A NATURALIST'S SATCHEL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 528, 5 August 1949, Page 17

A NATURALIST'S SATCHEL

BEVIS, by Richard Jefferies; Eyre and Spottiswoode, 8/6. j ROUND, ABOUT A GREAT ESTATE and RED DEER; by Richard Jefferies; Eyre and Spottiswoode. 5/-, THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME and THE AMATEUR POACHER, by Richard Jetferies; World’s Classics Series. Oxford University Press. 4/-. THE JEFFERIES COMPANION, Arranged and Introduced by Samuel J. Looker; Phoenix House. 8/6. THE ESSENTIAL RICHARD JEFFERIES, Selected ‘with an introduction by Malcolm Elwin; Jonathan Cape, 12/6, THE PHASIAN BIRD, by Henry Williamson; Faber ahd Faber. 10/6. SONS OF THE FARM, by Crichton Porteous; Michael Joseph. 9/6. HE Richard Jefferies books in this list. all appeated to mark the centenary of the naturalist’s birth im 1848. The pleasant blue cloth uniform edition of the favourite Bevis (still, after 70 years, a magnificent boys’ adventure tale), and two other well-knowne works, Round About a Great Estate and Red Deer, will-be welcome additions to many a. youthful library; and the World’s assics edition of The Gamekeeper at Home and The Amateur Poacher (the pro and con of a very old game) together in one book for 4/- will appeal

to most collectors. Here are five works issued in three books full. of small type and tight marginsand they are only five out of 23 that Jefferies published in his lifetime; 23 books he published, and he died two months before his 39th birthday. 4 At 17 this restless' son of a Wiltshire small farmer began work as a Teporter on a Ppro-. vincial newspaper;

at 32 he fell ill of the disease of which he died (fibroid phthisis); so we may say that he had 15 years of vigour and seven of intermittent pain "like lightning" for his work. Huge output alone is no claim to praise; but this huge output should at least be noted. Richard Jefferies may have been lazy about his father’s farm as a boy-*"our Dick poking about in them hedges"-but he was certainly not lazy as a writer of words, or as an ob"server of the birds, flowers, bees, fields and skies that were his passionate interest. He was, however, careless, repetitive and _ egotistical. The Jefferies Companion, edited and introduced with admirable restraint by one of the most fervid Jefferies admirers, Samuel J. Looker, contains the preface supplied by Jefferies for an edition of Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne, which opens in White’s waterclear prose: "The parish of Selborne lies in the extreme eastern corner of the county of Harnpshire, bordering on the county, of Sussex, and not far from the county of Surrey." Says Jefferies, presumably with the book before him: "The mass of this book was collected in the little Surrey parish of Selborne." For this I-could forgive him; but not for this (in praise of. White’s Naturalists’. Calendar); "By its aid you will miss very little. I did not come across Mr. White’s book till late*in the day, , when it was, in fact, too late, else this Calendar would have been of the utmost advantage to me?’ Much chagrined, I turned for balm to Gilbert White’s letters and spent some happy hours with his pig, his earthworms, his old Sussex tortoise and other The Companion, and ‘he Essential Richard Jefferies are much alike in content, except that the first is illustrated and the second is not; and except that the introduction by Malcotm Elwin is a little more critical than Mr. Looker’s introduction. to The Companion. Both include extracts from the main works. If the word’ "essential" means what I think it means then the title of the second book is badly chosen -the extracts from "The Story of My Heart," for instance, run to, 70 pages, "The Dewy Morn" to 33 pages, and these are both wordy, windy, repetitive affairs. But there they are, two néetul Jefferies collections to add to a naturalist’s library. The Phasian Bird opens in Mr. Henry Williamson’s measured and leisurely prose. Where Richard Jefferies goes over, smoothes. out, pats and irons flat, Mr.., iamson goes bang for the word that .co nts: so you meet "the bee-like chicks": you ‘hear the _- grasscutter

"clacker" round the field; yotr see the triangle of uncut gtass becoming smaller and smaller and you know the unhappiness of the farmer who knows that in there in that shrinking sanctuary of grass-forest a mother bird, some chicks, a few leverets are: sheltering, bewildered. /Partridge versus rat, rat ‘versus weasel, foot, claw, pad, wing and (continued on next page)

BOOKS (continued from previous page) ~ paw versus man and man’s gun-these are the stuff of The Phasian Bird. Norfolk is the county, 1937 to 1944 the time, and the life of game, farm and countryside the theme of this book. If a farmer could persuade himself that he had time to read quietly, he would enjoy it; but naturalists will claim it for their own, The last book in the list is included simply because the author has a better hand with trees, fields, hedges, weather and footpaths than he has -with men and women and the normal affairs of a novel. Sons of the Farm is called a novel; but Mr. Porteous devises a chilly tale of two sons and a decaying farm, a sort of frosty evening shadow of a story by L. A. G. Strong or Neil Gunn. The wermest and most readable passages describe birds in flight or trees in leaf; the coldést and most trite deal with men’s am-

bition or women’s envy.

J.