Afoot in England

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

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It is probable that in the case I am describing the effect of
sharpness and resonance was heightened by the position of the
birds, perched motionless, scattered about on the face of the
perpendicular wall of rock, all with their beaks turned in
my direction, raining their cries upon me. It was not a
monotonous storm of cries, but rose and fell; for after two or
three minutes the excitement would abate somewhat and the
cries grow fewer and fewer; then the infection would spread
again, bird after bird joining the outcry; and after a while
there would be another lull, and so on, wave following wave of
sound. I could have spent hours, and the hours would have
seemed like minutes, listening to that strange chorus of
ringing chiming cries, so novel was its effect, and unlike
that of any other tempest of sound produced by birds which
I had ever heard. When by way of a parting caress and
benediction (given and received) I dipped my hands in
Branscombe's clear streamlet it was with a feeling of tender
regret that was almost a pain. For who does not make a little
inward moan, an Eve's Lamentation, an unworded, "Must I leave
thee, Paradise?" on quitting any such sweet restful spot,
however brief his stay in it may have been? But when I had
climbed to the summit of the great down on the east side of
the valley and looked on the wide land and wider sea flashed
with the early sunlight I rejoiced full of glory at my
freedom. For invariably when the peculiar character and charm
of a place steals over and takes possession of me I begin to
fear it, knowing from long experience that it will be a
painful wrench to get away and that get away sooner or later I
must. Now I was free once more, a wanderer with no ties, no
business to transact in any town, no worries to make me
miserable like others, nothing to gain and nothing to lose.

Pausing on the summit to consider which way I should go,
inland, towards Axminister, or along the coast by Beer, Seton,
Axmouth, and so on to Lyme Regis, I turned to have a last look
and say a last good-bye to Branscombe and could hardly help
waving my hand to it.

Why, I asked myself, am I not a poet, or verse-maker, so as to
say my farewell in numbers? My answer was, Because I am too
much occupied in seeing. There is no room and time for
'tranquillity,' since I want to go on to see something else.
As Blake has it: "Natural objects always did and do, weaken,
deaden and obliterate imagination in me."

We know however that they didn't quite quench it in him.

Chapter Nneteen: Abbotsbury

Abbotsbury is an old unspoilt village, not on but near the
sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadowland where all
sorts of meadow and water plants flourish, and where there are
extensive reed and osier beds, the roosting-place in autumn
and winter of innumerable starlings. I am always delighted to
come on one of these places where starlings congregate, to
watch them coming in at day's decline and listen to their
marvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial evolutions
when they rise and break up in great bodies and play at clouds
in the sky. When the people of the place, the squire and
keepers and others who have an interest in the reeds and
osiers, fall to abusing them on account of the damage they do,
I put my fingers in my ears. But at Abbotsbury I did not do
so, but listened with keen pleasure to the curses they vented
and the story they told. This was that when the owner of
Abbotsbury came down for the October shooting and found the
starlings more numerous than ever, he put himself into a fine
passion and reproached his keepers and other servants for not
having got rid of the birds as he had desired them to do.
Some of them ventured to say that it was easier said than
done, whereupon the great man swore that he would do it
himself without assistance from any one, and getting out a big
duck-gun he proceeded to load it with the smallest shot and
went down to the reed bed and concealed hiniself among the
bushes at a suitable distance. The birds were pouring in, and
when it was growing dark and they had settled down for the
night he fired his big piece into the thick of the crowd, and
by and by when the birds after wheeling about for a minute or
two settled down again in the same place he fired again. Then
he went home, and early next morning men and boys went into
the reeds and gathered a bushel or so of dead starlings. But
the birds returned in their thousands that evening, and his
heart being still hot against them he went out a second time
to slaughter them wholesale with his big gun. Then when he
had blazed into the crowd once more, and the dead and wounded
fell like rain into the water below, the revulsion came and he
was mad with himself for having done such a thing, and on his
return to the house, or palace, he angrily told his people to
"let the starlings alone" for the future--never to molest them
again!

I thought it one of the loveliest stories I had ever heard;
there is no hardness comparable to that of the sportsman, yet
here was one, a very monarch among them, who turned sick at
his own barbarity and repented.

Beyond the flowery wet meadows, favored by starlings and a
breeding-place of swans, is the famous Chesil Bank, one of the
seven wonders of Britain. And thanks to this great bank, a
screen between sea and land extending about fourteen miles
eastward from Portland, this part of the coast must remain
inviolate from the speculative builder of seaside holiday
resorts or towns of lodging-houses.

Every one has heard of the Fleet in connection with the famous
swannery of Abbotsbury, the largest in the land. I had heard
so much about the swannery that it had but little interest for
me. The only thing about it which specially attracted my
attention was seeing a swan rise up and after passing over my
head as I stood on the bank fly straight out over the sea. I
watched him until he had diminished to a small white spot
above the horizon, and then still flying he faded from sight.
Do these swans that fly away over the sea, and others which
appear in small flocks or pairs at Poole Harbour and at other
places on the coast, ever return to the Fleet? Probably some
do, but, I fancy some of these explorers must settle down in
waters far from home, to return no more.

The village itself, looked upon from this same elevation, is
very attractive. Life seems quieter, more peaceful there out
of sight of the ocean's turbulence, out of hearing of its
"accents disconsolate." The cottages are seen ranged in a
double line along the narrow crooked street, like a procession
of cows with a few laggards scattered behind the main body.
One is impressed by its ancient character. The cottages are
old, stone-built and thatched; older still is the church with
its grey square tower, and all about are scattered the
memorials of antiquity--the chantry on the hill, standing
conspicuous alone, apart, above the world; the vast old abbey
barn, and, rough thick stone walls, ivy-draped and crowned
with beautiful valerian, and other fragments that were once
parts of a great religious house.

Looking back at the great round hill from the village it is
impossible not to notice the intense red colour of the road
that winds over its green slope. One sometimes sees on a
hillside a ploughed field of red earth which at a distance
might easily be taken for a field of blossoming trifolium.
Viewed nearer the crimson of the clover and red of the earth
are very dissimilar; distance appears to intensify the red of
the soil and to soften that of the flower until they are very
nearly of the same hue. The road at Abbotsbury was near and
looked to me more intensely red than any ordinary red earth,
and the sight was strangely pleasing. These two complementary
colours, red and green, delight us most when seen thus--a
little red to a good deal of green, and the more luminous the
red and vivid the green the better they please us. We see
this in flowers--in the red geranium, for example--where there
is no brown soil below, but green of turf or herbage. I
sometimes think the red campions and ragged-robins are our
most beautiful wild flowers when the sun shines level on the
meadow and they are like crimson flowers among the tall
translucent grasses. I remember the joy it was in boyhood in
early spring when the flowers were beginning to bloom, when in
our gallops over the level grass pampas we came upon a patch
of scarlet verbenas. The first sight of the intense blooms
scattered all about the turf would make us wild with delight,
and throwing ourselves from our ponies we would go down among
the flowers to feast on the sight.

Green is universal, but the red earth which looks so pleasing
amid the green is distributed very partially, and it may be
the redness of the soil and the cliffs in Devon have given
that county a more vivid personality, so to speak, than most
others. Think of Kent with its white cliffs, chalk downs, and
dull-coloured clays in this connection!

The humble subterraneous mole proves himself on occasions a
good colourist when he finds a soil of the proper hue to
burrow in, and the hillocks he throws up from numberless
irregular splashes of bright red colour on a green sward. The
wild animals that strike us as most beautiful, when seen
against a green background, are those which bear the reddest
fur--fox, squirrel, and red deer. One day, in a meadow a few
miles from Abbotsbury, I came upon a herd of about fifty milch
cows scattered over a considerable space of ground, some lying
down, others standing ruminating, and still others moving
about and cropping the long flowery grasses. All were of that
fine rich red colour frequently seen in Dorset and Devon
cattle, which is brighter than the reds of other red animals
in this country, wild and domestic, with the sole exception of
a rare variety of the collie dog. The Irish setter and red
chouchou come near it. So beautiful did these red cows look
in the meadow that I stood still for half an hour feasting my
eyes on the sight.

No less was the pleasure I experienced when I caught sight of
that road winding over the hill above the village. On going
to it I found that it had looked as red as rust simply because
it was rust-earth made rich and beautiful in colour with iron,
its red hue variegated with veins and streaks of deep purple
or violet. I was told that there were hundreds of acres of
this earth all round the place--earth so rich in iron that
many a man's mouth had watered at the sight of it; also that
every effort had been made to induce the owner of Abbotsbury
to allow this rich mine to be worked. But, wonderful to
relate, he had not been persuaded.

A hard fragment of the red stuff, measuring a couple of inches
across and weighing about three ounces avoirdupois, rust-red
in colour with purple streaks and yellow mottlings, is now
lying before me. The mineralogist would tell me that its
commercial value is naught, or something infinitesimal; which
is doubtless true enough, as tens of thousands of tons of the
same material lie close to the surface under the green turf
and golden blossoming furze at the spot where I picked up my
specimen. The lapidary would not look at it; nevertheless, it
is the only article of jewellery I possess, and I value it
accordingly. And I intend to keep this native ruby by me for
as long as the lords of Abbotsbury continue in their present
mind. The time may come when I shall be obliged to throw it
away. That any millionaire should hesitate for a moment to
blast and blacken any part of the earth's surface, howsoever
green and refreshing to the heart it may be, when by so doing
he might add to his income, seems like a fable, or a tale of
fairyland. It is as if one had accidentally discovered the
existence of a little fantastic realm, a survival from a
remote past, almost at one's doors; a small independent
province, untouched by progress, asking to be conquered and
its antediluvian constitution taken from it.

From the summit of that commanding hill, over which the red
path winds, a noble view presents itself of the Chesil Bank,
or of about ten miles of it, running straight as any Roman
road, to end beneath the rugged stupendous cliffs of Portland.
The ocean itself, and not conquering Rome, raised this
artificial-looking wall or rampart to stay its own proud
waves. Formed of polished stones and pebbles, about two
hundred yards in width, flat-topped, with steeply sloping
sides, at this distance it has the appearance of a narrow
yellow road or causeway between the open sea on one hand and
the waters of the Fleet, a narrow lake ten miles long, on the
other.

When the mackerel visit the coast, and come near enough to be
taken in a draw-net, every villager who owns a share (usually
a tenth) in a fishing-boat throws down his spade or whatever
implement he happens to have in his hand at the moment, and
hurries away to the beach to take his share in the fascinating
task. At four o'clock one morning a youth, who had been down
to the sea to watch, came running into the village uttering
loud cries which were like excited yells--a sound to rouse the
deepest sleeper. The mackerel had come! For the rest of the
day there was a pretty kind of straggling procession of those
who went and came between the beach and the village--men in
blue cotton shirts, blue jerseys, blue jackets, and women in
grey gowns and big white sun-bonnets. During the latter part
of the day the proceedings were peculiarly interesting to me,
a looker-on with no share in any one of the boats, owing to
the catches being composed chiefly of jelly-fish. Some
sympathy was felt for the toilers who strained their muscles
again and again only to be mocked in the end; still, a draught
of jelly-fish was more to my taste than one of mackerel. The
great weight of a catch of this kind when the net was full was
almost too much for the ten or twelve men engaged in drawing
it up; then (to the sound of deep curses from those of the men
who were not religious) the net would be opened and the great
crystalline hemispheres, hyaline blue and delicate salmon-pink
in colour, would slide back into the water. Such rare and
exquisite colours have these great glassy flowers of ocean
that to see them was a feast; and every time a net was hauled
up my prayer--which I was careful not to repeat aloud--was,
Heaven send another big draught of jelly-fish!

The sun, sinking over the hills towards Swyre and Bridport,
turned crimson before it touched the horizon. The sky became
luminous; the yellow Chesil Bank, stretching long leagues
away, and the hills behind it, changed their colours to
violet. The rough sea near the beach glittered like gold; the
deep green water, flecked with foam, was mingled with fire;
the one boat that remained on it, tossing up and down near the
beach, was like a boat of ebony in a glittering fiery sea. A
dozen men were drawing up the last net; but when they gathered
round to see what they had taken--mackerel or jelly-fish--I
cared no longer to look with them. That sudden, wonderful
glory which had fallen on the earth and sea had smitten me as
well and changed me; and I was like some needy homeless tramp
who has found a shilling piece, and, even while he is
gloating over it, all at once sees a great treasure before
him--glittering gold in heaps, and all rarest sparkling gems,
more than he can gather up.

But it is a poor simile. No treasures in gold and gems,
though heaped waist-high all about, could produce in the
greediest man, hungry for earthly pleasures, a delight, a
rapture, equal to mine. For this joy was of another and
higher order and very rare, and was a sense of lightness and
freedom from all trammels as if the body had become air,
essence, energy, or soul, and of union with all visible
nature, one with sea and land and the entire vast overarching
sky.

We read of certain saints who were subject to experiences of
this kind that they were "snatched up" into some supramundane
region, and that they stated on their return to earth that it
was not lawful for them to speak of the things they had
witnessed. The humble naturalist and nature-worshipper can
only witness the world glorified--transfigured; what he finds
is the important thing. I fancy the mystics would have been
nearer the mark if they had said that their experiences during
their period of exaltation could not be reported, or that it
would be idle to report them, since their questioners lived on
the ground and would be quite incapable on account of the
mind's limitations of conceiving a state above it and outside
of its own experience.

The glory passed and with it the exaltation: the earth and sea
turned grey; the last boat was drawn up on the slope and the
men departed slowly: only one remained, a rough-looking youth,
about fifteen years old. Some important matter which he was
revolving in his mind had detained him alone on the darkening
beach. He sat down, then stood up and gazed at the rolling
wave after wave to roar and hiss on the shingle at his feet;
then he moved restlessly about, crunching pebbles beneath his
thick boots; finally, making up his mind, he took off his
coat, threw it down, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, with the
resolute air of a man about to engage in a fight with an
adversary nearly as big as himself. Stepping back a little
space, he made a rush at the sea, not to cast himself in it,
but only, as it turned out, with the object of catching some
water in the hollow of his hands from the top of an incoming
wave. He only succeeded in getting his legs wet, and in
hastily retreating he fell on his back. Nothing daunted, he
got up and renewed the assault, and when he succeeded in
catching water in his hands he dashed it on and vigorously
rubbed it over his dirty face. After repeating the operation
about a dozen times, receiving meanwhile several falls and
wettings, he appeared satisfied, put on his coat and marched
away homewards with a composed air.

Chapter Twenty: Salisbury Revisited

Since that visit to Salisbury, described in a former chapter,
when I watched and listened to the doves in those cold days in
early spring, I have been there a good many times, but never
at the time when the bird colony is most interesting to
observe, just before and during the early part of the
breeding-season. At length, in the early days of June, 1908,
the wished opportunity was mine--wished yet feared, seeing
that it was possible some disaster had fallen upon that unique
colony of stock-doves. It is true they appeared to be long
established and well able to maintain their foothold on the
building in spite of malicious persecuting daws, but there was
nothing to show that they had been long there, seeing that it
had been observed by no person but myself that the cathedral
doves were stock-doves and not the domestic pigeon found on
other large buildings. Great was my happiness to find them
still there, as well as the daws and all the other feathered
people who make this great building their home; even the
kestrels were not wanting. There were three there one
morning, quarrelling with the daws in the old way in the old
place, halfway up the soaring spire. The doves were somewhat
diminished in number, but there were a good many pairs still,
and I found no dead young ones lying about, as they were now
probably grown too large to be ejected, but several young
daws, about a dozen I think, fell to the ground during my
stay. Undoubtedly they were dragged out of their nests and
thrown down, perhaps by daws at enmity with their parents, or
it may be by the doves, who are not meek-spirited, as we have
seen, or they would not be where they are, and may on occasion
retaliate by invading their black enemies' nesting-holes.

Swallows, martins, and swifts were numerous, the martins
especially, and it was beautiful to see them for ever wheeling
about in a loose swarm about the building. They reminded me
of bees and flies, and sometimes with a strong light on them
they were like those small polished black and silvery-white
beetles (Gyrinus) which we see in companies on the surface of
pools and streams, perpetually gliding and whirling about in a
sort of complicated dance. They looked very small at a height
of a couple of hundred feet from the ground, and their
smallness and numbers and lively and eccentric motions made
them very insect-like.

The starlings and sparrows were in a small minority among the
breeders, but including these there were seven species in all,
and as far as I could make out numbered about three hundred
and fifty birds--probably the largest wild bird colony on any
building in England.

Nor could birds in all this land find a more beautiful
building to nest on, unless I except Wells Cathedral solely on
account of its west front, beloved of daws, and where their
numerous black company have so fine an appearance. Wells has
its west front; Salisbury, so vast in size, is yet a marvel of
beauty in its entirety; and seeing it as I now did every day
and wanting nothing better, I wondered at my want of
enthusiasm on a previous visit. Still, to me, the bird
company, the sight of their airy gambols and their various
voices, from the deep human-like dove tone to the perpetual
subdued rippling, running-water sound of the aerial martins,
must always be a principal element in the beautiful effect.
Nor do I know a building where Nature has done more in
enhancing the loveliness of man's work with her added
colouring. The way too in which the colours are distributed
is an example of Nature's most perfect artistry; on the lower,
heavier buttressed parts, where the darkest hues should be, we
find the browns and rust-reds of the minute aerial alga, mixed
with the greys of lichen, these darker stainings extending
upwards to a height of fifty or sixty feet, in places higher,
then giving place to more delicate hues, the pale tender
greens and greenish greys, in places tinged with yellow, the
colours always appearing brightest on the smooth surface
between the windows and sculptured parts. The effect depends
a good deal on atmosphere and weather: on a day of flying
clouds and a blue sky, with a brillaint sunshine on the vast
building after a shower, the colouring is most beautiful. It
varies more than in the case of colour in the material itself
or of pigments, because it is a "living" colour, as Crabbe
rightly says in his lumbering verse:

The living stains, which Nature's hand alone,
Profuse of life, pours out upon the stone.

Greys, greens, yellows, and browns and rust-reds are but the
colours of a variety of lowly vegetable forms, mostly lichens
and the aerial alga called iolithus.

Without this colouring, its "living stains," Salisbury would
not have fascinated me as it did during this last visit. It
would have left me cold though all the architects and artists
had assured me that it was the most perfectly beautiful
building on earth.

I also found an increasing charm in the interior, and made the
discovery that I could go oftener and spend more hours in this
cathedral without a sense of fatigue or depression than in any
other one known to me, because it has less of that peculiar
character which we look for and almost invariably find in our
cathedrals. It has not the rich sombre majesty, the dim
religious light and heavy vault-like atmosphere of the other
great fanes. So airy and light is it that it is almost like
being out of doors. You do not experience that instantaneous
change, as of a curtain being drawn excluding the light and
air of day and of being shut in, which you have on entering
other religious houses. This is due, first, to the vast size
of the interior, the immense length of the nave, and the
unobstructed view one has inside owing to the removal by the
"vandal" Wyatt of the old ponderous stone screen--an act for
which I bless while all others curse his memory; secondly, to
the comparatively small amount of stained glass there is to
intercept the light. So graceful and beautiful is the
interior that it can bear the light, and light suits it best,
just as a twilight best suits Exeter and Winchester and other
cathedrals with heavy sculptured roofs. One marvels at a
building so vast in size which yet produces the effect of a
palace in fairyland, or of a cathedral not built with hands
but brought into existence by a miracle.

I began to think it not safe to stay in that place too long
lest it should compel me to stay there always or cause me to
feel dissatisfied and homesick when away.

But the interior of itself would never have won me, as I had
not expected to be won by any building made by man; and from
the inside I would pass out only to find a fresh charm in that
part where Nature had come more to man's aid.

Walking on the cathedral green one morning, glancing from time
to time at the vast building and its various delicate shades
of colour, I asked myself why I kept my eyes as if on purpose
away from it most of the time, now on the trees, then on the
turf, and again on some one walking there--why, in fact, I
allowed myself only an occasional glance at the object I was
there solely to look at. I knew well enough, but had never
put it into plain words for my own satisfaction.

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