Afoot in England: Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Abbotsbury

Abbotsbury is an old unspoilt village, not on but near the
sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadowland where all
sorts of meadow and water plants flourish, and where there are
extensive reed and osier beds, the roosting-place in autumn
and winter of innumerable starlings. I am always delighted to
come on one of these places where starlings congregate, to
watch them coming in at day's decline and listen to their
marvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial evolutions
when they rise and break up in great bodies and play at clouds
in the sky. When the people of the place, the squire and
keepers and others who have an interest in the reeds and
osiers, fall to abusing them on account of the damage they do,
I put my fingers in my ears. But at Abbotsbury I did not do
so, but listened with keen pleasure to the curses they vented
and the story they told. This was that when the owner of
Abbotsbury came down for the October shooting and found the
starlings more numerous than ever, he put himself into a fine
passion and reproached his keepers and other servants for not
having got rid of the birds as he had desired them to do.
Some of them ventured to say that it was easier said than
done, whereupon the great man swore that he would do it
himself without assistance from any one, and getting out a big
duck-gun he proceeded to load it with the smallest shot and
went down to the reed bed and concealed hiniself among the
bushes at a suitable distance. The birds were pouring in, and
when it was growing dark and they had settled down for the
night he fired his big piece into the thick of the crowd, and
by and by when the birds after wheeling about for a minute or
two settled down again in the same place he fired again. Then
he went home, and early next morning men and boys went into
the reeds and gathered a bushel or so of dead starlings. But
the birds returned in their thousands that evening, and his
heart being still hot against them he went out a second time
to slaughter them wholesale with his big gun. Then when he
had blazed into the crowd once more, and the dead and wounded
fell like rain into the water below, the revulsion came and he
was mad with himself for having done such a thing, and on his
return to the house, or palace, he angrily told his people to
"let the starlings alone" for the future--never to molest them
again!

I thought it one of the loveliest stories I had ever heard;
there is no hardness comparable to that of the sportsman, yet
here was one, a very monarch among them, who turned sick at
his own barbarity and repented.

Beyond the flowery wet meadows, favored by starlings and a
breeding-place of swans, is the famous Chesil Bank, one of the
seven wonders of Britain. And thanks to this great bank, a
screen between sea and land extending about fourteen miles
eastward from Portland, this part of the coast must remain
inviolate from the speculative builder of seaside holiday
resorts or towns of lodging-houses.

Every one has heard of the Fleet in connection with the famous
swannery of Abbotsbury, the largest in the land. I had heard
so much about the swannery that it had but little interest for
me. The only thing about it which specially attracted my
attention was seeing a swan rise up and after passing over my
head as I stood on the bank fly straight out over the sea. I
watched him until he had diminished to a small white spot
above the horizon, and then still flying he faded from sight.
Do these swans that fly away over the sea, and others which
appear in small flocks or pairs at Poole Harbour and at other
places on the coast, ever return to the Fleet? Probably some
do, but, I fancy some of these explorers must settle down in
waters far from home, to return no more.

The village itself, looked upon from this same elevation, is
very attractive. Life seems quieter, more peaceful there out
of sight of the ocean's turbulence, out of hearing of its
"accents disconsolate." The cottages are seen ranged in a
double line along the narrow crooked street, like a procession
of cows with a few laggards scattered behind the main body.
One is impressed by its ancient character. The cottages are
old, stone-built and thatched; older still is the church with
its grey square tower, and all about are scattered the
memorials of antiquity--the chantry on the hill, standing
conspicuous alone, apart, above the world; the vast old abbey
barn, and, rough thick stone walls, ivy-draped and crowned
with beautiful valerian, and other fragments that were once
parts of a great religious house.

Looking back at the great round hill from the village it is
impossible not to notice the intense red colour of the road
that winds over its green slope. One sometimes sees on a
hillside a ploughed field of red earth which at a distance
might easily be taken for a field of blossoming trifolium.
Viewed nearer the crimson of the clover and red of the earth
are very dissimilar; distance appears to intensify the red of
the soil and to soften that of the flower until they are very
nearly of the same hue. The road at Abbotsbury was near and
looked to me more intensely red than any ordinary red earth,
and the sight was strangely pleasing. These two complementary
colours, red and green, delight us most when seen thus--a
little red to a good deal of green, and the more luminous the
red and vivid the green the better they please us. We see
this in flowers--in the red geranium, for example--where there
is no brown soil below, but green of turf or herbage. I
sometimes think the red campions and ragged-robins are our
most beautiful wild flowers when the sun shines level on the
meadow and they are like crimson flowers among the tall
translucent grasses. I remember the joy it was in boyhood in
early spring when the flowers were beginning to bloom, when in
our gallops over the level grass pampas we came upon a patch
of scarlet verbenas. The first sight of the intense blooms
scattered all about the turf would make us wild with delight,
and throwing ourselves from our ponies we would go down among
the flowers to feast on the sight.

Green is universal, but the red earth which looks so pleasing
amid the green is distributed very partially, and it may be
the redness of the soil and the cliffs in Devon have given
that county a more vivid personality, so to speak, than most
others. Think of Kent with its white cliffs, chalk downs, and
dull-coloured clays in this connection!

The humble subterraneous mole proves himself on occasions a
good colourist when he finds a soil of the proper hue to
burrow in, and the hillocks he throws up from numberless
irregular splashes of bright red colour on a green sward. The
wild animals that strike us as most beautiful, when seen
against a green background, are those which bear the reddest
fur--fox, squirrel, and red deer. One day, in a meadow a few
miles from Abbotsbury, I came upon a herd of about fifty milch
cows scattered over a considerable space of ground, some lying
down, others standing ruminating, and still others moving
about and cropping the long flowery grasses. All were of that
fine rich red colour frequently seen in Dorset and Devon
cattle, which is brighter than the reds of other red animals
in this country, wild and domestic, with the sole exception of
a rare variety of the collie dog. The Irish setter and red
chouchou come near it. So beautiful did these red cows look
in the meadow that I stood still for half an hour feasting my
eyes on the sight.

No less was the pleasure I experienced when I caught sight of
that road winding over the hill above the village. On going
to it I found that it had looked as red as rust simply because
it was rust-earth made rich and beautiful in colour with iron,
its red hue variegated with veins and streaks of deep purple
or violet. I was told that there were hundreds of acres of
this earth all round the place--earth so rich in iron that
many a man's mouth had watered at the sight of it; also that
every effort had been made to induce the owner of Abbotsbury
to allow this rich mine to be worked. But, wonderful to
relate, he had not been persuaded.

A hard fragment of the red stuff, measuring a couple of inches
across and weighing about three ounces avoirdupois, rust-red
in colour with purple streaks and yellow mottlings, is now
lying before me. The mineralogist would tell me that its
commercial value is naught, or something infinitesimal; which
is doubtless true enough, as tens of thousands of tons of the
same material lie close to the surface under the green turf
and golden blossoming furze at the spot where I picked up my
specimen. The lapidary would not look at it; nevertheless, it
is the only article of jewellery I possess, and I value it
accordingly. And I intend to keep this native ruby by me for
as long as the lords of Abbotsbury continue in their present
mind. The time may come when I shall be obliged to throw it
away. That any millionaire should hesitate for a moment to
blast and blacken any part of the earth's surface, howsoever
green and refreshing to the heart it may be, when by so doing
he might add to his income, seems like a fable, or a tale of
fairyland. It is as if one had accidentally discovered the
existence of a little fantastic realm, a survival from a
remote past, almost at one's doors; a small independent
province, untouched by progress, asking to be conquered and
its antediluvian constitution taken from it.

From the summit of that commanding hill, over which the red
path winds, a noble view presents itself of the Chesil Bank,
or of about ten miles of it, running straight as any Roman
road, to end beneath the rugged stupendous cliffs of Portland.
The ocean itself, and not conquering Rome, raised this
artificial-looking wall or rampart to stay its own proud
waves. Formed of polished stones and pebbles, about two
hundred yards in width, flat-topped, with steeply sloping
sides, at this distance it has the appearance of a narrow
yellow road or causeway between the open sea on one hand and
the waters of the Fleet, a narrow lake ten miles long, on the
other.

When the mackerel visit the coast, and come near enough to be
taken in a draw-net, every villager who owns a share (usually
a tenth) in a fishing-boat throws down his spade or whatever
implement he happens to have in his hand at the moment, and
hurries away to the beach to take his share in the fascinating
task. At four o'clock one morning a youth, who had been down
to the sea to watch, came running into the village uttering
loud cries which were like excited yells--a sound to rouse the
deepest sleeper. The mackerel had come! For the rest of the
day there was a pretty kind of straggling procession of those
who went and came between the beach and the village--men in
blue cotton shirts, blue jerseys, blue jackets, and women in
grey gowns and big white sun-bonnets. During the latter part
of the day the proceedings were peculiarly interesting to me,
a looker-on with no share in any one of the boats, owing to
the catches being composed chiefly of jelly-fish. Some
sympathy was felt for the toilers who strained their muscles
again and again only to be mocked in the end; still, a draught
of jelly-fish was more to my taste than one of mackerel. The
great weight of a catch of this kind when the net was full was
almost too much for the ten or twelve men engaged in drawing
it up; then (to the sound of deep curses from those of the men
who were not religious) the net would be opened and the great
crystalline hemispheres, hyaline blue and delicate salmon-pink
in colour, would slide back into the water. Such rare and
exquisite colours have these great glassy flowers of ocean
that to see them was a feast; and every time a net was hauled
up my prayer--which I was careful not to repeat aloud--was,
Heaven send another big draught of jelly-fish!

The sun, sinking over the hills towards Swyre and Bridport,
turned crimson before it touched the horizon. The sky became
luminous; the yellow Chesil Bank, stretching long leagues
away, and the hills behind it, changed their colours to
violet. The rough sea near the beach glittered like gold; the
deep green water, flecked with foam, was mingled with fire;
the one boat that remained on it, tossing up and down near the
beach, was like a boat of ebony in a glittering fiery sea. A
dozen men were drawing up the last net; but when they gathered
round to see what they had taken--mackerel or jelly-fish--I
cared no longer to look with them. That sudden, wonderful
glory which had fallen on the earth and sea had smitten me as
well and changed me; and I was like some needy homeless tramp
who has found a shilling piece, and, even while he is
gloating over it, all at once sees a great treasure before
him--glittering gold in heaps, and all rarest sparkling gems,
more than he can gather up.

But it is a poor simile. No treasures in gold and gems,
though heaped waist-high all about, could produce in the
greediest man, hungry for earthly pleasures, a delight, a
rapture, equal to mine. For this joy was of another and
higher order and very rare, and was a sense of lightness and
freedom from all trammels as if the body had become air,
essence, energy, or soul, and of union with all visible
nature, one with sea and land and the entire vast overarching
sky.

We read of certain saints who were subject to experiences of
this kind that they were "snatched up" into some supramundane
region, and that they stated on their return to earth that it
was not lawful for them to speak of the things they had
witnessed. The humble naturalist and nature-worshipper can
only witness the world glorified--transfigured; what he finds
is the important thing. I fancy the mystics would have been
nearer the mark if they had said that their experiences during
their period of exaltation could not be reported, or that it
would be idle to report them, since their questioners lived on
the ground and would be quite incapable on account of the
mind's limitations of conceiving a state above it and outside
of its own experience.

The glory passed and with it the exaltation: the earth and sea
turned grey; the last boat was drawn up on the slope and the
men departed slowly: only one remained, a rough-looking youth,
about fifteen years old. Some important matter which he was
revolving in his mind had detained him alone on the darkening
beach. He sat down, then stood up and gazed at the rolling
wave after wave to roar and hiss on the shingle at his feet;
then he moved restlessly about, crunching pebbles beneath his
thick boots; finally, making up his mind, he took off his
coat, threw it down, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, with the
resolute air of a man about to engage in a fight with an
adversary nearly as big as himself. Stepping back a little
space, he made a rush at the sea, not to cast himself in it,
but only, as it turned out, with the object of catching some
water in the hollow of his hands from the top of an incoming
wave. He only succeeded in getting his legs wet, and in
hastily retreating he fell on his back. Nothing daunted, he
got up and renewed the assault, and when he succeeded in
catching water in his hands he dashed it on and vigorously
rubbed it over his dirty face. After repeating the operation
about a dozen times, receiving meanwhile several falls and
wettings, he appeared satisfied, put on his coat and marched
away homewards with a composed air.

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