Chapter XIII: Conclusion

I think that I have never read, in all the sad chronicles of hapless authors, anything more pitiful than the history of the last years of this life so short, yet so rich in its sheaves of golden grain and piles of purple fruit. Everything possible of long-continued torture, necessity of work, poverty, anxiety, and hope of recovery continually deferred, are crammed into the miserable record which closes this volume.

Jefferies fell ill in December, 1881, five years and a half before the end. He was attacked by a disease for which an operation of a very severe and painful nature is the only cure. It is, however, one which, in the hands of a skilful surgeon, is generally successful. Horrible to relate, in his case, the operation proved unsuccessful, and had to be repeated again and again. Four times in twelve months the dreadful surgeon's knife was used upon this poor sufferer. For a whole year he could do no work at all. The modest savings of the preceding years were spent upon the physicians and the surgeons, and in the maintenance of his household, while the pen of the breadwinner was perforce resting. Before he was able to take pen in hand again, he was reduced to something approaching destitution. You shall read directly how, when he recovered, hope immediately returned, and he was once more happy in the thought that now he could again work, though it was to begin the world once more. Alas! the interval of hope was brief indeed. Another, and a more mysterious disease attacked him. He felt an internal pain constantly gnawing him; he could not eat without pain; he grew daily weaker; he was at last no longer able to walk; he could only crawl.

Henceforth his days and nights were a long struggle against suffering, with a determination, however, to go on with his work. Nothing more wonderful than the courage and resolution of this man. As in youth he had resolved to succeed somehow, though as yet ignorant of the better way, so now he _would_ not be beaten by pain. His very best work, the work which will cause him to live, the work which places him among the writers of his country, to be remembered and to be read long after the men of his generation are dead and forgotten, was actually done while he was in this suffering. The "Pageant of Summer," for example: well, the "Pageant of Summer" reads as if it were the work of a man revelling in the warmth of the quivering air; of a man in perfect health and strength, body and mind at ease, surrendered wholly to the influence of the flowers and the sunshine, at peace, save for the natural sadness of one who communes much with himself on change, decay, and death. And yet the "Pageant of Summer" was written while he was in deadly pain and torture. Again, between 1883 and 1886 he published those collections of papers called "Life in the Fields" and "The Open Air." He also wrote "Red Deer," "Amaryllis," and a quantity of papers which have yet to be collected and published. If, even for a moment, he had an interval of strength, his busy pen began again to race over the paper, hasting to set down the thoughts that filled his brain.

His disease was discovered, after a period of intense suffering, to be an ulceration of the small intestine. It was weakness induced by this disease, which caused other complications, under which he gradually sank.

I suppose that Jefferies could never be considered a strong man. As a boy, tall, active, nervous, he was muscularly weaker than his younger brother. At the age of eighteen he showed symptoms which caused fear of a decline. Perhaps his intense love of the open air indicated the kind of medicine which he most needed. When he could no longer go into the open air he died. Perhaps, too, the consciousness of physical weakness, the sense of impending early death, caused him to yearn with so much longing after physical perfection and the fuller life which he clearly saw was possible. Those who are doomed to die young--as has been often observed--have the deepest sense and the keenest enjoyment of life.

Still, though not a strong man, he was apparently a healthy man. He lived at all times a simple and a healthy life; there was nothing to show that he was going to be struck down by so cruel an illness.

The period of greatest suffering seems to have been in the year 1884. The weakness following it set in some time during the year 1885.

He writes to Mr. Charles Longman in May of the latter year:

"Your suggestion"--that he should write a year-book of Nature--"of
a diary out of doors would no doubt make a good book, and I shall
give serious thought to it. My great difficulty is the physical
difficulty of writing. Since the spine gave way, there is no
position in which I can lie or sit so as to use a pen without
distress. Even a short letter like this is painful. Consequently, a
vast mass of ideas go into space, for I cannot write them down."

In August he returns to the subject:

"Many thanks for your kind letter and interest in my weakness. I
sometimes rather need moral support of this sort, for after so long
the spirits show signs of flagging, and the way seems endless. Such
sympathy, therefore, helps me very much.... I should have liked to
have written the book you proposed. I made several attempts, but it
never satisfied me. I am glad, at all events, that you have
forgiven my unintentional nonfulfilment of the promise. Even yet,
perhaps, I may do something in that direction. Professor Gamgee,
under whom I have been lately, says that complete recovery would
follow a few weeks' basking in South Africa, or, failing that,
Southern Europe. There is plenty of energy in me still. I sometimes
dream of using the rifle--a dream, indeed, to a man who can with
difficulty drag himself across a field."

In June he writes to his friend, Mr. C.P. Scott, of the _Manchester Guardian_:

"Since I last wrote to you I have been very seriously ill. The
starvation went on and on, and no one could relieve it, till I had
to stay in the bedroom, and finally went to bed, fainting nearly
all day and night, and yet craving for food, half delirious, and in
the most dreadful state. How I endured I cannot tell. At last I had
Dr. Kidd down from London, and in forty-eight hours his treatment
checked the disease. I got downstairs, next, out of doors in a
Bath-chair, and now I can walk two hundred yards. But I am still
the veriest shadow of a man--my nerves are gone to pieces--and he
warns me that it will take months to effect a cure. Of that,
however, he is certain. Under his advice I have left Eltham, and am
staying here (Rotherfield, Sussex) till a cottage can be found for
me near Tunbridge Wells.... My last piece of MS. appears in
_Longman_ this month, and I have now no more left, having exhausted
all I wrote when able. At least, there remains but one
piece--'Nature in the Louvre.' It is about a beautiful statue that
interested me greatly, and which seems to have escaped notice in
England. I think you would like the ideas expressed in it."

At this time it was suggested that he should make an application to the Royal Literary Fund. He writes both to Mr. Longman and to Mr. Scott in the strongest terms upon the subject. I do not, for my own part, in the least agree with Jefferies in his wholesale condemnation of that useful society, and therefore have the less hesitation in printing what he says of it:

'August 18, 1885.

"You have put before me a very great temptation. It is impossible
for you to know how great, for there can be no doubt that it is the
winter that is my enemy. Last winter I was indoors six months--in
fact, it was eight before I really got out of doors, most of this
time helpless, sitting in an easy chair before the fire, my feet on
a pillow, and legs wrapped up in a railway-rug, up and down stairs
on hands and knees, and unable even to dress myself. Even now it
tears me to pieces even to walk a short distance. So that to pass
next winter in warmth seems almost like life, besides the great
possibility of complete recovery. There would be also the pleasure
of the sights and scenes of Algiers or South Africa. In short, it
has been a very great temptation, and I am sure it was most kind of
you to think of me. But the Royal Literary Fund is a thing to
accept aid from which humiliates the recipient past all bounds; it
is worse than the workhouse. If long illness ultimately drove me to
the workhouse, I should feel no disgrace, having done my utmost to
fight with difficulties. Everyone has a right to that last relief.
If this fund were maintained by pressmen, authors, journalists,
editors, publishers, newspaper proprietors, and so on, that would
be quite another matter. There would be no humiliation--rather the
contrary--and in time one might subscribe some day and help someone
else. It is no such thing. It is kept up by dukes and marquises,
lords and titled people, with a Prince at their head, and a vast
quantity of trumpet-blowing, in order that these people may say
they are patrons of literature! Patrons of literature! Was there
ever such a disgrace in the nineteenth century? Patrons of
literature! The thing is simply abominable! I dare say if I were a
town-born man I should not think so, but to me it wears an aspect
of standing insult.

"No doubt we ought to combine--all who have ever touched a
pen--then we could assist each other in a straightforward and manly
way.

"The temptation to me is very great indeed, because there is no
question that I have been slowly sinking for years for want of some
such travel or stimulus working through the nervous system. But I
have made up my mind to say no. I would rather run the risk of
quitting this world altogether next winter than degrade myself in
that way.

"I am trying all I can to move altogether to the neighbourhood of
the sea. Possibly, even Dorset or Devon might answer; or, failing
that, I may try to pay a short visit to Schwalbach, and see if the
natural iron medicine of a mineral spring may do what compound
physic cannot. But I fancy the sea residence would be preferable.

"Change is the only thing that as yet has affected me, which seems
to point conclusively to an exhausted system rather than to
disease."

To Mr. Scott he writes in a similar strain. It galls him to think of being "patronized," and, indeed, if that were the view taken by the council of the Royal Literary Fund, I, for one, should be the first to agree with him. But it is not. Jefferies was wrong about the supporters of the Fund which is, in fact, assisted by everybody who ever makes any success in literature, and by every writer of any distinction either in letters or in other fields. He adds, however, a paragraph in which I cordially agree, and to the carrying out of the suggestion contained in it some of us have, during the last three years, devoted a great deal of time and effort.

"We ought, of course, to have a real Literary Association, to which
subscription should be almost semi-compulsory. We ought to have
some organization. Literature is young yet--scarce fifty years
old. The legal and medical professions have had a start of a
thousand years. Our profession is young yet, but will be the first
of all in the time to come."

He goes on to speak of his health:

"Ever since Christmas I have been trying to move to the sea-coast,
but I cannot effect it. I cannot stick to work long enough to
produce any result, the extreme weakness will not let me, so that I
cannot do anything. Whatever I wish to do, it seems as if a voice
said, 'No, you shall not do it. Feebleness forbids.' I think I
should like a good walk. No. I think I should like to write. No. I
think I should like to rest. No. Always No to everything. Even
writing this letter has made the spine ache almost past endurance.
I cannot convey to you how miserable it is to be impotent; to feel
yourself full of ideas and work, and to be unable to effect
anything; to sit and waste the hours. It is absolutely maddening."

In November he writes again. He is at Crowborough, where the fine air at first seemed to be restoring him. He could walk about in the field at the back of the house.

"Suddenly I went down as if I had been shot. All the improvement
was lost, and now I have been indoors three months, steadily
becoming weaker and more emaciated every day. It is, in fact,
starvation. They cannot feed me, try what they will. No one would
believe what misery it is, and what extreme debility it produces.
The worst of all is the helplessness. Often I am compelled to sit
or lie for days and think, think, till I feel as if I should become
insane, for my mind seems as clear as ever, and the anxiety and
eager desire to do something is as strong as in my best days. There
is an ancient story of a living man tied to a dead one, and that is
like me; mind alive and body dead. I fear that my old friends will
give me up in time, because I cannot travel the path of friendship
now, and the Cymric proverb says that it soon grows covered with
briars."

A letter, dated June 19, 1886, is too sad to be quoted. His dependence on others, even for the putting on of his clothes, his longing for the sea-coast, which he thinks is certain to do him good, his lament over the poverty which, through no fault of his own, has fallen upon him, fill up this melancholy letter. Day and night there is no cessation of pain.

Help of all kinds was forthcoming from friends whom one must not name: money, the offer of a house on the sea-coast; but there was the difficulty of travelling. How was he to be moved? This difficulty was got over, and he went to Bexhill for a time, returning to Crowborough in September. The sea had done him good. On the night of his return, he enjoyed a tranquil sleep for some hours, and awoke without pain.

Among the letters sent to me by Mr. Scott is one from a well-known physician who had been consulted on the case.

"There is no doubt," he says, "that there is some tuberculous
affection of his lungs, though, so far as I have been able to make
out, this does not seem to be at all in an active state.

"The serious complaints which make his life a misery to him I
believe to be purely functional. He strikes me as being a very
marked example of hysteria in man, though in his case, as in many
among women, the commoner phenomena of hysteria are absent. I am
surprised to hear that he spoke warmly of my treatment, for he
would not admit to his ordinary attendant, nor to me, that his
symptoms had undergone any palliation whatever. He is prejudiced
against any treatment, and the result, according to him, always
agrees with his prediction."

Evidently an extremely difficult and nervous patient to treat. But that might be expected. In October of 1886, Mr. Scott proposed to raise a fund among the friends and admirers of his works which should be devoted to sending him to a warmer climate. He consented, though with pain and bitterness of soul. "I have written," he says, "fourteen books." He enumerates them. "Scarcely anyone living has done so much." Yet he forgets to consider for how small and select an audience he has written. "All of them have been praised by the reviews. I cannot help feeling it hard, after so much work, to come to such disgrace." It was hard, it was cruelly hard. While the pensions of the Civil List--a breach of trust if ever there was one--are bestowed upon daughters of distinguished officers and widows of civil servants, such a man as Jefferies, for whose assistance the grant is yearly asked and voted, is left to starve. It is indeed cruelly hard on literature that the rulers of the country should be so blind, so deaf, so pitiless--so dishonest. They made Burns a gauger. Well: that was something. Could they not have made Jefferies a police-constable, for instance? They gave him nothing: it would have been useless to ask any Government to give anything: they wanted all the money for persons for whom it was never intended. There never has been--there is not now--not even at a time when Prime Ministers and ex-Cabinet Ministers write articles for monthly magazines, any Government which has had the least concern for, knowledge of, or touch with, literature, or its makers. Authors must develop and increase their own Society, and then they will not have to ask the Government for any Civil Pension list at all, and ministers may go on asking for the grant for the support of science and letters, and giving it all to their own creatures, and to the daughters, widows, and sisters of officers. It is hard, it is cruelly hard, as Jefferies said: it is a hardship and a disgrace to all of us that such a man as Jefferies should "come to such disgrace."

Well, the fund was raised, quietly, among the private friends of its promoters. But it came too late for the Algerian or South African expedition. The sick man was sent, however, to the seaside; to a house at Goring, on the Sussex coast. From this place he wrote to Mr. Scott a little history of his illness, the nature of which I have already sketched. The description by a highly-sensitive man, then in a most nervous condition, of the horrible pain which he had been enduring is most terrible to read, and is altogether too terrible to be quoted. I dare not quote the whole of this dreadful story of long-continued agony. Take, however, the end of it. At last his wounds were somehow made to heal.

"Now imagine my joy. The wounds were well at last. I was free. I
could walk and sit--actually sit down. I could work. I was very
faint and ill, but fresh air would soon set that right. All these
expenses had swallowed up a large share of my savings, and I had
practically to begin life again. But I did not mind that. I went to
work joyously.

"Now judge again of my disappointment. Within two months--in
February--I was seized with a mysterious wasting disease,
accompanied by much pain. I gradually wasted away to mere bones. By
degrees this pain increased till it became almost insupportable. I
can compare it to nothing but the flame of a small spirit lamp
continually burning within me. Sometimes it seemed like a rat
always gnaw, gnaw, night and day. I had no sleep. Everything I ate
or drank seemed to add fuel to the flame. The local doctors could
do nothing, so I went to London again, and in the course of the
two years and more that it lasted I was under five of the leading
London physicians. Altogether I had some forty prescriptions, and
took something like sixty drugs, besides being put on diet. It was
not the slightest use, and it became evident that they had no idea
what was really the matter with me. The pain went on, burn, burn,
burn. If I wrote a volume I could not describe it to you, this
terrible scorching pain, night and day. There is nothing in medical
books like it, except the pain that follows corrosive sublimate
which burns the tissues. It was at times so maddening that I
dreaded to go a few miles alone by rail lest I should throw myself
out of the window of the carriage. I worked and wrote all this
time, and some of my best work was done in this intense agony. I
received letters from New Zealand, from the United States, even
from the islands of the Pacific, from people who had read my
writings. It seemed so strange that I should read these letters,
and yet all the time, to be writhing in agony.

"At last, in April, 1885, nature gave way, and I broke down
utterly, and could only lie on the sofa in a fainting condition. In
a few days I became so helpless and weak that there appeared little
chance of my living. Someone suggested that Dr. Kidd should be sent
for. He came on Sunday morning, and found me nearly ended. I was
fainting during the examination. He discovered that it was
ulceration of the intestines. You know how painful an ulcer is
anywhere--say on your lip--now for over two years this ulceration
had been burning its way in the intestines.

"He put me on milk diet, malt bread, malt extract, malted food,
meat shredded and pounded in a mortar, raw beef, and so on. In
forty-eight hours the pain was better. For three weeks I improved
and hoped. I think that had the diet been then altered to the
ordinary food, I might have made a recovery; instead of which it
was kept up for nine weeks, at the end of which I had lost all the
improvement, and was so weak that I could but just crawl up and
down stairs. I attribute my subsequent exhaustion to the continued
use of milk, which has the effect of destroying nervous energy."

* * * * *

'Oct. 22, 1886.

"I have been obliged to set all aside from extreme feebleness.
During the last four weeks, indeed, the weakness and emaciation
have become very great, so much so that I almost fancy the bones
waste. But what I feel most is the loss of fresh air from inability
to go out. The last two days have been dry, so that I have been
able to get up and down by the house a little.

"Still, I should have managed somehow to write to you were it not
for the great dislike I feel to this begging business. You must not
take offence at this, though you may think me very foolish. I keep
putting it off and putting it off, till now I suppose I must do it,
or stay the winter indoors in helplessness. To-day I have written
to obtain the information necessary to fill up the form you sent.

"In September, 1885, my spine seemed suddenly to snap. It happened
in ten minutes--quite suddenly. It felt as if one of the vertebrae
had been taken away. It was no doubt a form of paralysis. I had to
take to the sofa again, and was confined to the house for over
seven months, quite helpless. I could not undress myself. At
Christmas, other troubles set in; the local doctor gave me up. He
told my wife that nothing could be done for me, and that the only
hope was in my keeping in good spirits. The misery of that dreadful
winter will never be forgotten. At length nature seemed to revive a
little, and I got downstairs, and soon after Miss Scott came to see
me, and you sent me to the sea. On returning from the sea I slowly
lost ground again. In the summer I had an attack of vomiting
blood--of itself enough to alarm most people. By October I was
confined indoors again. At last I got down here.

"Besides all these sufferings I had another trial--a loss by
death--one that I cannot dwell upon;"--it was the death of his
youngest child--"but it broke me down very much.

"Of the loss of all my savings I need not say much. But it is
difficult to begin the world afresh"--alas! he was just about to
end the world--"even with good health.

"With truth I think I may say that there are few, very few, perhaps
none, living who have gone through such a series of diseases. There
are many dead--many who have killed themselves for a tenth part of
the pain--there are few living.

"My wearied and exhausted system constantly craves rest. My brain
is always asking for rest. I never sleep. I have not slept now for
five years properly, always waking, with broken bits of sleep, and
restlessness, and in the morning I get up more weary than I went to
bed. Rest, that is what I need. You thought naturally that it was
work I needed; but I have been at work, and next time I will tell
you all of it. It is not work, it is _rest_ for the brain and the
nervous system. I have always had a suspicion that it was the
ceaseless work that caused me to go wrong at first.

"It has taken me a long time to write this letter; it will take you
but a few minutes to read it. Had you not sent me to the sea in
the spring I do not think that I should have been alive to write
it."

Was there ever a more miserable tale of slow torture? Parts of it--the parts relating to his operations--I have omitted. Enough remains. Picture to yourself this tall, gaunt man reduced to a skeleton, not able to use his pen for more than a few minutes at a time, his spine broken down, spitting blood, lying back on the sofa, his mind full of splendid thoughts which he _cannot_ put upon paper, dictating sometimes when he was strong enough, resolved on making money so as to save himself the "disgrace" of applying to the Literary Fund, full of pain by day and night, growing daily weaker, but never losing heart or hope--is there in the whole calamitous history of authors a picture more full of sadness and of pity than this?

He writes again on January 10, 1887. He is no worse. The letter is about money matters--that is to say, he has no money.

On February 2 he writes again. He has been able to dictate a little.

"I hope to be able to do more work after a time; when the weather
becomes sufficiently warm for me to sit out of doors. With me the
power to write is almost entirely dependent upon being out of
doors. Confined indoors, I have nothing to write, and I cannot
express my ideas if they do occur to me so boldly. You have no idea
what a difference it makes. A little air and movement seem to
brighten up the mind and give it play. I am in hope, too, that as
the warmth comes on the sea will help me more. Up to the present
the winter has gone well."

The last letter to Mr. Scott was written on March 23. He is pleased and surprised to hear that the fund raised for him amounts to so much. Perhaps it will enable him to go abroad presently. Meantime, he has had a relapse--an attack of haemorrhage--"and then so feeble that I have not been able to dictate. This loss of time worries me more than I can tell you."

And so with thanks to this good friend, Richard Jefferies lays down his pen for the last time. The busy hand which has written so much will write no more. He can no longer dictate. His very feebleness will soon be past, and he will be at rest, whether in the unconscious clay-cold rest of the dark grave, or in that better life of the Fuller Soul of which he had so great and glorious a Vision--who knoweth?

* * * * *

You have read the life of Richard Jefferies. You have seen how the country lad, ill-educated, slenderly provided with books or friends, formed in early life a resolution to succeed in letters. The resolution was formed when as yet he had no knowledge or thought of style. You have read how he fought long years against ill-success, against the ridicule and coldness of his friends, but still kept up his courage; how he did succeed at length, yet not at all in the way that at first he hoped. That way would have taken him along the paths trodden by those who write romances and stories to beguile their brothers and sisters, and to cheat them into forgetfulness of their disappointments and anxieties; that way, by which he wished to go, would have led him quickly to the ease of fortune which at all times he ardently desired. It is foolish, and worse than foolish, to pretend that any man--even the best of men, even the most philosophic of men--desires poverty, which is dependence; therefore one does not blame this man for desiring fortune. The way, however, by which he succeeded was a far higher and a nobler way, though he understood not that at first.

You have seen, also, not only that his early life was that of an obscure reporter for a little country paper, but that his first ambition was altogether for the making of money rather than for the production of good work. The love of good work, as such, grew gradually in him. At first it is not apparent at all. At first we have nothing but a commonplace lad, poor, and therefore eager to make money, and fondly thinking that it can be made by writing worthless and commonplace stories. Nothing in his early life has been concealed. You have read his very words, where they could be recovered. They are in no way remarkable words; they are generally, in fact, commonplace. Nothing, except a steady and consistent belief in his own future, the nature of which he does not even suspect, reveals the power latent in his mind. There is nothing at all in these early utterances to show the depths of poetry in his soul. Nay, I think there were none of these depths in him at first. So long as he worked among men, and contemplated their ways, he felt no touch of poetry, he saw no gleam of light. Mankind seemed to him sordid and creeping; either oppressor or oppressed. Away from men, upon the breezy down and among the woods, he is filled with thoughts which, at first, vanish like the photographs of scenery upon the eye. Presently he finds out the way to fix those photographs. Then he is transformed, but not suddenly; no, not suddenly. When he discovers the Gamekeeper at Home, he begins to be articulate; with every page that follows he becomes more articulate. At first he draws a faithful picture of the cottager, the farmer, the gamekeeper, the poacher; the pictures are set in appropriate scenery; by degrees the figures vanish and the setting remains. But it is no longer the same; it is now infused with the very soul of the painter. The woods speak to us, through him; the very flowers speak and touch our hearts, through him. The last seven years of his life were full, indeed, of pain and bodily torture; but they were glorified and hallowed by the work which he was enabled to do. Nay, they even glorify and hallow all the life that went before. We no longer see the commonplace young country reporter who tries to write commonplace and impossible stories--we watch the future poet of the "Pageant of Summer" whose early struggles we witness while he is seeking to find himself. Presently he speaks. HE HAS FOUND HIMSELF; he has obtained the prayer of his heart; he has been blessed with the FULLER SOUL.

* * * * *

At the last, during the long communings of the night when he lay sleepless, happy to be free, if only for a few moments, from pain, the simple old faith came back to him. He had arrived long before, as we have seen, at the grand discovery: that the perfect soul wants the perfect body, and that the perfect body must be inhabited by the perfect soul. To this conclusion, you have seen, he was led by Nature herself. Now he beheld clearly--perhaps more clearly than ever--the way from this imperfect and fragmentary life to a fuller, happier life beyond the grave. He had no need of priest; he wanted no other assurance than the voice and words of Him who swept away all priests. The man who wrote the "Story of My Heart;" the man who was filled to overflowing with the beauty and order of God's handiwork; the man who felt so deeply the shortness, and imperfections, and disappointments of life that he was fain to cry aloud that all happens by chance; the man who had the vision of the Fuller Soul, died listening with faith and love to the words contained in the Old Book.

* * * * *

What follows is written by his friend, Mr. J.W. North, who was with him during the last days.

"It was in the early summer, two or three months before his death,
that I saw Jefferies for the last time alive. He had then been
living at Goring for some short time, and this was my first visit
to him there. I was pleased to find that his house was far
pleasanter than the dreary and bleak cottage which he had rented at
Crowborough. It had a view of the sea, a warm southern exposure,
and a good and interesting garden: in one corner a quaint little
arbour, with a pole and vane, and near the centre a genuine
old-fashioned draw-well. Poor fellow! Painfully, with short
breathing, and supported on one side by Mrs. Jefferies and on the
other by myself, he walked round this enclosure, noticing and
drawing our attention to all kinds of queer little natural objects
and facts. Between the well and the arbour was a heap of rough,
loose stones, overgrown by various creeping flowers. This was the
home of a common snake, discovered there by Harold, and poor
Jefferies stood, supported by us, a yard or so away and peered into
every little cranny and under every leaf with eyes well used to
such a search until some tiny gleam, some minute cold glint of
light, betrayed the snake. Weakness and pain seemed forgotten for
the moment--alas! only for the moment. Uneasily he sat in the
little arbour telling me how his disease seemed still to puzzle the
doctors; how he felt well able in mind to work, plenty of mental
energy, but so weak, _so fearfully weak_, that he could no longer
write with his own hand; that his wife was patient and good to help
him. He had nobody to come and talk with him of the world of
literature and art. Why couldn't I come and settle by? There was
plenty to paint. Though Goring itself was one of the ugliest places
in the world, there was Arundel, and its noble park, and river, and
castle close by. I must go and see it the very next day, and see
whether I could not work there, and come back every day and cheer
him. I was the best doctor, after all.

"Poor fellow! I did not then know or believe that he was so utterly
without sympathetic society except his devoted wife. It was so. I
am one of the dullest companions in the world; but I had sympathy
with his work, and knowledge, too, of his subjects. Well, nothing
would do but that I must go to Arundel the next day, and Mrs.
Jefferies must show me the town. 'He would do well enough for one
day. A good neighbour would come in, and with little Phyllis and
the maid he would be safe.'

"Therefore we went to Arundel (a short journey by train), and on
coming back found him standing against the door-post to welcome us.

"I have seldom been more touched than by my experience of that
evening, finding, amongst other things, that he had partly planned
and insisted on this Arundel trip to get us away so that he might,
unrebuked, spend some of his latest hard earnings in a pint of
'Perrier Jouet' for my supper.

"Do you know Goring churchyard? It is one of those dreary,
over-crowded, dark spots where the once-gravelled paths are green
with slimy moss, and it was a horror to poor Jefferies. More than
once he repeated the hope that he might not be laid there, and he
chose the place where his widow at last left him--amongst the
brighter grass and flowers at Broadwater.

"He died at Goring at half-past two on Sunday morning, August 14,
1887. His soul was released from a body wasted to a skeleton by six
long weary years of illness. For nearly two years he had been too
weak to write, and all his delightful work, during that period, was
written by his wife from his dictation. Who can picture the torture
of these long years to him, denied as he was the strength to walk
so much as one hundred yards in the world he loved so well? What
hero like this, fighting with Death face to face so long, fearing
and knowing, alas! too well, that no struggles could avail, and,
worse than all, that his dear ones would be left friendless and
penniless. Thus died a man whose name will be first, perhaps for
ever, in his own special work."

* * * * *

'Monday, Aug. 15,

"... I went yesterday, expecting once more to speak with him. I
found him lying _dead, twelve hours dead_. I saw him with Mrs.
Jefferies and their little Phyllis. A pitiful sight to see them
kiss the poor cold face! God help them! All through his last days
his wife was with him _day and night_; a young country girl, who
behaved nobly all through, was her only help.... His long, long
illness of six years (four years before at Eltham he looked near
death)--this long, wearisome time had almost persuaded many who
knew him not intimately that his illness was partly imaginary. He
proved it otherwise. A soldier who in health, high spirits, and
excitement, rides to what appears certain death is called a hero:
glory and honours are heaped upon him; but what is that compared
with years of fighting without cessation, and the _absolute
certainty_ of defeat always present to the mind? I asked Mrs.
Jefferies if he had made a will. She said: 'No; surely it would
have been useless, we have nothing. A woman singly, strong as I am,
could rough it; but if something can be done for the children--.'
Something shall be done. I had to call at my framemaker's to put
off an appointment. I told him roughly what had happened to me
yesterday. He had never heard of Jefferies, and knew nothing of his
work; but he said, 'I shall be glad if anything can be done if you
will put us down for two guineas.' All those who are country born
and bred, and have a heart inside their body, have always
recognised and admired poor Jefferies' writing. Shall I say what I
think and _know_, that in all our literature until now he has never
had a rival, and that it is most likely he will never be equalled?
In a hundred years he will be only more truly appreciated than at
present. The number of men who combine the love and the knowledge
of literary work is more limited, perhaps, in this age than in any
previous one. Few people, again, of intelligence and refinement of
heart and mind live completely in the country, and much, very much
of his work, will be always unintelligible to those who cannot
exist in a country-house unless it is full of frequently-changing
guests. I have been trying by a different art for thirty
years--equal to almost the whole of his life on earth--to convey an
idea to others of some such subjects, and I feel with shame that in
the work of half a year I do not get so near the heart and truth of
Nature as he in one paragraph. With strict charge that it should
not leave my hands, Mrs. Jefferies lent me the proof of an article
which appeared in _Longman's Magazine_ in spring, 1886. It was the
very last copy he wrote with his own hand. Since then his wife
wrote from his dictation. Read this quotation from it, which
touched me greatly yesterday:

"'I wonder to myself how they can all get on without me; how they
manage, bird and flower, without ME, to keep the calendar for them.
For I noted it so carefully and lovingly day by day.'

"And this:

"'They go on without me, orchis-flower and cowslip. I cannot number
them all. I hear, as it were, the patter of their feet--flower and
buds, and the beautiful clouds that go over, with the sweet rush of
rain and burst of sun glory among the leafy trees. They go on, and
I am no more than the least of the empty shells that strew the
sward of the hill.'

"One thing I saw in one of his last note-books: 'Three great giants
are against me--disease, despair, and poverty.'

"One thing more. His wife said that their time had been for long
spent in prayer together and reading St. Luke.

"Almost his last intelligible words were, 'Yes, yes; that is so.
Help, Lord, for Jesus' sake. Darling, good-bye. God bless you and
the children, and save you all from such great pain.'

* * * * *

"He was buried at Broadwater, by Worthing, Sussex.

"In the gentlest, sweet, soft, sunny rain he was borne along the
path to his grave in the grass, and when the last part of the
service for the dead had been read, well and solemnly, and we
turned away leaving him for ever on earth, the large tears from
heaven fell thick and fast, and over and over again came to me the
saying, 'Happy are the dead that the rain rains on.' The modest
home-made wreath of wild wood-clematis and myrtle my wife had sent
pleased me by happy symbolism--for as the myrtle is, so will his
memory be, 'for ever green.'

"Mourn, little harebells, o'er the lea;
Ye stately foxgloves fair to see;
Ye woodbines hanging bonnilie
In scented bowers;
Ye roses on your thorny tree,
The first o' flowers.

"Mourn, Spring, thou darling of the year;
Ilk cowslip-cup shall kep a tear;
Thou Summer, while each corny spear
Shoots up its head,
Thy gay, green, flowery tresses shear
For him that's dead."

"J.W.N."