Notes On Landscape Painting

________________________________________________
Title:     Notes On Landscape Painting
Author: Richard Jefferies [More Titles by Jefferies]

I

The earth has a way of absorbing things that are placed upon it, of drawing from them their stiff individuality of newness, and throwing over them something of her own antiquity. As the furrow smooths and brightens the share, as the mist eats away the sharpness of the iron angles, so, in a larger manner, the machines sent forth to conquer the soil are conquered by it, become a part of it, and as natural as the old, old scythe and reaping-hook. Thus already the new agriculture has grown hoar.

The oldest of the modern implements is the threshing-machine, which is historic, for it was once the cause of rural war. There are yeomanry men still living who remember how they rode about at night after the rioters, guided by the blazing bonfires kindled to burn the new-fangled things. Much blood--of John Barleycorn--was spilt in that campaign; and there is many a farmer yet hearty who recollects the ale-barrels being rolled up into the rickyards and there broached in cans and buckets, that the rebels, propitiated with plentiful liquor, might forbear to set fire to the ricks or sack the homestead. Such memories read strange to the present generation, proving thereby that the threshing-machine has already grown old. It is so accepted that the fields would seem to lack something if it were absent. It is as natural as the ricks: things grow old so soon in the fields.

On the fitful autumn breeze, with brown leaves whirling and grey grass rustling in the hedges, the hum of the fly-wheel sounds afar, travelling through the mist which hides the hills. Sometimes the ricks are in the open stubble, up the Down side, where the wind comes in a long, strong rush, like a tide, carrying away the smoke from the funnel in a sweeping trail; while the brown canvas, stretched as a screen, flaps and tears, and the folk at work can scarce hear each other speak, any more than you can by the side of the sea. Vast atmospheric curtains--what else can you call them?--roll away, opening a view of the stage of hills a moment, and, closing again, reach from heaven to earth around. The dark sky thickens and lowers as if it were gathering thunder, as women glean wheatears in their laps. It is not thunder; it is as if the wind grew solid and hurled itself--as a man might throw out his clenched fist--at the hill. The inclined plane of the mist-clouds again reflects a grey light, and, as if swept up by the fierce gale, a beam of sunshine comes. You see it first long, as it is at an angle; then overhead it shortens, and again lengthens after it has passed, somewhat like the spoke of a wheel. In the second of its presence a red handkerchief a woman wears on the ricks stands out, the brass on the engine glows, the water in the butt gleams, men's faces brighten, the cart-horse's coat looks glossy, the straw a pleasant yellow. It is gone, and lights up the backs of the sheep yonder as it runs up the hill swifter than a hare. Swish! The north wind darkens the sky, and the fly-wheel moans in the gloom; the wood-pigeons go a mile a minute on the wind, hardly using their wings; the brown woods below huddle together, rounding their shoulders to the blast; a great air-shadow, not mist, a shadow of thickness in the air looms behind a tiled roof in the valley. The vast profound is full of the rushing air.

These are days of autumn; but earlier than this, when the wheat that is now being threshed was ripe, the reaping-machine went round and round the field, beginning at the outside by the hedges. Red arms, not unlike a travelling windmill on a small scale, sweep the corn as it is cut and leave it spread on the ground. The bright red fans, the white jacket of the man driving, the brown and iron-grey horses, and yellow wheat are toned--melted together at their edges--with warm sunlight. The machine is lost in the corn, and nothing is visible but the colours, and the fact that it is the reaping, the time of harvest, dear to man these how many thousand years! There is nothing new in it; it is all old as the hills. The straw covers over the knives, the rims of the wheels sink into pimpernel, convolvulus, veronica; the dry earth powders them, and so all beneath is concealed. Above the sunlight (and once now and then the shadow of a tree) throws its mantle over, and, like the hand of an enchanter softly waving, surrounds it with a charm. So the cranks, and wheels, and knives, and mechanism do not exist--it was a machine in the workshop, but it is not a machine in the wheat-field. For the wheat-field you see is very, very old, and the air is of old time, and the shadow, the flowers, and the sunlight, and that which moves among them becomes of them. The solitary reaper alone in the great field goes round and round, the red fans striking beside him, alone with the sunlight, and the blue sky, and the distant hills; and he and his reaper are as much of the corn-field as the long-forgotten sickle or the reaping-hook.

The sharp rattle of the mowing-machine disturbs the corncrake in the meadow. Crake! crake! for many a long day since the grass began to grow fast in April till the cowslips flowered, and white parsley flourished like a thicket, blue scabious came up, and yonder the apple trees drop their bloom. Crake! crake! nearly day and night; but now the rattle begins, and the bird must take refuge in the corn. Like the reaper, the mowing-machine is buried under the swathe it cuts, and flowers fall over it--broad ox-eye daisies and red sorrel. Upon the hedge June roses bloom; blackbirds whistle in the oaks; now and again come the soft hollow notes of the cuckoo. Angles and wheels, cranks and cogs, where are they? They are lost; it is not these we see, but the flowers and the pollen on the grass. There is an odour of new-made hay; there is the song of birds, and the trees are beautiful.

As for the drill in spring-time, it is ancient indeed, and ancients follow it--aged men stepping after over the clods, and watching it as if it were a living thing, that the grains may fall each in its appointed place. Their faces, their gait, nay, the very planting of their heavy shoes' stamp on the earth, are full of the importance of this matter. On this the year depends, and the harvest, and all our lives, that the sowing be accomplished in good order, as is meet. Therefore they are in earnest, and do not turn aside to gaze at strangers, like those do who hoe, being of no account. This is a serious matter, needing men of days, little of speech, but long of experience. So the heavy drill, with its hanging rows of funnels, travels across the field well tended, and there is not one who notes the deep azure of the March sky above the elms.

Still another step, tracing the seasons backwards, brings in the steam-plough. When the spotted arum leaves unfold on the bank, before the violets or the first celandine, while the "pussies" hang on the hazel, the engines roll into the field, pressing the earth into barred ruts. The massive wheels leave their imprint, the footsteps of steam, behind them. By the hedges they stand, one on either side, and they hold the field between them with their rope of iron. Like the claws of some prehistoric monster, the shares rout up the ground; the solid ground is helpless before them; they tear and rend it. One engine is under an oak, dark yet with leafless boughs, up through which the black smoke rises; the other overtops a low hedge, and is in full profile. By the panting, and the humming, and the clanking as the drum revolves, by the smoke hanging in the still air, by the trembling of the monster as it strains and tugs, by the sense of heat, and effort, and pent-up energy bubbling over in jets of steam that struggle through crevices somewhere, by the straightened rope and the jerking of the plough as it comes, you know how mighty is the power that thus in narrow space works its will upon the earth. Planted broadside, its four limbs--the massive wheels--hold the ground like a wrestler drawing to him the unwilling opponent. Humming, panting, trembling, with stretched but irresistible muscles, the iron creature conquers, and the plough approaches. All the field for the minute seems concentrated in this thing of power. There are acres and acres, scores of acres around, but they are surface only. This is the central spot: they are nothing, mere matter. This is force--Thor in another form. If you are near you cannot take your eyes off the sentient iron, the wrestler straining. But now the plough has come over, and the signal given reverses its way. The lazy monotonous clanking as the drum unwinds on this side, the rustling of the rope as it is dragged forth over the clods, the quiet rotation of the fly-wheel--these sounds let the excited thought down as the rotating fly-wheel works off the maddened steam. The combat over, you can look round.

It is the February summer that comes, and lasts a week or so between the January frosts and the east winds that rush through the thorns. Some little green is even now visible along the mound where seed-leaves are springing up. The sun is warm, and the still air genial, the sky only dotted with a few white clouds. Wood-pigeons are busy in the elms, where the ivy is thick with ripe berries. There is a feeling of spring and of growth; in a day or two we shall find violets; and listen, how sweetly the larks are singing! Some chase each other, and then hover fluttering above the hedge. The stubble, whitened by exposure to the weather, looks lighter in the sunshine, and the distant view is softened by haze. A water-tank approaches, and the cart-horse steps in the pride of strength. The carter's lad goes to look at the engine and to wonder at the uses of the gauge. All the brazen parts gleam in the bright sun, and the driver presses some waste against the piston now it works slowly, till it shines like polished silver. The red glow within, as the furnace-door is opened, lights up the lad's studious face beneath like sunset. A few brown leaves yet cling to one bough of the oak, and the rooks come over cawing happily in the unwonted warmth. The low hum and the monotonous clanking, the rustling of the wire rope, give a sense of quiet. Let us wander along the hedge, and look for signs of spring. This is to-day. To-morrow, if we come, the engines are half hidden from afar by driving sleet and scattered snow-flakes fleeting aslant the field. Still sternly they labour in the cold and gloom. A third time you may find them, in September or bright October, with acorns dropping from the oaks, the distant sound of the gun, and perhaps a pheasant looking out from the corner. If the moon be full and bright they work on an hour or so by her light, and the vast shadows of the engines are thrown upon the stubble.

 

II

Among the meadows the buttercups in spring are as innumerable as ever and as pleasant to look upon. The petal of the buttercup has an enamel of gold; with the nail you may scrape it off, leaving still a yellow ground, but not reflecting the sunlight like the outer layer. From the centre the golden pollen covers the fingers with dust like that from the wing of a butterfly. In the bunches of grass and by the gateways the germander speedwell looks like tiny specks of blue stolen, like Prometheus' fire, from the summer sky. When the mowing-grass is ripe the heads of sorrel are so thick and close that at a little distance the surface seems as if sunset were always shining red upon it. From the spotted orchis leaves in April to the honeysuckle-clover in June, and the rose and the honeysuckle itself, the meadow has changed in nothing that delights the eye. The draining, indeed, has made it more comfortable to walk about on, and some of the rougher grasses have gone from the furrows, diminishing at the same time the number of cardamine flowers; but of these there are hundreds by the side of every tiny rivulet of water, and the aquatic grasses flourish in every ditch. The meadow-farmers, dairymen, have not grubbed many hedges--only a few, to enlarge the fields, too small before, by throwing two into one. So that hawthorn and blackthorn, ash and willow, with their varied hues of green in spring, briar and bramble, with blackberries and hips later on, are still there as in the old, old time. Bluebells, violets, cowslips--the same old favourite flowers--may be found on the mounds or sheltered near by. The meadow-farmers have dealt mercifully with the hedges, because they know that for shade in heat and shelter in storm the cattle resort to them. The hedges--yes, the hedges, the very synonym of Merry England--are yet there, and long may they remain. Without hedges England would not be England. Hedges, thick and high, and full of flowers, birds, and living creatures, of shade and flecks of sunshine dancing up and down the bark of the trees--I love their very thorns. You do not know how much there is in the hedges.

We have still the woods, with here and there a forest, the beauty of the hills, and the charm of winding brooks. I never see roads, or horses, men, or anything when I get beside a brook. There is the grass, and the wheat, the clouds, the delicious sky, and the wind, and the sunlight which falls on the heart like a song. It is the same, the very same, only I think it is brighter and more lovely now than it was twenty years ago.

Along the footpath we travel slowly; you cannot walk fast very long in a footpath; no matter how rapidly at first, you soon lessen your pace, and so country people always walk slowly. The stiles--how stupidly they are put together. For years and years every one who has passed them, as long as man can remember, has grumbled at them; yet there they are still, with the elms reaching high above, and cows gazing over--cows that look so powerful, but so peacefully yield the way. They are a better shape than the cattle of the ancient time, less lanky, and with fewer corners; the lines, to talk in yachtsman's language, are finer. Roan is a colour that contrasts well with meadows and hedges. The horses are finer, both cart-horse and nag. Approaching the farmsteads, there are hay-ricks, but there are fewer corn-ricks. Instead of the rows on rows, like the conical huts of a savage town, there are but a few, sometimes none. So many are built in the fields and threshed there "to rights," as the bailiff would say. It is not needful to have them near home or keep them, now the threshing-machine has stayed the flail and emptied the barns. Perhaps these are the only two losses to those who look at things and mete them with the eye--the corn-ricks and the barns. The corn-ricks were very characteristic, but even now you may see plenty if you look directly after harvest. The barns are going by degrees, passing out of the life of farming; let us hope that some of them will be converted into silos, and so saved.

At the farmsteads themselves there are considerations for and against. On the one hand, the house and the garden is much tidier, less uncouth; there are flowers, such as geraniums, standard roses, those that are favourites in towns; and the unsightly and unhealthy middens and pools of muddy water have disappeared from beside the gates. But the old flowers and herbs are gone, or linger neglected in corners, and somehow the gentle touch of time has been effaced. The house has got a good deal away from farming. It is on the farm, but disconnected. It is a residence, not a farmhouse. Then you must consider that it is more healthy, sweeter, and better for those who live in it. From a little distance the old effect is obtainable. One thing only I must protest against, and that is the replacing of tiles with slates. The old red tiles of the farmhouses are as natural as leaves; they harmonise with the trees and the hedges, the grass, the wheat, and the ricks. But slates are wrong. In new houses, even farmhouses, it does not matter so much; the owners cannot be found fault with for using the advantages of modern times. On old houses where tiles were once, to put slates is an offence, nothing less. Every one who passes exclaims against it. Tiles tone down and become at home; they nestle together, and look as if you could be happily drowsy and slumber under them. They are to a house what leaves are to a tree, and leaves turn reddish or brown in the autumn. Upon the whole, with the exception of the slates--the hateful slates--the farmsteads are improved, for they have lost a great deal that was uncouth and even repulsive, which was slurred over in old pictures or omitted, but which was there.

The new cottages are ugly with all their ornamentation; their false gables, impossible porches, absurd windows, are distinctly repellent. They are an improvement in a sanitary sense, and we are all glad of that, but we cannot like the buildings. They are of no style or time; only one thing is certain about them--they are _not_ English. Fortunately there are plenty of old cottages, hundreds of them (they show little or no sign of disappearing), and these can be chosen instead. The villages are to outward appearance much as they used to be, but the people are very different. In manners, conversation, and general tone there is a great change. It is, indeed, the people who have altered more than the surface of the country. Hard as the farmer may work, and plough and sow with engine and drill, the surface of the land does not much vary; but the farmer himself and the farmer's man are quite another race to what they were. Perhaps it was from this fact that the impression grew up that modern agriculture has polished away all the distinctive characteristics of the country. But it has not done so any more than it has removed the hills. The truth is, as I have endeavoured to explain, innovations so soon become old in the fields. The ancient earth covers them with her own hoar antiquity, and their newness disappears. They have already become so much a part of the life of the country that it seems as if they had always been there, so easily do they fit in, so easily does the eye accept them.

Intrinsically there is nothing used in modern agriculture less symmetrical than what was previously employed. The flails were the simplest of instruments, and were always seen with the same accompaniment--the interior of a barn. The threshing-machine is certainly not less interesting; it works in the open air, often with fine scenic surroundings, and the number of people with it impart vivacity. In reaping with the reaping-hook there were more men in the wheat, but the reaping-machine is not without colour. Scythes are not at all pleasant things; the mowing-machine is at least no worse. As for the steam-plough, it is very interesting to watch. All these fit in with trees and hedges, fields and woods, as well, and in some cases in a more striking manner than the old instruments. The surface of the ground presents more varied colours even than before, and the sunlight produces rich effects. Nor have all the ancient aspects disappeared as supposed--quite the reverse. In the next field to the steam-plough the old ploughs drawn by horses may be seen at work, and barns still stand, and the old houses. In hill districts oxen are yet yoked to the plough, the scythe and reaping-hook are often seen at work, and, in short, the old and the new so shade and blend together that you can hardly say where one begins and the other ends. That there are many, very many things concerning agriculture and country life whose disappearance is to be regretted I have often pointed out, and having done so, I feel that I can with the more strength affirm that in its natural beauty the country is as lovely now as ever.

It is, I venture to think, a mistake on the part of some who depict country scenes on canvas that they omit these modern aspects, doubtless under the impression that to admit them would impair the pastoral scene intended to be conveyed. So many pictures and so many illustrations seem to proceed upon the assumption that steam-plough and reaping-machine do not exist, that the landscape contains nothing but what it did a hundred years ago. These sketches are often beautiful, but they lack the force of truth and reality. Every one who has been fifty miles into the country, if only by rail, knows while looking at them that they are not real. You feel that there is something wanting, you do not know what. That something is the hard, perhaps angular fact which at once makes the sky above it appear likewise a fact. Why omit fifty years from the picture? That is what it usually means--fifty years left out; and somehow we feel as we gaze that these fields and these skies are not of our day. The actual fields, the actual machines, the actual men and women (how differently dressed to the conventional pictorial costumes!) would prepare the mind to see and appreciate the colouring, the design, the beauty--what, for lack of a better expression, may be called the soul of the picture--far more than forgotten, and nowadays even impossible accessories. For our sympathy is not with them, but with the things of our own time.

[The end]
Richard Jefferies's essay: Notes On Landscape Painting

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN