeding its red juices into the dish when gashed with a
knife, as if undergoing a second death. We do not eat
negroes, although their pigmented skins, flat feet, and woolly
heads proclaim them a different species; even monkey's flesh
is abhorrent to us, merely because we fancy that that creature
in its ugliness resembles some old men and some women and
children that we know. But the gentle large-brained social
cow that caresses our hands and faces with her rough blue
tongue, and is more like man's sister than any other non-human
being--the majestic, beautiful creature with the juno eyes,
sweeter of breath than the rosiest virgin--we slaughter and
feed on her flesh--monsters and cannibals that we are!

But though cannibals, it is very pleasant to find that many
cowmen love their cows. Walking one afternoon by a high
unkept hedge near Southampton Water, I heard loud shouts at
intervals issuing from a point some distance ahead, and on
arriving at the spot found an old man leaning idly over a
gate, apparently concerned about nothing. "What are you
shouting about?" I demanded. "Cows," he answered, with a
glance across the wide green field dotted with a few big furze
and bramble bushes. On its far side half a dozen cows were,
quietly grazing. "They came fast enough when I was a-feeding
of 'em," he presently added; "but now they has to find for
theirselves they don't care how long they keeps me." I was
going to suggest that it would be a considerable saving of
time if he went for them, but his air of lazy contentment as
he leant on the gate showed that time was of no importance to
him. He was a curious-looking old man, in old frayed clothes,
broken boots, and a cap too small for him. He had short legs,
broad chest, and long arms, and a very big head, long and
horselike, with a large shapeless nose and grizzled beard and
moustache. His ears, too, were enormous, and stood out from
the head like the handles of a rudely shaped terra-cotta vase
or jar. The colour of his face, the ears included, suggested
burnt clay. But though Nature had made him ugly, he had an
agreeable expression, a sweet benign look in his large dark
eyes, which attracted me, and I stayed to talk with him.

It has frequently been said that those who are much with cows,
and have an affection for them, appear to catch something of
their expression--to look like cows; just as persons of
sympathetic or responsive nature, and great mobility of face,
grow to be like those they live and are in sympathy with.
The cowman who looks like a cow may be more bovine than his
fellows in his heavier motions and slower apprehensions, but
he also exhibits some of the better qualities--the repose and
placidity of the animal.

He said that he was over seventy, and had spent the whole of
his life in the neighbourhood, mostly with cows, and had never
been more than a dozen miles from the spot where we were
standing. At intervals while we talked he paused to utter one
of his long shouts, to which the cows paid no attention. At
length one of the beasts raised her head and had a long look,
then slowly crossed the field to us, the others following at
some distance. They were shorthorns, all but the leader, a
beautiful young Devon, of a uniform rich glossy red; but the
silky hair on the distended udder was of an intense chestnut,
and all the parts that were not clothed were red too--the
teats, the skin round the eyes, the moist embossed nose; while
the hoofs were like polished red pebbles, and even the shapely
horns were tinged with that colour. Walking straight up to
the old man, she began deliberately licking one of his ears
with her big rough tongue, and in doing so knocked off his old
rakish cap. Picking it up he laughed like a child, and
remarked, "She knows me, this one does--and she loikes me."

Chapter Seventeen: An Old Road Leading Nowhere

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