wolmer forest—charm of contrast and novelty in scenery—aspect of wolmer—heath and pine—colour of water and soil—an old woman's recollections—story of the "selborne mob"—past and present times compared—hollywater clump—age of trees—bird life in the forest—teal in their breeding haunts—boys in the forest—story of the horn-blower.
the first part of the story of that selborne mound in a strange place was heard at wolmer forest, over five years ago, during my first prolonged visit to that spot. i have often been there since, and have stayed many days, but a first impression of a place, as of a face, is always the best, the brightest, the truest, and i wish to describe wolmer as i saw it then.
it struck me on that visit that the pleasure we have in visible nature depends in a measure on contrast and novelty. never is moist verdure so refreshing and delightful to the eye as when we come to it from brown heaths and grey barren downs and uplands. so, too, the greenness of the green earth sharpens our pleasure in all stony and waste places; trim flower gardens show us the beauty of thorns and briars, and make us in love with desolation. as in light and shade, wet and dry, tempest and calm, so the peculiar attractions of each scene and aspect of nature are best "illustrated by their contraries."
i had, accordingly, the best preparation for a visit {204} to wolmer by a few days' ramble in alice holt forest, with its endless oaks, and in the luxuriant meadows and cool shady woods at waverley abbey. it was a great change to wolmer forest. although its soil is a "hungry, bare sand," it has long been transformed from the naked heath of gilbert white's time to a vast unbroken plantation. looked upon from some eminence it has a rough, dark aspect. there are no smooth summits and open pleasant places; all is covered by the shaggy mantle of the pines. but it is nowhere gloomy, as pine woods are apt to be: the trees are not big enough, on account of that hungry sand in which they are rooted, or because they are not yet very old. the pines not being too high and shady to keep the sun and air out, the old aboriginal vegetation has not been killed: in most places the ling forms a thick undergrowth, and looks green, while outside of the forest, in the full glare of the sun, it has a harsh, dry, dead appearance.
on account of this abundance of ling a strange and lovely appearance is produced in some favourable years, when the flowers are in great profusion and all the plants blossom at one time. that most beautiful sight of the early spring, when the bloom of the wild hyacinth forms a sheet of azure colour under the woodland trees, is here repeated in july, but with a difference of hue both in the trees above and in the bloom beneath.
wolmer forest
in may, wolmer is comparatively flowerless, and there is no bright colour, except that of the earth itself in some naked spot. the water of the sluggish {205} boggy streamlets in the forest, tributaries of the well-named dead water, takes a deep red or orange hue from the colour of the soil. the sand abounds with ironstone, which in the mass is deep rust-red- and purple-coloured. when crushed and pulverised by traffic and weather on the roads, it turns to a vivid chrome yellow. in the hot noonday sun the straight road that runs through the forest appeared like a yellow band or ribbon. that was a curious and novel picture, which i often had before me during the excessively dry and windy weather in may—the vast whity-blue, hot sky, without speck or stain of cloud above, and the dark forest covering the earth, cut through by that yellow zone, extending straight away until it was lost in the hazy distance. even stranger was the appearance when the wind blew strongest and raised clouds of dust from the road, which flew like fiery yellow vapours athwart the black pines.
the "selborne mob"
in a small house by the roadside in the middle of the forest i found a temporary home. my aged landlady proved a great talker, and treated me to a good deal of hampshire dialect. her mind was well stored with ancient memories. at first i let her ramble on without paying too much attention; but at length, while speaking of the many little ups and downs of her not uneventful life, she asked me if i knew selborne, and then informed me that she was a native of that village, and that her family had lived there for generations. her mother had reached the age of eighty-six years; she had married {206} her third husband when over seventy. by her first she had had two and by her second thirteen children, and my informant, who is now aged seventy-six, was the last born. this wonderful mother of hers, who had survived three husbands, and whose memory went back several years into the eighteenth century, had remembered the rev. gilbert white very well: she was aged about twelve when he died. it was wonderful, she said, how many interesting things she used to tell about him; for gilbert white, whose name was known to the great world outside of his parish, was often in her mind when she recalled her early years. unfortunately, these interesting things had now all slipped out of my landlady's memory. whenever i brought her to the point she would stand with eyes cast down, the fingers of her right hand on her forehead, trying—trying to recall something to tell me: a simple creature, who was without imagination, and could invent nothing. then little by little she would drift off into something else—to recollections of people and events not so remote in time, scenes she had witnessed herself, and which had made a deeper impression on her mind. one was how her father, her mother's second husband, had acted as horn-blower to the "selborne mob," when the poor villagers were starving; and how, blowing on his horn, he had assembled his fellow-revolutionists, and led them to an attack on the poorhouse, where they broke down the doors and made a bonfire of the furniture; then on to the neighbouring village of headley to get recruits for their {207} little army. then the soldiery arrived on the scene, and took them prisoners and sent them to winchester, where they were tried by some little unremembered judge jeffreys, who sentenced many or most of them to transportation; but not the horn-blower, who had escaped, and was in hiding among the beeches of the famous selborne hanger. only at midnight he would steal down into the village to get a bite of food and hear the news from his vigorous and vigilant wife. at length, during one of these midnight descents, he was seen, and captured, and sent to winchester. but by this time the authorities had grown sick—possibly ashamed—of dealing so harshly with a few poor peasants, whose sufferings had made them mad, and the horn-blower was pardoned, and died in bed at home when his time came.
i did not cease questioning the poor woman, because she would not admit that all she had heard about gilbert white was gone past recall. often and often had she thought of what her mother had told her. up to within two or three years ago she remembered it all so well. what was it now? once more, standing dejected in the middle of the room, she would cudgel her old brains. so much had happened since she was a girl. she had been brought up to farm-work. here would follow the names of various farms in the parishes of selborne, newton valence, and oakhanger, where she had worked, mostly in the fields; and of the farmers, long dead and gone most of them, who had employed her. all her life she had worked {208} hard, struggling to live. when people complained of hard times now, of the little that was paid them for their work, she and her husband remembered what it was thirty and forty and fifty years ago, and they wondered what people really wanted. cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap education for the children—everything was cheap now, and the pay more. and she had had so many children to bring up—ten; and seven of them were married, and were now having so many children of their own that she could hardly keep count of them.
it was idle to listen; and at last, in desperation, i would jump up and rush out, for the wind was calling in the pines, and the birds were calling, and what they had to tell was just then of more interest than any human story.
not far from my cottage there was a hill, from the summit of which the whole area of the forest was visible, and the country all round for many leagues beyond it. i did not like this hill, and refused to pay it a second visit. the extent of country it revealed made the forest appear too small; it spoilt the illusion of a practically endless wilderness, where i could stroll about all day and see no cultivated spot, and no house, and perhaps no human form. it was, moreover, positively disagreeable to be stared at across the ocean of pines by a big, brand-new, red-brick mansion, standing conspicuous, unashamed, affronting nature, on some wide heath or lonely hillside.
hollywater clump
a second hill, not far from the first, was preferable {209} when i wished for a wide horizon, or to drink the wind and the music of the wind. round and dome-like, it stood alone; and although not so high as its neighbour, it was more conspicuous, and seen from a distance appeared to be vastly higher. the reason of this was that it was crowned with a grove of scotch firs with boles that rose straight and smooth and mast-like to a height of about eighty feet; thus, seen from afar, the hill looked about a hundred feet higher than it actually was, the tree-tops themselves forming a thick, round dome, conspicuous above the surrounding forest, and wolmer's most prominent feature. i have often said of hampshire—very many persons have said the same—that it lacks one thing—sublimity, or, let us say, grandeur. i have been over all its high, open down country, and upon all its highest hills, which, although rising to a thousand feet above the sea at one point, yet do not impress one so much as the south downs; and i have been in all its forest lands, which have wildness and a thousand beauties, and one asks for nothing better. but the hollywater clump in wolmer forest as soon as i come in sight of it wakes in me another sense and feeling; and i have found in conversation with others on this subject that they are affected in the same way. i doubt if anyone can fail to experience such a feeling when looking on that great hill-top grove, a stupendous pillared temple, with its dome-like black roof against the sky, standing high above and dominating the sombre pine and heath country for miles around.
{210}
bird life in the forest
gilbert white described wolmer as a naked heath with very few trees growing on it. the hollywater clump must, one cannot but think, have been planted before or during his time. one old native of wolmer, whose memory over five years ago went back about sixty years, assured me that the trees looked just as big when he was a little boy as they do now. undoubtedly they are very old, and many, we see, are decaying, and some are dead, and for many years past they have been dying and falling.
the green woodpecker had discovered the unsoundness of many of them; in some of the trunks, in their higher part, the birds had made several holes. these were in line, one above the other, like stops in a flute. most of these far-up houses or flats were tenanted by starlings. this was only too apparent for the starling, although neat and glossy in his dress is an untidy tenant, and smears the trunk beneath the entrance to his nest with numberless droppings. you might fancy that he had set himself to whitewash his tenement, and had carelessly capsized his little bucket of lime on the threshold.
it was pleasant in the late afternoon to sit at the feet of these stately red columns—this brave company of trees, that are warred against by all the winds of heaven—and look upon the black legions of the forest covering the earth beneath them for miles. high up in the swaying, singing tops a kind of musical talk was audible—the starlings' medley of clinking, chattering, wood-sawing, knife-grinding, whistling, and bell-like sounds. higher still, above {211} the tree-tops, the jackdaws were at their aerial gambols, calling to one another, exulting in the wind. they were not breeding there, but were attracted to the spot by the height of the hill, with its crown of soaring trees. some strong-flying birds—buzzards, kites, vultures, gulls, and many others—love to take their exercise far from earth, making a playground of the vast void heaven. the wind-loving jackdaw, even in his freest, gladdest moments, never wholly breaks away from the earth, and for a playground prefers some high, steep place—a hill, cliff, spire, or tower—where he can perch at intervals, and from which he can launch himself, as the impulse takes him, either to soar and float above, or to cast himself down into the airy gulf below.
stray herons, too, come to the trees to roost. the great bird could be seen far off, battling with the wind, rising and falling, blown to this side and that, now displaying his pale under-surface, and now the slaty blue of his broad, slow-flapping wings.
as the sun sank nearer to the horizon, the tall trunks would catch the level beams and shine like fiery pillars, and the roof thus upheld would look darker and gloomier by contrast. with the passing of that red light, the lively bird-notes would cease, the trees would give forth a more solemn, sea-like sound, and the day would end.
my days, during all the time i spent at wolmer, when i had given up asking questions, and my poor old woman had ceased cudgelling her brains for lost memories, were spent with the birds. the yaffle, {212} nightjar, and turtle-dove were the most characteristic species. wolmer is indeed the metropolis of the turtle-doves, even as savernake is (or was) that of the jays and jackdaws. all day long the woods were full of the low, pleasing sound of their cooing: as one walked among the pines they constantly rose up in small flocks from the ground with noisy wines and as they flew out into some open space to vanish again in the dark foliage, their wings in the strong sunlight often looked white as silver. but the only native species i wish to speak of is the teal as i found it a little over five years ago. in wolmer these pretty entertaining little ducks have bred uninterruptedly for centuries, but i greatly fear that the changes now in progress—the increase of the population, building, the large number of troops kept close by, and perhaps, too, the slow drying up of the marshy pools—will cause them to forsake their ancient haunts.
teal
by chance i very soon discovered their choicest breeding-place, not far from that dome-shaped, fir-crowned hill which was my principal landmark. this was a boggy place, thirty or forty acres in extent surrounded by trees and overgrown with marsh weeds and grasses, and in places with rushes. cotton grass grew in the drier parts, and the tufts nodding in the wind looked at a distance like silvery white flowers. at one end of the marsh there were clumps of willow and alder, where the reed-bunting was breeding and the grasshopper warbler uttered his continuous whirring sound, which seemed to accord {213} with the singing of the wind in the pines. at the other end there was open water with patches of rushes growing in it; and here at the water's edge, shaded by a small fir, i composed myself on a bed of heather to watch the birds.
the inquisitive moor-hens were the first to appear, uttering from time to time their sharp, loud protest. their suspicion lessened by degrees, but was never wholly laid aside; and one bird, slyly leaving the water, made a wide circuit and approached me through the trees in order to get a better view of me. a sudden movement on my part, when he was only three yards from me, gave him a terrible fright. mallards showed themselves at intervals, swimming into the open water, or rising a few yards above the rushes, then dropping out of sight again. where the rushes grew thin and scattered, ducklings appeared, swimming one behind the other, busily engaged in snatching insects from the surface. by-and-by a pair of teal rose up, flew straight towards me, and dropped into the open water within eighteen yards of where i sat. they were greatly excited, and no sooner touched the water than they began calling loudly; then, from various points, others rose and hurried to join them, and in a few moments there were eleven, all disporting themselves on the water at that short distance. teal are always tamer than ducks of other kinds, but the tameness of these wolmer birds was astonishing and very delightful. for a few moments i imagined they were excited at my presence, but it very soon appeared that they were entirely absorbed {214} in their own affairs and cared nothing about me. what a wonderfully lively, passionate, variable, and even ridiculous little creature the teal is! compared with his great relations—swans, geese, and the bigger ducks—he is like a monkey or squirrel among stately bovine animals. now the teal have a world-wide range, being found in all climates, and are of many species; they are, moreover, variable in plumage, some species having an exceedingly rich and beautiful colouring; but wherever found, and however different in colour, they are much the same in disposition—they are loquacious, excitable, violent in their affections beyond other ducks, and, albeit highly intelligent, more fearless than other birds habitually persecuted by man. a sedate teal is as rare as a sober-coloured humming-bird. the teal is also of so social a temper that even in the height of the breeding season he is accustomed to meet his fellows at little gatherings. a curious thing is that at these meetings they do not, like most social birds, fall into one mind, and comport themselves in an orderly, disciplined manner, all being moved by one contagious impulse. on the contrary, each bird appears to have an impulse of his own, and to follow it without regard to what his fellows may be doing. one must have his bath, another his frolic; one falls to courting, another to quarrelling, or even fighting, and so on, and the result is a lively splashing, confused performance, which is amusing to see. it was an exhibition of this kind which i was so fortunate as to witness at the wolmer pond. the body-jerking {215} antics and rich, varied plumage of the drakes gave them a singular as well as a beautiful appearance; and as they dashed and splashed about, sometimes not more than fourteen yards from me, their motions were accompanied by all the cries and calls they have—their loud call, which is a bright and lively sound; chatterings and little, sharp, exclamatory notes; a long trill, somewhat metallic or bell-like; and a sharp, nasal cry, rapidly reiterated several times, like a laugh.
after they had worked off their excitement and finished their fun they broke up into pairs and threes, and went off in various directions, and i saw no more of them.
it was not until the sun had set that a snipe appeared. first one rose from the marsh and began to play over it in the usual manner, then another rose to keep him company, and finally a third. most of the time they hovered with their breasts towards me, and seen through my glass against the pale luminous sky, their round, stout bodies, long bills, and short, rapidly vibrating wings, gave them the appearance of gigantic insects rather than birds.
boys in the forest
at length, tired of watching them, i stretched myself out in the ling, but continued listening, and while thus occupied an amusing incident occurred. a flock of eighteen mallards rose up with a startled cry from the marsh at a distance, and after flying once or twice round, dropped down again. then the sound of crackling branches and of voices talking {216} became audible advancing round the marsh towards me. it was the first human sound i had heard that day at that spot. then the sounds ceased, and after a couple of minutes of silence i glanced round in the direction they had proceeded from, and beheld a curious sight. three boys, one about twelve years old, the others smaller, were grouped together on the edge of the pool, gazing fixedly across the water at me. they had taken me for a corpse, or an escaped criminal, or some such dreadful object, lying there in the depth of the forest. the biggest boy had dropped on to one knee among the rough heather, while the others, standing on either side, were resting their hands on his shoulders. seen thus, in their loose, threadbare, grey clothes and caps, struck motionless, their white, scared faces, parted lips, and wildly staring eyes turned to me, they were like a group cut in stone. i laughed and waved my hand to them, whereupon their faces relaxed, and they immediately dropped into natural attitudes. very soon they moved away among the trees, but after eight or ten minutes they reappeared near me, and finally, from motives of curiosity, came uninvited to my side. they proved to be very good specimens of the boy naturalist; thorough little outlaws, with keen senses, and the passion for wildness strong in them. they told me that when they went bird-nesting they made a day of it, taking bread and cheese in their pockets, and not returning till the evening. for an hour we talked in the fading light of day on the wild creatures in the forest, until we could no {217} longer endure the cloud of gnats that had gathered round us.
about three years after the visit to wolmer i made the acquaintance of a native of selborne, whose father had taken part as a lad in the famous "selborne mob," and who confirmed the story i had heard about the horn-blower, whose name was newland. he had been a soldier in his early manhood before he returned to his native village and married the widow who bore him so many children. it was quite true that he had died at home, in bed, and what was more, he added, he was buried just between the church porch and the yew, where he was all by himself. how he came to be buried there he did not know.
lately, in october 1902, i heard the finish of the story. i found an old woman, a widow named garnett, an elder sister of the woman at wolmer forest. she is eighty years old, but was not born until a year or two after the "selborne mob" events, which fixes the date of that outbreak about the year 1820. she has a brother, now in a workhouse, about two years older than herself, who was a babe in arms at that time. when newland was at last captured and sent to winchester, his poor wife, with her baby in her arms, set out on foot to visit him in gaol. it was a long tramp for her thus burdened, and it was also in the depth of one of the coldest winters ever known. she started early, but did not get to her destination until the following morning, and not {218} without suffering a fresh misfortune by the way. before dawn, when the cold was most intense, while walking over winchester hill, her baby's nose was frozen; and though everything proper was done when she arrived at the houses, it never got quite right. his injured nose, which turns to a dark-blue colour and causes him great suffering in cold weather, has been a trouble and misery to him all his life long.
story of the horn-blower
newland, we know, was forgiven and returned to spend the rest of his life in his village, where he died at last of sheer old age, passing very quietly away after receiving the sacrament from the vicar, and in the presence of his faithful old wife and his children and grandchildren.
after he was dead, two of his children—my informant, and that brother who as a babe had travelled to winchester in his mother's arms in cold weather—talked together about him and his life, and of all he had suffered and of his goodness, and in both their minds there was one idea, an anxious wish that his descendants should not allow him to go out of memory. and there was no way known to them to keep him in mind except by burying him in some spot by himself, where his mound would be alone and apart. finally, brother and sister, plucking up courage, went to the vicar, the well-remembered mr. parsons, who built the new vicarage and the church school, and begged him to let them bury their father by the yew tree near the porch, and he good-naturedly consented.
that was how newland came to be buried at that {219} spot; but before many days the vicar went to them in a great state of mind, and said that he had made a terrible mistake, that he had done wrong in consenting to the grave being made there, and that their father must be taken up and placed at some other spot in the churchyard. they were grieved at this, but could say nothing. but for some reason the removal never took place, and in time the son and daughter themselves began to regret that they had buried their father there where they could never keep the mound green and fresh. people going in or coming out of church on dark evenings stumbled or kicked their boots against it, or when they stood there talking to each other they would rest a foot on it, and romping children sat on it, so that it always had a ragged, unkept appearance, do what they would.
it is certainly an unsightly mound. it would be better to do away with it, and to substitute a small memorial stone with a suitable inscription placed level with the turf.
