CHAPTER VI.
FICTION, EARLY AND LATE
There lies before me a roll containing certain newspaper extracts pasted on paper and sewed together. They are cuttings from the North Wilts Herald, and contain a romance, entitled "A Strange Story," written "expressly" for that paper, and signed "Geoffrey." That Geoffrey – let us reveal a long-buried secret – was none other than Richard Jefferies himself. The "Strange Story" was published on June 30, 1866. It is blood-curdling; it is, in fact, the work of a boy. Between July 21 and August 4 of the same year, a second tale appeared by the same author; it is called "Henrique Beaumont." There is a murder in it, and, of course, a murderer. Lightning – sign of Heaven's wrath – reveals that the murderer's face, after the deed, is as pale as death. A third tale is called "Who Will Win? or, American Adventure." There is fighting in it, with negroes, hairbreadth escapes, and such things, in breathless succession. A fourth and last tale is called "Masked." These boyish efforts are only mentioned here to show in what direction the lad's thoughts were running. Considered as a lad's productions, they require no comment. At the outset, Jefferies proposed fiction to himself as the most desirable form of literature, and the most likely form with which to court success. Almost to the end he continued to keep this ambition before himself. The list of his serious attempts at fiction is respectable as regards number. It includes the following:
"The Scarlet Shawl," one vol., 1874.
"Restless Human Hearts," three vols., 1875.
"World's End," three vols., 1877.
"Green Fern Farm," three vols., 1880.
"The Dewy Morn," two vols., 1884.
"Amaryllis at the Fair," one vol., 1887.
To these may be added – but they must be treated separately – "Wood Magic," a fable, 1881, and "Bevis," three vols., 1882. Perhaps "After London" may also be accounted a work of fiction.
"The Scarlet Shawl" was published in July, 1874, in one volume. As the work is stated on the title-page to have advanced to a second edition, one of two things is certain – namely, either the book appealed to a large number of readers, or the editions were very small indeed. I incline, myself, to the latter opinion.
Great as is the admiration of Jefferies' readers for his best and noblest work, it must be frankly confessed that, regarded as a story-teller, he is not successful. Why this is so we will presently inquire. As regards this, his earliest serious work of fiction, there is one remarkable fact, quite without precedent in the history of literature – it is that the book affords not the slightest indication of genius, insight, descriptive or dramatic power, or, indeed, of any power, especially of that kind with which he was destined to make his name. It is a book which any publisher's reader, after glancing at the pages, would order to be returned instantly, without opinion given or explanation offered; it is a book which a young man of such real promise, with such a splendid career before him, ought somehow to have been prevented from publishing. Two reviews of it are preserved in a certain book of extracts – one from the Athenæum, and one from the Graphic. The story was also made a peg by a writer in the Globe for some unkind remarks about modern fiction generally. It is only mentioned here because we would not be accused of suppressing facts, and because there is no author who has not made similar false starts, mistakes, and attempts in lines unsuited to his genius. It is not much blame to Jefferies that his first novel was poor; it was his misfortune that no one told him at the outset that a book of which the author has to pay the expense of production is probably worthless. It is, perhaps, wonderful that the author could possibly think it good. There are, one imagines, limits even to an author's illusions as regards his own work. But it is not so wonderful that Jefferies should at this time, when he was still quite young and ignorant of the world, write a worthless book, as that he should at any time at all write a book which had not the least touch of promise or of power.
Consider, however. What is the reason why a young author so often shows a complete inability to discover how bad his early work really is? It is that he is wholly unable to understand – no young writer can understand – the enormous difference between his powers of conception and imagination – which are often enormous – and those of execution. If it were worth while, I think it would be possible to extricate from the crude pages of "The Scarlet Shawl" the real novel which the writer actually had in his mind, and fondly thought to have transferred to the printed page. That novel would, I dare say, have been sweet and wholesome, pure and poetical. The thing which he submitted to the public was a work in which all these qualities were conspicuously wanting. The young poet reads his own verses, his mind full of splendid images, half-formed characters, clouds of bewildering colours, and imagines that he has fixed these floating splendours in immortal verse. When he has forgotten what was in his mind while he was writing that verse, he will be able to understand how feeble are his rhymes, but not till then. I offer this as some explanation of these early novels.
Consider, again. He never was a novelist; he never could be one. To begin with, he knew nothing of society, nothing of men and women, except the people of a small country town. There are, truly, materials for dramatic fiction in plenty upon a farm and in a village; but Jefferies was not the man to perceive them and to use them. His strength lay elsewhere, and as yet he had not found his strength.
Another reason why he could never be a novelist was that he wholly lacked the dramatic faculty. He could draw splendid landscapes, but he could not connect them together by the thread of human interest. Nature in his books is always first, and humanity always second. Two figures are in the foreground, but one hardly cares to look at them in contemplating the wonderful picture which surrounds them.
Again, he did not understand, so to speak, stage management. When he had got a lot of puppets in his hands, he could not make them act. And he was too self-contained to be a novelist; he could never get rid of his own personality. When he succeeds in making his reader realize a character, it is when that character is either himself, as in "Bevis," or a part of himself, as Farmer Iden in "Amaryllis." The story in his earlier attempts is always imitative, awkward, and conventional; it is never natural and never spontaneous. In his later books he lays aside all but the mere pretence of a story. The individual pictures which he presents are delightful and wonderful; they are like his short essays and articles – they may be read with enormous pleasure – but the story, what is the story? Where is it? There is none. There is only the promise of a story not worked out – left, not half untold, but hardly begun, as in "After London" and in "Amaryllis at the Fair." You may put down any of his so-called novels at any time with no more regret than that this scene or that picture was not longer. As the writer never took any interest in his own characters – one understands that as clearly as if it was proclaimed upon the house-tops – so none of his readers can be expected to feel any interest. It is the old, old story. In any kind of art – it matters not what – if you wish your readers to weep, you must first be constrained to weep yourself. Many other reasons might be produced for showing that Jefferies could never have been a successful novelist; but these may suffice.
Meantime, the wonder remains. How could the same hand write the coarse and clumsy "Scarlet Shawl" which was shortly to give the world such sweet and delicate work, so truthful, so artistic, so full of fine feeling? How could that be possible? Indeed, one cannot altogether explain it. Collectors of Jefferies' books – unless they are mere collectors who want to have a complete set – will do well to omit the early novels. They belong to that class of book which quickly becomes scarce, but never becomes rare.
There are limitations in the work of every man. With such a man as Jefferies, the limitations were narrower than with most of those who make a mark in the history of literature. He was to succeed in one way – only in one way. Outside that way, failure, check, disappointment, even derision, awaited him. In the "Eulogy of Richard Jefferies" one can afford to confess these limitations. He is so richly endowed that one can well afford to confess them. It no more detracts from his worth and the quality of his work to own that he was no novelist than it would be to confess that he was no sculptor.
But the wonder of it! How could such a man write these works, being already five or six and twenty years of age, without revealing himself? It is as if one who was to become a great singer should make his first attempt and break down without even revealing the fact that he had a noble voice, as yet untrained. Or as if one destined to be a great painter should send in a picture for exhibition in which there was no drawing, or sense of colour, or grouping, or management of lights, or any promise at all. The thing cannot be wholly explained. It is a phenomenon in literature.
It is best, I say, to acknowledge these limitations fully and frankly, so that we may go on with nothing, so to speak, to conceal. Let us grant all the objections to Jefferies as a story-teller that anyone may choose to make. In the ordinary sense of the word, Jefferies was not a novelist; in the artistic sense of the word, he was not a novelist. This fully understood and conceded, we can afterwards consider his later so-called novels as so many storehouses filled with priceless treasure.
I have in my hands certain letters which Jefferies addressed to Messrs. Tinsley Brothers on the subject of his MSS. They are curious, and rather saddening to read. They begin in the year 1872 with proposals that the firm should publish a work called "Only a Girl," "the leading idea of which is the delineation of a girl entirely unconventional, entirely unfettered by precedent, and in sentiment always true to herself." He writes a first letter on the subject in May. In September he reopens the subject.
"The scenery is a description of that found in this county, with every portion of which I have been familiar for many years. The characters are drawn from life, though so far disguised as to render too easy identification impossible. I have worked in many of the traditions of Wilts, endeavouring, in fact, in a humble manner to do for that county what Whyte Melville has done for Northampton and Miss Braddon for Yorkshire."
As nothing more is written on the subject of "Only a Girl," I suppose she was suppressed altogether, or worked up into another book.
In 1874 he attacks the same publishers with a new MS. This time it is "The Scarlet Shawl." It will be easily understood, from what has gone before, that he was asked to pay a sum of money in advance in order to cover the risk – in this case, to pay beforehand the certain loss. He objected to the amount proposed, and says with charming simplicity:
"I mean to become a name sooner or later. I shall stick to the first publisher who takes me up; and, unless I am very much mistaken, we shall make money. To write a tale is to me as easy as to write a letter, and I do not see why I should not issue two a year for the next twelve or fifteen years. I can hardly see the possible loss from a novel."
This is really wonderful. This young man knows so little about the writing of novels as to suppose that, because it is easy for him to write two "Scarlet Shawls" a year, there can be no possible loss in them! You see that he had everything to learn. You may also observe that from the beginning he has never faltered in his one ambition. He will succeed; and he will succeed in literature.
Terms are finally agreed upon, and "The Scarlet Shawl" is produced. Some time afterwards he writes for a cheque, and receives an account, whether accompanied by a cheque or not does not appear. But he submits the account to a friend, who assures him that it is correct. Thus satisfied, he finishes a second story, this time in three volumes. It was called "Restless Human Hearts."
In the following year "Restless Human Hearts," in three volumes, was brought out by the same firm. In the book of extracts, from which I have already drawn, there are four or five reviews preserved. They are all of the same opinion, and it is not a flattering opinion. The Graphic admitted that there was one scene drawn with considerable power. One need not dwell longer upon this work. Jefferies, in fact, was describing a society of which he knew absolutely nothing, and was drawing on his imagination for a picture which he tendered as one of contemporary manners. At this juncture – nay, at every point – of his literary career, he wanted someone to stand at his elbow and make him tear up everything – everything – that pretended to describe a society of which he knew nothing. The hero appears to have been a wicked nobleman. Heavens! what did this young provincial journalist know of wicked noblemen? But he had read about them, when he was a boy. He had read the sensational romances in which the nobleman was, at that time, always represented as desperately wicked. In these later days the nobleman of the penny novelette is generally pictured as virtuous. Why and how this change of view has been brought about it is impossible in this place to inquire; but Jefferies belonged to the generation of wicked dukes and vicious earls.
The terms upon which "Restless Human Hearts" was published do not appear from the letters extant. Jefferies writes, however, a most sensible letter on the subject. He refuses absolutely to pay any more for publishing his own books. He says:
"This is about the worst speculation into which I could possibly put the money. Therefore I am resolved to spend no more upon the matter, whether the novel gets published or not. The magazines pay well, and immediately after publication the cheque is forwarded. It seems the height of absurdity, after receiving a cheque for a magazine article, to go and pay a sum of money just to get your tale in print. I was content to do so the first time, because it is in accordance with the common rule of all trades to pay your footing." The resemblance is not complete, let me say, because the new author, on this theory, would not pay his footing to other authors, but to a publisher, and, besides, such a proposal has never been made to any author. "I might just as well," he concludes, "put the cheque in the fire as print a tale at my own expense."
Quite so. Most sensibly put. Young authors will do well to lay this discovery to heart. They may be perfectly certain that a manuscript which respectable firms refuse to publish at their own risk and expense is not worth publishing at all, and they may just as well put their bank-notes upon the fire as pay them to a publisher for producing their works. Nay, much better, because they will thus save themselves an infinite amount of disappointment and humiliation.
Before "Restless Human Hearts" is well out of the binder's hands, he is ready – this indefatigable spinner of cobwebs – with another story. It is called "In Summer-Time." He is apparently oblivious of the brave words quoted above, and is now ready to advance £20 towards the risk of the new novel. Nothing came of the proposal, and "In Summer-Time" went to join "Only a Girl."
In the same year – this is really a most wonderful record of absolutely wasted energy – he has an allegory written in Bunyanesque English called "The New Pilgrim's Progress; or, A Christian's Painful Passage from the Town of Middle Class to the Golden City." This, too, sinks into oblivion, and is heard of no more.
Undeterred by all this ill-success, Jefferies proceeds to write yet another novel, called "World's End." He says that he has spent a whole winter upon it.
"The story centres round the great property at Birmingham, considered to be worth four millions, which is without an owner. A year or two ago there was a family council at that city of a hundred claimants from America, Australia, and other places, but it is still in Chancery. This is the core, or kernel, round which the plot develops itself. I think, upon perusal, you would find it a striking book, and full of original ideas."
In consideration of the failure of "Restless Human Hearts," he offers his publisher the whole of the first edition for nothing, which seems fair, and one hopes that his publisher recouped by this first edition his previous losses. The reviewers were kinder to "World's End." The Queen, the Graphic, and the Spectator spoke of it with measured approbation, but no enthusiasm.
He writes again, offering a fourth novel, called "The Dewy Morn;" but as no more letters follow, it is probable that the work was refused. This looks as if the success of "World's End" was limited. "The Dewy Morn," in the later style, was published in 1884 by Messrs. Chapman and Hall.
The appearance of "World's End" marks the conclusion of one period of his life. Henceforth Jefferies abandons his ill-starred attempts to paint manners which he never saw, a society to which he never belonged, and the life of people concerning whom he knew nothing. He has at last made the discovery that this kind of work is absolutely futile. Yet he does not actually realize the fact until he has made many failures, and wasted a great deal of time, and is nearly thirty years of age. Henceforth his tales, if we are to call them tales, his papers, sketches, and finished pictures, will be wholly rural. He has written "The Dewy Morn," and apparently the work has been refused; there was little in his previous attempts to tempt a publisher any farther. He will now write "Greene Ferne Farm," "Bevis," "After London," and "Amaryllis at the Fair." They are not novels at all, though he chooses to call them novels; they are a series of pictures, some of beauty and finish incomparable, strung together by some sort of thread of human interest which nobody cares to follow.
CHAPTER VII.
IN FULL CAREER
Never, certainly, did any man have a better chance of success in literature than Jefferies about the year 1876. He had made himself, to begin with, an authority on the most interesting of all subjects; he knew more about farming – that is to say, farming in his own part of the country – than any other man who could wield a pen; he had written papers full of the most brilliant suggestions, as well as knowledge, as to the future of agriculture and its possible developments; he had written things which made people ask if there had truly arisen an agricultural prophet in the land. And he was as yet only twenty-eight. Of all young authors, he seems to have been the man most to be envied. Everything that he had so long desired seemed now lying at his feet ready to be picked up. To use the old parlance, the trumpet of fame was already resounding in the heavens for him, and the crown of honour was already being woven for his brows.
Some men would have made of this splendid commencement a golden ladder of fortune. They would have come to town – the first step, whether one is to become a millionnaire or a Laureate; they would have joined clubs; they would have gone continually in and out among their fellow-men, and especially those of their own craft or mystery; they would have been seen as much as possible in society; they would have stood up to speak on platforms; they would have sought to be mentioned in the papers; they would have courted popularity in the ways very well known to all, and commonly practised without concealment. Such a man as Jefferies might have made himself, without much trouble, a great power in London.
Well, Jefferies did not become a power in London at all. He could not; everything was against him, except the main fact that the way was open to him. First, the air of the town choked and suffocated him; he panted for the breath of the fields. Next, he had no knowledge or experience of men; he never belonged to society at all, not even to the quiet society of a London suburb; he had none of the conversation which belongs to clubs and to club life; he never associated with literary men or London journalists; he knew nobody. Thirdly, there was the reserve which clung round him like a cloak which cannot be removed. He did not want to know anybody; he was not only reserved, but he was self-contained. Therefore, the success which he achieved did not mean to him what it should have meant had he been a man of the world. On the other hand, it must be conceded that no mere man of the world could write the things which Jefferies subsequently wrote. Let us, therefore, content ourselves with the reflection that his success proved in the end to be of a far higher kind than a mere worldly success. This knowledge, if such things follow beyond the grave, should be enough to make him happy.
He was himself contented – he was even happy – and desired nothing more than to go on finding a ready market for his wares, a sufficient income for the daily wants of his household, and that praise which means to authors far more than it means to any other class of men. Nobody praises the physician or the barrister: they go on their own way quite careless of the world's praise. But an author wants it; I think that all authors need praise. To work day after day, year after year, without recognition, thanks, or appreciation, must in the end become destructive to the highest genius. Praise makes a man write better. Praise gives him that happy self-confidence which permits the flow, and helps the expression, of his thoughts. Praise gives him audacity, a most useful quality for an author. Jefferies could never have written his best things but for the praise which he received. The chief reason, I verily believe, why his work went on improving was that every year that he lived after the appearance of the "Gamekeeper at Home" he received an ever increasing share of praise, appreciation and encouragement.
It was somewhere about the year 1876 that I myself first fell upon some of his work. I remember the delight with which I drank, as a bright and refreshing draught from a clear spring-head, the story of the country life as set forth by him, this writer, the like of whom I had never before read. Why, we must have been blind all our lives; here were the most wonderful things possible going on under our very noses, but we saw them not. Nay, after reading all the books and all the papers – every one – that Jefferies wrote between the years 1876 and 1887, after learning from him all that he had to teach, I cannot yet see these things. I see a hedge; I see wild rose, honeysuckle, black briony —herbe aux femmes battues, the French poetically call it – blackberry, hawthorn, and elder. I see on the banks sweet wildflowers whose names I learn from year to year, and straightway forget because they grow not in the streets. I know very well, because Jefferies has told me so much, what I should be able to see in the hedge and on the bank besides these simple things; but yet I cannot see them, for all his teaching. Mine – alas! – are eyes which have looked into shop windows and across crowded streets for half a century, save for certain intervals every year; they are also eyes which need glasses; they are slow to see things unexpected, ignorant of what should be expected; they are helpless eyes when they are turned from men and women to flowers, ferns, weeds, and grasses; they are, in fact, like unto the eyes of those men with whom I mostly consort. None of us – poor street-struck creatures! – can see the things we ought to see.
It happened unto me – by grace and special favour, I may call it – that in the course of my earthly pilgrimage I had for a great many years certain business transactions at regular short intervals with one who knew Jefferies well, because he married his only sister. The habit began, as soon as I learned that fact, of talking about Richard Jefferies as soon as our business was completed. Henceforward, therefore, week by week, I followed the fortunes of this man, and read not only his books and his papers, but learned his personal history, and heard what he was doing, and watched him curiously, unknown and unsuspected by himself. To be sure, his own people knew little, except in general terms, about his intentions or projects. It was not in Jefferies' nature to consult them. Another thing I knew not, because, with characteristic pride and reserve, he did not suffer even his brother-in-law or his sister to know it – viz., the terrible poverty of his later days.
I have never looked upon the face of Richard Jefferies. This, now that it is too late, is to me a deep and abiding sorrow. I always hoped some day to see him – there seemed so much time ahead – and to tell him, face to face, what one ought to tell such a man – it is a plain duty to tell this truth to such a man – how greatly I admired and valued his work, with what joy I received it, with what eagerness I expected it, what splendid qualities I found in it, what instruction and elevation of soul I derived from it. I have never even seen this man. I was not a friend of his – I was not even a casual acquaintance – and yet I am writing his life. Perhaps, in this strange way, by reading all that he wrote, by connecting his work continually with what I learned of his life and habits, and by learning, day by day, all the things which happened to him, I may have learned to know him more intimately even than some of those who rejoiced in being called his friends.
As for his personal habits, Jefferies was extremely simple and regular, even methodical. He breakfasted always at eight o'clock, often on nothing but dry toast and tea. After breakfast he went to his study, where he remained writing until half-past eleven. At that hour he always went out, whatever the weather and in all seasons, and walked until one o'clock. This morning walk was an absolute necessity for him. At one o'clock he returned and took an early dinner, which was his only substantial meal. His tastes were simple. He liked to have a plain roast or boiled joint, with abundance of vegetables, of which he was very fond, especially asparagus, sea-kale, and mushrooms. He would have preferred ale, but he found that light claret or burgundy suited him better, and therefore he drank daily a little of one or the other.
Dinner over, he read his daily paper, and slept for an hour by the fireside. Perhaps this after-dinner sleep may be taken as a sign of physical weakness. A young man of thirty ought not to want an hour's sleep in the middle of the day. At three o'clock he awoke, and went for another walk, coming home at half-past four. He thus walked for three hours every day, which, for a quick walker, gives a distance of twelve miles – a very good allowance of fresh air. Men of all kinds, who have to keep the brain in constant activity, have found that the active exercise of walking is more valuable than any other way of recreation in promoting a healthy activity of the brain. To talk with children is a rest; to visit picture-galleries changes the current of thought; to play lawn tennis diverts the brain; but to walk both rests the brain and stimulates it. Jefferies acquired the habit of noting down in his walks, and storing away, those thousands of little things which make his writings the despair of people who think themselves minute observers. He took tea at five, and then worked again in his study till half-past eight, when he commonly finished work for the day. In other words, he gave up five hours of the solid day to work. It is, I think, impossible for a man to carry on literary work of any but the humblest kind for more than five hours a day; three hours remained for exercise, and the rest for food, rest, and reading. He took a little supper at nine, of cold meat and bread, with a glass of claret, and then read or conversed until eleven, when he went to bed. He took tobacco very rarely.
He had not a large library, because the works which he most wished to procure were generally beyond his means. For instance, he was always desirous, but never able, to purchase Sowerby's "English Wild-Flowers." His favourite novelists were Scott and Charles Reade. The conjunction of these two names gives me singular pleasure, as to one who admires the great qualities of Reade. He also liked the works of Ouida and Miss Braddon. He never cared greatly for Charles Dickens. I think the reason why Dickens did not touch him was that the kind of lower middle-class life which Dickens knew so well, and loved to portray, belonged exclusively to the town, which Jefferies did not know, and not to the country, which he did. He was never tired of Goethe's "Faust," which was always new to him. He loved old ballads, and among the poets, Dryden's works were his favourite reading. In one thing he was imperious: the house must be kept quiet – absolutely quiet – while he was at work. Any household operations that made the least noise had to be postponed till he went out for his walk.
I have before me a great number of note-books filled with observations, remarks, ideas, hints, and suggestions of all kinds by him. He carried them about during his walks, and while he was always watching the infinite wealth and variety of Nature, the multitudinous forms of life, he was always noting down what he saw. To read these note-books is like reading an unclassified index to the works of Nature. And since they throw so much light upon his methods, and prove – if that wanted any proof – how careful he was to set down nothing that had not been noted and proved by himself, I have copied some few pages, which are here reproduced. Observe that these extracts are taken almost at random from two or three note-books. The writing is cramped, and in parts very difficult to make out.