RICHARD JEFFERIES AND EXMOOR
Richard Jefferies was born in 1848 in the hamlet oft Coate near Swindon. The son of a farmer, he displayed a love of the countryside fropm an early age. He was the second of five children and the household was described in his book Amaryllis at the Fair, published in 1887. The farm was too small to support the family and was eventually sold.
Richard attended school at Swindon from the age of nine. He was an avid reader and borrowed many kinds of books, having the use of the library of William Morris, a local man. He also enjoyed playing with friends at nearby Coate Reservior. This became the origin of his boy's adventure novel Bevis, published in 1882.
He became a journalist, with his first job as a reporter on the North Wilts Herald in Swindon. This allowed him to learn the trade but the income was meagre and he supplemented this by writing freelance pieces on local and natural history. This prompted him to explore the countryside as far as he could wander. He reported in a clear an unsentimental style that was, however, poetic and became well known for his works of rural record. Many short articles and letters were complied into volumes such as Hodge and his Masters and Round About a Great Estate.
In 1867 Richard fell ill with a fever and returned to Coate to recover slowly. During this time he courted Jessie Baden, who lived on a neighbouring farm, and eventually married her. In 1870 he had a trip to Brussels and by 1972 he was back in the full flood of writing. Over the next decade he had five novels published. Full of cliches and sentimental situations, his novels were not considered to be great works. They were followed by two very different works: The Story of my Heart - My Autobiography (1883) and After London or Wild England (1885). The former was a work of his personal philosophy and the latter a figment of imagination of what might have happened if London was drowned in a great flood and the landscape and population reverted to nature.
Richard visited Exmoor in 1882, staying with his artist friend John William North. What prompted him to do so is unclear. Perhaps it was a short break to recover from illness. He was in pain throughout most of the 1880s and had four operations in one year for a fistula (ulcer). North lived on the northern edge of the Brendon Hills, moving between Bilbrook, Withycombe and Leighland. He later helped raise funds to support Richard's impoverished widow. The visit prompted Richard to write the book Red Deer, published in 1884. He said of it:
"It is a minute account of the natural history of the wild deer of Exmoor and of the mode of hunting them. I went all over the area a short while since, first in order to see the deer for myself; and in addition I had the advantage of getting full information from the huntsman himself and from others who have watched the deer for twenty years past. The chase of the wild stag is a bit out of the life of the fifteenth century brought down to our own time."
The huntsman referred to was Arthur Heal of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds and his son, Fred. Arthur lived at North Ley and Fred had several farms around Exford. The book was a simple matter of Richard reporting what they told him and describing what he saw during walks over the moor during a hot June. Despite being a keen walker, his lack of fitness and the heat made his exploration a struggle:
"Dunkery itself is nothing more than an undulation, scarcely to be separated at some points of view from the common line of the ridge. These hills seem only a mile or two away and within half-an-hour's walk. But on going towards them, the table-land suddenly sinks in a deep combe, when it is apparent that the moor which looked so level is really the top of a hill. This combe has to be descended, and ascended, and the sides are high and steep. Presently another combe intervenes, and after five miles' walking very little progress has been made. At last the slope of the hill is reached, and has now expanded into a mountainous ascent, not to be overcome without much labour and more time. The country is, in fact, very deceptive, much wider, and more difficult than it looks."
Richard died at the age of 38 in 1887 after years of illness diagnosed as 'chronic fibroid phthisis'. He rejected an offer of a grant to pay for medicine and a trip abroad. In all he had published 22 books.