Richard Jefferies Society

Museum is real hidden treasure

2011-12-28T07:52:00.003Z

Swindon Advertiser.

Museum is real hidden treasure

Tuesday 27th December 2011

Memorial event 16th March 2012 Eltham Churchyard

2011-12-09T15:57:00.001Z

Richard Oliver Launcelot Jefferies (18th July 1883 – 16th March 1885) memorial – ceremony at St John’s Churchyard, Eltham on Friday 16 March 2012 at 2pm

Richard and Jessie’s baby son (known as Oliver) died, aged only twenty months old, whilst the Jefferies’ family were living at 14 Victoria Road, Eltham (now 59 Footscray Road).

The Eltham Society are placing an inscribed stone to mark where Oliver was buried in St John’s Churchyard in a grave that was once marked by a simple wooden cross.

Harold Jefferies (Richard & Jessie’s first born son) recounted the death of his baby brother as ‘a terrible blow to father. His suffering, which was far greater than that of the child, prevented him from attending the funeral, and mother and I were, I believe, alone in the coach to Eltham church. The agonised expression on father’s face, as he stood at the open door watching the little cortège slowly move away, haunted my mind for many years,’ (Worthing Calvacade, Richard Jefferies: My Father by his son, 1944, p.19-20).

The Eltham Society want to mark the occasion by holding a small ceremony in the churchyard to which, they hope, Members of the Richard Jefferies Society might join them and perhaps do a reading or say a few words. They have chosen 16th March for the event - the anniversary of the date the baby died. Whilst in the area, Members might also like to take a look at the outside of the house where the Jefferies’ family were living (it bears a memorial plaque), about a 15 minute walk from the churchyard.

Birthday Lecture

2011-09-16T18:28:00.003Z

John Price has been Chairman of the Richard Jefferies Society since 2004. He is now retired, but spent a lifetime working in Education. Having gained a Degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge, he taught for eleven years, before becoming an Education Officer and Advisor/Inspector. He then became Head of the truly “Public” School in Marlborough, St John’s, where he stayed for 14 years. For three and a half years, until 1999, he lived and worked on St. Helena, where he was Chief Education Officer. John also chaired an ‘A’ Level Biological Sciences Committee for one of the major Examining Boards, and for many years was the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. He has no formal literary training or qualifications whatever, apart from ‘O’- level English Language!

Richard Jefferies Society Poetry Competition

2011-09-16T18:24:00.001Z

The Richard Jefferies Society has launched a poetry competition that runs until 30 June 2012.

Full details can be found on the webpage.

Richard Jefferies Festival

2011-08-17T07:03:00.002Z

Please go here to read more about the Richard Jefferies Festival taking place in Swindon from 24-28th August 2011.

You can download a copy of the full programme .

All events are free to attend. The Richard Jefferies Museum backs onto Coate Water (not as indicated on the flyer that points to the hospital).

Study Day: RICHARD JEFFERIES & SPORT

2011-07-16T18:03:00.003Z

RICHARD JEFFERIES AND SPORT

SATURDAY 30 July 2011

RICHARD JEFFERIES’ MUSEUM, MARLBOROUGH ROAD, COATE, SN3 6AA

PROGRAMME

The day will seek to draw together some of Jefferies’ responses to sport and identify key common themes between them.

10.30 Doors open and refreshments.

11.00 Welcome and introductions by the Chairman of the Richard Jefferies Society.

11.15 Select a relevant piece of Jefferies’ writing or about Jefferies on the subject of sport to read to others. See notes*

1.00-2.30 Lunch break. Bring packed lunch or eat at the Sun Inn nextdoor. RJS publications and second-hand books on sale. Opportunity to look around the Museum.

2.30 Keynote Lecture by Rebecca Welshman: ‘ ‘Give me an iron mace that I may crush the savage beast and hammer him down’: the primitive and the ideal in Jefferies’ perception of Sport’

3.45 Refreshments.

4.15 Depart .

* Notes

Extracts should be no more than 5 minutes long. The choice of topic is optional, but sports to consider might include skating, shooting, fishing, hunting, swimming, rowing, and horse riding. The following texts might be helpful:

‘The Gamekeeper at Home’ (1878)

The Amateur Poacher (1879)

‘Shooting a Rabbit’ (Pall Mall Gazette, 1880. Collected in Chronicles of the Hedges)

Bevis (1882)

‘The Defence of Sport’ (National Review, 1883) (Collected in two parts: as ‘Sport and Science’ in Life of the Fields and ‘A Defence of Sport’ Chronicles of the Hedges)

The Story of My Heart (1883)

‘Skating’, in Hills and the Vale

Red Deer (1884)

‘The Bathing Season’ (1884) in The Open Air

The Dewy Morn (1884)

‘Field Sports in Art – the Mammoth Hunter’ (1885) in Field and Hedgerow

Brian Morris’ Richard Jefferies and the Ecological Vision

A Tribute to Hugoe Matthews

2011-04-14T08:11:00.004Z

The Telegraph
13 April 2011

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8448958/Hugoe-Matthews.html

Hugoe Matthews, who died on March 10 aged 72, was an eminent thoracic surgeon expert in diseases of the oesophagus; he was also an authority on the Victorian nature writer and mystic Richard Jefferies.

During his career as a consultant at East Birmingham (now Birmingham Heartlands) Hospital, Matthews developed several new techniques to improve treatment of a range of problems of the chest and oesophagus.

In the field of thoracic surgery, he developed what has become known as the “minitrach”(short for mini-tracheostomy) — a small plastic tube placed in the windpipe during chest surgery through which the lungs can be cleared with a suction device. The minitrach has been used on the battlefield as an emergency breathing aid — saving the lives of soldiers in Afghanistan and other theatres.

His own interests focused on diseases of the oesophagus. He established a laboratory for oesophagal disorders (which became a referral centre for the whole of the West Midlands) and had great success in reducing death rates among people with oesophagal cancer by giving chemotherapy before their operations — an unusual move at the time. In 1984 he set up the Oesophagal Cancer Research Appeal to raise money for a laboratory which was opened in 1989. He was instrumental in establishing the British Oesophagal Group and worked closely with a former patient to establish an Oesophagal Patients’ Association in 1985.

In the early 1990s he developed links with the Department of Biological Sciences at Warwick University, with the result that he was created honorary Professor of Thoracic Surgery. His work at Warwick helped to lay the foundations for a flourishing postgraduate medical school.

At Birmingham he and a colleague set up an Escapists’ Dinner Club (ably organised by his wife Judy) where medical talk was banned and guests discussed their hobbies.

His own hobby was Richard Jefferies, a contemporary of Thomas Hardy, known for his semi-mystical writing about nature and the countryside. He had stumbled across Jefferies by chance, thinking that his Gamekeeper at Home might be a sequel to Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He read every known work published by Jefferies (and much unpublished work in his notebooks and letters), gaining a clear insight into the development of his writing and the evolution of his thoughts and ideas. He served as president of the Richard Jefferies Society and in 1993, with George Miller, published a thorough and authoritative bibliography of Jefferies’s work. He followed this with The Forward Life of Richard Jefferies (1994, with P Treitel). He also produced a new index and anthology of Jefferies’s works with the assistance of Rebecca Welshman.
The son of a Baptist minister, Matthews was born on April 18 1938 at New Malden, Surrey, and named Hugoe with an 'e’ because his mother was descended from French Huguenots. His second name, Redvers, was chosen in honour of General Sir Redvers Henry Buller VC, GCB, GCMG, hero of the Zulu War.
He was educated at Sutton County Grammar School where, even as a teenager, he knew he wanted to be a surgeon. He qualified in Medicine and Surgery at University College, London (despite pronouncing a 55-year-old woman pregnant in his practical exams). After a number of jobs in London, he moved to Bristol in 1968 as a registrar in cardiothoracic surgery. Then, following a spell as senior registrar in Liverpool, he became a consultant at East Birmingham Hospital in 1976.
Matthews published many papers and was editor of the professional journal Thorax. He lectured around the world and served as vice-president of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons from 1993, and as president in 1995.
A contemplative man who enjoyed a pipe and listening to jazz, Matthews devoted himself to books and, after his retirement in the mid-1990s, developed his skills as an artist. He exhibited his pictures at shows held by the Tiverton Arts Society, of which he was a member.
In 1968 he married Judy Thain, who survives him with their son and daughter.

An Evening of Favourite Readings

2011-03-12T23:14:00.001Z

An Evening of Favourite Readings
From the Works of local writer
Richard Jefferies
The Prose Poet of the Countryside

By Members of the Society
Margaret Evans, Simon Coleman, John Webb & John Price

7.30pm Tuesday 19th April 2011

Central Library,
Regent Circus, Swindon SN1 1QG

Tickets £2.00/£1.50 conc.

• In person: From Floor 2 Help Point, Central Library
• Telephone: (01793) 463238
• Email: central.library@swindon.gov.uk

www.swindon.gov.uk/swindoncollection

Download poster here: http://www.northwilts-communityweb.com/site/RJSocPub1/RJ%20evening%20poster.pdf

PROTECT SETTING OF COATE WATER AND JEFFERIES LAND

2011-03-12T15:17:00.002Z

Fields at Coate as viewed from Liddington Hill

We, the undersigned, petition Swindon Borough Council to designate the open countryside between the A419, the Marlborough Road, the motorway and Broome Manor Lane as a high quality Landscape Character Area in order to protect the landscape setting of Coate Water Country Park, Dayhouse Copse Local Nature Reserve, the natural and archaeological history, as well as the literary importance of Jefferies Land and the views from the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Click here to sign http://www.petitiononline.com/coate/petition.html

Revised planning application to develop Jefferies Land

2011-01-01T10:45:00.005Z

The new year has brought news of a revised planning application to build 890 houses and offices on Jefferies Land alongside Dayhouse Lane, and near to the Richard Jefferies Museum and Coate Water.

You can read more about it on the Jefferies Land Conservation Trust's news site and there is a sample letter that you might send:

Ian Halsall
Planning Officer
Swindon Borough Council
Wat Tyler House
Beckhampton Street
Swindon, SN1 2JH

Dear Mr Halsall

Revised Planning Application for Coate – Ref. No. S/10/0842

I have looked at the recent revision to the planning application submitted by Redrow Homes and Persimmon Homes to develop countryside at Coate and Badbury Wick. The minor tinkering with the proposals has done nothing to allay my concern that it is unacceptable development in its own right by virtue of the nature, scale, layout and location of the buildings. It will still set a precedent for infill houses and offices to be built on fields between the application area and Broome Manor. The majority of the business park area is still on the Coate Water side of Dayhouse Lane whilst some of the houses and the school also open out onto Dayhouse Lane. This is not a contained and isolated design that will discourage further growth.

On being questioned about the revised planning application, Councillor Greenhalgh was quoted in the Swindon Advertiser on New Year’s Eve as saying: ‘This proposal is the best one I think that has been put forward for this general area ... I think this development will protect the character of Coate Water and should prevent building between this land and Coate itself.’ How does opening up an area that has been protected from housing and office development since about the 1950s suddenly act as a stop for more of the same? It will clearly have the opposite effect that will be encouraged by the land-owners of the fields around Coate Water who have been waiting to sell their land to developers since the Science Park proposals over 25 years ago. Indeed that building proposal was far less intrusive in the environment – yet Swindon Council was opposed to it and so was the Secretary of State. Redrow Homes and Persimmon Homes still have legal options to buy these fields if planning permission is granted.

Swindon Borough Council has proved that it can’t be trusted to keep any promises – first the hospital – that was to be a one-off building complex for the area between Coate Water and the A419/M4; then the university with the promise that if the university wasn’t built, there would be no housing and now this statement from Councillor Greenhalgh (the senior cabinet Member for strategic planning) who is clearly in favour of the latest plans.

Over 52,000 people have expressed their concerns and wish to see the countryside between Coate Water and the A419/M4 protected against further development. Please listen to the people and refuse planning permission.

Stan Hickerton's poster

2010-11-11T19:35:00.000Z

Richard Jefferies: An Anthology by Hugoe Matthews and Rebecca Welshman.

2010-11-11T15:15:00.003Z

This new anthology of extracts from Jefferies' writing is selected by Hugoe Matthews and Rebecca Welshman. It aims to highlight his broad, exploratory, and sometimes unpredictable nature in his works. The authors have focused primarily on short quotations which read well independently, and longer passages which demonstrate the context, the quality of the writing, or the flow of Richard Jefferies’ thoughts and observations. Where possible the selections are chronological and show a shift in the emphasis of his work from the 1870s, which focused largely on practical subjects such as farming and rural life, to his later work of increased sensitivity and perception of the natural world. Thereby they have sought to reveal the organic continuity and calm objectivity of Jefferies’ writing, which was present from his teens and addressed a diversity of subjects during an extraordinary era of change, illuminating both the man behind the words, and the times in which he lived.

The Anthology is published in a case-bound, thread-sewn book of 266 pages.

The book was published on 6 November 2010 to celebrate 162 years since the day the author was born.

ISBN: 978-0-9563751-2-4.

Price £20 (plus postage: £2.50 UK)

It can be ordered via the Richard Jefferies Society by debit/credit card here.

Richard Jefferies’ science fiction book: basis for Birthday Lecture on 6 November

2010-10-22T09:26:00.006Z

Professor John Carey (pictured above) will be giving this year’s Richard Jefferies’ Birthday Lecture on Saturday 6 November at Liddington Village Hall starting at 2.30pm, 162 years after Swindon’s most celebrated writer was born and raised at Coate Farm in 1848.

John Carey is Emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, a Fellow of the British Academy, and Chief Book Reviewer for The Sunday Times. His books include studies of Donne, Thackeray, Milton and Dickens; and his most recent publication; William Golding, the Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies, has been widely acclaimed.

Prof Carey edited the Faber Book of Utopias that included a section on Richard Jefferies’ science fiction novel After London, or Wild England (first published in 1885) that depicts what happens to England after a major environmental catastrophe turns London into a no-go area of contamination whilst an inland sea is created that runs from London to Bristol, based on an imaginary expansion of Coate Water. Whilst Jefferies is better known for his nature and countryside writing, After London is still an influential work of fiction.

Prof. Carey has been invited to present his lecture by the Richard Jefferies Society and it is entitled “After London and other Utopias and Dystopias,” and it is open to the general public. No prior booking is required and the event is free to attend.

Adventures in the Vale of the White Horse

2010-07-28T16:23:00.003Z

Exactly 100 years after Kate Tryon’s first visit to Swindon, to see the places that Richard Jefferies wrote about, her memoir of the occasion has been published by the Richard Jefferies Society.

American tourist Kate Tryon visited ‘Jefferies Land’ six times in the early 1900s. She was an ardent admirer of the nature writing of Richard Jefferies and followed his philosophy of life. Having re-read his works many times, she wanted to capture scenes on canvas that had inspired the author’s words set around Jefferies’ birthplace and home – a small dairy farm at Coate, next to Coate Water, set in the foothills of the downs. Her first visit to Swindon took place in 1910. She wrote: ‘The lark, the nightingale and Richard Jefferies – those are the three things that brought me to England.’

Kate Tryon (1864-1952) was born in the small village of Naples in Maine, USA. She was a popular lecturer on the birds of New England and England. She studied art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and painted over two hundred scenes during her visits to the Swindon area. In 1963, thirty five of these oil paintings were shipped from America and donated to the Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate by her daughter, where most of them can still be seen today.

The artist’s grand-daughter, Kate Schneider, visited Coate in September 1997. She donated her grandmother’s account of her first visit. Sheila Povey, local historian and member of the Richard Jefferies Society, showed the American visitor around the Richard Jefferies Museum and has documented the memoir by adding photographs taken by Mrs Tryon and of her paintings. The book entitled Adventures in the Vale of the White Horse: ‘Jefferies Land’ has been published in a limited edition of 100 soft-back copies. There are over 100 photographs including 27 reproductions in colour of Mrs Tryon’s paintings – from grand houses such as Burderop House and Upper Upham House to thatched cottages and churches, from bluebell woods at Hodson to the downs.

Andrew Rossabi, a former President of the Richard Jefferies Society said:

"The book is a charming memoir – the writing is fluent, relaxed and often amusing. She knows her Jefferies thoroughly and her quotes and allusions are always apposite. As an American she takes a wry, oblique but deeply affectionate look at English rural society just before the outbreak of the First World War and dispenses much valuable information about the people and places she meets."

The book can be purchased at the Richard Jefferies Museum for £12 or ordered online at the Richard Jefferies Society web-site (postage & packing £1.50).

2010-04-17T08:55:00.004Z

Fields of Vision: a Study Day

Saturday 8th May 2010, 10.30 am - 4.30 pm

This event, a collaboration between the Edward Thomas Fellowship and the Richard Jefferies Society, will examine aspects of the relationship between Jefferies and Thomas, such as their shared interest in wildlife, the rural landscape and country traditions, the extent to which Jefferies influenced Thomas as a writer, and his biographical treatment of Jefferies. We are privileged to have as keynote speaker the distinguished poet, novelist and literary scholar Jem Poster, who is currently preparing a new edition of Richard Jefferies: His Life and Work by Edward Thomas for Oxford University Press. There will also be talks by Richard Emeny (Chairman of the Edward Thomas Fellowship, who has written and lectured prolifically on Thomas and various related authors) and Terry Lloyd (a Swindonian, and since childhood an enthusiast for the works of Thomas and Jefferies, who has thoroughly explored their landscapes on foot).

The Study Day will be held in Liddington Village Hall, Wiltshire, at the heart of "Jefferies' Country".

Places, which cost £15.00 (£5.00 for students and unemployed people), including refreshments but not lunch, must be booked by 1st May. Download a programme [pdf] and a booking form [pdf] .

Enquiries about the Study Day may be made to Martin Haggerty, the co-ordinator of this event.

On the following day, there will be an opportunity to visit the Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate and, by special arrangement, the garden of the Gamekeeper's Cottage at Hodson, which is not normally open to view. Andrew Rossabi (a former President of the Richard Jefferies Society, who has written introductions to several new imprints of Jefferies' works and is currently working on a new biography of this author) will lead a short walk between these places, including Cecily's Bridge along the route.

After lunch (picnic or pub), Richard Jefferies' home will be open to view, and there will be readings from Jefferies' and Thomas's writings in the house. This event is free and no prior booking is required.

Download the programme for the weekend [pdf], which includes information about the walk .

Enquiries about the Sunday walk may be made to Jean Saunders.

Information about public transport is available through the website of Traveline South West or by phoning Traveline on 0871 - 200 22 33 (7.00 am to 9.00 pm; calls from landlines cost 10p per minute).

Details of local accommodation and other downloads can be found through this link:

http://www.envoy.uk.net/edward_thomas/news.html#study.

2010-04-06T07:19:00.001Z

Should Richard Jefferies be treated as a footnote?

The Richard Jefferies Society is holding a meeting at the Richard Jefferies Museum on Saturday 10th April addressed by John Payne, the author of The West Country: a Cultural History [1]. John Payne, who lives in Somerset, will explore why Richard Jefferies is treated as a ‘footnote’ compared with other west country writers such as Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen and T E Lawrence and whether this is justified.

Having studied the cultural history of the south-west, Mr Payne believes that Richard Jefferies deserves better recognition particularly by the people of Swindon.

“Jefferies was one of the great English nature writers;” said John, “we should be proud of talent.” [2]

The meeting starts at 2pm and is open to the public. It is free to attend. Parking is free at Coate Water Country Park and just a short walk to the Museum, next to the Sun Inn pub on the Marlborough Road.

Notes:
[1] The West Country: a Cultural History, John Payne (Oxford: Signal Books, 2009).
[2] In an interview for the Swindon Advertiser (Fri Nov 6, 2009 p. 16) Mr Payne commented on Swindon’s treatment of Richard Jefferies.

2010-03-02T12:43:00.000Z

60 YEAR OLD CINE FILM ABOUT RICHARD JEFFERIES FOUND IN A LOFT IN ESSEX RETURNS HOME

PRESS RELEASE: RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY

2 March 2010

A cine film, made by the Film Production Unit of the Swindon Public Library Film Society in 1948, has found its way back to Swindon. The film, produced as a tribute to Richard Jefferies one hundred years after his birth, was found in a loft in Essex by Philip Mansbridge among films about trains.

Mr Mansbridge has sent the film to the Richard Jefferies Society but has no idea where it came from. It is possible that it originated from Albert Mansbridge who was the founder of the Swindon branch of the Workers’ Educational Association.

The film runs for fifteen minutes with no sound-track and it shows shots of Richard Jefferies’ birthplace and home at Coate, and some of his books and places that were special to the writer such as Liddington Hill, the Gamekeeper’s Cottage at Hodson and Coate Water. There is a charming re-enactment of a scene from Jefferies’ boys adventure story: Bevis, where local boys wield hand-made wooden swords at Coate Water in a mock battle. Those children would now be in their seventies and may still be living in Swindon and remember making the film. The Richard Jefferies Society would like to hear from them.

The film was last shown at the Arts Centre on 21st June 1948. It will get a new airing this Saturday (6 March) at the Richard Jefferies Museum when enthusiasts of Richard Jefferies and Alfred Williams joining forces to share readings from their favourite works of the two Victorian Swindon-born authors.

The meeting starts at 2pm and is open to the public.

Contact Jean Saunders on 01793 783040 for further information.

2010-02-02T11:02:00.001Z

RICHARD JEFFERIES MUSEUM AT COATE NOW OPEN AGAIN

The Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate will be re-opening its doors to the public on Wednesday 10 February after a five-month closure during which time Swindon Borough Council has carried out structural repairs to the old house.

The Museum was once the birthplace and home of Richard Jefferies (1848-1887), Victorian author and nature writer. He lived there for most of his life and moved not long after he married the girl next door - Jessie Baden from Day House Farm.

Jefferies' writing was inspired by his own experiences of living on a small dairy farm, next to Coate Water, and by the landscape that he loved so much between the farm and the North Wessex Downs. He wrote over twenty books and hundreds of essays in his short life. Although he is best known for his nature writing, he also wrote two children's adventure stories based around his home, a science-fiction book that has influenced many later writers, novels based on local Victorian farm-life and politics and an autobiographical book that expressed his mystical beliefs. All of his books are still in print and many of them are available to buy at the Museum. The Richard Jefferies Society has published nine books by and about the writer in the last eighteen months alone. The Museum is on three floors: the attic is recreated as Jefferies' described it and was used to store apples and cheese and as his study. The exhibits include family memorabilia and hundreds of photographs and information about places and people associated with Jefferies along with a short film on the subject.

The Literary Society has provided the majority of the many exhibits on display at the Museum and volunteers open the place to the public on the second Wednesday of the month from 10am to 4pm throughout the year and between May to the end of September on the first, third and fourth Sundays between 2-5pm. Special arrangements can be made for group bookings on other days.

Parking space is limited at the Museum that opens onto the busy dual-carriageway road next to the Sun Inn at Coate but it is only a short walk from Coate Water. Entrance is free. You will be given a warm welcome by the enthusiastic group of volunteers who are extremely proud of Swindon's greatest cultural asset - a writer who has been described as a genius by literary critics and was voted as Britain's best-loved nature writer in a poll in 2005.

For more information, contact Jean Saunders (Honorary Secretary of the Richard Jefferies Society) on 01793 783040 or go to http://richardjefferiessociety.co.uk (there are links to various photos of the Museum and some of the exhibits).

2009-07-11T10:37:00.002Z

The Richard Jefferies Society will be holding their annual Study Day at the Richard Jefferies Museum, Marlborough Road, Coate on Saturday 25 July between 10.30am to 4.30pm.

The topic for the day is the illustrators of Richard Jefferies' works, of which there have been many. John Price, the Chairman of the Society, will give an illustrated talk on the subject in the morning whilst the afternoon session is open to the audience to discuss their favourite illustration or artist. Each contributor will be given 5 minutes.

The meeting is open to the public and is free (bring a picnic lunch - refreshments are available).

For more information telephone 01793 783040.

2008-11-06T10:10:00.001Z

THE RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY

PRESS RELEASE

New life from Richard Jefferies' ancient yew tree at Coate

6th November 2008

The 160th anniversary of the birth of Richard Jefferies was marked today with the planting of a small seedling yew tree in the Jefferies' garden at Coate.

The tiny three inch high plantlet was rescued growing under the ancient yew tree removed by Swindon Borough Council in September that had towered above the old house, now a Museum, built by Richard Jefferies' grandfather in 1826.

Richard Jefferies, born at Coate Farm on 6th November 1848, was particularly fond of the ancient yew tree that was home to a family of thrush that, for generations, he had observed nesting in the old tree. He recorded the birds' activities in his second novel Restless Human Hearts published in 1875.

Visitors to the Museum and devotees of the Victorian nature writer expressed great sadness at the loss of the ancient tree and wanted it to be remembered in some fashion.

A spokesperson for the Richard Jefferies Society said:

"The yew tree is associated with long-life and was most commonly planted in sacred places. One of Richard Jefferies' themes in his writing was the timelessness of nature. We hope that this little tree will be allowed to grow in the Jefferies' garden and mark the writer's spiritual attachment to his birthplace."

2008-09-06T14:03:00.001Z

RICHARD JEFFERIES “SPIRIT COUNTRY”

An illustrated lecture by Roger Vlitos, photographer.

Liddington Village Hall, Saturday 11th October 2008: 2.30pm

Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) called the landscape around his home at Coate to the Downs “spirit country” because of its timeless and inspirational qualities. The lecture will show how writers such as Richard Jefferies, Thomas Hardy and Robert Byron; artists like John Piper, Paul Nash, Eric Ravillious and David Inshaw; photographers like Bill Brandt, Charlie Waite and Fay Godwin, all found inspiration in their local landscapes.

Roger Vlitos, born in the USA, has been an editorial and travel photographer for the past 25 years. He is also a published author whose work has appeared in magazines and books worldwide. Past photographic work has included Arts Council posters, a series of landscapes for the National Trust, an exhibition and publication on Welsh Legends that won Design Council awards, plus assignments for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, as well as The British Museum and Natural History Museum in London. He currently lectures on photography at Bath University and lives in Avebury.

Roger’s father was with a trainload of Allied servicemen delayed in Swindon station on their way to prepare for the D-day invasion. He was only 18 at the time and he met an elderly Swindon couple who took him under their wing that day. They drove him to see the Downs and gave him The Story of my Heart to pass the time. Roger's father read it and scribbled words like ‘wonderful’ in the margins. He kept the book for many years until he gave it to Roger. That book by Richard Jefferies, and the inspirational landscape of Wiltshire, drew Roger to work here as a photographer.

For more information contact The Richard Jefferies Society on 01793 783040
Entrance free

2008-08-14T09:30:00.003Z

The Richard Jefferies Society publish three important books relating to the Victorian nature writer, Richard Jefferies.

Richard Jefferies' first job was as a reporter for the North Wilts Herald, although he believed that he might achieve fame as a novelist. Shortly after marrying Jessie Baden from Day House Farm the second of his novels entitled ‘Restless Human Hearts’(1) was published in 1875. At the time, the reviews killed the book. The plot was described as grossly immoral and an offence against decency. One reviewer advised that the book should be kept under lock and key. The novel was never re-issued and any existing copies sell for around £200. Whilst the Richard Jefferies Society might find fault with the novel that would have benefited from good editing, they believe that the neglected book is worth a second chance and they have published it for the first time in over 130 years with an introduction by Andrew Rossabi, a past President of the Society.

The second book published is an index of Richard Jefferies’ works (2). No-one has ever attempted to compile an index of a collection of books before, which, in itself is a major achievement. It is an index of themes, thoughts and observations: partly a word-index (e.g. names of species) and partly a subject-index (e.g. Nature and Man, Farming, Religion) - the emphasis is on the non-fictional writings.

The final book is a biography of Richard Jefferies entitled ‘The Interpreter’ (3) which documents his life from birth to death.

The books are on sale at the Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate, open on the second Wednesday of the month from 10am to 4pm and the first and third Sundays from 2-5pm until the end of September. Orders can be made through Amazon or by contacting the Richard Jefferies Society direct.

(1) ‘Restless Human Hearts’ by Richard Jefferies, Petton Books 2008, ISBN: 978-0-9522813-3-7, 480 pages. Softback: £8, Hardback: £20 plus £2 postage.

(2) ‘Richard Jefferies: an Index’ by Hugoe Matthews and Phyllis Treitel, Petton Books 2008, 260 pages, ISBN: 978-0-9522813-2-0. Hardback only: £15 plus £2 postage.

(3) ‘The Interpreter: a biography of Richard Jefferies’ by Audrey Smith, Blue Gate Books 2008, 192 pages with black and white illustrations, ISBN: 978-0-9555874-3-6. Softback only: £5 plus £1 postage.

2008-04-18T13:49:00.000Z

ALLIANCE OF LITERARY SOCIETIES' AGM

Hosted by the Richard Jefferies Society

PROGRAMME

SATURDAY 17 May 2008

Holiday Inn, Marlborough Road, Coate, Swindon

10.30 Registration and coffee.

11.00 Welcome by Lady Treitel, Vice-President of the Richard Jefferies Society: A brief account of Richard Jefferies and his associations with Coate.

11.30 ALS Annual General Meeting.

12.30 Luncheon.

14.00 “Richard Jefferies: His Life and Thoughts” - a Lecture by John Price, Chairman of the Richard Jefferies Society.

15.30 Assemble at the Jefferies Museum (across the road from the Holiday Inn)

-18.00 “Jefferies Land” a short film produced by the Richard Jefferies Society that shows local places associated with the writer.

Coate Water and Jefferies Museum - guided tours.

Refreshments at the Museum & Raffle Draw.

19.00 Evening meal at the Holiday Inn (bookings are being dealt with by the ALS Chair, Linda Curry l.j.curry@bham.ac.uk - you have to pre-book your meal). As there will not be any formal entertainment over dinner, if anyone would like to bring their favourite literary piece (a short poem, etc.) to read at dinner, please do so.

SUNDAY 18 May 2008

Home base: Jefferies’ Museum at Coate (luggage can be stored)

10.00 LITERARY TREASURE TRAIL a car-sharing event

An opportunity to explore the North Wiltshire countryside and places that Jefferies immortalised in his works. The event will take the form of a literary treasure trail, with clues, that will include visits to places associated with other local writers. Car-sharing will be encouraged in order to take part in the treasure hunt and will involve some walking over rough terrain.

Luncheon: there is a variety of good country pubs that include inns at Wanborough, Hodson, Badbury, Liddington and Chiseldon as well as in the Marlborough area.

Refreshments will be available at the Jefferies Museum until 5pm.

Directions to the Holiday Inn, Coate Water and the Jefferies Museum. The National Express coach, that runs from Victoria Bus Station in London, stops opposite the Museum/Holiday Inn. Local buses from Swindon town centre that stop at Coate Roundabout include service numbers 10, 12, 13, 14 & 21.

The Holiday Inn can offer accommodation at a rate of £60 single and £70 for a double room including breakfast. To secure a bedroom by credit card, phone 01793 817082 or 817040 quoting the booking reference ‘Richard Jefferies Society.’ The Swindon Tourist Information Centre can help find and book other B&B in the area on 01793 530328 or 466454.

Raffle and stalls
Please bring an item (normally a book) that might be raffled to raise funds for the Alliance. The Alliance’s Members are invited to set up their own stalls at the Richard Jefferies Museum over the weekend.

2007-09-27T14:44:00.000Z

170 year old fruit tree snapped in two by winds

Richard Jefferies famous mulberry tree was another casualty of the high winds that blew across central England in the early hours of Monday (24 September) morning. The old tree, thought to be about 170 years old, was snapped in two and lost its main branch (see picture).

The tree forms the main focal point in the back garden of the Jefferies house and museum at Coate and was planted by Richard Jefferies father.Richard Jefferies sent many hours sitting under this tree and even composed a poem to it [1] when it lost a bough during his lifetime.Now others are penning their tributes to the tree and it is hoped that the wood from the fallen trunk can be seasoned and turned into something equally beautiful and memorable.

Jean Saunders, secretary of the Richard Jefferies Society said:"We are all heart broken to see the tree in its present state. However battered it may be, we will still love it and treasure it. The fruits are delicious and children have danced around it this year singing 'here we go round the mulberry bush'. To be on the safe side, we are taking cuttings but hope that the tree survives another century or two".

(1) Richard Jefferies wrote The Tree of Life about 1871, but it did not appear in print until three years after his death. It was published in the Scots' Observer on 8 November 1890 under the title of The Mulberry Tree. The poem, however, may have publicised in the columns of the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard before this.

THE MULBERRY TREE

Oh, mulberry tree, oh mulberry tree
Dear are thy spreading boughs to me.
Beneath their cool and friendly shade
My earliest childhood laughed and played.
Or, lips all stained with rich red fruit
Slept in the long grass at thy root.

Oh mulberry tree, oh mulberry tree !
The yellow moonlight shone on thee.
A few low words - a gentle sigh,
A tear within the upturned eye.
“I love—my fate to thee resign"—
A nameless thrill, and she was mine.

The mid-day sun in splendour blazed,
And all who stood around me praised.
The deed was done, the fame went round,
My brows with laurel leaves were crowned
My first—my proudest victory
Beneath thy boughs, oh mulberry tree.

The tears of Heaven were falling fast,
Mourning the memory of the past.
I knelt beneath the broken limb
In rain and night, and wept for him.
I saw the tomb - the planks laid there,
To slide the coffin to its lair,
"Ashes to ashes", this the end,
My first, my last - my only friend!

The morning stars grew pale and few,
In chilly draughts the east wind blew,
Lifting the black and frost-strewn leaves
In rustling eddies to the eaves.
Deceived no more with life's vain lies,
And all things equal in mine eyes,
I wait still near the mulberry tree
The dawning of eternity.

Whoe'er shall pluck the mulberry tree,
Bitter and sweet its fruit shall be;
Such - joy and misery still at strife -
The berries of the Tree of Life.

2007-07-16T13:47:00.000Z

New policies suggested to protect Jefferies Land.

Swindon Friends of the Earth, the Richard Jefferies Society, the Jefferies Land Conservation Trust and the Swindon Civic Trust have written to Swindon Borough Council's Forward Planning team to consider the following changes to the next Swindon Swindon Local Development Framework Plan :

- a focus on North Star as the favoured site for tertiary education as proposed in the deposit draft Swindon Local Plan 2011 along with other town centre sites.

- the reinstatement of the former Thamesdown/Swindon Borough Council Local Plan policies and Wiltshire Structure Plan policy that afforded protection and enhancement of the high and unique landscape value of the countryside in the foothills of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that stretches to Coate Water Country Park, a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Burderop Wood Local Nature Reserve and which includes Day House Copse Local Nature Reserve. As such it would be necessary to re-evaluate the area that might be developed without harm to the environment and to allow for some hospital expansion.

- a new policy that seeks to protect and enhance the landscape setting of Coate Farm that houses the Jefferies Museum and other features associated with the world class nature and countryside writer, Richard Jefferies.

The emerging Regional Spatial Strategy for the South-West offers this observation for the forward planning of Swindon to 2026: "the town has aspirations to establish a university". (paragraph 4.2.26) There is no further reference to making provision for a university in the Swindon strategy. Given that the University of Bath has dropped all proposals to provide a major campus at Coate or a medical research facility at Commonhead and whilst the Higher Education Funding Council of England is no longer supporting grants to establish new out-of-town campus-style educational facilities, the time is ripe to re-visit the planning policies for the Coate area that were only introduced to satisfy the needs of the University of Bath. As such, the emerging Framework Plan for Swindon should focus the town’s tertiary education needs at North Star and the town centre as part of the regeneration programme.

There is a considerable amount of new evidence related to the Coate area since both the Examination in Public of the Wiltshire and Swindon Structure Plan 2016 and the Public Inquiry of the Swindon Borough Local Plan 2011 took place. The area, that was thought to be suitable for development at the time by some, is far more heavily constrained by environmental and historic assets than previously recognised whilst environmental considerations such as the presence of unstable contaminated land and potential flood areas have been brushed aside. The archaeological study alone has revealed major constraints to development, unknown previously, that must now be protected. Further evidence has emerged to show that the ecological studies carried out on behalf of the developers were flawed and unreliable suggesting that the precautionary buffer of 0.5km to protect Coate Water SSSI, as proposed by Natural England (formerly English Nature), is more realistic. Furthermore, planners have demonstrated no appreciation of the importance of the unique literary landscape quality of the area and have failed to undertake any study that might shed light on the matter. If they had done so, they might understand why Richard Jefferies, particularly in his position as a pioneer environmentalist, is one of Swindon’s greatest assets and why the landscape that inspired Jefferies’ writing is of significant literary importance.

As such we believe that the Coate/Badbury Wick/Burderop area, that just escaped official national designation as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (as part of the North Wessex Downs) in the 1970s, should be re-designated as a Landscape Character Area subject to a policy of protection and enhancement that would require any permitted development to be in keeping with the historic setting of the landscape. Land that might be excluded from the policy might be evaluated in order to allow for some expansion of the hospital.

Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) was born at Coate Farm and lived at Coate for the best part of his first 28 years. In his short writing career, he wrote over 20 books and hundreds of essays and articles, many of them heavily influenced by his years of living in a farming community at Coate. Coate Farm was purchased by Swindon Corporation in 1926. Since that positive act of preservation 81 years ago, it is unfortunate that the Corporation's successors have made many unsympathetic changes to the property that include selling off meadow to the Sun Inn to extend their car-park, building a large “shed” in the same meadow (Brook Field) that was intended for use as an agricultural museum, reducing the size of the orchards and front garden for road widening, pulling down the thatched cow-sheds and thatched rick-shed, and replacing the thatch on the cart-house with an asbestos roof. A public outcry in the 1970s stopped the council from pulling down the pig-sties and barn. It was as a result of a national appeal by Sir John Betjeman, Spike Milligan, Johnny Morris and other national figures who helped the Richard Jefferies Society raise money for repairs, that the buildings were saved from demolition.

The Jefferies Museum attracts visitors from all around the world. This year alone there have been visitors from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and France drawn there because of their admiration for Jefferies’ writing. Visitors are thrilled that they can still see so many natural and man-made features in the area that Jefferies clearly identified and described in his books, albeit that he used fictitious place names. The development pressures on Swindon make Jefferies’ home vulnerable. Any further degradation of the property or of the setting of the Grade II listed building must not be permitted in order to allow future generations the opportunity to appreciate this literary heritage site. As such, we request that a policy is introduced in the Framework Plan that recognises the importance of the Jefferies house at Coate and ensures that it is preserved and enhanced.

2007-04-07T07:28:00.000Z

PRESS RELEASE

Antique bust of Richard Jefferies presented to the Jefferies Museum by Salisbury’s Mayor

On 2nd April, Sheila Warrander, the Mayor of Salisbury District Councillor and Cllr. Justin Tomlinson, Swindon Borough Council’s cabinet member for leisure, culture and recreation unveiled an antique bust of Richard Jefferies [1] at the Jefferies Museum at Coate[2] that has graced the committee room in Salisbury for over 80 years.

The white alabaster bust is a replica of the marble statue sculpted by Margaret Thomas that was unveiled in Salisbury Cathedral in 1892. It is believed that Miss Thomas made about five plaster replicas and it appears that this copy was once owned by Jefferies' Biographer Walter Besant, from whom it passed to the Association of Authors in London. The bust was offered for sale to Salisbury City Council, who declined it at first but then Alderman Frederick Sutton the renowned local confectioner and later Mayor of Salisbury bought the bust and presented it to the council in 1925. This particular copy of the cathedral bust appears to be the only one remaining apart from a version made for London’s National Portrait Gallery.

John Price, Chairman of the Richard Jefferies Society said:

“We are most grateful to Salisbury District Council for this rare and most welcome honour. The sculptress, Margaret Thomas, had but a few pictures of the writer on which to base her work. Jefferies had recently died, in 1887, aged only 37. Miss Thomas spoke to family and friends of the writer and mainly used a photo taken when Jefferies was 30 years old. We have given the statue pride of place on display in the large bay window of Jefferies’ sitting room”.

Mrs Sheila Warrander, the Mayor of Salisbury said:

“We have recently started to refurbish and extend our offices in Salisbury and, in knowledge that the Jefferies Museum is expanding its collection, it seemed appropriate to lend the statue to the museum where it can be appreciated by more visitors. We are delighted to find this perfect home for the sculpture. It is a charming museum”.

The Mayor was accompanied by Steve Milton, Salisbury District Council’s Principal Democratic Services Manager whose great grandfather was a friend of the author [3], along with Ruth Davies from the same department. Councillor Justin Tomlinson was accompanied by Paul Blacker, Director of leisure, culture and recreation for Swindon Borough Council. John Price, John Webb and Jean Saunders attended on behalf of the Richard Jefferies Society.
The Jefferies Museum is next open on Wednesday 11th April from 10am to 4pm. Admission is free and there is a creative writers’ group workshop running at the same time that visitors can join.

ENDS

Editors notes:

[1] Richard Jefferies was born at Coate Farm near Swindon on 6th of November 1848. The author spent his childhood exploring Coate Water and the local fields and woods, observing wildlife and nature. The area around his home at Coate has been known for years as “Jefferies Land”. It has become a place of pilgrimage for generations of readers.
Jefferies had a great exhilaration for life although he died from tuberculosis at the age of 37 and spent his last ten years in extreme pain. None the less he wrote over 20 novels and hundreds of essays many of them based on his life at Coate and his observations of nature and rural life. He has been described as a “many sided genius”. Historians cite him as an authority on agriculture in Victorian England. Major studies of mysticism have anthologised his work and discussed his ideas. He wrote one of the great novels for boys, Bevis, the Story of a Boy as well as several highly original novels for adult readers. He is recognised as one of the greatest nature writers in the language and he topped a Guardian 2005 poll for Britain’s favourite country writers.

[2] The Richard Jefferies Museum is situated between the Sun Inn at Coate and Day House Lane opposite the petrol station on the Marlborough Road. The old farm was purchased by Swindon Corporation in 1926 and it is still owned by Swindon Borough Council. The museum was opened to the public on a limited basis in the 1960’s. The Richard Jefferies Society, founded in 1950, has supplied the majority of the exhibits in the museum and for the last twenty years has provided volunteers to open the museum on the first and third Sundays of the month from May to September between 2-5pm and the second Wednesday of the month throughout the year from 10am to 4pm. Admittance to the house and grounds is free.

[3] Steve Milton is the great grandson of John William North ARA RWS the well known Victorian painter and friend of Richard Jefferies. Jefferies stayed with North in Somerset during his research for Red Deer and Wild Life in a Southern County. North had visited Jefferies on several occasions and was present on the day he died. North took in Jefferies' widow Jessie and his children to live with him in Somerset, he raised a fund to assist the family that raised around £1,300 in donations and he helped secure a pension from Parliament to assist them. North was on the committee that erected the bust in Salisbury Cathedral.

2007-03-16T14:31:00.000Z

RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY

SPRING NEWSLETTER 2007

FROM THE CHAIR

As I start to write this introduction to our Spring offering for 2007, the encouraging news has just broken that Bath University is pulling out of its plan to build a new campus at Coate. The prospect of gaining a University was the carrot that persuaded the Swindon Councillors to agree also to the building of 1,800 houses in addition on the site, so it remains to be seen whether the tail can continue to exist without the dog. We shall, of course, be prepared to fight on to counter the inevitable next round of planning applications for the threatened area.

You will see from this newsletter that the Society continues to flourish; to be proactive in many ways; and to attract new members. It is through Richard Jefferies’ writings that most people come to join us, and it is therefore very much appreciated when individuals donate or bequeath Jefferies’ books to the Society to redistribute amongst the membership. The gifts from the widow of the late Alan Voce, and from the very much alive Sarah Horton, are listed in this Newsletter, and we expect, from our experience of previous donations, that members will take this opportunity to add to, or upgrade their existing collections. It will be noted that one of Alan’s books came, in turn, from Cyril Wright’s Library.

One of the topics, raised at the last AGM, which your Executive Committee is discussing this year, is the possibility of indexing Jefferies’ works. Although the use of word searches for specific nouns is now much easier with modern technology; there is no substitute for a thorough reading if concepts, ideas, feelings, and other more abstract expressions are to be listed. Another relevant problem concerns which edition should be used for indexing. Henry Williamson’s rearrangement of Hodge, for example, would be a definite non-starter! The ideal solution would be to publish a new complete collected uniform edition of Jefferies’ works, together with a copy of Edward Thomas’s biography (as suggested originally by Queenie Leavis) and ensure that these had indices. This project could then fulfil two aims; to ensure that Jefferies’ books were in print and available to new generations all over the world who need to discover him; and to make the works more accessible (via the index) to those with a scholarly interest. New introductions putting each volume in the context of the 21st Century could also be extremely valuable.

I would very much like to encourage members in the U.K. who have not visited Coate in the past few years, to seriously make an effort to do so sometime this year. The improvement to the grounds, and the replanting of the orchard with old varieties of fruit trees, are interesting enough; but the interior changes are quite outstanding. The new photographic displays, the additional museum items, and the folders of photographs, articles, and general background information in the meeting room, will very pleasantly surprise those who have not visited for a few years. The library, bookshop of low-cost Jefferies and related volumes; as well as the much greater range of leaflets and souvenirs, ensure that visitors now feel that this is a “living” museum – rather than a shrine. The prospect (at last) of a new tenant for the cottage should also mean a reduction in the vandalism that has affected the museum badly over the last few years, and provide some help with the cleaning and maintenance at the museum – all of which has been done by our energetic, enthusiastic, indefatigable, and increasingly very knowledgeable Secretary, Jean Saunders.

I do hope we shall see many of you at our meetings this year. Please also remember that we are always genuinely pleased to hear from members about anything; from your own Jefferies’ experiences or thoughts, to ideas about how your Society should be run. Now that most of our ordinary meetings are held at Coate, there is a much greater incentive and opportunity to meet one another, enjoy the meeting, and revisit “Jefferies’ Land”.

Finally, I should like to congratulate Brian Morris, one of our long-standing members, on the publication of Richard Jefferies and the Ecological Vision. Brian’s background as a writer, is probably nearer to that of Richard Jefferies than any other living member authors. His limited early formal education, and his love of the outdoors, led him to discover and appreciate Jefferies’ own writings and ideas in an empathetic way, and he has produced a most interesting volume.
John Price

BIRTHDAY LECTURE: ‘WILLIAM MORRIS AND THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE’ by MARTIN HAGGERTY 14th October 2006

Once again, it was pleasant to return to the Church Hall at Chiseldon for the Society’s Annual General Meeting and Birthday Lecture. Albeit that the building was over-heated and windows were thrown open to compensate, forty one people attended the event and the room was packed for the Birthday Lecture ably given by Martin Haggerty.

Whilst William Morris is mainly remembered as a designer and craftsman, Martin outlined Morris’s talents as a writer, essayist, prolific poet and the author of prose romances such as The Wood beyond the World and the utopian fantasy novel News from Nowhere, as well as a translator of Icelandic sagas. In 1883, he declared himself a socialist and was an extremely active propagandist for that cause as a public speaker and as the founder-editor of Commonweal, a political journal published by the Socialist League.

Martin presented a case for Morris to be considered as a country writer on the basis of his lectures, essays and articles which address rural issues, as well as his depiction of a hypothetical future England in News from Nowhere, and on his descriptions of landscape, farming and wildlife in other writing. In common with Richard Jefferies, Morris was also most familiar with the countryside of Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

Morris had no affection for the large towns and cities of Victorian Britain. "London and our other great commercial cities" are, he complained, "mere masses of sordidness, filth, and squalor, embroidered with patches of pompous and vulgar hideousness . . . and every little market-town seizes the opportunity to imitate, as far as it can, the majesty of the hell of London and Manchester" ('Art Under Plutocracy'). In Morris's lectures and journalism, the contrast between the city and the countryside is very pronounced and this is a continual theme. Typically each is described in relation to the other. Although deeply appreciative of nature, Morris regarded the English countryside primarily as a human environment.

Morris's "passionate love of the earth" finds its fullest and most eloquent expression in depictions of particular landscapes. For example, without being explicitly identified, the Wiltshire Downs feature in The Roots of the Mountains and The Water of the Wondrous Isles, as well as in The Well at the World's End which also uses various real locations in Oxfordshire.

Like Jefferies, Morris shows a serious concern for rural hardship and poverty. Morris dreamt of a future when "the great drama of the seasons can touch our workmen with other feelings than the misery of winter and the weariness of summer" ('The Prospects of Architecture in Civilization').

In Morris's later descriptions of the countryside, whether in his prose romances or in his journalism and lectures, there are enough correspondences with Jefferies to suggest that Morris had read not only After London but also some of Jefferies' other work, most probably the essays collected in the 1889 volume, Field and Hedgerow.

Immediately after the lecture, Martin distributed photocopies of 'Under an Elm-Tree; or, Thoughts in the Country-Side', first published in July 1889 as one of Morris's editorials for Commonweal, to exemplify Morris at his best as a country writer. Hopefully Martin will produce a paper on the subject of his lecture for a future edition of the Society’s Journal

FOOTSTEPS OF RICHARD JEFFERIES PROJECT

Last November, the Society submitted an application for a one year project to the National Lottery/Arts Council Awards for All grant. Just before Christmas, we were informed that our proposal had been accepted for funding. The grant is £9,200 and it will be used to advance three separate initiatives aimed at encouraging the local Swindon community to learn about, be inspired by and visit local places associated with Jefferies at Coate. The project will be based at the Jefferies’ museum and gardens and will partly explore the countryside nearby. The facilities will be available free-of-charge to the community and the project ends on 31st December 2007. News of the grant was given prominence in the local papers and BBC Radio on 29 January. This included an excellent eye-catching article in a free paper delivered to most homes in Swindon.

Writers workshops: Building on the success of the writers’ workshops for adults held in 2006, these will continue on the second Wednesday of the month until December 2007 from 10am to 4pm. In addition, local schools will be invited to special sessions. A pamphlet or pamphlets of works created by participants will be published. Society member Tony Hillier, a community development worker and poet, has been engaged to lead the workshops and to promote them.

Story-walks: Dedicated story-telling days will be organised, mainly for young children. Hilda Sheehan, a teacher and Society member, has adapted two extracts from Wood Magic, appropriately illustrated, that will be made available as a paperback. Relatively new to living in Swindon, but a keen poet, Hilda visited the Coate Museum in August 2006 only to be enthralled by the atmosphere of Jefferies’ house and gardens. She left with a copy of Wood Magic that captured her imagination. ‘The Weasel’s Story’ and ‘The Cunning Spider’ will be recounted whilst walking around the museum and grounds visiting places mentioned by Jefferies. Hilda is organising other activities for young children at the museum such as treasure trails. The walks event will be launched on Saturday 12 May. There will be two story telling sessions for children in the morning at 11am and one for adults at 2pm in the afternoon linked with the Swindon Literary Festival. Other sessions for children will be held on certain Sundays in the summer.

Coate Water walk: Mark Daniel’s guided walk around Coate Water booklet has been updated and published in colour along with a separate Coate Farm guide. Mark will lead a special walk to celebrate the occasion on Sunday 3rd June meeting at 11am in the car park of Coate Water Country Park. The walk will finish at the museum. Bring a picnic if you can come along. Refreshments will be provided at the museum.

Archives of the Richard Jefferies Society
On 2 December 2006, the Society held its first public meeting at the Coate Museum. We were delighted to be joined by a reporter and photographer from the Swindon Advertiser who recorded the event in an article dated 5th December.
Hitherto, the Society’s archives – dating back to 1949 – have been in the care of the Honorary Secretary. After the death of Cyril Wright they passed to Phyllis Treitel. Having housed them for ten years, she thought that for two reasons they should be held in professionally organised storage: for better preservation, and to facilitate access by members of the public, especially by Society members. The Wiltshire & Swindon Records Office, which has already taken charge of Henry Williamson’s letters (as President) to Mrs Frances Gay, agreed to accept this main archive.
So that current members should have some idea of what records are to be handed over, Phyllis brought the most important (about half) over for members to see. Boxes and files were placed on tables for examination. Of most interest were the six books of cuttings collected by Harold Adams and three more by Cyril Wright. Next in interest were the two boxes and two files of photographs. Minutes of committee meetings, and meetings open to the public (many hand-written) were the next category of interest. Finally, a group of files and boxes containing: J. B. Jones’s papers; a transcript of ‘Benn Tubbs Adventures’; Kate Tryon’s papers; the Delattre papers, including his Jefferies Saga Vols. I and II; and other research material. These will all be available for study to members at the WSRO and will soon be installed in the new purpose-built office in Chippenham.
A great many Society files that do not qualify as ‘records’ will be kept by the Hon. Sec. or placed in the Coate Museum.

The latest news on the archives is that on 5th January John d'Arcy, from the Wiltshire & Swindon Records Office, collected almost all the records that Phyllis held. Apparently, he seemed delighted. Eventually, there should be an inventory and Mr d’Arcy may return material not considered appropriate for their collection. In 2008 the Society hopes to organise a visit to the new Chippenham office.
***
Advance notice of the Society’s public meeting on Saturday 1 December. We will revisit a reading by Paul Casimir (a Swindon librarian) of his talk entitled 'Richard Jefferies and Other Writers' that was given to the Society in February 1956 which in his own words was “firstly, to examine the impression formed by others of the work of Jefferies; secondly, to trace the stylistic influences, if any, of Jefferies upon other writers; thirdly, to examine his thoughts and view of life”.

COATE FARM AND MUSEUM OPENING DATES 2007
Last year beat all records with 420 visitors on designated open days and there were an additional 265 visitors for special openings of the Museum. Heritage Day alone brought in over 70 visitors. This event was a good test for the strength of the floor-boards! In view of the success of Heritage Day, this year we plan to open the museum from 11am and add more activities.

The Museum is open on the second Wednesday of the month from 10am to 4pm throughout the year. The Sunday open dates from 2-5pm are set out below. Ideally, we aim to open the Museum every Sunday during these months but this would require more help from you. Any offers? Perhaps next year? Please contact the Hon. Sec.

6th May, 20th May, 3rd June, 17th June, 1st July, 15th July, 5th August, 19th August, 2nd September, 9th September (Heritage Day - 11am open) & 16th September.

If you haven’t visited the museum for some time, you should. There is now much more to see. Indeed, we are in need of more exhibition space. A special thank you to Society member Richard Burge who, in researching his own family tree, has supplied the Society with documents and newspaper copy about the Jefferies’ family. Some of this material is now on display at the Coate Museum.

RICHARD JEFFERIES’ TABLE
Among the visitors to the museum on 14th February, Jean Saunders was surprised to welcome her neighbours who live in Longcot. “We’ve come to visit our table”, announced Robert Baker. At which point the penny dropped when Jean remembered that Mr. L. Baker, now deceased, of Faringdon, had lent the gate-leg table on display in the attic to the museum in April 1982. “I thought that we had lost all trace of the owner,” remarked Jean.

The solid oak gate-leg table is known as ‘Richard Jefferies’ Table’ albeit that it belonged to his parents (not to be confused with Richard Jefferies’ writing table that is also on display in the attic). The table is described in the kitchen of the farmhouse in Round About a Great Estate (Ch II) as “an old oak table in the centre of the room –a table so solid that young Aaron, the strong labourer, could only move it with difficulty” and in Amaryllis at the Fair (Ch XXIII) as “the heavy oaken table, unpolished, greyish oak ... the old and clumsy table, village made and unpolished, except in so far as the stains of cooking operations had varnished it … the same table at which ‘Jearje,’ the fogger, sat every morning to eat his breakfast, and every evening to take his supper.”

Jefferies’ parents gave the table to John and Amelia Brown of Coate when their house and contents were sold. John Brown worked on Jefferies’ farm. Richard Jefferies wrote about him in “My Old Village” (published in October 1887) recounting John Brown’s death and his sadness at the news.

John Brown’s grand-daughter sold the table to Mr Lyn Baker of Highworth Road, Faringdon in 1971. Mr Baker bought it for his wife, Freda, a descendent of a cousin of Jefferies’ wife, Jessie Baden. Freda was also a member of the Richard Jefferies Society.

Robert remembers helping his father carry the heavy table to the museum in April 1982. For a while it had been at his house in Longcot. He pointed to a repair that had been undertaken and their efforts to find an old piece of oak fit for the job.

Robert Baker inherited his father’s possessions. Now he has extended the loan of the table to the Society in his own right, for which we are most grateful.

RICHARD JEFFERIES RUSSET
With recent cutting-taking and propagation of the Richard Jefferies Russet, its survival now seems assured. The Brogdale Trust near Canterbury, which maintains specimens of all English varieties, cannot match ours, and we are free to call it what we like, although any kind of Registration of Title would cost about £1000. This was not investigated further.

The original Russet Apple died about 1999, being replaced at that time by a scion taken from an earlier scion from the seventies and planted in Brighton. Unfortunately this, too, died, having been ring-barked in 2002, apparently by vandals. Another grafted cutting is being trained in Brighton to make a straight trunk. This should be ready for planting near the original site next spring.

In 2005 and 2006 further twigs were grafted and offered to people wanting their own tree, demand being widespread following a Country Life article. Richard Jefferies Russet trees now exist in Brighton, Reading, Calne, Wootton Bassett, Marlborough, Fairford (Glos), Blockley (Glos), Salterton (Devon), Lydiard Park, Swindon, and in the replanted orchard at Coate Farm.

In case of necessity, locations of some of the trees can be obtained from :
The Tree Register of the British Isles
77a Hall End
Wooton
Beds. MK43 9HP
Mark Daniel

More on fruit trees at Coate Farm
Four brave souls from TWIGS (Therapeutic Work in Gardens) helped Jean plant ten more fruit trees in howling gales and rain on 19 January. The fruit trees were delivered bare-rooted and there was no choice but to get them in the ground as soon as possible. Cherry and plum trees have been planted in front of the house; a damson, Blenheim Orange apple, pear and cherry added to the orchard and more plums, pears and apples have been planted in what was part of Brook Field meadow next to the ha-ha wall. There is a new walnut tree as well donated by the Jefferies Land Conservation Trust. In all twenty fruit trees have been added to the gardens in the last year. Mark Daniel punched out lead labels to attach to the trees recording the variety, year of planting and the name of the person who supplied funding for the tree. The espalier pear “Doyenne Du Comice” was paid for by Andrew Rossabi whilst Helen Newman supplied the “Blenheim Orange” apple tree (another Jefferies favourite). Jean Saunders has supplied a “Lord Lambourn”. The two Richard Jefferies Russet apple trees planted in the orchard last year are doing well. These were paid for by John Webb and Stan Hickerton and were grown from cuttings taken from Mark Daniel’s tree in Brighton.

SUN INN PROPOSALS
Members who attended the last AGM might remember that Society officers had some concerns that Arkells Brewery proposed extending the Sun Inn pub, providing access to the Museum from their car park as well as managing the Jefferies’ gardens partly for their customers’ use. John Webb, John Price and Jean Saunders met with Arkells’ representatives on 26 October only to find out that Swindon Borough Council had misled the brewery into thinking that this was what we wanted! Once we made it clear that it had been illegal access from the pub garden that had caused much of the vandalism at Coate Farm, the suggestion was withdrawn. The Sun Inn hope to build twenty letting rooms that will abut the Jefferies’ gardens but it is anticipated that the design will be in keeping with the setting. No planning application has been submitted yet. The new landlord at the pub has been most congenial and helpful.

JEFFERIES LAND CONSERVATION TRUST
The Trust has continued to work hard in the Jefferies’ Museum gardens. One member described the task as “extreme gardening”. Steve Nethercot, a member of the Trust, succeeded in obtaining a grant of £500 from the company he works for (Royal & Sun Alliance) to buy more plants for the gardens. The Trust has donated a sun dial, a bird bath and the walnut tree. There are plans to plant a lavender hedge. The Trust also aims to address the appalling lack of direction markers to find the museum from Coate Water and organise the provision of road signs. An old gate found in the ancient hedge between Brook Field and Home Field might provide an ideal access point to the gardens from Coate Water taking visitors through a woodland walk. New bird nesting boxes and feeders have been put up although the squirrels are taking most of the nuts.

SAVE COATE CAMPAIGN
On 15th February, there was a surprising announcement from the University of Bath. Their Senate recommended that the university should pull out of the proposals for a campus at Coate supported by their governing body that met on 1st March. They cite two main reasons for their decision; a change in government’s funding arrangements for higher education and an inability to agree plans with the house builders. New archaeological studies have revealed extensive constraints that prevent development on the fields affected. Redrow Homes and Persimmon Homes don’t want to reduce their housing land quota and have reduced the allocation originally set aside for the campus. The house builders announced that they will submit a revised planning application in May and hope to start building 1,800 houses next year. They argue that as long as land is set aside for a university campus, they have met the requirements of the Swindon Local Plan, regardless of whether a university is ever built. The battle rages on. Your help will be needed to object to the new plans but there is now a real opportunity to save Coate! In the meantime, Swindon College has invited the University of Bath to join them at the North Star site located centrally next to Swindon railway and coach stations and, apparently, this proposition is now being considered seriously. As this was the original site announced for the preferred university campus in 2002, the University of Bath might have saved us a good deal of heartache.

RICHARD JEFFERIES’ BUST
Salisbury District Council lent their bust of Richard Jefferies to the Coate museum on 24 November 2006. It is pictured on the cover of the newsletter standing in its new home in the bay window of Jefferies’ sitting room. The bust is a replica of the marble sculpture by Margaret Thomas unveiled in Salisbury Cathedral in 1892. It is believed that Miss Thomas made about five plaster replicas. This unsigned copy of the cathedral bust appears to be the only one remaining. It belonged to Frederick Sutton, an Alderman and Mayor of Salisbury. In 1925 Mr Sutton presented the statue to Salisbury District Council where it stood in their Committee Room for over 80 years. It is now on permanent loan to the Museum. Society member, Steve Milton who is employed by Salisbury District Council will be accompanying a councillor to formally present the bust to the Museum on 2nd April. For more information about the cathedral bust see Journal No 13 pages 10-24.

COUNCIL OAK PLAQUE
The new Council Oak plaque was unveiled on 10th September – National Heritage Day - by Ray Morse and Terri Venables. Terri’s husband was a teacher at Dorcan Technical College who died suddenly after setting the wheels in motion to make the new plaque. The wording is the same as on the original plaque made by Cyril Wright:

THE COUNCIL OAK
DESCRIBED BY RICHARD JEFFERIES
BORN AT COATE IN 1848
IN HIS NOVEL ‘BEVIS THE STORY OF A BOY’

In addition, there is a small brass insert on the plaque in memory of John Venables. John Price read out the relevant extract from Bevis about the tree. The event was given prominence in the local paper quoting from the boys’ adventure story. Ray Morse was thanked for his help in obtaining the new plaque.

LISTING OF COATE FARM
Whilst the Jefferies Museum is designated as a Grade II listed building by English Heritage, the original description was inadequate and failed to mention out-buildings and features important to Jefferies’ writing. As such, the Society wrote to English Heritage, at the end of 2005, and provided detailed information asking for features to be specifically named that included the ha-ha wall, outbuildings, the main garden wall and Hawkes boundary stone. English Heritage visited Coate Farm not long after. Whilst it was deemed that the listing should not be upgraded, on 10th November 2006, the description was officially updated to include all the out-buildings and walls.

PUBLICITY & PUBLICATIONS

Richard Jefferies: A Spirit Illumined – 100 years of Redemption through Nature. A centenary symposium published by the Richard Jefferies Society in 1987. A hoard of copies of this A5 pamphlet were discovered at the Jefferies’ Museum last autumn. Originally on sale for £3.75, the booklet is on offer at £1 plus postage. 60 pages long, it includes photographs and illustrations of Jefferies and Coate Farm along with sixteen articles/poems that include those by Jeremy Hooker, Kim Taplin, Bill Keith, Christopher R. Milne, Edna Manning, Mark Daniel and Andrew Rossabi. Order through Norma Goodwin.

Guide to the Coate Museum and grounds. A 28 page A5 guide has been put together by the Society to add value to any visit to Jefferies’ birthplace. It is fully illustrated and published in colour and a valuable addition to any member’s book-shelf. The publication has been part-funded by the National Lottery and, as such, we are able to sell it at a subsidised price of £1 plus postage. Order through Mrs Goodwin.

John Webb has continued to supply the Swindon Advertiser with monthly extracts from Jefferies nature writing along with suitable photographs to illustrate the scene. The feature has now been running for a year and is normally given a full-page spread along with colour photographs. The editor of the local paper appears keen to keep the feature running this year. The publicity also provides the Society with an opportunity to remind the public of dates when the Museum is open.

CITINGS OF JEFFERIES
George Miller drew attention to an exhibition showing in Owestry: ANDY GOLDSWORTHY; EARLY WORKS FROM THE ARTS COUNCIL COLLECTION - Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition. Goldsworthy is another contemporary artist who has found inspiration in Richard Jefferies' words, not surprising perhaps, given the 'heightened experience' of nature he celebrates. The exhibition is accompanied by a two volume book of ideas, influences and responses relating to his work. Part one contains a lengthy quote from 'Out of Doors in February'. Part two consists mainly of quotes from letters and diaries of writers on nature from Gilbert White to D H Lawrence. There are 13 extracts from Jefferies' Nature Diaries and Notebooks. Enquiries about Hayward Gallery touring exhibitions: 020 7921 0837. www.hayward.org.uk

Jean Saunders spotted this in the Toronto Star – “If our global civilization dies, what's left to replace it? - by Ronald Wright.
The faster the hands began to move on the clock of progress, the more writers and thinkers began to ask themselves Paul Gauguin's question: Where are we going? If so much was happening so quickly before their eyes, what might happen in the future? Butler, H.G. Wells, William Morris, Richard Jefferies, and many others developed a new literary form that could present their imaginings to a broad reading public: a blend of fantasy, satire, and allegory that became known as the "scientific romance."

Eric Jones found the following articles that mention Jefferies which may be read for free on the LookSmart Find Articles website: http://findarticles.com . The articles include:
Mark Freeman, ‘Folklore Collection and Social Investigation in late nineteenth and early twentieth century England’, Folklore April 2005 (this lists four books by Jefferies and contains a long quotation from Red Deer).

Stephen Wade, ‘”The glory of education”: one hundred years of the Workers’ Educational Association’, Contemporary Review November 2003 (this says that Leonard Bast in E. M. Forster, Howard’s End [1910], saw enlightenment in the ‘impassioned prose’ of Jefferies – ‘and of course Ruskin’).

John Knight, ‘In Hardy Country’, Contemporary Review, January 2001.

Eric Jones also found that BlogPulse, one of the main blog tracking sites, has 29 entries for Richard Jefferies. One entry was in Adrian Monck’s blog dated 2 December 2006. He is a British journalism professor and writer on the media and current affairs. Prof Monck describes Jefferies as “probably my favourite journalist and writer of English prose” and quotes the opening paragraphs of a ‘Walk in the Wheatfields’ to illustrate his point.

In The Guardian September 16, 2006, Robert MacFarlane celebrates the writing and wild life enthusiasms of the environmentalist Roger Deakin, author of the bestselling Waterlog: A Swimmer's Journey Through Britain who died in August aged 63. MacFarlane writes:
"In its poetry, its ecological conscience, and its visionary quality, Waterlog should be understood as belonging to a tradition of English land-art which includes the sculptors David Nash and Peter Randall-Page, as well as writers such as Ronald Blythe, Richard Jefferies and John Clare."
In the Spring 2007 edition of The Glass there is a short paper entitled ‘Prophecy and Utopia: Richard Jefferies and the Transcendalists’ by Roger Ebbatson.

John Price mentioned a new edition of a National Trust book “Wild Flowers” that includes a quotation from Jefferies’ Life of the Fields that describes Germander Speedwell.

Thought for the Day – 21st September 2006 International News, Australia: "The very idea that there is another idea is something gained." – Richard Jefferies, English author (1848-1887).

Patrick Gray refers to a little book that his mother owned as a young girl: Selected English Essays that includes Jefferies’ ‘Meadow Thoughts’ alongside English classical writers such as Defoe, Lamb, Swift and Fielding. The book was reprinted by Oxford University Press in 1930.

On 4 January BBC Points West broadcast an interview with Society member and community poet Tony Hillier. The film was shot at the Jefferies Museum and highlighted Tony’s passion to inspire the community to write poetry. Filmed under the mulberry tree and in the “parlour”, short extracts of poetry were read out that included the opening lines to Jefferies’ poem ‘The Mulberry Tree’. Unfortunately viewers were not informed that the filming took place at the museum nor was Jefferies mentioned by name.

BOOKS and PAMPHLETS.

Heidegger's Bicycle by Prof Roger Ebbatson. Published by Sussex Academic Press, £16.99 (softcover);1-84519-105-6. It contains a chapter on Jefferies and Hardy.

Isambard’s Kingdom: Travels in Brunel’s England by Judy Jones. Published by Sutton Publishing, £17.99. Judy, a writer and journalist who lives in Wiltshire, describes her walk from Paddington to Penzance tracking the route of the great Western Railway. She mentions a most interesting visit to the Coate Museum when she was shown round by Chris Bowles and expresses her concern about the proposed development next to Coate Water.

Richard Jefferies and the Ecological Vision by Brian Morris. 455 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #06-1584; ISBN 1-4120-9828-9; US$29.48, C$33.90, EUR24.21, £16.95 Morris demonstrates that Jefferies was a pioneer ecologist. Available from Trafford Publishing online at Trafford.com/06-1584 or call 1-888-232-4444 (USA and Canada only) or 250-383-6864. From Europe, ring the UK order desk clerk at local rate number 0845 230 9601 (UK only) or 44 (0)1865 722 113. Brian Morris has been invited to give this year’s Birthday Lecture.

HOW DID YOU FIRST DISCOVER RICHARD JEFFERIES AND THE SOCIETY?

Stuart Eagles writes: “I came to Jefferies through Ruskin and Morris. All of them share a love and appreciation of nature which informs their vision of life. ‘Vision’ – because their collective mission as writers, it seems to me, is to see, in the truest sense.” How did you discover that the RJS existed? “A distant relative, Sheila Povey of Swindon, first made me aware of the Society – and, much more surprisingly, of a distant family connection to the man himself. Invested with such reasons to join the Society, this year I have finally got around to it, and I am delighted to be a member of such an important group – and thanks to the developers, at such a crucial time!”

Chris Partis read an article about the proposed Coate development in the Telegraph; how it would ruin the whole Coate area and the implications for Jefferies' writing. He writes: "The small biography of Richard Jefferies that followed the article was enough to stir my interest and I decided there and then that I would look further into the life and work of the man. A man ahead of his time".
Mr Partis discovered the RJS via the Edward Thomas Fellowship’s newsletter. “I’ve just finished reading At Home on the Earth, a great selection of the later writings of RJ selected and introduced by Jeremy Hooker, and I must admit that my interest and admiration has grown even more. Needless to say I’m now trying to collect everything RJ wrote".

Dennis Cross mentioned to our Chairman that he was a professional ice-skater and performed at Richmond ice-rink. He bought a copy of Life of the Fields and would read essays whilst waiting to perform. Perhaps Mr Cross might enjoy reading ‘A Midnight Skate’ published in the RJS Journal No 4 pp 10-16 ?

Wendy Spence believes that she has always known about Richard Jefferies. “Living with my maternal grandparents during WW2 and onwards until 8 years of age, my most fragrant memories are of wandering with my Nan in deepest Surrey. We were surrounded by chestnut and hazel woods. A little further afield were bluebell and primrose copses surrounding the meadows, full of flowers and farm animals roaming freely. I learnt so much from my love for everything ‘natural’. We were always picnicking and gathering something that ended with an ‘ing’ (wood…, blackberry…, chestnut…) etc. I remember the name Bevis very well during this time – no doubt on their bookshelves. My adult rekindling was of being loaned a book of poems, including one by Richard Jefferies, which captivated me. Words describing ‘being at one with the tiny blades of grass in a meadow, moving in the unseen wind’. I returned the book and time moved on. Earlier this year, I read an article in a magazine on places to visit of interest. The article included the Richard Jefferies Museum. This time I was not letting the opportunity pass by. I rang the local Tourist Information Office, who sent me details, including the Secretary’s address and museum times of opening. I made contact and am now a Member, beginning a journey of discovery.”

NEWS FROM OTHER SOCIETIES

Alliance of Literary Societies’ Annual General Meeting
This year The Tolkien Society will host the ALS AGM that will be held on May 19-20th The talks about Tolkien and the AGM taking place on the Saturday morning will be held at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. There will be a walk tour of Tolkien’s Oxford in the afternoon. On Sunday morning a visit is planned to ‘The Oxford Story’ that examines 900 years of Oxford University’s history. Further details from Helen Newman or the Hon Sec. The registration deadline is set at 31st March.

The Richard Jefferies Society will be hosting the Annual General Meeting of the ALS in 2008 in Swindon. Plans are already underway for the weekend of 17-18 May to raise the profile of Jefferies and Coate. Hugoe Matthews will give the keynote address about Jefferies. A novel event is being planned for the Sunday that will include a literary treasure hunt based on Jefferies' favourite local haunts. The Society will be trialling a dry run of the treasure hunt this year. As yet, a date is not set.

Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Society
We have tickets which enable our members to visit, and make use of the facilities of the Museum at Devizes. If you would like to borrow a ticket, please apply to John Price. Telephone 01672 515150.

The Friends of the Ridgeway
Phyllis Treitel informs us that the National Environment and Community Bill is now law. Five years ago 45 miles of the 85-mile long Ridgeway were legally accessible to motor vehicles. Now only 3 miles of it are open to them all the year round, viz. from Fox Hill to Bishopstone (Swindon Borough Council please put this right). Vehicles will still be seen in places, but the main object has been achieved. Congratulations to Ian Ritchie.

News from the past: the first ever manned balloon flight is said to have taken place in 1824; George Graham took off from Bath and landed near Ramsbury, having flown over the Ridgeway.

News for today: a new YHA bunkhouse has opened at Cliffe Pypard. It is popular with overseas guests from Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand, Iran and Samoa. YHA members £11.00 night.

Friends’ AGM at the Ridgeway Centre, near Wantage, 25 March 2007.

The Friends of Alfred Williams are pleased to announce that in January 2007 Sutton Publishing republished Alfred Williams' book Life in a Railway Factory which was first published in 1915. It has been produced in soft back format (ISBN 978 0750 946 605) at £14.99 and is available from all good book sellers or by mail order from Ian Allen. Publishing, telephone number 01455 254450.

The Edward Thomas Fellowship.
April 14th & 15th, 2007 Celebration of the 90th anniversary of Edward's death with a weekend of events at Bedales School, Steep.
November 2007 The Fellowship is planning a visit to Agny, Arras, Somme and Ypres.
Contact: Colin G. Thornton, 1, Carfax, Undercliff Drive, St. Lawrence, Isle of Wight PO38 1XG. Telephone:01983 853366.

The Loughton Festival
31st March- 1st April 2007. This will be the first year for the festival that was conceived last spring. The event is being organised on a very tight budget and aims to celebrate Loughton's literary heritage. Speakers are drawn from the John Clare and Tennyson Societies and the Edward Thomas Fellowship. There will also be a talk about Arthur Morrison at the church where he is buried: The Church of the Holy Innocents, High Beach. There will be a walk on 1st April which will start with an introduction to the Queen Elizabeth Hunting Lodge, at Chingford. After a walk through Epping Forest, the walkers will arrive at the Suntrap in High Beach, which is one of the sites of the asylum where John Clare and also Tennyson were patients. Contact: Sue Taylor, 020 8508 2512 for more information or Jean Saunders can supply a leaflet.

John Clare DVD- A photographic journey with Peter Moyse.
The film features photographs of Clare’s countryside and includes selected readings of his poetry and prose with reflections on his life and writing by Ronald Blythe and Edward Storey. It is described as “A brilliant introduction to Clare’s life and writing”.
Proceeds go to the John Clare Society and the John Clare Trust. £11.99 including postage in the UK, £12.99 for Europe and £13.99 elsewhere. Orders to: John Clare Sales Officer, 8 Massey Road, Lincoln, LN2 4BN.

STUDY DAY: CHILDREN’S LITERATURE IN JEFFERIES’ DAY

SATURDAY 28 JULY 2007

RICHARD JEFFERIES MUSEUM, COATE

PROGRAMME

10.30 Doors open and refreshments.

11.00 Individual contributions by members (up to 5 minutes each). *

12.30-2.00 Lunch break. Time to look around the Museum or Coate Water. Meals available at the Sun Inn or bring a packed lunch.

2.00 Speakers
Helen Newman: Victorian Children’s Literature
Andrew Rossabi: Richard Jefferies and the Classics

3.45 Tea

4.30 Depart

* Guidance Please name and discuss one book or writer, of Jefferies’ day, that did, or could, influence Jefferies, directly or indirectly. The list is very long.

Reading. W. J. Keith RJS Journal No 2
Jonathan Calder RJSJ No 6
Peter Hunt RJSJ No 7
John Savage RJSJ No 10

We shall display copies of contemporary children’s books. If you have any, bring them along – all authors.

Please would you inform the secretary if you are able to attend in order to organise seating and refreshments.

There is free parking at Coate Water Country Park and limited parking at the Museum and Day House Lane. Parking is also allowed at the Sun Inn, particularly so if taking luncheon there.

RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS FOR SALE AND LOAN

The full list of publications available can be found in the Autumn Newsletter and Annual Report for 2006. The following changes should be noted:

The new colour booklet of the guided walk around Coate Water by Mark Daniel is now available free courtesy of the National Lottery.

The new colour Coate Museum guide – 28pp A5 – is available at a subsidised price of £1.

Richard Jefferies: A Spirit Illumined is now available for £1.

The stock of paperback copies of The Story of my Heart is now exhausted.

Electronic books on CD for sale
See list of books previously scanned on page 35 of the Autumn newsletter 2006. Wood Magic, Dewy Morn and The Old House at Coate have been recently added. Copies of the CD Rom are available for £5 including postage. The scanning errors in the text of The Scarlet Shawl have now been corrected and the file put into A5 format enabling owners to print off their own version of the book.

Orders should be sent to Mrs. Norma Goodwin, Wildings, 3a Momford Road, Oliver’s Battery, Winchester SO22 4LE. Cheques should be made payable to the ‘Richard Jefferies Society’ although small orders can be paid for by postage stamps.

Postage: For the UK add 25p for orders up to £1; add 50p for orders up to £2 : add 75p for orders £2 and over.

Outside Europe, please contact Norma to find out postage cost.
****
Copies of the video, JEFFERIES LAND, may still be obtained, price £10, from John Webb, Padbrook, Bincknoll Lane, Wootton Bassett, Wilts SN4 8QR. Cheques to ‘John Webb’. John also houses the Society’s complete library of books that can be borrowed by members. For more information phone John on 01793 853171.

Second-hand books John Price has a good stock of second-hand Jefferies books for sale. Contact him on 01672 515150. There is also a supply of cheaper volumes on sale at the museum.

Please note that the Jefferies Museum is not easy to find – there are no signposts until you arrive. The main entrance is opposite the petrol station on the Marlborough Road and next to the Sun Inn public house off the Coate Water roundabout. Car-parking is free at Coate Water Country Park – only 3 minutes walk away (there is an entrance to the garden by the ha-ha wall from Brook Field if you follow the Great Hedge). The landlord at the Sun Inn is happy for museum visitors to use his car park. There is limited parking at the Museum and along Day House Lane.

From Swindon town centre there are several bus services that stop next to Coate Water roundabout. These include: Monday to Saturday - daytime: Numbers 10, 12, 13, 14 and 21. Monday to Saturday - evenings: Numbers 12, 13 and 14..

PROGRAMME OF MEETINGS AND EVENTS 2007

Saturday 3 March* Joint meeting with the Friends of Alfred Williams to share readings.

Saturday 14 April* The Man on the Hill The showing of a two-part documentary film made by HTV in 1987 as part of the Jefferies’ centenary celebrations. Readings by Paul Scofield.

Saturday 12 May* The Weasel’s Story a walking story-telling event by Hilda Sheehan adapted from Wood Magic and in partnership with the Swindon Literary Festival. Children’s session at 11am.

Sunday 3 June Walk Around Coate Water with Mark Daniel. Meet outside the Rangers’ Centre in Coate Water car park at 11am. Bring picnic. Refreshments at the Museum. Museum also open at 2pm.

Saturday 28 July STUDY DAY. ‘Children’s Literature in Jefferies’ Day’. 10.30am to 4.30pm. Jefferies Museum at Coate.

Sunday 9 September Heritage Open Day at the Museum 11am-5pm

Saturday 13 October Annual General Meeting and Birthday Lecture. Liddington Church Hall. Details in the next newsletter. Brian Morris will be giving the Birthday Lecture on “Richard Jefferies: the Pioneer Ecologist”.

Saturday 1 December* Reading of Paul Casimir’s (a former Swindon librarian) paper entitled 'Richard Jefferies and Other Writers' that was originally given in February 1956.

* Meetings begin at 2.00pm at the Jefferies museum unless otherwise stated. See direction map on the previous page. The Museum will be open from 1.00pm on meeting days. Refreshments provided. Entrance free.

2007-02-08T09:15:00.000Z

Readings from Alfred Williams and Richard Jefferies.

Saturday 3rd March 2pm. at the Richard Jefferies Museum, Marlborough Road, Coate.

Participants can select a 5 minute piece to read out and share with others or can just come along and listen.

The museum will be open from 1pm. No entrance fee. Park at Coate Water Country Park or in the Sun Inn car park next to the Museum.

2007-01-22T15:38:00.000Z

PRESS RELEASE

New life for the Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate

This year there will be a burst of new activities at the Richard Jefferies Museum (1) thanks to a grant from the Lottery’s Awards for All programme (2).

The Richard Jefferies Society (3) has been awarded £9,200 for a community project entitled “Footsteps of Richard Jefferies” that aims to encourage local people to become better acquainted with their local writer (4) born at Coate Farm in 1848, to visit places that influenced his work and be inspired to write themselves. There will be story telling walks and adventures based on extracts from Jefferies’ children’s fable Wood Magic (published in 1881) that will be led by Hilda Sheehan, a Kindermusik Educator. Writers workshops for adults and schools will be run by community poet, Tony Hillier. A guided walk around Coate Water and the museum will be led by Mark Daniel and a tour guide will be produced.

Jean Saunders, secretary of the Richard Jefferies Society said:
“This grant couldn’t have come at a better time. Last year there was a record number of visitors to the Jefferies’ museum and volunteers have been working really hard to make the place more inviting. The old dairy farm is full of atmosphere yet many Swindonians know nothing about the home of one of England’s finest nature writers or the man. With this grant we hope to put that right and make the town proud of its unique literary heritage”.

Robert Buckland, Parliamentary Candidate for Swindon South said:
"The legacy of Richard Jefferies will be well and truly brought to life by this important project. My congratulations and good wishes to a Society that deserves our fullest support."

The grant will be used to fund the following events that are free for participants:

 Writers’ workshops for adults have been set up and are held on the second Wednesday of the month from 10am to 4pm at the museum. From today schools can book two hour sessions throughout the school terms by contacting Tony Hillier on 01793 346440. A pamphlet of works will be produced at the end of the year.

 The story-telling walks are geared, in particular, for young children. The stories include ‘The Cunning Spider’ who lived in the Coate Farm garden and such was his skill at capturing flies that the toad, who lived under the rhubarb bush, hatched a plan to outwit the spider. As well as the story walk around the museum and grounds that will be launched in May there will be activities such as treasure hunts and children will be given an illustrated book of stories. Other story walks will be organised at 11am on certain Sundays of the month until the end of September.

 The Guided walk around Coate Water and Coate Farm will take place on Sunday 3rd June but the leaflet describing the tour will be available at Coate Water and the museum next month.

For more information about the events contact Jean Saunders on 01793 783040 or e-mail R.Jefferies_Society@tiscali.co.uk.

ENDS

Editor’s notes
(1) The museum, next to Coate Water, was once a small dairy farm and the birthplace and home of Richard Jefferies, an influential Victorian nature writer. The farm was bought by Swindon Corporation in 1926 and as a result of loans from members of the Richard Jefferies Society, an exhibition has been established there.

(2) Awards for All is the small grants scheme administered by the Big Lottery Fund on behalf of Lottery good cause funders, Arts Council England, Big Lottery Fund, Heritage Lottery Fund and Sport England. The scheme makes awards of between £300 and £10,000 to grass roots community groups and voluntary organisations.

(3) The Richard Jefferies Society was founded in 1950 to promote the appreciation and study of the writings of Richard Jefferies. There are about 300 members spread around the world. The Society provides volunteers who open the Jefferies’ museum to the public on the first and third Sundays of May to September inclusive from 2-5pm and on the second Wednesday of the month from 10am to 4pm throughout the year.

(4) Richard Jefferies was born at Coate Farm on 6th of November 1848 and it was his home until his late twenties. The author spent his childhood exploring Coate Water and the local fields and woods, observing wildlife and nature with an enquiring eye. The area around his home at Coate has been known for years as “Jefferies Land”. It has become a place of pilgrimage for generations of readers. He has been described as a “many sided genius”. Historians cite him as an authority on agriculture and rural life in Victorian England. Major studies of mysticism have anthologised his work and discussed his ideas. He wrote one of the great novels for boys (Bevis based around adventures at Coate and Coate Water), as well as several highly original novels for adult readers. He is recognised as one of the greatest nature writers in the language and he topped a Guardian 2005 poll for favourite country writers. He married Jessie Baden from neighbouring Day House Farm and his final home was at Goring by Sea near Worthing where he died of tuberculosis at the age of 37.

2006-11-25T18:58:00.000Z

Coate Farm out-buildings better protected by law

Today, the Richard Jefferies Society is celebrating the news that Elaine Pearce, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has authorised a new listing description for the Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate that would better serve to protect the out-buildings and built features in the grounds of the old farm.

The Society wrote to English Heritage in late 2005 when they discovered that the description of the Grade II listed building on the Marlborough Road, that was first designated as such in October 1951,only mentioned the old thatched cottage and museum and not the other farm buildings and man-made structures that were so important to the Victorian author’s writing [1]. Specifically the group requested that the old barn, dairy, the pig-sties, the ha-ha wall [2] and the main garden wall along with a field boundary marker stone were included in the description.

The Society were delighted to learn that their request had been fully investigated and their wishes granted [3].

A spokesperson for the Richard Jefferies Society said:

“Over thirty years ago we were fund-raising to restore the farm-buildings that the owners, Swindon council, planned to demolish although by this time, the thatched cow-sheds and hay-rick barn had already gone. At that time we were helped by celebrities such as John Betjeman and Spike Milligan who were enthusiastic Jefferies’ fans.

"Visitors to the Museum are so thrilled when they can look at features and buildings that they have read about. For example, there is a square drain in the ha-ha wall where Jefferies describes watching wildlife shelter. We are delighted with the news that what remains might now be better protected.”

The Jefferies Museum will be open on Wednesday 13th December from 10am to 4pm. The Richard Jefferies Society is holding a meeting at the Jefferies Museum on Saturday 2nd December at 2pm when there will be an opportunity for people to delve into some of the archive files that the Society has built up over the last 50 years or more Both events are free and open to the public. More information from Jean Saunders, Secretary of the Society, on 01793 783040.

ENDS

Editor’s notes:

[1] Richard Jefferies was born at Coate Farm near Swindon on 6th of November 1848. The author spent his childhood exploring Coate Water and the local fields and woods, observing wildlife and nature with an enquiring eye. The area around his home at Coate has been known for years as “Jefferies Land”. It has become a place of pilgrimage for generations of readers. Jefferies had a great exhilaration for life. His unique expression of his relationship to nature has won him a secure place in the hearts of imaginative people. He has been described as a “many sided genius”. Historians cite him as an authority on agriculture and rural life in Victorian England. Major studies of mysticism have anthologised his work and discussed his ideas. He wrote one of the great novels for boys, as well as several highly original novels for adult readers. He is recognised as one of the greatest nature writers in the language and he topped a Guardian 2005 poll for favourite country writers.

[2]pictures removed

[3] Copy of the English Heritage listing dated 10 November 2006

SU 18 SE

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2.10.51

SWINDON

MARLBOROUGH ROAD Coate

Richard Jefferies Museum II

A C17 farmhouse with an adjoining early C19 house, now used as a museum.

EXTERIOR: The C17 house is built of limestone rubble with a thatched roof and brick gable stack. The low, one storey building, with attic above, has a two-bay east front with a central entrance porch (added later) and an early C19, slate cat slide extension to the south and west ends. The early C19 farmhouse is attached to its west. It is a three storey building constructed of Flemish bond brickwork with a slate roof, with brick chimney stacks at both gable ends. The north front has three bays with an entrance left of centre comprising a six-panelled door with splayed stone lintel, flanked to the left by a hipped bay window with twenty-pane sashes and to the right by a three-light leaded timber window with a splayed stone lintel. Above the entrance on first floor level is a two-light leaded timber window flanked on either side by three-light leaded windows, all with splayed stone lintels. Above the latter at attic level are two smaller three-light leaded timber windows. The rear of the house to the south has scattered fenestration, and the west gable end has two-light timber windows to the right on first floor and attic level.

INTERIOR: The C17 farmhouse has been significantly altered and restored in the C19 and C20. The early C19 house has panelled window reveals on ground and first floor levels. There is a contemporary inlaid slate fireplace on ground floor level and In the first floor bed room a timber fire surround with grate and a built-in six-panelled wardrobe.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: The garden, orchard and farmyard at the Richard Jefferies Museum, enclosed by a stone wall along Marlborough Road (moved and rebuilt in the mid C20), contain a series of outbuildings and structures dating from the C19 some incorporating earlier fabric possibly

dating from the C17 or C18, including a dairy (re-roofed in the mid C20), a barn with a stable (and hayloft above), a pigsty, a workshop, a garden bothy, a ha ha and a boundary stone (the latter was moved from elsewhere on the former estate).

HISTORY: The farmstead, originating from the C17 and formerly known as Coate Farm, is the birthplace of the nature writer Richard Jefferies (1848-1887)and which is thought to have formed the main inspiration for his books. In the mid C20 it became the Richard Jefferies Museum.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: The Richard Jefferies Museum is a C17 farmhouse with an adjoining early C19 house and associated outbuildings and structures, forming an interesting historic farmstead. The various buildings show how this farmstead evolved over time, and it is also an interesting surviving example of a group of vernacular buildings on the outskirts of Swindon. Additionally, the farmstead is the birthplace of the nature writer Richard Jefferies (1848-1887), and together with its surrounding landscape, in particular the Coate Water Reservoir, it formed the main inspiration for Jefferies books, including Bevis and Amaryllis at the Fair.

SOURCES:

M Daniel, 'Return to Jefferies' Country' in Country Life, 12 December 1974;

B Cherry and N Pevsner, The Buildings of England (1985 2nd edn), p 516;

J Chandler, Coate and Richard Jefferies (2005);

1st edition Ordnance Survey, surveyed 1878, published 1882;

P.G. Herring Jefferies Farm, Coate, Wilts, a plan of the farmstead by Beauchamp (1923).

Dated:- 10th November 2006

Signed by authority of the Secretary of State ELAINE PEARCE

Department for Culture, Media and Sport

2006-10-09T09:38:00.000Z

RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY

AUTUMN NEWSLETTER 2006

[NB INTERNET VERSION – ALL PICTURES REMOVED and page references do not apply]

The Richard Jefferies Society (Registered Charity No 1042838) was founded in 1950 to promote appreciation and study of the writings of Richard Jefferies (1848-1887).

Membership is open to all on payment of the current annual subscription (£7 single, £8 couple).

Members receive spring and autumn newsletters, an annual report and a Journal and can take advantage of the Society’s extensive library. Activities include winter meetings, a study day, special outings, events, a Birthday Lecture and an Annual General Meeting.

TRUSTEES AND COUNCIL MEMBERS 2005-6

Margaret Evans, Brian Fullagar, Geoff Hirst, Eric Jones, Hugoe Matthews, Ray Morse, Helen Newman, John Price, Jean Saunders, John Savage, Richard Stewart, Phyllis Treitel, John Webb.

Co-opted: Simon Coleman, Norma Goodwin and Stan Hickerton.

President Hugoe Matthews

Hon. Secretary Jean Saunders
Pear Tree Cottage, Longcot, Faringdon, Oxon SN7 7SS.
Tel. 01793 783040
Email: R.Jefferies_Society@tiscali.co.uk.

Websites http://richardjefferiessociety.blogspot.com
www.bath.ac.uk/~lissmc/rjeffs.htm

Contents

Page From the Chair
From the Membership Secretary and Secretary
Reports of winter meetings
Stone Readings
Study Day report
Storing the Journal
Coate Farm and Museum Report
Jefferies’ family christening cloak
Save Coate campaign and the Jefferies Land Conservation Trust
Bevis in the life of a New Zealand Scientist
Here Ends Coate Road
Plaques
More on Forty-Folds
Williamson-Gay letters
Publicity and Publications
For Internet Users
Citings of Jefferies
Books
Lectures
How did you discover Jefferies?
Alliance of Literary Societies AGM
News from other Societies
Obituary

Birthday Lecture

Publications for sale and loan
Contents list of RJS Journals
Meetings 2006-7

FROM THE CHAIR

It may have come as a surprise to many members to discover that the smaller envelope arriving through your letterbox was this year’s Autumn Newsletter and Annual Report. The reason for the new format is that the Post Office introduced a new system of charging by size and weight on 21st August this year, and the adjustment in size was necessary to prevent a steep increase in postage costs. The contents are unaffected, but A5 and thicker, is significantly cheaper than A4 and thinner!

You will all be aware from Newsletters, how much Jean, our Secretary, has been doing in the way of fighting the Coate development proposals; and taking every possible initiative and opportunity to gain grant aid support for enhancing the Birthplace Museum and its surroundings. What you will not realise, however, unless you have recently visited Coate, is how much she has also done to improve the interior of the Museum. There are now attractive and informative displays and reference collections in the downstairs study room; the windows and floors are clean; there are books for display, loan and purchase; and refreshments are always available for those meeting in, working in, or just visiting the Museum. The transformation of the grounds is almost miraculous; with overgrown, weedy borders now attractively planted out with bedding and perennial plants and shrubs, and seats available for visitors on the lawn at the back. The new fruit trees in the orchard have established well, despite the dry summer, and are already bearing their first produce.
John Webb too, has contributed enormously to the new ambience. In addition to his marvellous photographic displays in place of the old dead grasses and disintegrating insects; amongst other projects, he has put up a new handrail on the stairs, repaired the front door lock, and put up shelving units in the kitchen area. Coate farmhouse is now, once again, a living welcoming environment, and is no longer an embarrassment as a Museum. This, however, is entirely due to the efforts of Officers of the Society, and other members; and nothing, shamefully, has been forthcoming from Swindon Borough Council, despite numerous meetings and requests.

We now hold our Executive Council Meetings at the Museum – which is appropriate and right.
For me, the Spring and Summer has been a period of pleasant discoveries with regard to Jefferies’ matters: finding a new letter from Charles Longman to RJ; tracking down some further photographs of the Coate area taken in about 1900 – less than 15 years after Jefferies’ death; listening again to Frank Bridge’s compositions inspired by RJ; and taking part in a regional BBC TV programme “Write Across the West”, filmed at Coate.

The letter from Longman (dated 1883), I found tucked inside a first edition of The Dewy Morn in a Charing Cross Road bookshop. It will be printed in due course in the Journal, with a commentary on its literary and historical context.

The photographs were part of a series taken by Clifton Jones, 25 of which were included in the 1903 US edition of Wild Life in a Southern County, retitled An English Village. I discovered that the Clifton Jones archive is held by an American university, and they possess 10 photographs of the Coate area, taken at the same time, which were not published. Copies have been ordered for our records.

I rediscovered the Frank Bridge through a recently available recording of his Two Poems for Orchestra. These are on the Naxos label, and played by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Judd. Bridge wrote his Two Poems in 1915, drawing inspiration from Richard Jefferies. The first Poem is a gentle pastoral piece with a superscription from The Open Air. “Those thoughts and feelings which are not sharply defined, but have a haze of distance and beauty about them, are always the dearest”.

The second, and in some ways more surprising, piece is much more light-hearted and joyous, and is inspired by The Story of my Heart. The quotation in the superscription here is one that many, I suspect, would not immediately recognise: “How beautiful a delight to make the world joyous! The song should never be silent, the dance never still, the laugh should sound like water which runs forever”. The Two Poems play for 11 minutes in total and are accompanied on the CD by The Sea (Suite), and Enter Spring (Rhapsody).

Most recently, we were approached by “Points West”, our regional BBC TV station, to help make a short film about the Coate area. Amanda Parr, one of the presenters, was fronting a series about West Country authors, including Coleridge, Jane Austen, Laurie Lee, and Thomas Hardy, the intention being to describe a walk in the countryside associated with each author. Each programme lasted 3 minutes – although “ours” took most of a day to film. The feature showed the Museum, inside and out, and part of Coate Water including the Council Oak. Unfortunately, the Society was not referred to either in the programme, or on the associated website; and although I complained about this omission, nothing subsequently was done or said to rectify the situation.

Finally, I should like to refer to one of our members of many years standing, who, sadly, died earlier this year. Ken Cavalot, who lived in the Midlands, had contacted me just before Christmas about helping to downsize his Jefferies and Alfred Williams library. Unfortunately, he passed away before the book sale was completed, at auction, but he did donate some volumes to the Society for sale at the Museum. The intriguing point that emerged from one of my many telephone conversations with him in the new year, was that as a young man, he was so inspired by Richard Jefferies and his writing, that he cut a sod of turf from Liddington Hill, and walked to Sussex, sleeping in hedgerows along the way, to place the turf on Jefferies’ grave. I asked Ken to write a short account of his pilgrimage for the newsletter, but unfortunately he died before the task was undertaken. I am only too pleased that he did manage to give me some account of the event, so that it could be recorded here; a note of the achievement of one individual, amongst the rich and fascinating community of our membership.

John Price

MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY’S REPORT
A warm welcome is extended to the new members who have joined the Society since last September:

Mr J Bainbridge, Teignmouth, Devon
Mr B Burrows, Swindon, Wiltshire
Mr E Clark, Horton, Wiltshire
Mr J A Crow, Rochester, Kent
Mr T Hillier & Ms K Skelton, Swindon
Jefferies Land Conservation Trust, c/o Longcot, Oxon
Mrs W Macleod-Gilford, Lambourn, West Berkshire
Mr & Mrs P Maynard, Hilmarton, Wiltshire
Mr & Mrs R Roys, Wheldrake, Yorkshire
Mr D Schwartz, London
Mrs E C Spickernell, Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire
Mr C J O Syer, The Lee, Buckinghamshire
Miss J M Webb, Parkstone, Dorset
Mrs N K Webb, Toothill, Swindon

The total membership during the 2005/06 subscription year numbered 279 being made up of 171 single, 31 joint (62 members), 27 Life, 5 Joint Life (10 members), 3 Hon Life, 1 Hon Life Joint (2 members) and 4 Corporate memberships.
At the time of writing the 2006/07 membership is 275 This takes account of 2 members having resigned at the end of, and 6 paid-up members having sadly passed away during the 2005/06 membership year; plus 4 new members during the 2006/07 membership year.
Although most members live in England, other countries are represented: Australia 4, Belgium 1, Canada 4, the Channel Islands 1, Eire 1, Germany 2, New Zealand 1, Northern Ireland 3, Scotland 6, Spain 1, Tasmania 1, the USA 4, Wales 9.
At present 45 members (8 of whom are Joint) have not yet paid their 2006/07 subscriptions. Gentle reminders will accompany their mailing of the Annual Report in the hope that they will now bring their membership up-to-date. In anticipation, many thanks.
Margaret Evans

MESSAGE FROM THE SECRETARY
It is somewhat daunting putting together my first newsletter for the Society. My headmaster once wrote in my school report that “Jean expresses herself forcefully if not elegantly”. Forty five years later, nothing has changed. As an environmental campaigner, the written word is not my strong point. I apologise for any lack of refinement.
I hope that you like the new booklet format for the newsletter – see Phyllis’s ideas for storage of Journals and, now, newsletters on page 13. The text of the newsletter, without the pictures, is now also available on Simon Coleman’s web site at www.bath.ac.uk/~lissmc/rjeffs.htm.
Should anyone wish to receive more frequent updates about the Society’s activities via the Internet, send me your email address. We have set up an e-group.
Through popular demand we shall be trialling a new venue and date for the winter meetings that will now take place on the first Saturday of the month at 2pm at the Coate Museum (second Saturday if it coincides with a bank holiday.). This will allow members from further afield to participate and make better use of the Museum where we can also provide refreshments. The Museum will be open from 1pm on these days.
Finally, I should like to thank the many members of the Society for their kind welcome and support. There are too many to mention by name.
Jean Saunders

REPORTS OF WINTER MEETINGS

A Society Slide Show. Speaker: Ray Morse. 5 December 2005.

Ray Morse showed a selection of slides collected by the Society that included pictures of outings, buildings, monuments, plaques, people and places associated with Jefferies and of special events. He illustrated some of the slides by quoting extracts from Jefferies’ works. We were treated to fine pictures of agricultural workers in their smocks and photos of Jefferies’ favourite flowers and blossoms. Pictures recounting Society outings and events along with photos of Society members brought the most oohs! and aahs!
It was an evening of nostalgia but tinged with sadness at the loss of well-loved Society members and buildings and of the views that no longer exist.

Members’ Evening Jointly with The Friends of Alfred Williams. 2 March 2006.

The readers and their choice of text:
Phyllis Treitel paid tribute to the late John Fowles who wrote the introductions to later editions of After London and Round about a Great Estate. She read from the introduction to RGE where Fowles described Jefferies’ two ‘selves’: the good journalist and the secret person. Fowles believed that RGE best illustrated Jefferies’ ability to modulate between the two. We were reminded of the Hilary Luckett remark “God made nothing tidy” to explain why he hated to see trees and shrubs heavily pruned.
Roy Burton read from Villages of the White Horse where Alfred Williams described the journey from Didcot to Swindon with reference to the passing scenery and the history of the area. He then read a Williams’ poem: The Earth Lover. To Richard Jefferies. Essentially the poem describes the fading of beauty and withering in nature with time and of Jefferies himself.
Ray Morse read from ‘Nature Near Brighton’ [The Life of the Fields] in which the power of the soaring hawk and its majestic movements that defy gravity are described.
Jean Saunders read from Amaryllis at the Fair where Amaryllis is asked to read to Grandfather Iden and discovers beautiful pressed flowers and leaves in his book that make her think more kindly of her granddad.
John Price had a theme of ‘discovery’ in the two pieces he read. The first was from Bill Hughes Millstone Grit that describes his journey through the West Riding of Yorkshire and his discovery of Richard Jefferies who he felt closer to than his mother, father and friends. The second was John’s discovery of a letter in an old copy of Dewy Morn on sale in a Charing Cross bookshop. The letter was sent by C J Longman to Jefferies in 1883. Longman expressed disagreement with an article by Jefferies suggesting that landowners should not be allowed to vote on matters that affected their land. Jefferies obviously took on board his editor’s criticism when he wrote about the need for ‘one man one vote’ in ‘After the County Franchise’. The letter is an exciting new find.
Roy Burton rounded off the readings with Williams’ poem To My Mother about the death of a loved one. He continued with the reading from Villages of the White Horse and a description of Jefferies’ gamekeeper where he recounted the old wives’ tale of hedgehogs picking up eggs with their spines.

Charles Sorley (1895-Oct. 1915) Poet and disciple of Jefferies. Speaker: Lady Phyllis Treitel. Research: Stan Hickerton. 3 April 2006.

Phyllis began by explaining that she had not read the recent book on Sorley by Jean Moorcroft Wilson, as her aim was to reveal Sorley's devotion to Jefferies’ essays. This could be discovered from earlier publications, all of which had been tracked down by Stan Hickerton, and made available to her. She began with a short life history: short because Sorley's life was short. Fortunately, he was a poet and a prolific letter writer and so more is known about him than about most young men. He was a great walker and became devoted to the Wiltshire Downs and thus to Jefferies’ essays. Phyllis read several extracts from letters to his parents as evidence of this. Some poems too.

To show that Sorley is not now overlooked (he has one poem in the Oxford Book of English Verse) she read passages from articles by J B Jones, Frances Gay, Mark Baker, and Ken Watts. J B Jones, concerned lest ‘Sorley’s milestone’ and ‘Sorley’s signpost’ get damaged by troops in World War II, had got these items official army protection. He informed Mrs Sorley. Grateful for this service to her son’s memory, Mrs Sorley sent JBJ her son’s copy of The Life of the Fields (sent out to him in the trenches). Where is it? And how fares the signpost?

It transpired, in the discussion, that the copy of LF was in the Society’s own library. This was subsequently tracked down to reveal not only Charles Sorley’s signature on the fly sheet but the dedication from his mother and twin brother, Kenneth, to J B Jones.

The History of the Wilts and Berks Canal in Swindon. Speaker: Janet Flanagan. 8 May 2006.

Janet, an active long-standing member of the local canal trust gave a presentation with slides about the canal, past and present. The canal interested Jefferies along with the life of the canal folk. Some staggering figures were presented regarding the numbers of brickworks that were created along the line of the canal that stretched the clay belt from Semington in Wiltshire to Abingdon, now in Oxfordshire. A larger type of brick was used to avoid tax! Swindon was in the middle of the 52 mile stretch where the HQ was based. An enabling act of Parliament in 1795 led to the start of the building of the canal that reached Swindon in 1804 and Abingdon in 1810. It was mostly used to carry coal and its peak year of use was 1840 when the coming of the railways led to the decline of the canals. A cheer was raised when Coate reservoir was mentioned. The work currently undertaken by the Trust to restore the canal and the repeated setbacks as a result of vandalism made daunting listening. Our efforts to restore the Jefferies Museum pale into insignificance by comparison.

The ‘Stone Readings’ event on 3 May was held as part of the Swindon Literary Festival, now in its thirteenth year. It drew together over 30 people, from all parts of the country and the world, to the Memorial Stone at Burderop Down. There were appropriate readings from Alfred Williams’ and Jefferies’ works whilst a skylark sang in the background. Festival organiser, Matt Holland, suggested that similar events should be held in future years. The following two poems were inspired by the occasion:

earth lovers
by Tony Hillier

thirty folk
rise above the breeze
float indeed on the breeze
the free breeze of free words
Williams’ words
Jefferies’ words
sliding the Barbury slopes
singing around the Stone
the Memorial Stone
the Writers’ Stone

earth lovers
writers now
listening to the festive larks

by Wendy Gilford

Standing on the high downs
The wind behind our backs, growing chill.
The soaring skylark sings a timeless symphony
Sullied by modern machinery's drone.

The faithful few gather on the windswept hill
Around the memorial sarsen stone
To read poetic, prophetic prose
About past lives: keen observations on man's condition.

We look out across the panoramic landscape
Towards Hodson, Coate and Liddington
And wonder, sadly, at the changes
Wrought by the industrial revolution.

Vast prairies of wheat and yellow rape,
Doused with toxic chemicals - no room for wild flowers!
The motorway, cutting through Jefferies' once wild, wooded land
Now obliterating tranquillity - too late to reinstate!

The same lament then as now - too much use of the plough;
No home grown apples - cheaper from the USA.
Jefferies and Williams sent out the message then and still do now
Honour Nature - beware progress and the consequences!

STUDY DAY AT LAWN COMMUNITY CENTRE 29 JULY 2006
SUBJECT: RICHARD JEFFERIES, POETRY AND THE POETS

Nearly twenty people gathered on a hot summer day to share the delights of the poetic word. Almost an equal number of members had sent their apologies for absence.
Richard Stewart opened the morning session by reading a poem from his new book about butterflies [see page 22].

The Chairman, John Price, listed Jefferies’ few known poems: ‘To a Fashionable Bonnet’ and ‘The Battle of 1866’ published in his Early Fiction; ‘Grave of the Last Abbot’ published in the Wilts & Glos Herald; ‘Noon-tide in the Meadow’ from Green Ferne Farm; ‘Pictures of April’, ‘My Chaffinch’, ‘Recapitulation’ and ‘Earth Prayer’ from Chronicles of the Hedges and ‘The Mulberry Tree’ from his nature note-books. He then listed people who had written poems about Jefferies that included Charles Sorley, Alfred Williams, Harold Joliffe, George Bell and Bill Keith. Members were then invited to select their own contribution.

Richard Stewart read three short poems by Bill Keith from Worshipper of Earth. These were: ‘Coate Water’, ‘Beechwood Silence’ and ‘Sea Lane – Goring’.

Wendy McLeod Gilford read her own poem inspired by the Stone-gathering event at Burderop in May [see page 9]

Ray Morse read Jefferies’ poem ‘The Mulberry Tree’.

Helen Newman selected an extract of poetic nature prose from Mary Webb’s The Spring of Joy.

John Webb selected two pieces. The first was an extract from Jefferies’ ‘July Grasses’ that had been recently republished in the Swindon Advertiser and describes the activities of the beautiful scarlet ‘July fly’, as Jefferies called it. The second was a reading from Jean Henri Fabre, a French entomologist who wrote about 50 books on insects but who inspired an appreciation for creatures that might otherwise be considered repulsive. John read from Life of the Spider an extract on the life of the scarab or dung-beetle.

Margaret Evans read on behalf of Brian Morris who referred to a biography of Fabre The Poet of Science. Brian was fascinated by writers like Fabre who combined a literary mode of expression with an attempt to convey scientific ideas and included Jefferies, Henry Thoreau, John Burroughs, Ernest Thompson Seton, W H Hudson and John Muir in the list. Brian selected a passage from ‘The Pine Wood’ [The Open Air] where August is buzzing with the sound of insects that, he believed, Fabre would have enjoyed.

Margaret Evans’ own choice was to study the references to Chaucer’s writing in Jefferies’ work. She believed that Jefferies had been influenced by Chaucer’s subject matter and technique such as the use of observations of the month’s nature and the listing of species. She referred to Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale to illustrate the point.

Stan Hickerton drew attention to Birds of a Feather and an unpublished letter to W H Hudson from Harding who wondered “to whom the vale at Long Ditton was sacred” as related by poet and playwright John Davidson [(1857-1909) in the lines: Once in June, Upstream I went to hear summertime, The birds sing at Long Ditton on a vale, Sacred to him who wrote his own heart’s tale [St Swithin’s Day, published in Fleet Street Ecologies, 1896] Hudson was unable to cast any light on the query but expressed regret at Davidson’s fate [he committed suicide] and that his writing never reached the acclaim it deserved. Stan then chose an extract from the first draft of The Story of my Heart [Constable edition page 144] where Jefferies quotes from a sonnet by Leigh Hunt on the Nile and thought of the sun that centuries ago, had seen Sesostris. The notes refer to the fact that Jefferies rarely quoted, that the quote was dropped from the final version of the book but showed how widely read Jefferies was.

Phyllis Treitel selected some Jefferies poetry that had been included in Looker’s Richard Jefferies: Man of the Fields [Ch. 4] that demonstrated Jefferies’ Whitman-style writing. Phyllis had examined the original Jefferies’ manuscript and had succeeded in deciphering some of the missing words that Looker had found difficult to read. She challenged others to try to decipher more. The extract related to Jefferies regret that he had not taken advantage of opportunities in the past; he hadn’t considered offers good enough and that now he had nothing. Jefferies referred to “the woman of the earth” who said “come with me”. Who was she?

Brenda Taylor read a poem from Bill Keith’s Worshipper of Earth entitled ‘For Company’.

Rip Buckley read out his own poem dedicated to Jefferies that expressed his love of walking in all weathers on the Downs. Entitled ‘By Jefferies Clump’, the poem was published in the Society’s newsletter [Autumn 1999, page 19].

Norma Goodwin chose a piece of prose from Hampshire Days by W H Hudson that was similar to Jefferies’ writing. It described ancestral barrows, sunshine, wind and the stars.

Eric Jones selected an extract from Hodge and his Masters where Hodge ends his final days in the work-house and bemoans the fact that whilst he is housed, fed and bedded, it is not his cottage, his food or his bed.

Jean Saunders found a quote from Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas that opened ‘The Study of Stock’ [Chronicles of the Hedges] where Jefferies compares the difficulties of becoming a farmer with the knowledge required to become a poet and wonders why anyone chooses to become either. Jean also selected a poem from Mary Webb [‘To the World’] that describes Mary’s emotion and despair at the loss of beloved countryside and nature that others could not recognise to be of any value and sought to destroy [cp Jefferies’ ‘My Old Village’ – Field and Hedgerow].

John Price read two tribute poems to Jefferies. The first by Alfred Williams: ‘The Earth Lover’ , the second by Charles Sorley, who was only about 17 years of age at the time, entitled simply ‘Richard Jefferies’.

Andrew Rossabi reflected on Edward Thomas’s thoughts on Jefferies in his life and works biography. Thomas does not rate Jefferies as a poet but refers to him constantly as such. Andrew read out seven extracts from Thomas’s book to illustrate the poetry that included a description of the state of the canal where moorhens were able to walk across the polluted water, the lack of noise at Draycot Foliat and thoughts of the sea on the Marlborough Downs.

Regrettably the morning session over-ran with no time left to discuss the interesting and varied contributions from the floor. The afternoon session was dedicated to two speakers and general discussion.
Richard Stewart spoke about Edward Thomas [1878-1917] and his prose into poetry. He introduced the writer who described himself as a ‘hack’ until he found poetry. At his morose, depressed and suicidal periods, Thomas believed that ‘nothing was worthwhile’. Despite a short life he wrote about 40 books – at one stage he had 6 on the go at once. He married Helen, because she was pregnant, and managed to support a family and servant on an income from writing that included many reviews of poems. It was his poet friend, Robert Frost, that persuaded Thomas that he could write poetry. Unlike Jefferies, Thomas moved in a large literary circle that included Hillaire Belloc, Ezra Pound, Walter de la Mare, Arthur Ransome, Joseph Conrad and W H Hudson. Richard read out many extracts from Thomas’s Collected Poems, to illustrate specific points about Thomas’s writing that included his observations on nature, people and places. Richard wondered what would have happened to Thomas had he survived the war. He was an efficient soldier and continued to write some of his best work for pleasure. Would he have emigrated to America and joined Frost? Would he have explored mysticism to a greater degree? How many writers, like Thomas, were equally recognised as good poets and prose writers? Why wasn’t Jefferies a good poet? Richard suggests that Jefferies didn’t need to be - his prose was so good. Finally Richard compared how Jefferies and Thomas treated a similar subject matter to illustrate how both could use brevity to capture the essence of nature in a few lines. [A full transcript of the talk and poems selected can be obtained from the Hon Sec].

Rip Bulkeley spoke on the subject of “Nature poetry before and after Jefferies”. Rip described himself as a working poet with a deep admiration for Jefferies who conveyed a great joy in his writing. Rip compared art with the written word where the reader has to do much of the work. He used the mulberry tree to illustrate the great number of words a writer would need to use to convey a picture of the tree. Yet Jefferies always found the right words to do this successfully with relative brevity. Rip looked at the techniques used by Jefferies: his use of ‘self’ describing what he saw, his use of repetition and “lists” as did Chaucer. Jefferies combined realism with scepticism looking constantly for the meaning of life as have others since. Rip said that Jefferies was not a super-hero but was part of a large cultural shift where adult literacy was improving. He saw increasing urbanisation as an incentive for people to read about country life whilst photography added value. Rip then focussed on how different poets had treated a similar subject – the thrush or common birds. This included Wordsworth’s 1838 sonnet “Hark the thrush…”, John Clare’s ‘The Thrushes’ Nest’, Robert Browning’s ‘Home thoughts from abroad’, Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’, Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘Spring’, Philip Larkin’s ‘Pigeons’, Ted Hughes’ ‘Thrushes’ and Basil Bunting who wrote more from the thrushes’ perspective: hunger, struggle for survival, predators, fear, lust…. Owen, in his poem, tells the thrush to shut up! Earl Sollenberg, a deaf poet, wrote ‘Birds will sing’. Even this year Eamon Gremon had a poem published on the thrush.

HOW TO STORE YOUR COPIES OF THE JOURNAL
In true “Blue Peter” style, Phyllis Treitel suggests ways in which cereal boxes can be re-used to make box files for your precious Journals. She writes:
There are now 15 issues of the Society’s Journal, and some members may be wondering how to store them. Here are a few ideas:
1. An old chocolate box of the right size (220mm x 150 mm)
2. A small breakfast-cereal box, with part of the side cut back to reveal the contents that can sit on a bookshelf
3. A custom-made Solander box [a slip-case]. Ask a friend who goes to book-binding classes to make you one or two.
4. A commercially made pamphlet holder that secures about 12 Journals on a spring-loaded cord although it is a fight to get them in and out [e.g. Modern Bookbinders Ltd, Pringle Street, Blackburn BB1 1SA. Tel: 01254 59371]. These are only available in bulk and cost about £4 each. If enough members are interested the Hon. Sec. could make a bulk order.

COATE FARM AND MUSEUM REPORT
There have been endless rounds of meetings with Swindon Borough Council and very little progress made. Somewhat frustrated by the lack of action and the neglected look of the Coate farm grounds, volunteers from the Society, the Jefferies Land Conservation Trust [see page 15] and others have given up their time to tackle the brambles, nettles and overgrowth choking the trees, grounds and buildings. Plans to restore the orchard with old English varieties of fruit trees are underway whilst the famous espalier pear has been replaced. Royal Mail awarded the Trust a grant of £500 to buy plants, herbs, trees and shrubs for the gardens that have helped to beautify the grounds. The Trust submitted an application for funding to the Lottery Heritage Fund and Biffawaste in order to restore the out-buildings and the grounds and to take on an education officer for ten hours a week based in the Museum. Whilst the funding bodies liked the project, they were concerned that Swindon Borough Council had failed to demonstrate any support for the project or commitment to maintain the buildings once the project is completed. As such, funding will not be forthcoming until more guarantees are in place.
The Society has written to English Heritage requesting that all the buildings and man-made structures related to the farm are covered by the Grade II protection. The current description attached to the listing only describes features in the main farmhouse. English Heritage has inspected Coate Farm and agrees that more information should be provided. The Society has also applied for protection of trees of literary and environmental importance at the Museum.
On a more sour note, vandals smashed the roofs restored as a result of the Betjeman appeal thirty years ago. Tiles and slates were broken on the roof of the old pig-sty and slated barn that had been so carefully sourced for the restoration work in the 1970s. Three windows were broken in the old cottage whilst the Museum sign was ripped off the main wall. The police sent a crime scene officer to investigate, took DNA samples and appealed for witnesses to come forward through the local media. This incident was followed only days later with another call to the police. Vandals had kicked in the gothic-shaped door through the Museum wall. Broken windows are a common occurrence made worse by the fact that the old thatched cottage has been empty for over ten years. Promises made by Swindon Borough Council to install a suitable care-taker/tenant are now taken with a pinch of salt.
It has been a frantic year at the Museum with record numbers of visitors. There is now much more to see. Items include the Jefferies’ christening cloak [see next article], additional family memorabilia donated by Hugoe Matthews purchased from Nancie Cator and a splendid farmer’s smock and lady’s sun-bonnet made and donated by Sheila Povey. Whilst we have recovered the beautiful silk dress that belonged to Richard’s cousin, Lizzie Cox, light exposure has badly damaged the fabric. The gardens are taking shape and the grounds are now an inviting place to linger and capture the essence of Jefferies. A new damask rose was planted to thank Sheila and John Povey for their valuable contribution to the Museum, after John underwent major surgery in May. We all wish him well and look forward to seeing him back at the Museum. John Webb has produced three more panels of colour photographs with appropriate ‘nature’ quotes that brighten up the room. The education room now contains information and photographs of people and places associated with Jefferies. Sheila Povey has produced extensive historic documentation to browse and some of the Society’s photograph collection are now on permanent view.
The Museum has been opened for the usual Sunday arrangements and Heritage Day but it is now also open every second Wednesday of the month from 10am to 4pm throughout the year. On these same Wednesdays, a writing workshop ‘Footsteps’ is being run by Tony Hillier – a new and welcome Society member. The second meeting in August inspired poems about Jefferies’ mulberry tree that was rich with delicious fruit at the time. Wendy Gilford has donated her collection of Jefferies’ books to the Museum where Members can borrow books from the new library. The main Society library is still kept at John Webb’s house [see page 35 for details]. Wendy, John and Jean have also donated pieces of furniture and other items that improve the building.
Many of the fruit trees planted in the orchard have been paid for by individual Society members. More trees have been ordered for planting next spring paid for out of Mark Daniel’s museum fund. If you would like to make a donation for a tree, shrub, bulb or flower, please send a cheque to the ‘Richard Jefferies Society’ to the Hon. Sec. If you have a particular favourite Jefferies plant, please specify.

THE JEFFERIES’ FAMILY CHRISTENING CLOAK – LOST AND FOUND!
According to Henry Williamson, Richard Jefferies’ mother gave a christening robe to a Mrs Bathe, presumably after her own children had been christened in it. Evidently, Williamson visited Coate in 1925 and 1937 and described Mrs Bathe as a ‘straight seeing’ little woman who lived in a ‘tarred cot’ opposite Coate Farm. Mrs Bathe lived to 93 years of age and died in 1948. She had 16 children all of whom were christened wearing the Jefferies’ cloak. It was passed to Mrs Bathe's daughter (Mrs Whitbread of Newport Street) who was the youngest child. Mrs Whitbread’s two children (Arthur and Norman) were also christened in it. The robe was then gifted to the Society in the 1950s. It was shown at a Society meeting and then disappeared for fifty years. It was discovered in May 2006 that the robe had been stored at Swindon’s Bath Road Museum and wrongly attributed to Alfred Williams. The cloak was returned to the Jefferies’ Museum on 4 May. The cloak is a vibrant scarlet colour and in good condition. On learning about the robe featured in the Swindon Advertiser, Norman Whitbread’s son, Ian, visited the Museum on 7 May. Fascinated by the story he questioned the name ‘Bathe’ as his grandmother’s name was Goddard [not related to the land-owners]. So, did Williamson get the name wrong or did Mrs Bathe marry again? And, did the colour of the cloak inspire The Scarlet Shawl?

SAVE COATE CAMPAIGN
The Save Coate petition continues to attract names with nearly 30,000 people objecting to the proposals for development at Coate. Policies in the new Swindon Local Plan and the Wiltshire Structure Plan now earmark land for 1800 houses, offices and a university campus along with a small extension for the new hospital. The development area is now referred to as “Commonhead” rather than “Coate” despite the fact that the former is a road-junction and some distance away from the proposed university that mainly hugs Coate Water nature reserve. It is still anticipated that the planning application, lodged by developers in April 2005, will be amended in an attempt to diffuse the situation and make the proposal more acceptable to the public. However Swindonians have suffered broken promises about protecting land at Coate far too often and are becoming more cynical about any new proposal that might come forward with promises to protect any “buffer” land from development. The Regional Spatial Strategy for the South West still views Swindon as a key growth area for the Region proposing that 1,750 new houses should be built each year until 2026. However reference to a university in the document is merely an ‘aspiration’ whilst no mention is made of a potential location for the building. As the University of Bath has no funding approved to build a campus and councillors have said “no university, no houses”, then there is still hope that we might win the fight. Efforts to highlight the literary importance of the area under threat have fallen on deaf ears. Swindon Borough Council has asked their landscape team to investigate this. As no experts on Richard Jefferies have been approached for a view, it is unlikely that any report produced will be based on any substance.

JEFFERIES LAND CONSERVATION TRUST
The Trust evolved from the Save Coate! coalition and achieved full charity status in January 2006. It’s objectives allow the organisation to undertake conservation work. Whilst the emphasis is on protecting the land immediately under threat from development at Coate, the Trust aims to highlight and promote the literary and environmental qualities of the area that includes Jefferies’ old house at Coate. Its first task was to ensure that the Grade II listing of Jefferies’ milestone [‘Meadow Thoughts’] described the literary merits of the “building” that went unrecognised in the English Heritage notification. As a result of the Trust’s efforts, the records have been amended.
The focus is now on a major restoration plan for the out-buildings and grounds of Jefferies’ Museum [see page 13] in consultation with and the approval of the Society. Whilst everyone is bitterly disappointed that the bid for nearly £100,000 was blocked through lack of interest by Swindon Borough Council, the Trust will achieve their goals somehow! The efforts of volunteers from the Trust and the Society as well as from TWIGS, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and Nationwide, have transformed the place whilst the grant of £500 from Royal Mail has been well spent. Items purchased include two wooden benches that are placed near the mulberry tree when the Museum is open. Threats of more vandalism make it difficult to restore some areas. We are also finding out where the slugs like to chomp their way through plantings, at great cost to some of the flower beds!

For more information about the Save Coate campaign or Jefferies Land Conservation Trust, contact Jean Saunders [see page 2] or look at these web sites: www.savecoate.org.uk and www.jefferiesland.org.uk

BEVIS IN THE LIFE OF A NEW ZEALAND SCIENTIST
Michael Taylor, Society member in Auckland, New Zealand, writes:

There is an early link between Richard Jefferies and New Zealand because one of Jefferies's boyhood friends (or was it his younger brother Harry, the model for Mark the bosom friend of Bevis?) had emigrated to the distant colony.
Today New Zealand has attained a population of four million and tourism bids to eclipse the pioneering industries of sheep and dairy farming in the country's economic equation. However isolation remains a big factor in the professional life of its citizens. This thread runs through the distinguished career in geology, palaeontology and zoology of Sir Charles Fleming (1916-1987) whose knighthood was gained for services to science and conservation - a rare achievement in 1977. Keen especially on birds, he was a founder of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand, the organisation through which I met him. Among the roots of Charles Fleming's life-long enthusiasm for nature was his introduction to the works of Richard Jefferies, together with those of W H Hudson, during his schooldays in Auckland.
This information is revealed in the biography Charles Fleming -Environmental Patriot recently published by his daughter, Mary McEwen, which is a fascinating account. My own love of nature which dates from schooldays in Yorkshire can be traced to books; the Romany and Nomad series but especially Bevis, along with Tarka the Otter, and Salar the Salmon, by Henry Williamson (a great admirer of Jefferies). Hence I was particularly pleased to come across the following passages in the story of so eminent a fellow scientist as Sir Charles Fleming.
The war years had prevented travel but we read:-
‘In August 1948 Charles joined an excursion, based in Oxford, which was organised to precede the 18th International Geological Congress. The leader of the excursion was palaeontologist Dr W J Arkell, a specialist in ammonites. He was pleased to discover that Dr Arkell liked the work of Richard Jefferies, whose book Bevis had inspired Charles when he was growing up. More than that, Arkell took the group to Bevis's home territory - Coate Water and Coate Farm.’
Of his home life, Mary McEwen relates that her father’s regular hours at the New Zealand Geological Survey along with a complete immersion in his studies limited his role as a parent. She notes: ‘he worked on ornithology at the dining table until bedtime’. However she adds: ‘inspired by Arthur Ransome’s Pigeon Post, we kept homing pigeons, and once or twice Charles helped us to take the birds some distance away, where we attached messages to their legs before releasing them to fly home’— and he ‘took us fishing from a jetty in Wellington Harbour, but such events were rare.’ ‘More frequent were the bedtime stories he read to us. He chose books he had owned and loved when he was a child: Bevis and Wood Magic by Richard Jefferies for Robin [the older sister] and Little Lord Fauntleroy by Francis Hodgson Burnett for me.’

‘HERE ENDS COATE ROAD’

In response to the query regarding the whereabouts of the stone [RJS Newsletter, Spring 2006, page 9] bearing the inscription that declares ‘Here ends Coate Road’, Hugoe Matthews reminded us of the quote from ‘Chapters on Churches’ [RJS Journal No 6, 1997 page 3]. The article penned by Jefferies for the North Wiltshire Herald, and published on 5 January 1867 deals with Jefferies’ visit to Chiseldon. He writes:

On entering the village of Coate, I once again passed over the bridge which spans a stream known as Coate water, and here observed inserted on the left-hand parapet, on the side furthest from Swindon, a stone with this mysterious inscription:

Here ends Coate Road.

Jefferies goes on to describe the location of the stone as “forty paces further” from the Sun Inn but asks “Where ends Coate Road” as those living in the hamlet had different ideas.

Sheila Povey sent in an old postcard that reads: “End of Coate Road”, pictured below. Sheila suggests that the stone might have been by the now demolished house that would have been opposite the Sun Inn.

PLAQUES

Blue plaque. The Society has written to English Heritage with a view to obtaining a Blue Plaque for the Jefferies Museum. Unfortunately, however, the scheme that started in London has not yet extended to the South-West region. The situation is under review. The English Heritage officer dealing with the scheme commented, after seeing a photo of the house, that a Blue Plaque would complement the blue door of the Museum. She urged us to re-apply once the scheme reaches the area.

Cirencester plaque. Did you know that there is a plaque on the wall of the offices of the Wiltshire & Gloucestershire Standard based in Cirencester? Prof. Eric Jones sent in these pictures.

The Society has written twice to the editor of the paper requesting that they might like to publish an article about Jefferies and his house at Coate or some extracts from his works. There has been no response. A reporter, when asked, could not see the relevance of an article to their local paper!

Liddington Viewing Table. On June 24th around 50 people gathered on Liddington Hill when a memorial plaque and direction marker was unveiled by Lord Joffe. The weather was perfect, the views superb and a skylark sang overhead to add to the atmosphere of the occasion. Lady Treitel expressed thanks on behalf of the Society and read an appropriate passage from The Story of My Heart. The erection of the viewing table and plaques was a millennium project planned by Liddington Parish Council who also wanted to replace the memorial plaque to Richard Jefferies and Alfred Williams that had been placed on the Ordnance Survey triangulation point pillar by J B Jones [Swindon schoolmaster and scholar] on 18 November 1938. This plaque was replaced in 1940 - the original had been damaged as a result of using it for artillery practice during the war. The original plaque is kept at the Bath Road museum. The second plaque disappeared around 2001 - it was assumed that vandals had pulled it down. It is rumoured that this plaque has been found. If we can trace it, the plaque will be restored to its rightful place to honour J B Jones who went to such great trouble to get the plaque erected originally and the efforts of Society member Mark Daniel and Gordon Wilson of Liddington Parish Council who saved the plinth that was in danger of falling down. The inscription on the latest plaque reads:

LIDDINGTON HILL BELOVED BY RICHARD JEFFERIES AND ALFRED WILLIAMS. Haste not, be at rest. This now is eternity. I felt immortality as I felt the beauty of the summer morning.
Richard Jefferies.

The Council Oak plaque. According to the Coate Water Rangers, the Council Oak plaque made by Cyril Wright had fallen apart and was thrown away. Thanks to the efforts of Ray Morse, teachers and pupils at Dorcan Technical College a new sign for the tree was completed in August. There will be a small dedication ceremony to reinstate the plaque that will be held on Heritage Day – 10th September at noon.

MORE ON FORTY-FOLDS

Interest in farmer Iden’s favourite potato has grown [see Spring 2006 newsletter page 1] with enquiries as to where the potato might be purchased. The supermarket referred to by John Price is Waitrose. Perhaps, this winter, there will be new stocks on the shelves. If not, why not ask? Small potatoes can be planted around February as “seed”.

HENRY WILLIAMSON LETTERS.

The following entry appeared in the newsletter of the Wiltshire Records Office [WRO]: “A series of 39 letters and postcards from the writer Henry Williamson, to Mrs Frances Gay, secretary of the Richard Jefferies Society, have been deposited by her daughter. Williamson was an admirer of Jefferies and the letters, written between 1958 and 1971, reflect this, together with his less favourable opinion of W H Hudson, author of A Shepherd’s Life. He also describes his current literary and broadcasting work. The letters are also revealing about his life and family. He became President of the Society in 1971. (WSRO 3512/1). Contributors: Claire Skinner, John d’Arcy and Steve Hobbs, editor.” The WRO in Trowbridge is closing next summer and opening in Chippenham in October 2007.

PUBLICITY & PUBLICATIONS

The Society has published a new leaflet to advertise the Museum whilst a guide has been produced for Museum visitors. Other leaflets have been updated; for example the walks around Coate Water [awaiting print in full colour] and the tour that explores more of Jefferies Land. New pamphlets have been added related to the Frances Gay Memorial and direction marker at Coate Water and ‘Bevis Country’. The leaflets are based on the articles that appeared in the 1987 Jefferies’ guidebook. John Chandler has been commissioned to write a new guidebook for the Society that will be geared towards reaching the general public who may not be aware of Jefferies or his works. The text of many Jefferies’ works is now available in WORD on a CD Rom – new titles are being added constantly. Stan Hickerton has produced a stunning new colour poster to advertise Museum open days [see front cover] that has been circulated widely around Swindon. The nearest local library at Liden hosted a display about Jefferies from May to September. We are most grateful to the Swindon Advertiser; they have given the Society, Jefferies and the Museum much publicity throughout the year. More about this under “Citings”.

FOR INTERNET USERS

Those of you with access to the Internet can now keep up to date with news and events about the Society. A news blog has been set up at http://richardjefferiessociety.blogspot.com
This complements Simon Coleman’s web site at http://www.bath.ac.uk/~lissmc/rjeffs.htm that focuses on the Life and Works of Richard Jefferies.
If you would like to receive the occasional e-mail with news or you have information to impart to others send your e-mail address to R.Jefferies_Society@tiscali.co.uk. The Society has set up a free electronic mailing group to facilitate this.

EARLY NOVELS ON THE INTERNET

Thanks to Richard Wright in Australia, the following links will take you to the text of Jefferies' early novels on the Internet:
The Scarlet Shawl http://www.box.net/public/lagx1btskx
Restless Human Hearts http://www.box.net/public/07bd2pe4bt
Jefferies' Land [text only ] http://www.box.net/public/90v8f1pyfs
with illustrations: http://www.box.net/public/2nc4cjako5
Greene Ferne Farm http://www.box.net/public/0efskd7fu8

CITINGS OF JEFFERIES
The Independent on Sunday had a flurry of activity earlier in the year. On Building a Library by Jem Poster [19th February], he recommended The Story of my Heart. On 12th March, Walden Books published their top ten “hot list” of sales over the week . Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley came in at number one; to be followed by Hodge and His Masters.
In reviewing a book for the Guardian [25 March], Daniel Butler describes Running for the Hills by Horatio Clare as "beautifully written, particularly in its detailed observations of the natural world. The description of swirling choughs along the Pembroke coast is reminiscent of Richard Jefferies".
Suzanne Kelsey wrote a superb piece about Jefferies in Out and About in Berkshire & Neighbouring Counties, May edition, which should have encouraged more visitors to the Museum.
The Shooting Times (25th May) contained a column by John Humphreys called 'An amateur poacher' which starts ‘The Amateur Poacher, by Richard Jefferies, is a dangerous book to pick up: open it and you can’t put it down.’ Humphreys writes that his father gave him Poacher and also Gamekeeper and ‘they changed my life.’ The ST is offering Poacher for £18.95 post free, Excellent Press edition. The Pocket Book of Shooting Facts (given away with this ST issue) lists Gamekeeper at Home in its list of ten classic books on shooting.
The May edition of Countryman publicised the latest edition of The Open Air.
The Society has teamed up with the Swindon Advertiser in order to provide suitable monthly nature notes that have been beautifully illustrated with appropriate wild-life photos. We launched with a piece from ‘April Gossip’ and have years of quotes to keep them going!
Margaret Bathe spotted an article in the Daily Telegraph [13th June] publicising The Dangerous Book for Boys. The editorial comment noted: ‘Can children of the PlayStation3 era still breathe the air of the Richard Jefferies classic Bevis, The Story of a Boy'? The "test drive" on today's News Features pages suggests they can. More power to their catapults.'
Will Self claimed in The Week that After London was one of the six books that most influenced the writing of his latest novel: The Book of Dave.
Eric Jones came across this: Brian Tippett, W H Hudson in Hampshire (Winchester: Hampshire County Council, Hampshire Papers #27, 2004), discusses Hudson as 'the immediate successor to Richard Jefferies'. Tippett goes out of his way to pair Hudson and Jefferies and refers to RJ as 'Hudson's immediate literary predecessor in bringing Nature to the increasingly urbanised Victorian reading public' and even carries a photograph of Jefferies.
Geoff Hirst came across this in the London Review of Books (3rd August). The review is by E.S.Turner (posthumously published as he died in his nineties early in July) and the book is Rural Reflections: A brief History of Traps, Trapmakers and Gamekeeping in Britain. (It is 416 pages long so must be the last word, rather than "brief"). The direct quotation of Turner reads: The victims of the "iron wolf", as Richard Jeffries (sic) called it, included not only poachers but maidservants, clergymen, courting couples, botanisers and bird-nesting boys as well as members of the (trap) owners family and his absent minded gamekeepers.
BBC TV in their programme Points West featured Jefferies and the Coate Water walk along with other writers in the south-west region who were inspired by landscape. Other writers included Coleridge, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Laurie Lee. The Jefferies’ feature was broadcast on August 15th. John Price was interviewed by TV presenter Amanda Parr. The walk is up on the BBC web-site at http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/articles/2006/08/17/the_richard_jefferies_walk_feature.shtml

BOOKS
Some splendid new books are available written by Society members.

The Cut of the Light: Poems 1965-2005
Professor Jeremy Hooker [President of the Society from 1999-2004] has produced a collection of his poems written between 1965 to 2005. The book is published by Enitharmon Press (Distributed in the USA and Canada by Dufour Editions Inc.), pp. 373, hardback, £25. ISBN 1-904634-27-3.
Drawing extensively on poetry written over forty years, the book contains early, previously unpublished poems and some new versions of later work.

Brother What Strange Place is This?
A collection of short stories by Tom Saunders has been published by UKA Press, ISBN: 1-904781-14-4 UK £9.99. The title story, 'Brother…', describes the slow death of a composer, Griffin Curzon, who in 1913 attempts a suicide, survives, and is interned in a sanatorium. We bear witness to Griffin's physical and metaphorical descent through the eyes of his brother, an inventor called Alaric. Alaric receives the occasional letter from Griffin, one of which reads:
Brother, What strange place is this? My keepers carried me here like a Samson in chains. A great man graced my room today and peered hard into my face as if he aspired to read in it some prophecy.
The book can be purchased and customer reviews and an appreciation can be read at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904781144/qid%3D1096904640/202-7809655-9096600

The Poetry of Swindon – one man’s journey 2000-2006
Tony Hillier paints pictures, through his poetry, of the many community, educational and cultural events and issues that have grabbed his attention in this millennium. This includes a poem about plans to concrete over Coate. The A5 pamphlet, pp. 50, is available from Tony for £3 from 48 South View Avenue, Swindon SN3 1DZ.`

New Butterfly Book
As a follow-up to his Millennium Atlas of Suffolk Butterflies Richard Stewart has now written a more informal book based on his diaries from 1994 to the start of 2000, with a final updated section.
The main thrust of the book is the butterfly recording in Suffolk during the highly successful national Millennium Survey and this includes accounts of rare butterflies like Large Tortoiseshell, Queen of Spain Fritillary and Camberwell Beauty. Richard also describes many trips outside Suffolk , to see Swallowtails in Norfolk, Chequered Skippers in the Scottish Highlands, Mountain Ringlets in the Lake District and Large Blues at a secret site in Devon . Other trips described include the Isle of Wight , Dorset , Hampshire , Kent and Surrey which have species no longer recorded in Suffolk. Richard has included several photos and published poems and he covers other wildlife during his travels. There is also a detailed account of seeing the overwintering Monarchs in Mexico. Other adventures include a nudist colony, forcibly evicted villagers, threatened allotments, suspicious villagers, late night football supporters, a computerised robot and a woman who actually dislikes butterflies.
The book would make an ideal present for anyone interested in wildlife and is available for £6-50, including postage, from Richard at: 'Valezina', 112, Westerfield Road, Ipswich, Suffolk. IP4 2XVJ . Please make cheques out to 'Richard Stewart’.

Richard Jefferies and the Ecological Vision by Brian Morris. This book should be available in the New Year. Details in the next newsletter.

LECTURES
Professor Roger Ebbatson is giving two Jefferies related lectures this autumn. The first: 'Richard Jefferies and Transcendentalism', takes place at the Leiden University October Conference, Holland, 25 October. The second is a day conference [10am-4pm] organised by the Christian Literary Studies Group. “PROPHETIC VOICES” takes place on Saturday, 11 November at Corpus Christi College [seminar room], Merton Street, Oxford [£15 including lunch]. Prof Ebbatson’s subject will be 'Prophetic Landscapes: Thomas Hardy & Richard Jefferies'. Bookings to CLSG Secretary, 10 Dene Road, Northwood, Middlesex by 6 November.

HOW DID YOU FIRST DISCOVER RICHARD JEFFERIES?
Mr R Roys of York provided a most eloquent and detailed answer in a six page illustrated letter in response to this question posed to new members. He writes: It was in the early nineteen thirties.. The era of short patched up trousers, cod liver oil at playtime, (bring your own spoon), cigarette cards and grubby knees.. Our class had to move to the next classroom for sums. Here were desks with lids that lifted. Books and personal items were kept in these belonging to the resident class. Here one could lift the lid and explore the contents when teacher’s attention was elsewhere. It was such when completing the assignment of arithmetical problems that one finished one’s task before the end of the lesson. Having time to spare one delved, as one does. A book of some interest was discovered. ‘Wood Magic’. I read and was absorbed, delighted and besotted. Every time we visited this special classroom for sums I hastened through the delegated task and read, and read until I finished the book of wonderment. From that time on, until we went to a secondary school, at the age of eleven, ‘Wood Magic’ and its companion ‘Bevis’ occupied my reading and supplied the gist of my day dreams. Oh! Happy Days!

Mr J Roberts of Wakefield became acquainted with the works of Jefferies after hearing programmes about him on Radio 3 and 4 in the early 1980s. As a lover of the English countryside, Jefferies’ words “touched a chord” and along with an interest in mysticism, this seemed the perfect combination. At the same time, music by Frank Bridge, Edmund Rubra and Vaughan Williams ploughed a similar furrow. By chance, Mr Roberts bought books by Jefferies that he still owns today.

ALLIANCE OF LITERARY SOCIETIES
The Richard Jefferies Society will be hosting the Annual General Meeting of the ALS in 2008 in Swindon. Plans are already underway for the weekend of 17-18 May to raise the profile of Jefferies and Coate. A novel event being planned for the Sunday will include a literary treasure hunt based on Jefferies' favourite local haunts.
Margaret Evans and Stan Hickerton attended this years AGM held in Bath in May. See Margaret’s report below. The Richard Jefferies Society has asked the ALS if a future AGM might consider the lack of government planning policy to protect literary landscapes and what the ALS might do about this to effect change. It was reported in the ALS newsletter, Summer 2006, that this has been of great concern to the Society with regard to the Save Coate campaign and the impact of the proposed development on Jefferies Land.
The Tolkien Society will host the 2007 AGM on May 19-20th.

THE ALLIANCE OF LITERARY SOCIETIES WEEKEND HELD AT THE ABBEY CHURCH ROOMS, WESTGATE STREET AND THE REDCAR HOTEL, BATH ON 13-14 MAY 2006, HOSTED BY THE JANE AUSTEN AND BURNEY SOCIETIES

Patrick Stokes, Chairman of the Jane Austen Society of the United Kingdom, welcomed attendees on behalf of the Jane Austen and The Burney Societies.
In the absence of Nicholas Reid, Kenn Oultram acted as Chairman. He reported that 27 Societies were represented at the meeting. There were approximately 110 member societies. 6 new societies have joined during the last year with more enquiries looming. Members of the committee gave their reports.
The formal business concluded Kenn introduced Maggie Lane and Angela Barlow, who together were to give a very interesting and entertaining presentation entitled She was come to be happy: Jane Austen and Fanny Burney in Bath. Maggie gave a talk interspersed with readings given by Angela. Maggie Lane has written books on Jane Austen and Fanny Burney. Angela Barlow is an actress and writer.
The theme of the talk was the different experiences and responses Jane Austen and Fanny Burney had in, and to, Bath. Both authors were stimulated by Bath in different ways. Although Fanny and Jane are linked in many ways, it is interesting to note that the work of Fanny Burney had an influence on Jane Austen, whereas Jane Austen is more well-known today. In her day however, Fanny Burney was more well-known than Jane Austen. Fanny Burney’s works were in print when Jane Austen was a child, and Jane read these whilst she was growing up. On the other hand, however, although Jane’s books were published during Fanny’s lifetime, Fanny does not appear to have heard of Jane. More is known about Fanny Burney from her diaries which give an insight into her life and life in the times. Whereas Jane Austen had a domestic life, Fanny Burney led a very broad life.
Although Fanny Burney’s novels were well-known in her day she is little read today, her present audience comprising of people who want to know about life in her day. Fanny’s books have titles of girls’ names. The sub-titles Fanny Burney uses demonstrate how Jane Austen was influenced by her. Fanny Burney was the first author to take women as a main character and the first person to write about current life and society.
Fanny Burney was born 23 years before Jane Austen and outlived her by 23 years. She lived from the reign of George II into the early days of Victoria’s reign. She therefore saw more historical change than Jane Austen. However, they both witnessed changes in Bath through the time that they knew it.
Fanny Burney’s first visit to Bath was made in 1767 at the age of 15. She loved it but only made little use of it in her fictional writings. Her second visit comprised a 3-month stay in 1780. In the intervening years Bath had become less fashionable. Even so she was still enthusiastic about the city and the lifestyle. This contrasts with the reaction of Jane Austen who, apart from Lyme Regis, does not enthuse about places. Fanny Burney’s next visit was a 3-week stay in 1791. In the intervening 11 years the city had grown both physically and in the society now there – it was becoming more a place of residents as well as a resort.
The earliest visit to Bath by Jane Austen, is thought to have been in 1797 when she was 22. She revisited in 1799. In between the two visits she had written a draft of a novel, which was to become Northanger Abbey. This was one of two of her novels to feature Bath. (“She was come to be happy in Bath” is a quote from Northanger Abbey.) Jane Austen uses her characters’ reactions to Bath as indicators of their moral worth. Jane had spent her childhood and younger days in the country, which she loved. This contrasted with Bath, which seemed to her a metropolis with more social activities but which she found shallow. In her letters to her sister Cassandra she concentrates on these, rather than visual aspects of the city, and she does not give lengthy descriptions of the city in her novels. This contrasts with Fanny Burney who enthuses about the architecture.
In 1801 the family decide to move to Bath. After her father died, the Austen ladies remained in Bath before moving to Southampton and, finally, in 1809, moved to Chawton, near Alton, in Hampshire.
Returning to Fanny Burney, at the age of 40, she married General D’Arbley, and eventually, in 1815, set up home in Bath, 24 years after her previous visit. They led a pleasant life in Bath for the next 3 years, similar to Jane Austen’s characters in Persuasion. She lived in Bath until 1818. It is during the period 1815 to 1818 that one would have thought she would have read Jane Austen. In 1818, after the death of her husband, she moved with her son to live in London, where she died in 1840. Her body was returned to Bath for burial.
In her conclusion Maggie mentioned that her talk had been based on books she had written about Fanny Burney.
During the afternoon, in order to have manageable groups and to stagger visits to 4 Sydney Place, where the Austen family had lived between 1801 and 1804, a number of walks were organised, one for Fanny Burney and the rest for Jane Austen. These visited places relevant to the two authors when they stayed there, and those mentioned in their fictional work.
After dinner Angela Barlow gave a vivacious presentation entitled Character in Jane Austen – An Actor’s View. Character was a huge subject so only a few aspects were touched on. To gain a thorough insight into a character, an actor must ask themselves many questions in order to faithfully portray a role. Jane Austen manages to convey answers to these questions raised with great skill. She attended the theatre and was brought up in a literary family. Even though her characters are actable it took a long time for her novels to be dramatised. In adaptations a performer also has to have a concept of how to act the part between the lines of dialogue.

Angela rounded off her talk with amusing quotes to illustrate the differing predispositions of male and female characters in Pride and Prejudice. The audience reacted enthusiastically, not only to this, but to the whole of the most lively, entertaining and informative presentation.
During the morning session of the AGM sheets for a self-guided walk were issued to those who were interested in following it on the Sunday, when one could also visit the Jane Austen Centre.
A striking comparison between Jane Austen and Richard Jefferies was their shared love of, and solace found in, nature. It was also interesting to recollect that Jefferies’ father had moved to Bath to work as a gardener after selling Coate Farm. Margaret Evans

NEWS FROM OTHER SOCIETIES

Wilts Archaeological & Natural History Society.
We have tickets which enable our members to visit, and make use of the facilities of the Museum at Devizes. If you would like to borrow a ticket, please apply to John Price. Telephone 01672 515150.

Friends of Alfred Williams
The May 2006 newsletter contains an extract from the unpublished journal of Kate Tryon, an American devotee of Jefferies who painted Jefferies’ landscapes that hang on the walls of the Jefferies Museum. She met Alfred Williams in 1911 whilst lodging at the keeper’s cottage at Coate Water. ‘The Friends’ summer outing this year visited Cogges Manor Farm Museum in Witney that is steeped in agricultural history and where you could watch the Victorian maids cooking and talking about their daily chores whilst farm-hands demonstrated the use of traditional rural implements.

The Edward Thomas Fellowship.
The Edward Thomas Fellowship held a Study Day in Cheltenham on June 10th 2006, attended by Walter de la Mare’s grandson, Giles, to consider the relationship between Edward Thomas and de la Mare. The autumn walk will be held on September 24th around Bearsted in Kent, where the Thomases lived in the early days of their marriage. The Birthday Walk and ninetieth anniversary of Edward Thomas’s death will be celebrated at Steep over the weekend of 14th/15th April 2007, and there are plans to visit Agny and other places on the Western Front from 31st October – 3rd. November next year. Finally, there is an interesting article in the newsletter on “Hardy and Edward Thomas, Poet”, by Professor R. George Thomas; based on a lecture given to the Thomas Hardy Society in July 1988, which refers to a passage in Edward Thomas’s “Richard Jefferies”.

OBITUARY

ALAN VOCE. Alan was the son of Samuel Voce and Ethel May Jefferies who always insisted that “We’re related to Richard Jefferies the author”. When he was a teenager he saw a book by Richard Jefferies in a second hand book store and bought it. It was the first of many. When he retired, he became interested in family History, and very soon discovered his grandfather’s Wiltshire roots, and many other relatives of the wide-ranging Jefferies family, most of whom he met. He always enjoyed meeting the like-minded people at the Society’s AGMs and visiting once more the Wiltshire countryside. He died May 9th aged 77.
Eileen Voce

Alan was kind enough to bequeath his collection of Jefferies’ books to the Society. They will be made available to members. There will be more information in the Spring 2007 newsletter.

John Jefferys and Michael Burrows have also bequeathed their Jefferies’ books to the Society this year. We are most grateful but wish them good health and a long life.

BIRTHDAY LECTURE

SATURDAY 14 OCTOBER 2006

HOLY CROSS CHURCH, CHISELDON

2.30 The Birthday Lecture (visitors welcome)
Speaker: Martin Haggerty
Subject: ‘William Morris and the English Countryside’.
4.00 Tea
4.30 Depart

Martin Haggerty is an independent researcher and writer, specialising in aspects of English cultural history. As such, he has published work on a wide range of themes, from landscape to philosophy and from architecture to music, but most typically on literary topics. He holds Master's degrees in both English and Theology and a postgraduate diploma in Heritage Interpretation.
Martin served on the committee of the William Morris Society from 1997 to 2004 and was the editor of their Newsletter for most of that time. Also since 1997, but continuing, he has been a committee member for the Edward Thomas Fellowship, whose website he manages. His earlier voluntary positions include serving as Open Spaces and Footpaths Secretary for the Ramblers' Association, Inner London Area, from 1995 to '98.
An environmentalist since childhood, Martin has in recent years become prominent as a campaigner against GM food and farming. Consequently, since 2004, he has been a co-ordinator in the Genetic Engineering Network (GEN), working as an intermediary between NGOs, local groups, farmers, scientists and activists involved in the anti-GM campaign across Britain.
Martin has been a member of the Richard Jefferies Society for many years. His other membership includes Friends of the Earth, the Soil Association, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (founded by William Morris), the British Agricultural History Society, Christian Ecology Link and the Rural Theology Association.
After 15 years living in London, Martin moved to Scarborough, North Yorkshire, in 1998. His main recreations are walking in the countryside and growing food on two large organic-permaculture allotments.

RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS FOR SALE AND LOAN

If you would like any of the following, please write to Mrs. Norma Goodwin, Wildings, 3a Momford Road, Oliver’s Battery, Winchester SO22 4LE. E-mail norma.goodwin@btopenworld.com. Cheques should be made payable to the ‘Richard Jefferies Society’ although small orders can be paid for by postage stamps.

Postcards: 25p each or any 3 for 65p
Watercolour of Liddington Hill & quotation
Wild flowers & quotation
Portrait of Richard Jefferies
Set of 5 cards Jefferies’ birthplace circa 1910 £1
Leaflets
Richard Jefferies Farmhouse and Museum free
Richard Jefferies in Eltham 25p
Richard Jefferies in Surbiton 25p
Richard Jefferies in Sussex 25p
Coate Farm and ‘Bevis Country’ 50p
Richard Jefferies & Coate Water (guided walk) 50p
Richard Jefferies & Old Town (guided walk) 25p
A Jefferies Land itinerary (guided tour) 25p
Jefferies Land Direction Indicator/Frances Gay Memorial 50p

Back numbers of the Journal (see contents list on page 36) £1.00
The Story of my Heart (paperback) £2.00
Richard Jefferies and Coate by John Chandler £1.00
Published Works of Richard Jefferies (in order) by Hugoe Matthews
A4 size £2.00 A5 size (same text) £1.50

Postage: For the UK add 23p for orders up to £1; add 50p for orders up to £2 : add 75p for orders £2 and over. See separate mailing costs for Journals on page 38.
For Europe add the minimum charge of 95p for 1 booklet (printed matter) . More than 1 booklet add £1.14p.
Outside Europe, please contact Norma to find out postage cost.

Electronic books on CD for sale
The following books have now been scanned and are available for purchase on one CD Rom at a cost of £5 including postage. The books are being added to constantly. Please note, there can be no guarantee of accuracy, given the limitation of scan-to-text hardware. The majority of the files are in WORD format but can be altered on request to pdf files.

After London
The Amateur Poacher
Amaryllis at the Fair
Bevis
Chronicles of the Hedges
Field and Hedgerow
Greene Ferne Farm
Hodge and his Masters
Jefferies Land
The Life of the Fields
The Open Air
Pageant of Summer
Restless Human Hearts
The Scarlet Shawl
The Story of my Heart
Wildlife in a Southern County
World’s End
… and more!

Also included:

Richard Jefferies and Coate by John Chandler

Scarce Jefferies Works on CD
These may also be obtained on loan from Mrs. Goodwin:
CD-01 The Scarlet Shawl
CD-02 Jefferies Land
CD-03 Greene Ferne Farm
CD-04 Restless Human Hearts
A fee of £1 is charged for the loan of each CD. See page 6 of Spring Newsletter 2004 for details. The CDs will be posted separately in an air bag at a cost of 37p for one and 62p for two. Cheques to the Richard Jefferies Society.

****
Copies of the video, JEFFERIES LAND, may still be obtained, price £10, from John Webb, Padbrook, Bincknoll Lane, Wootton Bassett, Wilts SN4 8QR. Cheques to ‘John Webb’.

John also houses the Society’s complete library of books that can be borrowed by members. For more information phone John on 01793 853171.

Second-hand books John Price has a good stock of second-hand Jefferies books for sale. Contact him on 01672 515150

Talks and articles library. There is an extensive archive of about 80 talks and articles produced for the Society that can be purchased as photocopies. Some date back to the 1970s. Contact the Hon. Sec. for the full list and for more information.

Contents of Richard Jefferies Society Journals
Newer members of the Society may like to know of the interesting articles and smaller Jefferies’ works to be found in back numbers of the journals which can be purchased from the Society by mail order. Below is a list of the titles.

Number 1 – 1992
Alone in London… by Richard Jefferies
T.T.T. by Richard Jefferies
Greater Gardens by Richard Jefferies
Lawn Preserves by Richard Jefferies
Edward Thomas on the Country of Richard Jefferies by Andrew Rossabi
Letter to W H Hudson by Edward Thomas
Mouching Through Jefferies by Brian Rich
Richard Jefferies and the Plesiosaur by Phyllis Treitel
A Collector’s List of Jefferies Titles

Number 2 – 1993
Reporting; Editing & Authorship (Part) by Richard Jefferies
English Socialists by Richard Jefferies
The Future of Farming; letter to Times of 15 October 1873 by Richard Jefferies
Jefferies’ Reading by W J Keith
A Tribute to Bill Keith by Andrew Rossabi
The Other Side: Visions of America by Phyllis Treitel
Book Reviews: 1) Richard Jefferies. A Bibliographical Study. 2 ) Hodge & His Masters: a new edition

Number 3 – 1994
Reporting; Editing & Authorship (Part) by Richard Jefferies
Chapters on Churches I by Richard Jefferies
The Nude in London by Richard Jefferies
Mound Restorers by Richard Jefferies
The Bevis Country by Mark Daniel
Book Reviews: 1) The Marlborough Downs. 2) Life of Henry David Thoreau

Number 4 – 1995
Chapters on Churches II by Richard Jefferies
January Notes by Richard Jefferies
The Midnight Skate by Richard Jefferies
The Fiction of Richard Jefferies by Edward Thomas
On ‘The Scarlet Shawl’ by Andrew Rossabi
‘The Forward Life of Richard Jefferies’: A Personal Response by W J Keith

Number 5 – 1996
A Book Review – ‘Sport & Nature in Scotland’ by Richard Jefferies
Charles Jefferies by Nancie D Jefferies Cator
An Uncomfortable Antiquary:Richard Jefferies and Victorian Local History by John Chandler
History and Tradition in Richard Jefferies’ ‘Three Centuries at Home’ by J B Smith
Jefferies and Cassell’s Family Magazine by W J Keith
Book Review: Nearly out of Heart and Hope.
Cyril Wright 1909-1995
Index – Numbers 1-5

Number 6 – 1997
Chapters on Churches by Richard Jefferies
The Dragon at Ashdown by Richard Jefferies
Sun-spots by Richard Jefferies
Richard Jefferies at Tolworth by Peter K Robins
Voyage to the Unknown Island: an exploration of Richard Jefferies’ Bevis by Jonathan Calder

Number 7 – 1998
The Gamekeeper’s Larder by Richard Jefferies
The Coming Voter by Richard Jefferies
Richard Jefferies ‘The Coming Voter’ by Diana Morrow
Richard Jefferies, Bevis and Children’s Literature by Peter Hunt

Number 8 – 1999
Jack Brass, Emperor of England by Richard Jefferies
Thoughts on the Labour Question by Richard Jefferies
‘Thoughts on the Labour Question’: An Alternative View by Diana Morrow
Book Review: Writers in a Landscape.

Number 9 – 2000
Richard Jefferies: A Personal Discovery by Jeremy Hooker
Richard Jefferies in Germany by Peter Eyink
Introduction to the German edition of ‘The Story of My Heart’ by Ellen Key
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Andrew Rossabi
Book Review: Wessex-Peter Tolhurst

Number 10 – 2001
Chapters on Churches III by Richard Jefferies
Richard Jefferies and Birds by W J Keith
The Art and Craft of Richard Jefferies by John Savage
Book Review: The English Path
Index numbers 6-10

Number 11 – 2002
In Summer Fields by Richard Jefferies
The Dewy Morn: Jefferies, Being and History by Roger Ebbatson
Richard Jefferies and Thomas Hardy: Parallel Lives? by Carolyn Clarke
Was ‘Dad’ Uzzell ever at Hodson Cottage? by Ken Watts
Book Review: At Home on the Earth

Number 12 – 2003
The Man of the Future by Richard Jefferies
A Fragment of Manuscript by Richard Jefferies
Could Richard Jefferies have been an Artist instead of a Writer? by Andrew Rossabi
Time and Eternity in Jefferies’ Thought by Simon Coleman

Number 13 – 2004
Selections from Richard Jefferies’ 1876 Notebook by John Pearson
Margaret Thomas, Sculptor of the Bust of Richard Jefferies in Salisbury Cathedral by Kedrun Laurie
Kisses of the Sun by Jo-Anne Smith

Number 14 – 2005
Selections from Richard Jefferies’ 1876 Notebook by John Pearson
Richard Jefferies’ Writing Criticised and Defended by Eric Jones
Henry Williamson’s Debt to Richard Jefferies by Richard Stewart
Book Review: Henry Williamson: A Bibliography

Number 15 – 2006
Selections from Richard Jefferies’ 1876 Notebook by John Pearson
Humanity and Natural History by Richard Jefferies
Richard Jefferies: An Independent Mind by Hugoe Matthews
Literary Landscapes, Richard Jefferies and the Planning Inspector by Mark Daniel
Book Reviews: 1) Landscape, Writing and ‘The Condition of England’, 1878-1917, Ruskin to Modernism and 2) An Imaginary England. Nation, Landscape and Literature, 1840-1920
Index numbers 11-15

Back numbers of the Journal can be obtained at £1 each from Norma Goodwin,“Wildings”, 3A Momford Road, Oliver’s Battery, Winchester, Hants. SO22 4LE.The price of postage 2nd class is as follows
1 journal 37p
2-3 journals 55p
4-7 journals 75p
8-9 journals £1.39
10 journals £1.77
Please contact Norma either by telephone 01962 864684 or email her on norma.goodwin@btopenworld.com if you have any questions about the articles.

PROGRAMME OF MEETINGS 2006-2007

2006
Saturday Annual General Meeting at Church Hall, Chiseldon.
14 October Birthday Lecture .
Speaker - Martin Haggerty:
‘William Morris and the English Countryside’.
For details, see pages 27-33.

Saturday 2 December* Harold Adams Archives. The Society’s archives will soon be deposited at Trowbridge. Early scrapbooks, photographs, reports, some never shown before, will be brought for display and discussion, before translocation to the Record Office.

2007
Saturday 3 March* Joint meeting with the Friends of Alfred Williams. Select an appropriate short extract [no longer than 5 minutes] for reading or just come along and listen.
Saturday 14 April* The Man on the Hill The showing of a two-part documentary film made by HTV in 1987 as part of the Jefferies’ centenary celebrations. Readings by Paul Scofield.
Saturday 12 May* Joint Swindon Literary Festival event. Subject to be announced.
Saturday 28 July STUDY DAY. A suggested theme is ‘Jefferies and children’s literature’. We might compare and contrast books written for/about children around Jefferies’ time with Jefferies’ own works. More information in next newsletter.
Saturday 1 December* To be arranged.

*Meetings begin at 2.00pm in the Coate Museum, Marlborough Road, Swindon next to the Sun Inn and on the corner of Day House Lane [see map on previous page]. Parking is free at Coate Water, only 3 minutes walk away. Those with a disability can park at the Museum, although space is limited. Visitors are welcome. There is no charge. The Museum will be open from 1.00pm on meeting days.

The Museum is also open on the second Wednesday of the month throughout the year from 10am to 4pm as well as the usual Sunday arrangements from May to September. The “Footsteps” workshop is also held on the same Wednesdays.

2006-10-04T11:40:00.000Z

Victorian Country Writers Celebrated

The RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY is holding its Annual General Meeting and Birthday Lecture on Saturday 14th October in Chiseldon Church Hall.

The afternoon session, starting at 2.30 p.m., is devoted to the subject of 'William Morris and the English Countryside'. The Birthday Lecture will be given by Martin Haggerty [1], a researcher and writer who specialises in aspects of English cultural history. He has published work on a wide range of themes, from landscape to philosophy and from architecture to music, but most typically on literary topics. He is also an environmental campaigner.

Both William Morris and Richard Jefferies drew inspiration for their writing from the English countryside, especially the landscapes of Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Although they were contemporaries (Morris was born in 1834 and Jefferies in 1848) and Morris was the tenant of Kelmscott Manor from 1871, when Jefferies was still living at Coate, there is no record of them meeting. However, Morris was deeply impressed by Jefferies' futuristic novel After London (1885) and it provided part of the impetus for him to write his utopian fantasy News from Nowhere (1891). The essays and articles of both writers show their common interest in wildlife, agriculture, antiquities, social reform and much else.

May Morris, William's second daughter, is on record [2] as supporting a proposed monument to Richard Jefferies and Alfred Williams on Liddington Hill in the 1930s.

Members of the public are welcome to attend the Birthday Lecture. Admission is free.

More information from Jean Saunders: 01793 783040.

____________________________ENDS____________________________________

Editor's Notes

[1] Martin Haggerty has been a member of the Richard Jefferies Society for many years. His other membership includes Friends of the Earth, the Soil Association, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (founded by William Morris), the British Agricultural History Society, Christian Ecology Link and the Rural Theology Association. He holds Master's degrees in both English and Theology and a postgraduate diploma in Heritage Interpretation.

Martin served on the committee of the William Morris Society from 1997 to 2004 and was the editor of their Newsletter for most of that time. Also since 1997, but continuing, he has been a committee member for the Edward Thomas Fellowship, whose website he manages. His earlier voluntary positions include serving as Open Spaces and Footpaths Secretary for the Ramblers' Association, Inner London Area, from 1995 to '98.

An environmentalist since childhood, Martin has in recent years become prominent as a campaigner against GM food and farming. Consequently, since 2004, he has been a national co-ordinator in the Genetic Engineering Network (GEN), working as an intermediary between NGOs, local groups, farmers, scientists and activists involved in the anti-GM campaign across Britain.

After 15 years living in London, Martin moved to Scarborough, North Yorkshire, in 1998. His main recreations are walking in the countryside and growing food on two large organic-permaculture allotments.

[2] Letter to Swindon scholar J B Jones who was seeking support to erect a memorial plaque to Richard Jefferies and Alfred Williams on Liddington Hill. From the late Miss May Morris. Kelmscott Manor; March 9, 1938: About the Memorial on Liddington Hill: the only sort of a memorial I should support would be something entirely plain; such as a natural grey stone, inscribed. I am sure that both those men whom you wish to honour would have much disliked anything that sticks up on a wild and beautiful place (it is the Down you are thinking of, isn't it?) A piece of rugged stone that one would come upon quietly on the hill-side would be appropriate and dignified. I will be pleased to add my name to your list if the Memorial takes this form; otherwise, i.e. if anything monumental is arranged for, I must be out of it.

2006-09-04T14:12:00.000Z

Jefferies' tree at Coate Water immortalised by plaque

PRESS RELEASE

A new wooden plaque will be unveiled at Coate Water at 12 noon on Sunday 10th September, as part of the Heritage Day celebrations, to commemorate an oak tree that was immortalised by Richard Jefferies in his boys' adventure story, Bevis [1] first published in 1882.

The 'Council Oak', as Jefferies described it, is an ancient tree growing alongside the eastern shore of Coate Water lake near the children's sand-pit. It is a place of pilgrimage for devotees of Jefferies' writing.

Richard Jefferies, born in 1848, was raised at Jefferies Farm - now a Museum - some 500 metres from the tree. Bevis reflects Jefferies' own childhood adventures around Coate. In the book, the tree was the meeting place for local boys to plan their council of war that led to their mock battle in the nearby field, on Day House farm, named the 'Battlefield of Pharsalia'. The tree was chosen because "it was known by everyone. It grew all alone in the meadow, and far from any path, so that they could talk as they liked". Coate Water was called the 'New Sea' by Bevis.

The tree's position was marked on maps published in various editions of the book.

Around 1990, this magnificent oak tree suffered from a natural and rare condition known as 'limb drop' whereby it lost its crown.

Another victim of age was the wooden plaque erected next to the tree made by Cyril Wright, a long-standing secretary of the Richard Jefferies Society.

The new plaque was made by students at Dorcan Technical College under the supervision of teacher, Ivan Kirk. The school has added a dedication to teacher, John Venables, who was instrumental in getting the plaque accepted as a project. His sudden death this year came as a shock to all.

Ray Morse, Vice-chairman of the Richard Jefferies Society, said:

"John Venables was energetic and full of enthusiasm to help when I asked if his students might make a new plaque for the tree. The 'Council Oak' is part of our literary heritage. The new memorial plate not only acts as a marker but celebrates the passing of a great local writer as well as friends old and new".

John Price, the Chairman of the Richard Jefferies Society, will welcome friends of Richard Jefferies and Coate Water to the unveiling ceremony at 12 noon on Sunday and read a relevant extract from Bevis. The Jefferies Museum will be open later from 2-5pm.

- ENDS -

*****
Editor's notes:

[1] BEVIS: CHAPTER XIV - THE COUNCIL OF WAR opens:

"I say!"

''Battleaxes - '' "St. George is right 'Hold your tongue." 'Pikes twenty feet long." 'Marching two and two." 'Do stop." 'I shall be general." 'That you won't." 'Romans had shields."

'Battleaxes are best." 'Knobs with spikes." 'I say - I say!" 'You're a donkey!" 'They had flags - " 'And drums." 'I've got a flute."

'You!" 'Yes, me."

'Hi!" "Tom." "If you hit me, I'll hit you." "Now." "Don't." "Be quiet." "Go on." "Let's begin." "I will" - buzz - buzz - buzz !

Phil, Tom, Ted, Jim, Frank, Walter, Bill, "Charl," Val, Bob, Cecil, Sam,Fred, George, Harry, Michael, Jack, Andrew, Luke, and half a dozen more were talking all together, shouting across each other, occasionally fighting, wrestling, and rolling over on the sward under an oak. There were two up in the tree, bellowing their views from above, and little Charlie ("Charl") was astride of a bough which he had got hold of, swinging up and down, and yelling like the rest. Some stood by the edge of the water, for the oak was within a few yards of the New Sea, and alternately made ducks and drakes, and turned to contradict their friends.

On higher ground beyond, a herd of cows grazed in perfect peace, while the swallows threaded a maze in and out between them, but just above the grass.

The New Sea was calm and smooth as glass, the sun shone in a cloudless sky, so that the shadow of the oak was pleasant; but the swallows had come down from the upper air, and Bevis, as he stood a little apart listening in an abstracted manner to the uproar, watched them swiftly gliding in and out. He had convened a council of all those who wanted to join the war in the fields, because it seemed best to keep the matter secret, which could not be done if they came to the house, else perhaps the battle would be interfered with. This oak was chosen as it was known to everyone.

It grew all alone in the meadow, and far from any path, so that they could talk as they liked."

2006-09-04T14:02:00.000Z

October Nature Notes

Extracts from 'Wild Life in a Southern County' related to the orchards at Wick House [Jefferies' Farm].

"Be careful how you pick up a ripe apple, all glowing orange, from the grass in the orchard ; roll it over with your foot first, or you may chance to find that you have got a handful of wasps. They eat away the interior of the fruit, leaving little but the rind, and this very hollowness causes the rind to assume richer tints and a more tempting appearance. Speckled apples on the tree, whether pecked by a blackbird, eaten by wasps or ants, always ripen fastest, and if you do not mind cutting out that portion, are the best. Such a fallen apple, when hollowed out within, is a veritable torpedo if incautiously handled. Wasps are incurable drunkards. If they find something sweet and tempting they stick to it, and swill till they fall senseless to the ground. They are then most dangerous, because unseen and unheard ; and one may put one's hand on them in ignorance of their whereabouts.
-----

Dusky Blenheim oranges, with a gleam of gold under the rind ; a warmer tint of yellow on the pippins. Here streaks of red, here a tawny hue. Yonder a load of great russets; nearby heavy pears bending the strong branches; round black damsons; luscious egg-plums hanging their yellow ovals overhead; bullace, not yet ripe, but presently sweetly piquant. On the walnut trees bunches of round green balls-note those that show a dark spot or streak, and gently tap them with the tip of the tall slender pole placed there for the purpose. Down they come glancing from bough to bough, and, striking the hard turf, the thick green rind splits asunder, and the walnut itself rebounds upwards. Those who buy walnuts have no idea of the fine taste of the fruit thus gathered direct from the tree, when the kernel, though so curiously convoluted, slips its pale yellow skin easily and is so wondrously white. Surely it is an error to banish the orchard and the fruit-garden from the pleasure-grounds of modern houses, strictly relegating them to the rear, as if something to be ashamed of".

2006-08-07T14:38:00.000Z

AUGUST NATURE NOTES

are taken from 'A Summer Evening'. First published in 1881 in the Pall Mall Gazette, later in Chronicles of the Hedges

The sunlight falling on the tree trunks pales as it comes from the westward, having lost the glare of the south. At noon the trunks were in shadow with the sun straight over, and the appearance of the beams upon the stems as he declines marks the coming of the evening. The shrill note Pied wagtail echoes from the building, and it is noticed because the other birds are silent while the sun is going down. Long hours of heat seem to have burned the blue out of the sky; it pales as the light goes, and the faintest white haze mingles with it as if an invisible gossamer mist were spread over. In the deep shadow of the elms—a double shade from a double row—the horses are a little happier at last; but for hours yet their heads will nod, nod ceaselessly up and down, shaking off the torment of flies. At horse-hoe in the morning there seemed to be a green bush moving across the field between the rows of roots, for a bough was thrust into every crevice of the harness, and others were hung over or tied on, so that the horse was caparisoned with drooping branches. They withered and became a listless green in the sun before an acre was finished, but, swinging at every step, drove away the insects. With the first sunbeam the insects began, and will continue long after the last ray has departed. No files of rooks stream across the country as they would do in winter—they are late to return to their trees, and do so in scattered parties. The wood-pigeons, too, have not finished yet, and the sparrows are still in the corn; you can see where they have cleared out every ear in a corner by the white and chaffy appearance, while elsewhere the wheat is golden. The house-martins are still busy bringing mortar from the shore of the pond, where they drag their white legs over the moist earth, floundering and fluttering as they lose their balance. The swifts are screeching round the houses, or the church, so that the sky seems vacant, till, perhaps, a heron comes over, high up and slow as a cloud. If you put your hand on the top bar of a gate it is still warm, the mirage has disappeared, and does not quiver; but in walking through the fields now and then, a heated section of air is entered, much warmer than the rest of the atmosphere. Where the earth lies fallow the dry clods take a browner tint. A sudden movement in the wheat close by shows where a hare has already left his form well concealed by the tall stalks, but a pheasant in the barley may crouch and lie still. You may step right in among a covey of partridge chicks, if you come quickly and noiselessly over the gate without a dog. They are in the long grass between the wheat and the hedge, where there are ant hills; their first instinct is to 'quat' and before they can run you are in the middle of them. The strongest perhaps fly and drop twenty yards out in the wheat, the others ' cheep ' and run in among the stalks, tumbling in their eagerness over the clods. If you wished you might put a broad-brimmed hat over and capture one as children do butterflies. They are the prettiest little things, and he must be hard-hearted who would not handle a partridge chick tenderly. Any little stream greatly puzzles them if they cannot fly. A burdock leaf would hide the whole covey.

By now every tall bunch of grass casts a shadow, and a softer hue steals forth over the dry corn. What is the name of the colour of the barley? For in and among the rest there is a flicker of red fire which cannot be fixed, disappearing if looked for steadily. But as you first glance at it there seems sparks of redness here and there, as if the colour at those places came to a point. In reality there is no such redness, nor could you find it in a whole field ; the barley is broadly yellow, faintly green, dashed a little with orange, the most difficult of hues to give an idea of, and only seen in perfection when long weeks of fierce sunshine (as this season) have left an essence of the sunlight on it. The oats before they whiten have a delicate green of their own, less pronounced than eau de Nil, pearly yet not pearl grey. Out from the hedges the shadow comes, and far in front of the shadow a penumbra of lesser light; soft still hues settle on the surface. The disc of the sun goes down yellow, and not so bright but that it can be looked at; the sky at the horizon is a faint yellow — a pale glow that seems weary and worn out with heat. Some might say so pale a sunset meant rain. But look to the east. There the atmosphere thickens to a dull red, like a heated tile; and so long as that dull red glow comes evening after evening the wheat will stand in earth as hard as a kiln could make it. If the hills seem near and clearly defined it is because the air has been burned with sunlight, and because the slopes are distinct with squares of yellow corn. Overhead the faint whitish mist disappears and leaves a purple sky; beneath, over the broad fields, the shadows have gone. Instead of bright light and dark contrast, there is a light everywhere, soft and quiet, as if it came through the dome of purple. Grasshoppers still sing on the short turf where the worn ground shows white and dry through the thin blades. The ants have not yet finished, nor the bees; as they go home the moths come forth. On a bare bough a shrike is still intent on every passing insect, and calls ceaselessly to her young perched in the bushes. From the fern a nightjar rises and starts upon his uncertain course like a larger swallow of the night. There are thrushes in the aftermath, and the brownish spots farther away which move now and then are rabbits. Flocks of rooks are stationary on the ground by the corn, but outside it; at the brook the water-rats feed, and the moorhens, birds both of day and night; and the yellow-hammer sings till the first beetle hums over the hedge.

The yellow glow in the west sinks away, leaving only a whiter light there to distinguish the place of sun-setting. Distant corners of fields grow dusky, and in the copse under the trees there are passages which look dark a short way off, though not so when actually beneath the boughs. The little green that is yet left in any of the later corn or found along the edges among the weeds and wild flowers comes up, as it were, to the surface. So, too, with the white tints, the whiteness of the oats, of the driest and ripest of the wheat-stalks, of the white flowers and dusty sward, of the earth itself whitened by heat. White and green tone everything, and the gold is deadened, but the purple overhead is still clearer and seems higher. The hares are happy now, and may be seen wherever the second crop of clover is not too tall to hide them, or met with stealing along the quiet lanes where the nuts are already enlarging upon the hazel. A bat appears and flies to and fro at a great height; the bats do not seem to hawk so much in the summer as in spring, or perhaps not till late—at least, they are not so conspicuous. The swallows are still on the wing, and even yet it is some time before the first star. Not much effort is made by the birds to find a roosting-place. The barn and the bushes by it, an old fir tree grown about with ivy, from which long straws depending betray a nest—these suffice the sparrows. Almost the first bough answers, as they are all clothed with foliage. Those birds that have a second brood choose a branch adjacent to the nest: if not, wherever the deepening dusk finds them, there is sure to be a bush or tree. Now and again, as the beetles hum more often, a faint air comes over the corn—cool, but not chilly—scarce enough breeze to rustle the wheat-ears. Stand still while it lasts; it is too delicious to miss the least portion of, and it will only blow a minute. A star parts the purple veil at last.

The purple is less now and the blue more; and after the first the stars come forth, each with a shorter interval between. There is no haze, and southwards where the horizon is darkest the stars shine low down as it were to the surface of the wheat. A white owl passes under the trees, and the chirruping of the crickets on the mounds sounds in the stillness across the fields. A rook, or perhaps a night-wandering crow, flits by, just clearing the hedge towards the copse. The nightjar floats again, rising to the top of the oak yonder. All the breadth of the white corn is visible, the hedge on the other side, the elms farther still, a rolling slope of corn beyond that, and the distant hills. But yet, though it seems so light and clear, if the eye endeavours to single out an object it fails to define it. Whether there may or may not be someone behind the elm yonder, whether someone may or may not be stealthily moving along the hedge, is not certain, and the longer the gaze is fixed the more shadowy the object looks. It is a shadow: it is not a shadow: a horse perhaps? No, nothing; merely a spot where a projecting bush deepens the dusk. All things are visible, and yet invisible; they have no outline, no definition. The stars thicken, and with them comes a sense of intense rest. The light is not gone, but only enough left to incline the thoughts to quiet; there is no darkness, but that shadow which soothes and inclines to dream. The heated earth cools, and there is a freshness in the atmosphere. The hot trees, loaded with heavy foliage hi the noontide sun, seem to lift themselves again. Rest everywhere, rest and stillness; the calmest silence, but not Weariness or slumber—the reverse. The windows of the mind, the eyes open wider, the pupils enlarging; the mind, no more oppressed, ranges afar. The blood which was heated like the earth, flows stronger, and the hot hands are cool, and the feverish fingers no longer repel each other as they touch. The surface of the skin acts again, and the faint relaxed feeling departs. There is new life, new vigour, and the power to enjoy. How easy it is now to understand how to the nomad tribes of old, burned with Eastern suns, the light was to them as darkness is to us, the symbol of evil; how they looked on the sun as an enemy, and welcomed, lauded, and adored the night as their greatest good! The beautiful night with it; mystery and glory, and the thoughts that cannot be written down any more than you can write down what a star is— the beautiful life-renewing Night! Let us remain without doors.

2006-07-10T13:03:00.000Z

The extract selected for July's nature notes comes from THE JULY GRASS first published on 24 July 1886 in the Pall Mall Gazette and later in Field and Hedgerow - a collection of Jefferies' essays published after his death.

You need to know that the "July fly" described by Jefferies is the pretty six-spotted burnett moth [a day-flying moth] and the birdsfoot "lotus" is birdsfoot trefoil that he would have seen in the meadows at Coate.

************

The July Grass

A July fly went sideways over the long grass. His wings made a burr about him like a net, beating so fast they wrapped him round with a cloud. Every now and then, as he flew over the trees of grass, a taller one than common stopped him, and there he clung, and the eye had time to see the scarlet spots - the loveliest colour - on his wings. The wind swung the bennet and loosened his hold, and away he went again over the grasses. I wonder whether it is a joy to have bright scarlet spots, and to be clad in the purple and gold of life; is the colour felt by the creature that wears it?

The scarlet-dotted fly knows nothing of the names of the grasses that grow here, and thinking of him I have decided not to learn any more of their names either. I have picked a handful this morning of which I know nothing. I will sit here on the turf and the scarlet-dotted flies shall pass over me, as if I too were but a grass.

Here by me is a praying-rug, just wide enough to kneel on, of the richest gold interwoven with crimson. It is indeed too beautiful to kneel on, for the life in these golden flowers must not be broken down even for that purpose. It is so common, the bird's-foot lotus, it grows everywhere; yet if I had purposely searched for days I should not have found a plot like this, so rich, so golden, so glowing with sunshine.

You might pass it by in one stride, yet it is worthy to be thought of for a week and remembered for a year. Slender grasses, branched round about with slenderer boughs, each tipped with pollen and rising in tiers cone-shaped - too delicate to grow tall -cluster at the base of the mound. They dare not grow tall or the wind would snap them. A great grass, stout and thick, rises three feet by the hedge, with a head another foot nearly, very green and strong and bold, lifting itself right up to you; you must say, 'What a fine grass!'

Grasses whose awns succeed each other alternately; grasses whose tops seem flattened; others drooping over the shorter blades beneath; some that you can only find by parting the heavier growth around them; thousands and thousands. I wish I could do something more than gaze at all this scarlet and gold and crimson and green, something more than see it, not exactly to drink it or inhale it, but in some way to make it part of me that I might live it.

2006-06-26T11:35:00.000Z

Liddington Plaque and Viewing Table.

On June 24th around 50 people attended an event at Liddington Hill when a memorial plaque and direction marker was unveiled by Lord Joffe. The weather was perfect, the views superb and a skylark sang overhead to add to the atmosphere of the occasion.

Lady Treitel expressed thanks on behalf of the Richard Jefferies Society and read an appropriate passage from 'The Story of my Heart'.

The erection of the viewing table and plaques was a millennium project planned by Liddington Parish Council who also wanted to replace the memorial plaque to Richard Jefferies and Alfred Williams that had been placed on the trig point by JB Jones [Swindon schoolmaster and scholar] some 70 years ago. This plaque disappeared a few years ago and it was assumed that vandals had pulled it down.

We were pleasantly surprised to learn today that the old plaque had been found in a field and had been taken to the Bath Road Museum. As this is the first we had heard about the recovery of the plaque and, as we can see no value in placing the plaque at Bath Road Museum, we have asked for it back so that it might have place of honour at the Jefferies Museum.

Photo: courtesy Gordon Wilson, Liddington Parish Council.

2006-06-06T09:49:00.000Z

Bird Notes in June

[published in Field and Farm]

By the side of the brook is a great lime. Its leaves unfold to the sun. On its flowers the bees are lurking. Near the path on the other side of the stream is a row of pine-trees, their delicate tufted plumes of an enchanting green. In the deep wood beyond no bird voices stir the velvet-footed silence. There is no bird music amid the pines and the stems of the trees rise tall and straight towards the sun. The floor of the wood bears a thick carpet of pine needles and there is no undergrowth.
In this hush of silence one's very footsteps as we tread softly, seem too loud. Not far away in the beech copse the wood pigeons are busy, their incessant voices seem everywhere. Elms and alders grow near the stream, some graceful branches stretch over the water. A wren has its nest in an alder and a magpie nests in a lofty elm.
As one pauses by the stream to listen to the current lapsing by, [how delightful is the sound!] reed-sparrows may be seen in the flags and if you stay long enough and watch quietly you may see a water ouzel. The kingfisher haunts the pool beyond the bend and flies like an arrow in a flash of colour. Now and then hovering above, a heron may be seen in the blue air. The warblers are singing loudly. The cries and whistlings come thick and fast.
The ground is covered with fallen blossom, for this is the time of the June rose. Swallows dart here and there, hawking over the water. A jay flies from a tree and utters its discordant note. The rooks over the hedge are busy in the cornfield among the green corn. On the rocks which rise in the middle of the stream where it broadens out, clings saxifrage; campions, wild parsley, and water avens are in a crowd and iris, more clearly seen, as it rises above the other plants. The reeds sway to the lapping of the wavelets. As we watch, half abstracted and half dreaming in the bright June sunlight, small trout rise and a water hen may be seen in the reeds, but is soon out of sight, where the tall grasses rise. Listen! amid the sweet twisted babel of bird voices is one above all, it is the note of the chaffinch, a short song, but sweet and often mellow. The chaffinch is perhaps the most common of all our birds. Its nest, wonderfully and compactly constructed, is a work of art. It is most cleverly hidden and almost impossible to detect, so great is its resemblance to the trunk against which it is placed on the bough.
Now the rain begins to fall. Slowly at first, drop after drop, then more swiftly and in greater volume until there is a sharp shower for a few minutes. We shelter under the thick leafy boughs on the margin of the wood, inhaling the varied sweet scents which the rain has stirred up. A hedgehog, intent and self-absorbed, is jogging along the green ride. The clouds pass swiftly, the rain ceases and we go on our way; leaning over a gate near the Home Farm, we pause for a moment to look at the bluebell wood, the myriad blue flowers cover the ground here like a carpet, so thick are they. It is a delectable sight and lingers on in the mind long after it is seen no more.
The sunshine has returned and in the golden light the bluebells seem like flames rising from the woodland soil.
In the pause after the rain there comes an even louder bird chorus, each bird seems singing its loudest and sweetest, the voices of the thrush and the blackbird rise and fall amid the rush of sound. It is almost like a great hymn of gratitude for the benediction of the light. Let us linger out of doors in the sweet air of June until the light begins to fade from the sky and the stars appear. Every moment in this most delightful of all the months, snatched from the passing of inevitable time, is to be enjoyed and cherished, stored in the memory when darker days return.

2006-05-22T08:56:00.000Z

THE JEFFERIES’ FAMILY CHRISTENING CLOAK

Richard Jefferies' mother gave this christening robe to Mrs Bathe, presumably after her own children had been christened in it.

Henry Williamson [author of Tarka the Otter], a Jefferies’ devotee, visited Coate in 1925 and 1937. He described Mrs Bathe as a ‘straight seeing’ little woman who lived in a ‘tarred cot’ opposite Coate Farm.

Mrs Bathe lived to 93 years of age and died in 1948. She had 16 children all of whom were christened wearing the Jefferies' cloak. It was passed to Mrs Bathe's daughter (Mrs Whitbread of Newport Street) who was the youngest child. Mrs Whitbread’s two children (Arthur and Norman) were also christened in it and the robe was then gifted to the Richard Jefferies Society in the 1950s. It was shown at a meeting and then disappeared. It was discovered in May 2006 that the robe had been stored at Bath Road Museum and wrongly attributed to Alfred Williams. The scarlet cloak was returned to the Jefferies’ Museum.

On learning about the robe Norman’s son, Ian, visited the Museum on 7 May 2006. Fascinated by the story he questioned the name ‘Bathe’ as his grandmother’s name was Goddard [not related to the land-owners]. So, did Henry Williamson get the name wrong or did Mrs Bathe marry again? And, did the colour of the cloak inspire The Scarlet Shawl?

2006-05-04T16:10:00.000Z

Stone Readings at Burderop Downs Memorial Stone

Yesterday over thirty people gathered at the Richard Jefferies/Alfred Williams Memorial Stone at Burderop Downs to pay tribute to the writers as part of the Swindon Literary Festival celebrations.

A sky-lark singing in the background, the breeze, the setting and the ambience made the event special to remember.

The Swindon Advertiser recorded the occasion as follows:

Hillside tribute to authors

2006-05-04T15:11:00.000Z

MAY NATURE NOTES

This month's extract is taken from the HOURS OF SPRING. It was first published in May 1886 in Longman’s Magazine and later in the Field and Hedgerow collection. By this time Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) was crippled by tuberculosis - the year before his death - and was no longer able to walk outside and chronicle the comings and goings of creatures and plants. Jefferies continues to marvel at nature and in this extract it is bird song that he found so sweet.

It is sweet on awaking in the early morn to listen to the small bird singing on the tree. No sound of voice or flute is like the bird's song; there is something in it distinct and separate from all other notes. ..The bird upon the tree utters the meaning of the wind--a voice of the grass and wild flower, words of the green leaf; they speak through that slender tone. Sweetness of dew and rifts of sunshine, the dark hawthorn touched with breadths of open bud, the odour of the air, the colour of the daffodil--all that is delicious and beloved of spring-time are expressed in his song. Genius is nature, and his lay, like the sap in the bough from which he sings, rises without thought. Nor is it necessary that it should be a song; a few short notes in the sharp spring morning are sufficient to stir the heart. But yesterday the least of them all came to a bough by my window, and in his call I heard the sweet-briar wind rushing over the young grass. Refulgent fall the golden rays of the sun; a minute only, the clouds cover him and the hedge is dark. The bloom of the gorse is shut like a book; but it is there--a few hours of warmth and the covers will fall open. The meadow is bare, but in a little while the heart-shaped celandine leaves will come in their accustomed place. On the pollard willows the long wands are yellow-ruddy in the passing gleam of sunshine, the first colour of spring appears in their bark. The delicious wind rushes among them and they bow and rise; it touches the top of the dark pine that looks in the sun the same now as in summer; it lifts and swings the arching trail of bramble; it dries and crumbles the earth in its fingers; the hedge-sparrow's feathers are fluttered as he sings on the bush.

The green hawthorn buds prophesy on the hedge; the reed pushes up in the moist earth like a spear thrust through a shield; the eggs of the starling are laid in the knot-hole of the pollard elm--common eggs, but within each a speck that is not to be found in the cut diamond of two hundred carats--the dot of protoplasm, the atom of life. There was one row of pollards where they always began laying first. With a big stick in his beak the rook is blown aside like a loose feather in the wind; he knows his building-time from the fathers of his house--hereditary knowledge handed down in settled course: but the stray things of the hedge, how do they know? The great blackbird has planted his nest by the ash-stole, open to every one's view, without a bough to conceal it and not a leaf on the ash--nothing but the moss on the lower end of the branches. He does not seek cunningly for concealment. I think of the drift of time, and I see the apple bloom coming and the blue veronica in the grass. ..

The larks sang at last high up against the grey cloud over the frost-bound earth. They could not wait longer; love was strong in their little hearts--stronger than the winter. After a while the hedge-sparrows, too, began to sing on the top of the gorse-hedge about the garden. By-and-by a chaffinch boldly raised his voice, ending with the old story, 'Sweet, will you, will you kiss--me--dear?' Then there came a hoar-frost, and the earth, which had been black, became white, as its evaporated vapours began to gather and drops of rain to fall. Even then the obstinate weather refused to quite yield, wrapping its cloak, as it were, around it in bitter enmity. But in a day or two white clouds lit up with sunshine appeared drifting over from the southward, and that was the end. ..Five dull yellow spots on the hedge--gorse bloom--that had remained unchanged for so many weeks, took a fresh colour and became golden. By the constant passing of the waggons and carts along the road that had been so silent it was evident that the busy time of spring was here. There would be rough weather, doubtless, now and again, but it would not again be winter.

2006-04-28T15:11:00.000Z

Vandals smashed the roof restored as a result of the Betjeman appeal thirty years ago

Around 21st April the Jefferies Museum was subjected to another attack at the hands of those who have nothing better to do than to destroy. Tiles and slates were broken on the roof of the old pig-sty and slated barn that had been so carefully sourced for the restoration work in the 1970s. Three windows were broken in the old cottage whilst the Museum sign was ripped off the main wall. The police sent a crime scene officer to investigate, took DNA samples and appealed for witnesses to come forward through the local media.

Here is how the story was reported in the

Swindon Advertiser

2006-04-20T09:15:00.000Z

Early works of Richard Jefferies

Thanks to Richard Wright in Australia, the text of the following works can now be downloaded by clicking on the relevant links below:

The Scarlet Shawl

Restless Human Hearts

Jefferies' Land text

illustrated Jefferies' Land

Greene Ferne Farm

2006-04-07T07:30:00.000Z

SPRING NEWSLETTER

The Society's latest newsletter is now available electronically.

SPRING 2006 NEWSLETTER

2006-04-04T07:13:00.000Z

APRIL NATURE NOTES

This month's nature notes are taken from SOME APRIL INSECTS

It was first published on 19th April 1886 in the St James Gazette and later in Field and Hedgerow.

The essay is reproduced in its entirety.

A black humble-bee came to the white hyacinths in the garden on the sunny April morning when the yellow tulip opened, and as she alighted on the flower there hovered a few inches in the rear an eager attendant, not quite so large, more grey, and hovering with the shrillest vibration close at hand. The black bee went round the other side of a bunch of hyacinths, and was hidden in the bell of a purple one. At thus temporarily losing sight of her, the follower, one might say, flew into a state of extreme excitement, and spun round and round in the air till he caught sight of her again and resumed his steady hovering. Then she went to the next bunch of hyacinths; he followed her, when, with a furious, shrill cry of swiftly beating wings, a second lover darted down, and then the two followed the lady in black velvet--buzz, buzz, buzz, pointing like hounds stationary in the air--buzz, buzz--while she without a moment's thought of them worked at the honey. By-and-by one rushed at her--a too eager caress, for she lost her balance and fell out of the flower on to the ground. Up she got and pursued him for a few angry circles, and then settled to work again. Presently the rivals darted at each other and whirled about, and in the midst of the battle off went the lady in velvet to another part of the garden, and the combatants immediately rushed after her. Every morning that the tulip opened its great yellow bell, these black humble-bees came, almost always followed by one lover, sometimes, as on the first occasion, by two. A bright row of polyanthus and oxlips seemed to be the haunt of the male bees. There they waited, some on the leaves and some on the dry clods heated by the sun, in ambush till a dark lady should come. The yellow tulip was a perfect weather-meter; if there was the least bit of harshness in the air, the least relic of the east wind, it remained folded. Sunshine alone was not sufficient to tempt it, but the instant there was any softness in the atmosphere open came the bell, and as if by a magic key all the bees and humble-bees of the place were unlocked, and forth they came with joyous note--not to visit the tulip, which is said to be a fatal cup of poison to them.

Any one delicate would do well to have a few such flowers in spring under observation, and to go out of doors or stop in according to their indications. I think there were four species of wild bee at these early flowers, including the great bombus and the small prosopis with orange-yellow head. It is difficult to scientifically identify small insects hastily flitting without capturing them, which I object to doing, for I dislike to interfere with their harmless liberty. They have all been named and classified, and I consider it a great cruelty to destroy them again without special purpose. The pleasure is to see them alive and busy with their works, and not to keep them in a cabinet. These wild bees, particularly the smaller ones, greatly resented my watching them, just the same as birds do. If I walked by they took no heed; if I stopped or stooped to get a better view they were off instantly. Without doubt they see you, and have some idea of the meaning of your various motions. The wild bees are a constant source of interest, much more so than the hive bee, which is so extremely regular in its ways. With an explosion almost like a little bomb shot out of a flower; with an immense hum, almost startling, boom! the great bombus hurls himself up in the air from under foot; well named--boom--bombus. Is it correct or is it only a generalisation, that insects like ants and hive bees, who live in great and well-organised societies, are more free from the attacks of parasites than the comparatively solitary wild bees? Ants are, indeed, troubled with some parasites, but these do not seem to multiply very greatly, and do not seriously injure the populousness of the nest. They have enemies which seize them, but an enemy is not a parasite. On the other hand, too, they have mastered a variety of insects, and use them for their delectation and profit. Hive bees are likewise fairly free from parasites, unless, indeed, their so-called dysentery is caused by some minute microbe. These epidemics, however, are rare. Take it altogether, the hive bee appears comparatively free of parasites. Enemies they have, but that is another matter.

Have these highly civilised insects arrived in some manner at a solution of the parasite problem? Have they begun where human civilisation may be said to have ended, with a diligent study of parasitic life? All our scientific men are now earnestly engaged in the study of bacteria, microbes, mycelium, and yeast, infinitesimally minute fungi of every description, while meantime the bacillus is eating away the lives of a heavy percentage of our population. Ants live in communities which might be likened to a hundred Londons dotted about England, so are their nests in a meadow, or, still more striking, on a heath. Their immense crowds, the population of China to an acre, do not breed disease. Every ant out of that enormous multitude may calculate on a certain average duration of life, setting aside risks from battle, birds, and such enemies. Microbes are unlikely to destroy her. Now this is a very extraordinary circumstance. In some manner the ants have found out a way of accommodating themselves to the facts of their existence; they have fitted themselves in with nature and reached a species of millennium. Are they then more intelligent than man? We have certainly not succeeded in doing this yet; they are very far ahead of us. Are their eyes, divided into a thousand facets, a thousand times more powerful than our most powerful microscopes, and can they see spores, germs, microbes, or bacilli where our strongest lenses find nothing? I have some doubts as to whether ants are really shut out of many flowers by hairs pointing downwards in a fringe and similar contrivances. The ant has a singularly powerful pair of mandibles: put one between your shirt and skin and try; the nip you will get will astonish you. With these they can shear off the legs or even the head of another ant in battle. I cannot see, therefore, why, if they wished, they could not nip off this fringe of hairs, or even sever the stem of the plant. Evidently they do not wish, and possibly they have reasons for avoiding some plants and flowers, which besides honey may contain spores--just as they certainly contain certain larvae, which attach themselves to the bodies of bees.

Possibly we may yet use the ants or some other clever insects to find out the origin of the fatal parasite which devours the consumptive. Some reason exists for imagining that this parasite has something to do with the flora, for phthisis ceases at a certain altitude, and it is very well known that the floras have a marked line of demarcation. Up to a certain height certain flowers will grow, but not beyond, just as if you had run a separating ditch round the mountain. With the flora the insects cease; whether the germ comes from the vegetation or from the insect that frequents the vegetation does not seem known. Still it would be worth while to make a careful examination of the plant and insect life just at the verge of the line of division. The bacillus may spring from a spore starting from a plant or starting from an insect. Most of England had an Alpine climate probably once, and some Alpine plants and animals have been stranded on the tops of our highest hills and remain there to this day. In those icy times English lungs were probably free of disease. Has formic acid ever been used for experiments on bacilli? It is the ant acid; they are full of it, and it is extracted and used for some purposes abroad. Perhaps its strong odour is repellent to parasites. To return: while the honey-bees live in comparative safety, the more or less solitary wild bees have a great struggle to repel various creatures that would eat them or their young, and, be as watchful as they may, all their efforts at nest-building are often rendered nugatory by the success of a parasite. So it is not worth while to catch them just for the purpose of identification, for they have enough enemies in the field without man and his heartless cabinets. The collector is the most terrible parasite of all. Let them go on with a happy hum, while the tulip opens in the sunshine.

2006-03-06T12:23:00.000Z

"We will find a new sea where no one has ever been before. Look! there it is, is it not wonderful?" said Bevis.

Thanks to Ray Morrison for supplying this recent atmospheric view of Coate Water.

2006-03-01T12:57:00.000Z

MARCH NATURE NOTES

'Early in March' was first printed in the 'Standard' on 31 March 1879 and then incorporated into Hodge and his Masters in the Chapter entitled "Hodge's Field".

The labourer working all the year round in the open air cannot but note to some degree those changes in tree and plant which coincide with the variations of his daily employment. Early in March, as he walks along the southern side of the hedge, where the dead oak leaves still cumber the trailing ivy, he can scarcely avoid seeing that pointed tongues of green are pushing up. Some have widened into black-spotted leaves; some are notched like the many-barbed bone harpoons of savage races. The hardy docks are showing, and the young nettles have risen up. Slowly the dark and grey hues of winter are yielding to the lively tints of spring. The blackthorn has white buds on its lesser branches, and the warm rays of the sun have drawn forth the buds on one favoured hawthorn in a sheltered nook, so that the green of the coming leaf is visible. Bramble bushes still retain their forlorn, shrivelled foliage; the hardy all but evergreen leaves can stand cold, but when biting winds from the north and east blow for weeks together even these curl at the edge and die.
The remarkable power of wind upon leaves is sometimes seen in May, when a strong gale, even from the west, will so beat and batter the tender horse-chestnut sprays that they bruise and blacken. The slow plough traverses the earth, and the white dust rises from the road and drifts into the field. In winter the distant copse seemed black; now it appears of a dull reddish brown from the innumerable catkins and buds. The delicate sprays of the birch are fringed with them, the aspen has a load of brown, there are green catkins on the bare hazel boughs, and the willows have white 'pussy-cats.' The horse-chestnut buds--the hue of dark varnish--have enlarged, and stick to the finger if touched; some are so swollen as to nearly burst and let the green appear. Already it is becoming more difficult to look right through the copse. In winter the light could be seen on the other side; now catkin, bud, and opening leaf have thickened and check the view. The same effect was produced not long since by the rime on the branches in the frosty mornings; while each smallest twig was thus lined with crystal it was not possible to see through. Tangled weeds float down the brook, catching against projecting branches that dip into the stream, or slowly rotating and carried apparently up the current by the eddy and back-water behind the bridge. In the pond the frogs have congregated in great numbers; their constant 'croo-croo' is audible at some distance.
The meadows, so long bound by frost and covered with snow, are slowly losing their wan aspect, and assuming a warmer green as the young blades of grass come upwards. Where the plough or harrow has passed over the clods they quickly change from the rich brown of fresh-turned soil to a whiter colour, the dryness of the atmosphere immediately dissipating the moisture in the earth. So, examine what you will, from the clod to the tiniest branch, the hedge, the mound, the water--everywhere a step forward has been taken. The difference in a particular case may be minute; but it is there, and together these faint indications show how closely spring is approaching.
As the sun rises the chaffinch utters his bold challenge on the tree; the notes are so rapid that they seem to come all at once. Welcome, indeed, is the song of the first finch. Sparrows are busy in the garden--the hens are by far the most numerous now, half a dozen together perch on the bushes. One suddenly darts forth and seizes a black insect as it flies in the sunshine. The bee, too, is abroad, and once now and then a yellow butterfly. From the copse on the warmer days comes occasionally the deep hollow bass of the wood pigeon. On the very topmost branch of an elm a magpie has perched; now he looks this way, and then turns that, bowing in the oddest manner, and jerking his long tail up and down. Then two of them flutter across the field--feebly, as if they had barely strength to reach the trees in the opposite hedge. Extending their wings they float slowly, and every now and then the body undulates along its entire length. Rooks are building--they fly and feed now in pairs; the rookery is alive with them. To the steeple the jackdaws have returned and fly round and round; now one holds his wings rigid and slides down at an angle of sixty degrees at a breakneck pace, as if about to dash himself in fragments on the garden beneath.
Sometimes there come a few days which are like summer. There is an almost cloudless sky, a gentle warm breeze, and a bright sun filling the fields with a glow of light. The air, though soft and genial, is dry, and perhaps it is this quality which gives so peculiar a definition to hedge, tree, and hill. A firm, almost hard, outline brings copse and wood into clear relief; the distance across the broadest fields appears sensibly diminished. Such freedom from moisture has a deliciously exhilarating effect on those who breathe so pure an atmosphere. The winds of March differ, indeed, in a remarkable manner from, the gales of the early year, which, even when they blow from a mild quarter, compel one to keep in constant movement because of the aqueous vapour they carry. But the true March wind, though too boisterous to be exactly genial, causes a joyous sense of freshness, as if the very blood in the veins were refined and quickened upon inhaling it. There is a difference in its roar--the note is distinct from the harsh sound of the chilly winter blast. On the lonely highway at night, when other noises are silent, the March breeze rushes through the tall elms in a wild cadence. The white clouds hasten over, illuminated from behind by a moon approaching the full; every now and then a break shows a clear blue sky and a star shining. Now a loud roar resounds along the hedgerow like the deafening boom of the surge; it moderates, dies away, then an elm close by bends and sounds as the blast comes again. In another moment the note is caught up and repeated by a distant tree, and so one after another joins the song till the chorus reaches its highest pitch. Then it sinks again, and so continues with pauses and deep inspirations, for March is like a strong man drawing his breath full and long as he starts to run a race.
The sky, too, like the earth, whose hedges, trees, and meadows are acquiring fresher colours, has now a more lovely aspect. At noon-day, if the clouds be absent, it is a rich azure; after sunset a ruddy glow appears almost all round the horizon, while the thrushes sing in the wood till the twilight declines. At night, when the moon does not rise till late, the heavens are brilliant with stars. In the east Arcturus is up; the Great Bear, the Lesser Bear, and Cassiopeia are ranged about the Pole. Procyon goes before the Dog; the noble constellation of Orion stretches broad across the sky; almost overhead lucent Capella looks down. Aries droops towards the west; the Bull follows with the red Aldebaran, and the Pleiades. Behind these, Castor and Pollux, and next the cloudlike, nebulous Cancer. Largest of all, great Sirius is flaming in the south, quivering with the ebb and flow of his light, sometimes with an emerald scintillation like a dewdrop on which a sunbeam glances.

2006-03-01T12:49:00.000Z

The Wiltshire World of Richard Jefferies

The Spring edition of This England includes a super article entitled:

The Wiltshire World of Richard Jefferies

It is written by Terry Gray and he examines Jefferies' life and works as part of an on-going series of articles on Literary Landscapes of England..

2006-02-03T10:22:00.000Z

OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY
First published in Good Words in Feb 1882
And in The Open Air
by Richard Jefferies

'How happy the trees must be to hear the song of birds again in their branches! After the silence and the leaflessness, to have the birds back once more and to feel them busy at the nest-building; how glad to give them the moss and fibres and the crutch of the boughs to build in! Pleasant it is now to watch the sunlit clouds sailing onwards; it is like sitting by the sea. There is voyaging to and fro of birds; the strong woodpigeon goes over - a long course in the air, from hill to distant copse; a blackbird starts from an ash, and, now inclining this way and now that, traverses the meadows to the thick corner hedge; finches go by, and the air is full of larks that sing without ceasing. The touch of the wind, the moisture of the dew, the sun-stained raindrop, have in them the magic force of life - a marvellous something that was not there before.'

The cawing of the rooks in February shows that the time is coming when their nests will be re-occupied. They resort to the trees, and perch above the old nests to indicate their rights; for in the rookery possession is the law, and not nine-tenths of it only. In the slow dull cold of winter even these noisy birds are quiet, and as the vast flocks pass over, night and morning, to and from the woods in which they roost, there is scarcely a sound. Through the mist their black wings advance in silence, the jackdaws with them are chilled into unwonted quiet, and unless you chance to look up the crowd may go over unnoticed. But so soon as the waters begin to make a sound in February, running in the ditches and splashing over stones, the rooks commence the speeches and conversations which will continue till late into the following autumn.

The general idea is that they pair in February, but there are some reasons for thinking that the rooks, in fact, choose their males at the end of the preceding summer. They are then in large flocks, and if only casually glanced at appear mixed together without any order or arrangement. They move on the ground and fly in the air so close, one beside the other, that at the first glance or so you cannot distinguish them apart. Yet if you should be lingering along the by-ways of the fields as the acorns fall, and the leaves come rustling down in the warm sunny autumn afternoons, and keep an observant eye upon the rooks in the trees, or on the fresh-turned furrows, they will be seen to act in couples. On the ground couples alight near each other, on the trees they perch near each other, and in the air fly side by side. Like soldiers each has his comrade. Wedged in the ranks every man looks like his fellow, and there seems no tie between them but a common discipline. Intimate acquaintance with barrack or camp life would show that every one had his friend. There is also the mess, or companionship of half a dozen, or dozen, or more, and something like this exists part of the year in the armies of the rooks. After the nest time is over they flock together, and each family of three or four flies in concert. Later on they apparently choose their own particular friends, that is the young birds do so. All through the winter after, say October, these pairs keep together, though lost in the general mass to the passing spectator. If you alarm them while feeding on the ground in winter, supposing you have not got a gun, they merely rise up to the nearest tree, and it may then be observed that they do this in pairs. One perches on a branch and a second comes to him. When February arrives, and they resort to the nests to look after or seize on the property there, they are in fact already paired, though the almanacs put down St. Valentine's day as the date of courtship.

There is very often a warm interval in February, sometimes a few days earlier and sometimes later, but as a rule it happens that a week or so of mild sunny weather occurs about this time. Released from the grip of the frost, the streams trickle forth from the fields and pour into the ditches, so that while walking along the footpath there is a murmur all around coming from the rush of water. The murmur of the poets is indeed louder in February than in the more pleasant days of summer, for then the growth of aquatic grasses checks the flow and stills it, whilst in February every stone, or flint, or lump of chalk divides the current and causes a vibration, With this murmur of water, and mild time, the rooks caw incessantly, and the birds at large essay to utter their welcome of the sun. The wet furrows reflect the rays so that the dark earth gleams, and in the slight mist that stays farther away the light pauses and fills the vapour with radiance. Through this luminous mist the larks race after each other twittering, and as they turn aside, swerving in their swift flight, their white breasts appear for a moment. As while standing by a pool the fishes came into sight, emerging as they swim round from the shadow of the deeper water, so the larks dart over the low edge, and through the mist, and pass before you, and are gone again. All at once one checks his pursuit, forgets the immediate object, and rises, singing as he soars. The notes fall from the air over the dark wet earth, over the dank grass, and broken withered fern of the hedge, and listening to them it seems for a moment spring. There is sunshine in the song; the lark and the light are one. He gives us a few minutes of summer in February days. In May he rises before as yet the dawn is come, and the sunrise flows down to us under through his notes. On his breast, high above the earth, the first rays fall as the rim of the sun edges up at the eastward hill. The lark and the light are as one, and wherever he glides over the wet furrows the glint of the sun goes with him. Anon alighting he runs between the lines of the green corn. In hot summer, when the open hillside is burned with bright light, the larks are then singing and soaring. Stepping up the hill laboriously, suddenly a lark starts into the light and pours forth a rain of unwearied notes overhead. With bright light, and sunshine, and sunrise, and blue skies the bird is so associated in the mind, that even to see him in the frosty days of winter, at least assures us that summer will certainly return.

Ought not winter, in allegorical designs, the rather to be represented with such things that might suggest hope than such as convey a cold and grim despair? The withered leaf, the snowflake, the hedging bill that cuts and destroys, why these? Why not rather the dear larks for one? They fly in flocks, and amid the white expanse of snow (in the south) their pleasant twitter or call is heard as they sweep along seeking some grassy spot cleared by the wind. The lark, the bird of the light, is there in the bitter short days. Put the lark then for winter, a sign of hope, a certainty of summer. Put, too, the sheathed bud, for if you search the hedge you will find the buds there, on tree and bush, carefully wrapped around with the case which protects them as a cloak. Put, too, the sharp needles of the green corn; let the wind clear it of snow a little way, and show that under cold clod and colder snow the green thing pushes up, knowing that summer must come. Nothing despairs but man. Set the sharp curve of the white new moon in the sky: she is white in true frost, and yellow a little if it is devising change. Set the new moon as something that symbols an increase. Set the shepherd's crook in a corner as a token that the flocks are already enlarged in number. The shepherd is the symbolic man of the hardest winter time. His work is never more important than then. Those that only roam the fields when they are pleasant in May, see the lambs at play in the meadow, and naturally think of lambs and May flowers. But the lamb was born in the adversity of snow. Or you might set the morning star, for it burns and burns and glitters in the winter dawn, and throws forth beams like those of metal consumed in oxygen. There is nought that I know by comparison with which I might indicate the glory of the morning star, while yet the dark night hides in the hollows. The lamb is born in the fold. The morning star glitters in the sky. The bud is alive in its sheath; the green corn under the snow; the lark twitters as he passes. Now these to me are the allegory of winter.

These mild hours in February check the hold which winter has been gaining, and as it were, tear his claws out of the earth, their prey. If it has not been so bitter previously, when this Gulf stream or current of warmer air enters the expanse it may bring forth a butterfly and tenderly woo the first violet into flower. But this depends on its having been only moderately cold before, and also upon the stratum, whether it is backward clay, or forward gravel and sand. Spring dates are quite different according to the locality, and when violets may be found in one district, in another there is hardly a woodbine-leaf out. The border line may be traced, and is occasionally so narrow, one may cross over it almost at a step. It would sometimes seem as if even the nut-tree bushes bore larger and finer nuts on the warmer soil, and that they ripened quicker. Any curious in the first of things, whether it be a leaf, or flower, or a bird, should bear this in mind, and not be discouraged because he hears some one else has already discovered or heard something.

A little note taken now at this bare time of the kind of earth may lead to an understanding of the district. It is plain where the plough has turned it, where the rabbits have burrowed and thrown it out, where a tree has been felled by the gales, by the brook where the bank is worn away, or by the sediment at the shallow places. Before the grass and weeds, and corn and flowers have hidden it, the character of the soil is evident at these natural sections without the aid of a spade. Going slowly along the footpath—indeed you cannot go fast in moist February—it is a good time to select the places and map them out where herbs and flowers will most likely come first. All the autumn lies prone on the ground. Dead dark leaves, some washed to their woody frames, short grey stalks, some few decayed hulls of hedge fruit, and among these the mars or stocks of the plants that do not die away, but lie as it were on the surface waiting. Here the strong teazle will presently stand high; here the ground-ivy will dot the mound with bluish-purple. But it will be necessary to walk slowly to find the ground-ivy flowers under the cover of the briers. These bushes will be a likely place for a blackbird's nest; this thick close hawthorn for a bullfinch; these bramble thickets with remnants of old nettle stalks will be frequented by the whitethroat after a while. The hedge is now but a lattice-work which will before long be hung with green. Now it can be seen through, and now is the time to arrange for future discovery. In May everything will be hidden, and unless the most promising places are selected beforehand, it will not be easy to search them out. The broad ditch will be arched over, the plants rising on the mound will meet the green boughs drooping, and all the vacancy will be filled. But having observed the spot in winter you can almost make certain of success in spring.
It is this previous knowledge which invests those who are always on the spot, those who work much in the fields or have the care of woods, with their apparent prescience. They lead the new comer to a hedge, or the corner of a copse, or a bend of the brook, announcing beforehand that they feel assured something will be found there; and so it is. This, too, is one reason why a fixed observer usually sees more than one who rambles a great deal and covers ten times the space. The fixed observer who hardly goes a mile from home is like the man who sits still by the edge of a crowd, and by-and-by his lost companion returns to him. To walk about in search of persons in a crowd is well known to be the worst way of recovering them. Sit still and they will often come by. In a far more certain manner this is the case with birds and animals. They all come back. During a twelvemonth probably every creature would pass over a given locality: every creature that is not confined to certain places. The whole army of the woods and hedges marches across a single farm in twelve months. A single tree—especially an old tree—is visited by four-fifths of the birds that ever perch in the course of that period. Every year, too, brings something fresh, and adds new visitors to the list. Even the wild sea birds are found inland, and some that scarce seem able to fly at all are cast far ashore by the gales. It is difficult to believe that one would not see more by extending the journey, but, in fact, experience proves that the longer a single locality is studied the more is found in it. But you should know the places in winter as well as in tempting summer, when song and shade and colour attract every one to the field. You should face the mire and slippery path. Nature yields nothing to the sybarite. The meadow glows with buttercups in spring, the hedges are green, the woods lovely; but these are not to be enjoyed in their full significance unless you have traversed the same places when bare, and have watched the slow fulfilment of the flowers.

The moist leaves that remain upon the mounds do not rustle, and the thrush moves among them unheard. The sunshine may bring out a rabbit, feeding along the slope of the mound, following the paths or runs. He picks his way, he does not like wet. Though out at night in the dewy grass of summer, in the rain-soaked grass of winter, and living all his life in the earth, often damp nearly to his burrows, no time, and no succession of generations can make him like wet. He endures it, but he picks his way round the dead fern and the decayed leaves. He sits in the bunches of long grass, but he does not like the drops of dew on it to touch him. Water lays his fur close, and mats it, instead of running off and leaving him sleek. As he hops a little way at a time on the mound he chooses his route almost as we pick ours in the mud and pools of February. By the shore of the ditch there still stand a few dry, dead dock stems, with some dry reddish-brown seed adhering. Some dry brown nettle stalks remain; some grey and broken thistles; some teazles leaning on the bushes. The power of winter has reached its utmost now, and can go no farther. These bines which still hang in the bushes are those of the greater bindweed, and will be used in a month or so by many birds as conveniently curved to fit about their nests. The stem of wild clematis, grey and bowed, could scarcely look more dead. Fibres are peeling from it, they come off at the touch of the fingers. The few brown feathers that perhaps still adhere where the flowers once were are stained and discoloured by the beating of the rain. It is not dead: it will flourish again ere long. It is the sturdiest of creepers, facing the ferocious winds of the hills, the tremendous rains that blow up from the sea, and bitter frost, if only it can get its roots into soil that suits it. In some places it takes the place of the hedge proper and becomes itself the hedge. Many of the trunks of the elms are swathed in minute green vegetation which has flourished in the winter, as the clematis will in in the summer. Of all, the brambles bear the wild works of winter best. Given only a little shelter, in the corner of the hedges or under trees and copses they retain green leaves till the buds burst again. The frosts tint them in autumn with crimson, but not all turn colour or fall. The brambles are the bowers of the birds; in these still leafy bowers they do the courting of the spring, and under the brambles the earliest arum, and cleaver, or avens, push up. Round about them the first white nettle flowers, not long now; latest too, in the autumn. The white nettle sometimes blooms so soon (always according to locality), and again so late, that there seems but a brief interval between, as if it flowered nearly all the year round. So the berries on the holly if let alone often stay till summer is in, and new berries begin to appear shortly afterwards. The ivy, too, bears its berries far into the summer. Perhaps if the country be taken at large there is never a time when there is not a flower of some kind out, in this or that warm southern nook. The sun never sets, nor do the flowers ever die. There is life always, even in the dry fir-cone that looks so brown and sapless.

The path crosses the uplands where the lapwings stand on the parallel ridges of the ploughed field like a drilled company; if they rise they wheel as one, and in the twilight move across the fields in bands invisible as they sweep near the ground, but seen against the sky in rising over the trees and the hedges. There is a plantation of fir and ash on the slope, and a narrow wagon-way enters it, and seems to lose itself in the wood. Always approach this spot quietly, for whatever is in the wood is sure at some time or other to come to the open space of the track. Wood-pigeons, pheasants, squirrels, magpies, hares, everything feathered or furred, down to the mole, is sure to seek the open way. Butterflies flutter through the copse by it in summer, just as you or I might use the passage between the trees. Towards the evening the partridges may run through to join their friends before roost-time on the ground. Or you may see a covey there now and then, creeping slowly with humped backs, and at a distance not unlike hedgehogs in their motions. The spot therefore should be approached with care; if it is only a thrush out it is a pleasure to see him at his ease and, as he deems, unobserved. If a bird or animal thinks itself noticed it seldom does much, some will cease singing immediately they are looked at. The day is perceptibly longer already. As the sun goes down, the western sky often takes a lovely green tint in this month, and one stays to look at it, forgetting the dark and miry way homewards. I think the moments when we forget the mire of the world are the most precious. After a while the green corn rises higher out of the rude earth.

Pure colour almost always gives the idea of fire, or rather it is perhaps as if a light shone through as well as colour itself. The fresh green blade of corn is like this, so pellucid, so clear and pure in its green as to seem to shine with colour. It is not brilliant—not a surface gleam or an enamel,—it is stained through. Beside the moist clods the slender flags arise filled with the sweetness of the earth. Out of the darkness under—that darkness which knows no day save when the ploughshare opens its chinks—they have come to the light. To the light they have brought a colour which will attract the sunbeams from now till harvest. They fall more pleasantly on the corn, toned, as if they mingled with it. Seldom do we realise that the world is practically no thicker to us than the print of our footsteps on the path. Upon that surface we walk and act our comedy of life, and what is beneath is nothing to us. But it is out from that under-world, from the dead and the unknown, from the cold moist ground, that these green blades have sprung. Yonder a steam-plough pants up the hill, groaning with its own strength, yet all that strength and might of wheels, and piston, and chains, cannot drag from the earth one single blade like these. Force cannot make it; it must grow—an easy word to speak or write, in fact full of potency. It is this mystery of growth and life, of beauty, and sweetness, and colour, starting forth from the clods that gives the corn its power over me. Somehow I identify myself with it; I live again as I see it. Year by year it is the same, and when I see it I feel that I have once more entered on a new life. And I think the spring, with its green corn, its violets, and hawthorn-leaves, and increasing song, grows yearly dearer and more dear to this our ancient earth. So many centuries have flown! Now it is the manner with all natural things to gather as it were by smallest particles. The merest grain of sand drifts unseen into a crevice, and by-and-by another; after a while there is a heap; a century and it is a mound, and then every one observes and comments on it. Time itself has gone on like this; the years have accumulated, first in drifts, then in heaps, and now a vast mound, to which the mountains are knolls, rises up and overshadows us. Time lies heavy on the world. The old, old earth is glad to turn from the cark and care of drifted centuries to the first sweet blades of green.

There is sunshine to-day after rain, and every lark is singing. Across the vale a broad cloud-shadow descends the hillside, is lost in the hollow, and presently, without warning, slips over the edge, coming swiftly along the green tips. The sunshine follows—the warmer for its momentary absence. Far, far down in a grassy coomb stands a solitary cornrick, conical roofed, casting a lonely shadow—marked because so solitary, and beyond it on the rising slope is a brown copse. The leafless branches take a brown tint in the sunlight; on the summit above there is furze; then more hill lines drawn against the sky. In the tops of the dark pines at the corner of the copse, could the glance sustain itself to see them, there are finches warming themselves in the sunbeams. The thick needles shelter them, from the current of air, and the sky is bluer above the pines. Their hearts are full already of the happy days to come, when the moss yonder by the beech, and the lichen on the fir-trunk, and the loose fibres caught in the fork of an unbending bough, shall furnish forth a sufficient mansion for their young. Another broad cloud-shadow, and another warm embrace of sunlight. All the serried ranks of the green corn bow at the word of command as the wind rushes over them.

There is largeness and freedom here. Broad as the down and free as the wind, the thought can roam high over the narrow roofs in the vale. Nature has affixed no bounds to thought. All the palings, and walls, and crooked fences deep down yonder are artificial. The fetters and traditions, the routine, the dull roundabout which deadens the spirit like the cold moist earth, are the merest nothings. Here it is easy with the physical eye to look over the highest roof. The moment the eye of the mind is filled with the beauty of things natural an equal freedom and width of view come to it. Step aside from the trodden footpath of personal experience, throwing away the petty cynicism born of petty hopes disappointed. Step out upon the broad down beside the green corn, and let its freshness become part of life.

The wind passes, and it bends—let the wind, too, pass over the spirit. From the cloud-shadow it emerges to the sunshine—let the heart come out from the shadow of roofs to the open glow of the sky. High above, the songs of the larks fall as rain—receive it with open hands. Pure is the colour of the green flags, the slender-pointed blades—let the thought be pure as the light that shines through that colour. Broad are the downs and open the aspect—gather the breadth and largeness of view. Never can that view be wide enough and large enough, there will always be room to aim higher. As the air of the hills enriches the blood, so let the presence of these beautiful things enrich the inner sense. One memory of the green corn, fresh beneath the sun and wind, will lift up the heart from the clods.

2006-01-02T08:41:00.000Z

JANUARY NATURE NOTES

HAUNTS OF THE LAPWING - winter

This article was published in January 1883 in Good Words . In November 1885, it formed one of a collection of essays in The Open Air .

Coming like a white wall the rain reaches me, and in an instant everything is gone from sight that is more than ten yards distant. The narrow upland road is beaten to a darker hue, and two runnels of water rush along at the sides, where, when the chalk-laden streamlets dry, blue splinters of flint will be exposed in the channels. For a moment the air seems driven away by the sudden pressure, and I catch my breath and stand still with one shoulder forward to receive the blow. Hiss, the land shudders under the cold onslaught; hiss, and on the blast goes, and the sound with it, for the very fury of the rain, after the first second, drowns its own noise. There is not a single creature visible, the low and stunted hedgerows, bare of leaf, could conceal nothing; the rain passes straight through to the ground. Crooked and gnarled, the bushes are locked together as if in no other way could they hold themselves against the gales. Such little grass as there is on the mounds is thin and short, and could not hide a mouse. There is no finch, sparrow, thrush, blackbird. As the wave of rain passes over and leaves a hollow between the waters, that which has gone and that to come, the ploughed lands on either side are seen to be equally bare. In furrows full of water, a hare would not sit, nor partridge run; the larks, the patient larks which endure almost everything, even they have gone. Furrow on furrow with flints dotted on their slopes, and chalk lumps, that is all. The cold earth gives no sweet petal of flower, nor can any bud of thought or bloom of imagination start forth in the mind. But step by step, forcing a way through the rain and over the ridge, I find a small and stunted copse down in the next hollow. It is rather a wide hedge than a copse, and stands by the road in the corner of a field. The boughs are bare; still they break the storm, and it is a relief to wait a while there and rest. After a minute or so the eye gets accustomed to the branches and finds a line of sight through the narrow end of the copse. Within twenty yards—just outside the copse—there are a number of lapwings, dispersed about the furrows. One runs a few feet forward and picks something from the ground; another runs in the same manner to one side; a third rushes in still a third direction. Their crests, their green-tinted wings, and white breasts are not disarranged by the torrent. Something in the style of the birds recalls the wagtail, though they are so much larger. Beyond these are half a dozen more, and in a straggling line others extend out into the field. They have found some slight shelter here from the sweeping of the rain and wind, and are not obliged to face it as in the open. Minutely searching every clod they gather their food in imperceptible items from the surface.

Sodden leaves lie in the furrows along the side of the copse; broken and decaying burdocks still uphold their jagged stems, but will be soaked away by degrees; dank grasses droop outwards! the red seed of a dock is all that remains of the berries and fruit, the seeds and grain of autumn. Like the hedge, the copse is vacant. Nothing moves within, watch as carefully as I may. The boughs are blackened by wet and would touch cold. From the grasses to the branches there is nothing any one would like to handle, and I stand apart even from the bush that keeps away the rain. The green plovers are the only things of life that save the earth from utter loneliness. Heavily as the rain may fall, cold as the saturated wind may blow, the plovers remind us of the beauty of shape, colour, and animation. They seem too slender to withstand the blast—they should have gone with the swallows—too delicate for these rude hours; yet they alone face them.

Once more the wave of rain has passed, and yonder the hills appear; these are but uplands. The nearest and highest has a green rampart, visible for a moment against the dark sky, and then again wrapped in a toga of misty cloud. So the chilled Roman drew his toga around him in ancient days as from that spot he looked wistfully southwards and thought of Italy. Wee-ah-wee! Some chance movement has been noticed by the nearest bird, and away they go at once as if with the same wings, sweeping overhead, then to the right, then to the left, and then back again, till at last lost in the coming shower. After they have thus vibrated to and fro long enough, like a pendulum coming to rest, they will alight in the open field on the ridge behind. There in drilled ranks, well closed together, all facing the same way, they will stand for hours. Let us go also and let the shower conceal them. Another time my path leads over the hills.

It is afternoon, which in winter is evening. The sward of the down is dry under foot, but hard, and does not lift the instep with the springy feel of summer. The sky is gone, it is not clouded, it is swathed in gloom. Upwards the still air thickens, and there is no arch or vault of heaven. Formless and vague, it seems some vast shadow descending. The sun has disappeared, and the light there still is, is left in the atmosphere enclosed by the gloomy mist as pools are left by a receding tide. Through the sand the water slips, and through the mist the light glides away. Nearer comes the formless shadow and the visible earth grows smaller. The path has faded, and there are no means on the open downs of knowing whether the direction pursued is right or wrong, till a boulder (which is a landmark) is perceived. Thence the way is down the slope, the last and limit of the hills there. It is a rough descent, the paths worn by sheep may at any moment cause a stumble. At the foot is a waggon-track beside a low hedge, enclosing the first arable field. The hedge is a guide, but the ruts are deep, and it still needs slow and careful walking. Wee-ah-wee! Up from the dusky surface of the arable field springs a plover, and the notes are immediately repeated by another. They can just be seen as darker bodies against the shadow as they fly overhead. Wee-ah-wee! The sound grows fainter as they fetch a longer circle in the gloom.

There is another winter resort of plovers in the valley where a barren waste was ploughed some years ago. A few furze bushes still stand in the hedges about it, and the corners are full of rushes. Not all the grubbing of furze and bushes, the deep ploughing and draining, has succeeded in rendering the place fertile like the adjacent fields. The character of a marsh adheres to it still. So long as there is a crop, the lapwings keep away, but as soon as the ploughs turn up the ground in autumn they return. The place lies low, and level with the waters in the ponds and streamlets. A mist hangs about it in the evening, and even when there is none, there is a distinct difference in the atmosphere while passing it. From their hereditary home the lapwings cannot be entirely driven away. Out of the mist comes their plaintive cry; they are hidden, and their exact locality is not to be discovered. Where winter rules most ruthlessly, where darkness is deepest in daylight, there the slender plovers stay undaunted.

2006-01-02T08:37:00.000Z

Richard Jefferies

22 years of age

2005-12-16T08:12:00.000Z

Reflections on Jefferies' idyll

The following article was published in the Swindon Advertiser last Saturday.

One of their journalists has "tried to recreate some of Jefferies' writings to see how he might have described a walk near the new campus, should it go ahead".

It falls far short on both accounts.

Swindon Advertiser

10 December 2005 - page 16

Next chapter..... What would Swindon author Richard Jefferies think of the plans for his former home at Coate?

Reflections on Jefferies' idyll

Writer Richard Jefferies is to Swindon, like Thomas hardy is to Dorset.

The town's most esteemed writer is not celebrated in the same way as his counterpart from Dorchester, but his life has been pushed into the spotlight with the controversy surrounding his birthplace.

Jefferies was born in 1848 at the family home in Coate, which is now a museum of his life.

He was never a best-seller, but experts feel he was one of the finest writers of his generation.

The internet teems with references to and quotations from him, while every second-hand book seller knows his name, and recognises him for beautiful stories, and wondrous descriptions of nature.

Ray Morse, a members of the Richard Jefferies Society which aims to preserve the writer's memory said: "Richard Jefferies is a well-known name across the UK and internationally, but it's always been somewhat of a mystery as to why he's not as well known in Swindon. He made a great contribution to English Literature. Jefferies had a way with words, his descriptions of nature and country life were truly remarkable, but he had a tragically short life. He died just before his 39th birthday but he made a big contribution, writing many books and papers over those short years. He has been truly inspirational.

Jefferies died suffering from what doctors believed at the time to be tuberculosis.

He took great inspiration from Coate.

Now the landscape he once described faces controversial plans for development by the University of Bath in Swindon for its new campus.

We have tried to recreate some of Jefferies' writings to see how he might have described a walk near the new campus, should it go ahead.

WHAT THE WRITER MIGHT HAVE SAID: (as imagined by ANTHONY OSBORNE)

I Left the old house at Coate, and wandered through the wood towards the lake.

The summer evening was bright and warm, the beams of light arced through the trees.

Ducks fluttered, rising out of the water, drops of water reflecting on their underside. Nearby, swans looked on, their graceful arcing long necks moved with delicate, precision, their bodies creating a silent wave shimmering the surface of the water.

A slight breeze gusted the trees, and hapless leaves struggled against the life-force of air, again and again.

The wind was stronger here, the tall buildings beyond sent the wind rushing between the grand designs of our modern age.

The giants towered over the trees, and the warm gentle evening light glowed upon the many a clay brick, the strong-armed steel structure and the bright translucent panes of glass, reflecting the nearby hills.

Gone are some of the sounds of nature's forces, replaced by the silent rumble of air-cooling machines. They somehow make life comfortable for those on the inside, but the insistent humming and droning, is incessant.

And one is never allowed to forget the rumbling of the highway.

How does nature try to fit in with such monoliths of mankind? It gives, gives, gives and somehow succeeds.

Pigeons are among the many new arrivals. Dozens sit atop the grand structures.

They enjoy the warm air, they do not swoop or swift through the wind but fly with intent and purpose, staring at all the nature below. They are undistressed, but far from tame, and the slightest disturbance would send them off.

On the ground, young people with essays on their minds go about their daily routine, chattering and laughing as they scurry to lectures in sleek, angular prisms, which rise from their soft, green haven.

Nature's life force remains, succeeds but struggles against mankind's forces, but always shall overcome.

2005-12-04T14:20:00.000Z

UNIVERSITY WILL BE A 'GLORIFIED COLLEGE'
Ex-education officer launches a broadside

by Kevin Shoesmith

Swindon Advertiser, 3 December 2005

MANY think it is now a matter of when and not if bulldozers roll onto Coate.

Government planning inspector David Fenton yesterday concluded that a university and 1,800 homes could be built between Coate Water and the Great Western Hospital.

But a fierce opponent to the scheme - and retired education officer - warned last night that the university would be a "glorified college" with only a few facilities.

The Government's conclusion came in spite of years of protests and a petition, organised by the Save Coate campaign, signed by 26,000 people.

John Price, who worked in several local schools before coming chief education officer of the Atlantic island of St Helena, is chairman of the Richard Jefferies Society.

Jefferies, a 19th century author, often turned to the countryside around Coate for inspiration.

Mr Price admits the new university is looking increasingly likely but added that it would do nothing for Swindon's image..

He criticised science-focused University of Bath for failing to recognise culture.

Mr Price said: "It will not be a proper university - more of a glorified college with a few faculties."

The University of Bath still has to find financial backing before plans can be taken further.

Mr Fenton also recommended increased protection for the country park and an extension to the buffer zone, taking it to at least 200m.

The New Swindon Company - which featured in our recent Big Debate series on plans for Coate - echoed the thoughts of many.

Spokeswoman Rosemary Wells wanted to look at the report in detail before making an in-depth comment, but she said the university is crucial for the town's growth.

"We are keen that Swindon should get a university," she said. "We do not have that level of education in Swindon and it needs it. It is accepted that a university gives breadth and diversity to a town."

2005-12-03T11:23:00.000Z

Local Plan inspector rules out the importance of the literary landscape at Coate.

You can read some basic information about what the Local Plan inspector said about the Coate policies on the Save Coate newsblog. It is mostly bad news for Jefferies Land although there are some rays of hope.

However, David Fenton had this to say about Jefferies literary landscape:

"I understand the relevance of the Coate landscape to the life and works of local writer Richard Jefferies. Much of his writing has drawn upon his upbringing in the immediate area and is set within this landscape, around Coate, Day House Farm and Coate Water. The development land is a central and integral part of the landscape depicted in his writings. However, I do not find that I can attribute such weight to this factor as to justify turning down the designation of this area for development. To some people Jefferies and his works are an integral part of the literary landscape of Britain. However, it seems to me that he is not known or thought of in the same way as more major figures such as Hardy or Wordsworth. That is not to denigrate his works or to undervalue his contributions, but there does not seem to me to be the weight of acclaim to justify a stop being placed upon the development of this land.

PPS7 makes reference to historic areas, but, overall there is little in national or local policy guidance that would directly support the protection of land such as here at Coate for this reason, regardless of the cultural importance of his writings. The land carries no formal historic designation. Development, although directly affecting the immediate area of Richard Jefferies’ upbringing, would still leave intact some of the landscapes whose virtues he extolled in his writings. In conclusion, I do not consider that it would be justified for the Local Plan to protect this area because of its literary links."

2005-11-21T16:09:00.000Z

Slide show 5 December

The Richard Jefferies Society will be hosting a meeting on Monday 5 December, starting at 7.30pm at the Arts Centre, Devizes Road, Swindon.

Ray Morse will be showing a selection of slides that the Society has collected over the years that include pictures of outings, buildings and places associated with Jefferies and of special occasions such as plaque dedications.

Entrance is free and members of the public will be made most welcome.
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A report of the meeting has been published below.

Meeting of the Richard Jefferies Society held in the Studio, The Arts Centre, Devizes Road Swindon

Monday 5 December 2005

Members present: 21
Apologies: Hugoe Matthews and John and Sheila Povey
Chairman: John Price
Subject: Society Slide Show
Speaker: Ray Morse

John Price read out the notes from the last public meeting held on 19 May and observed that there was a considerable amount of news to recount since then.

The Coate Museum: Having recently lost the entire Swindon Borough Council staff who had any dealings with the Museum and the Society, we learnt in the last couple of days that all responsibility for the Museum was now in the hands of Kirsty Hartsiotis, the new Curator based at Bath Road Museum. John Price is now trying to establish with the Curator what will happen to the Task Force that Councillor Justin Tomlinson, Borough Cabinet member for Recreation & Culture, asked David Allen to set up at a meeting last month attended by John Webb and himself and held at the Museum in order to progress the vital work required to the building and grounds.
The saga related to the repair of the damaged fence between the Sun Inn and the orchard rages on. The Society secured an agreement with Arkell’s that the brewery would replace the damaged fence as a gesture of goodwill if the Borough Council cut back the undergrowth. It seems that Swindon Contractors have been overzealous in their activities. In the last few days, a 3 metre wide swathe of shrubbery has been cut back along the fence and heaped to one side whilst a 4 metre cutting has been made between Brook Field [the over-flow car park] into the orchard making the Museum more vulnerable to vandalism than ever before. The Society is now pushing the Borough Council to secure this breach with a fence and gate.

The Swindon Local Plan inquiry: The planning inspector’s report was published on 2 December and, not surprisingly, David Fenton agreed that Coate was suitable for the development of a university campus, no more than 1800 houses and 25 hectares of offices although he believed that the house building was not urgent and the numbers may have to be revised down. His recommendations were extremely guarded proposing that English Nature’s minimum buffer should be accepted around Coate Water nature reserve, that treasured open landscapes to Liddington Hill and the countryside must be preserved to maintain Coate Water’s “Country Park” status, that the University of Bath must agree legal conditions to secure the future of Oakfield Campus and to secure site[s] in the town centre for stand-alone faculties and that business use must be linked to the hospital or university. The leader of the Council, Mike Bawden, was quoted as saying “No University, no houses”. The relevant section of the report was read out that demonstrated the Inspector’s lack of appreciation for protecting Jefferies’ literary landscape. This was based on Mr Fenton’s perception that Jefferies work was not important compared to that of Hardy and Wordsworth. As Government planning policy needs to be strengthened to protect literary landscapes, it was decide that the time was ripe to send off the Society’s letter to The Times and, in the light of the Guardian article that revealed Jefferies’ as the most frequently nominated British nature writer, it was agreed that the Society should write to the Rt Hon John Prescott to challenge the Inspector’s view.

As usual much publicity related to Jefferies has been generated locally as a result of the proposals and letters have been published in the August, November and December of Countryman and in Country Life [Nov 7]. An article about the russet apple and Jefferies will run in the Dec 15 issue of Country Life whilst This England will be covering Jefferies’ literary landscape in their Spring 06 edition.

Members were invited to take copies of the newly published pamphlet Coate and Richard Jefferies written by Society member, John Chandler and to buy the new pamphlet that lists the published work of Jefferies in chronological order.

The dates of future meetings were announced: Study Day- Jefferies’ poetry and poets – 29 July at Lawns Community Centre. AGM and Birthday Lecture to be given by Martin Haggerty on William Morris as a County Writer – 14 October at Chiseldon Church Hall. Janet Flanagan has agreed to talk about the local history of the Wilts & Berks canal at the public meeting here on the 8 May.

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A Society Slide Show

Speaker: Ray Morse
5 December 2005

Ray Morse showed a selection of slides collected by the Society that included pictures of outings, buildings, monuments, plaques, people and places associated with Jefferies and of special events. He illustrated some of the slides with short extracts from Jefferies’ works.

Ray displayed the slides in groups starting with photos of Jefferies’ family and the homes and places associated with them relating to the Swindon area. Regrettably most of the buildings and features shown have now been destroyed including the Goddard’s house, Holy Rood Church, the Jefferies’ bakery, Snodshill Farm and an ancient barrow that featured in Wildlife in a Southern County. Apart from the odd tomb-stone at Chiseldon Churchyard, the Game-keepers Cottage, Day House and the Coate Museum, much had changed dramatically. One saving grace demonstrated that the wall at Coate Farm that featured so strongly in Amaryllis at the Fair and later rebuilt at the time of the road-widening scheme was a well-constructed and sympathetic feature albeit that the row of lime trees in the garden ended up next to the road.

There were some interesting historic photos of agricultural workers in their smocks, their machinery and their lives that included a couple sitting next to a cosy inglenook fire place.

Then we were taken to the monuments and plaques: Burderop Downs, Liddington Hill, the milestone and the Frances Gay memorial plaque.

Some pictures of Jefferies’ favourite flowers followed such as of speedwell, cuckoo flower, poppies in wheatfields and blackthorn with blossom… like snow and, of course, pictures of the Downs and Coate Water. An old photo of the Council Oak showed how it looked before losing many of its branches as we see it today.

This was followed by some nostalgic mementos of Society outings and events along with pictures of Society members who attended. This included the visit to the Gamekeepers Cottage at Hodson where the owner made them most welcome.

Surbiton then featured in the next group of slides: the carved wooden plaque commissioned to list the works written at Surbiton that is now in the Surbiton library; the tree-planting ceremony at the Jefferies’ Bird Sanctuary and the Tolworth stream where Jefferies watched the trout for hours on end.

Views of Eltham followed showing Jefferies’ home at ‘Sea View’, Worthing albeit that ‘Sea View’ no longer has a view of the sea, obscured now by development.

Then we visit Goring and the gravestone with the cross that stood upright now knocked down and lying in a prone position.

There were photos of other commemorative events such as the planting of the Mulberry Tree and the visit to Salisbury Cathedral.

Finally we saw the Coate stone circle, the remains of what was Snap village and finally a brick in the wall carved with the initials RJ and HJ.

It was an evening of nostalgia but tinged with sadness at the loss of well-loved Society members along with the loss of buildings and views that no longer exist.

2005-11-21T16:01:00.000Z

General information and membership details can be obtained by sending a message via our e-mail address: R.Jefferies_Society@tiscali.co.uk or by phoning 01793 (Swindon)783040

Yearly subscriptions cost £7 for individuals and £8 for couples.