Part 6

“League of Nations,” a simple man had said to me. I wondered if the hopes of Richard Jefferies will ever be fulfilled. Are not the eave-swallows wiser than us? Sometimes I think so.

SPORTSMEN OF THE RUBBISH-HEAPS

An old, faded notice board, bearing the legend that trespassers will be prosecuted, leans at a low angle in the hedge; newer and larger boards announce that the land is “admirable for building purposes” and for sale. A gate guards a gap in the hedge, over which bold boys swarm on Saturdays and Sundays when no policeman is in sight.

This preserve, as the crow flies, is about eight miles from London Bridge in a south-easterly direction. It is known to dustmen, who dump their loads upon its once-green fields, and it is also known to certain cockney sportsmen.

Trams and omnibuses pass near its violated woodlands (soon to fall), and yet its possibilities are immense. One Sunday after the war I walked there. Four shooting parties, complete with dogs, were out after its game. Now, it is not lawful to pursue game on Sundays; nor is it lawful to carry a gun without a licence. But the sportsmen do not mind that. Their guns have sawn-off barrels, and take apart in less than ten seconds. An inside pocket conceals both. As for their dogs--well, although I am a dog-lover and like rough shooting, I would not care to be seen in my own village with such dogs. Every man I met would grin and wink--long, swift dogs they are, a mixture of greyhound and bulldog, chiefly, with various other strains, in order to make them that rare breed--the true lurcher. They never bark. They look slyly at you. Often they grin in dog-fashion, suspiciously, almost a leer.

The sportsmen shoot anything. The last hare has been gone for years, even a rabbit is an unusual sight, almost as rare as a partridge. Generations ago gravel was taken from this estate, leaving shallow pits that in winter are filled with water. Snipe haunt the pools even now, but they fly up so quickly and then zigzag that it is impossible to hit them.

When a shot is fired guns are hidden, and heads look round for policemen. Sparrows are common game, thrushes and blackbirds are considered the equivalent of pheasants, and the large missel-thrush causes as much excitement and admiration as a first woodcock. A pigeon is as rare as a golden plover, and talked of for weeks.

Sport is not confined to turning-up birds and snap-shooting. The superior ones carry guns; the lowlier fraternity hunt the humble rat, who loves the rubbish-heaps. Their holes are everywhere, by broken umbrellas, decrepit straw hats, burst boots, papers, straw, tins, novels, bottles, and old torn shirts. Little terriers quiver with excitement as their masters from Deptford and Shoreditch dig with the crowbars--great excitement this.

Of course the boys must have their shooting parties. Some of them are very skilful with the catapult, and when bored with life they are quite equal to shooting at their elders. Others frequent the pools, wading after efts and sticklebacks. Once I saw a systematic dragging of the ponds with the aid of an old army blanket.

At another end of the preserve bird-catchers are busy with clap-nets and call-birds. Perhaps, if you go near, surly looks will greet you, and you may hear the sound of frail wings ceaselessly fluttering against the bars of tragically overcrowded and small cages. Sometimes goldfinches flit over, their sweet sipping notes rising and falling as they pass to the thistle-heads of last autumn; and wistfully comes the answer from the cages as beaks covered with blood are thrust again and again through the bars.

I knew this place years ago, when it was the country. The land is for sale; they are going to build; and the house-squares of civilisation will be better than the green fields so foully ravaged. But it is nothing to do with me. The happy, happy days of boyhood are gone for ever, with their hopes and their friendships: I shall never go there again, nor shall I hear the wood-larks singing there on a morning of May, nor watch the kingfisher as he draws a sapphire line to the pit where every spring we found his nest. All these are dead: let the houses and the streets obliterate the place for ever.

RUNAWAYS

Many pet birds escape from captivity every year, and their distressed owners wonder how they fare. For it is generally understood that the wild creatures resent one who has had long association with man, and usually do their best to kill it. But this, I think, is merely a fiction. It is said that should a canary join a flock of goldfinches, they will taboo it, and even fall upon it and eventually kill it with their beaks. Cases that I have known prove exactly the reverse. I know that a canary among sparrows meets with kindly treatment, perhaps because its appearance is so much more striking than their own dull plumage that like primitive savages seeing a white man for the first time, they are inclined to fall down and worship it.

In Hyde Park one summer I saw a little green love-bird feeding on seeds of the grass. Now lovebirds are often born in captivity, and their wings are feeble. But in this case the bird had the full power of its wings, and when a boy tried to capture it, it flew away with the speed and agility of a mothflitsie, or jack-snipe.

Even such a bird as the parrot can support itself. There is a rookery in the Lewisham Infirmary Gardens, and for some years past a gray and red African parrot has been flying about with rooks, who seem to welcome its presence.

In flight it resembles a pigeon and a hawk, and its presence among them is all the more mystifying, because the antipathy of rooks to a hawk is well known; they mob one and drive it away whenever seen. The Lewisham parrot escaped before the war, and survived many winters, for I saw it feeding with them in the Recreation Grounds during 1919.

Its curved beak prevents it from digging in the ground, and in the spring and summer seasons there are few seeds for it to feed on, especially in a crowded suburb like Lewisham. I have watched to see if the rooks feed it, but have never been able to discover.

It would be interesting to know how the spirit of fraternity is born between birds of such widely divergent characteristics. The parrot, however, cannot change its plumage, although it squawks like a young rook and caws like an old one. This may be the explanation of the phenomenon--it can speak the language like a native!

LONDON CHILDREN AND WILD FLOWERS

(To W. de la M.)

The sphere-blooms of the dandelion have left their anchorage and are floating away in the warm wind. That same wind bears with it a vague scent, for the wild flowers are open to the sun, while the white buds of the may-tree and the lilac-blossom of the keeper’s cottage yonder have come before their time. The yellow celandine petals have gone from the meadow, already their little heart-shaped leaves are tinged at the edge with the rust of decay; the brighter buttercups drink deeply of the poured sun-wine, and the red sorrel and pale cuckoo flowers move as the wind comes more strongly. No form of flower life remains for long. When I came here but a few weeks since the celandine was everywhere; a brave flower, for it rises so early, and is one of the first signs of life stirring again in the cold earth. Then the wood-anemones shone like stars among the brown leaves under the hazel wands and ashpoles of the covert, and on the raised bank near the vermin tree where the marauder stoats and pirate crows hang, the sweet violets drooped their heads, shy in their loveliness. I passed by that bank to-day, but the sweet violets have gone, even as the wood-anemones are withering. Nothing remains for long. But the first swift screams high in the azure, his black curved wings bearing him in fast circles, less graceful than the swallow, who floats on the bosom of the wind, then falls and turns sharply rather than sweeps through the air with the effortless thrusts of the swift. So in the place of the violet’s scent I have the scream of the swift, and the cuckoo calls above the dying wind-flowers.

I leant against a wooden fence, placed to keep the cattle in the meadow from straying into the covert behind, and to guard them from the brook that ran at the edge of the hazels. High nettles hid the lower rails of the fence, growing straight and green, and giving off a heavy odour from their flowers. From afar a cuckoo was calling, but near me the only sounds were the burring of the dusky humble bees at the nettle flowers, and the soft voice of the brook. A great cloud shadow came rushing over the meadow, the wind lost its warmth, and a few drops pattered on the hawthorn. Immediately a blackbird sang on the topmost bough of an oak tree in the wood, and a wren trilled from some hidden bush. Gently the rain fell, plashing on the veined leaves of the hazels; a yellow-green wave of light descended the distant hills and followed the black shadow over cornfield, meadow, and webbed pattern of hop field, washing the red oast-houses with instant colour. The swift sunlight swept down to the meadow, the shadow passed onwards, and again the sun gave its vitalising rays to the grass and the wild flowers.

The blackbird left the oak tree and dropped down to continue his search among the moist leaf-mould; the wren was silent. Just behind, and dividing the field from the pheasant wood, the brook, its waters swelling with light, brimmed smoothly round a curve. A sweet little whispering call, oft repeated and so gentle that it might have been the voice of the brook, came from the ashpoles beyond. A long-tailed tit was gathering the down from the hazel catkins, calling, or rather murmuring, in shy ecstatic love to her mate as she did so. The sunlight--rendered whiter and purer by the wind from the far hills--streamed down through the nut trees and the opening buds of ash; as the leaves rustled they caught the sunbeams, and were turned a lucent green. Mingling with the tender notes of my little bottle-bird gathering her material was the voice of the brook, almost inaudible, but lifting the heart with sudden joy for its poem.

I watched the two birds, so happy with each other, and heedless of anything but the immediate joyful moment, carry the down to a quick-set hedge, snowy with blossom, dividing the meadow from the wheatfield. They disappeared for a moment among its greeneries and spiky thorns, and then flew back to the covert, still murmuring to each other in their wheezy, subdued tones. In the hedge the house was nearly completed, and had been fashioned with wondrous skill. Outside the birds had woven gray lichen from the apple trees with the green moss found under the oaks, and gradually a long, bottle-shaped nest had grown among the thorns. Several hundreds of feathers had been borne from the farmyard--distant over a mile--each journey made with the feeble jerky flight. Think of the infinite labour and searching before the cradle is ready for the dozen minute eggs that will nestle in its soft cup! The little chap and his adoring wife were not alarmed at my presence: I stood within two yards of their nest, but they flew into the hedge and out again without fear or distress.

A wild bee hummed among the nettles, content and self-sufficient; a crow slanted overhead, veering as he saw me, for crows and gamekeepers hate each other equally; a dead leaf fluttered into the water and was carried in a foam-capped whirlpool under the roots of the hawthorn. Three willow-wrens came to the tree, and sought the insects that walked over the broad platform of the leaves; one flew to the surface of the brook and seized a horse-fly struggling in the water. The stream sang and sang, carrying the leaf that had left the tree for ever; the sunlight flashed a burnished ripple, was gone again, and the bees brushed against the nettles, wondering if they should stay there or gather their harvest from the bluebells, lit by the shuffling shadow mazes, whose honey lay ready for loading. All the morning the bells on the green towers of stalk had been pealing their chimes of fragrance to the bees; the busy harvesters went heavily past, drawing their song-inspiration from the infinite flame of the sun, passing from bell to bell with an eagerness that must cause the wild hyacinths to rejoice--for would they not shortly vanish like the celandines and the wind-flowers? Nothing remains for long. A brief life, and they have gone whither all things that draw upon the earth-energy must go. Though the blackbird sing so leisurely, the flowers stand gently timorous in their fragility, the veined leaf stain itself with the sunbeams, and I am exalted in the “light and fire of summer,” yet for all there is only so little of time. Therefore, it seemed to me, by the brimming water, so pitiable that millions were confined in factory and office, breathing the air fouled by exhaust of petrol engine and chimney, while the brook rippled so sweetly, and the living air formed a passionate stream with the energy of the sunbeams.

Dreaming by the brook, I thought of other woods nearer London, which are so dear because of old association with the friend of my boyhood. There still the nightingale returns, the jay lurks, and the mysterious nightjar wheels when the chafer-beetles flit against the oak leaves at twilight. And yet, less than half a mile away, is a busy tram terminus. The wild things in freedom love their haunts and are not easily driven away, but in the higher wood--beautiful in spring with apple blossom, uncurling brakefern, silver birch and sheen of bluebell--no birds sang as alone I walked among its violated sanctities. It was the hour of solitude, when the sun almost was quenched and the moon had not yet come above the dim hills. The paths were beaten into mire by the passing and re-passing of a thousand feet, acres of bluebells had been uprooted and taken away, many trampled and crushed, or gathered and cast carelessly on the paths. The apple blossom was stripped from the trees. In his instinctive effort to possess beauty, man invariably destroys it--for is not all beauty ever elusive? It is the subconscious, or deeper than subconscious, realisation of this elusiveness of beauty that causes the sadness of its contemplation--the blossoms were gone, a whole spring-life of them, carried away by the people who had come from Walworth, Shoreditch, and Woolwich. Branches of those graceful trees, the silver birches, had been torn and wrenched off; not content with decimating the flowers, grasping hands had broken the smaller trees. A week ago, before the fatal beauty of the apple bloom had drawn the hordes from their strongholds, I found dozens of thrushes’ and blackbirds’ nests--some with eggs, others with fledgelings--all these disappeared on that Sunday. No beauty remains inviolate for long.

I walked slowly to the tram terminus, where the crowded cars waited to bear the many people back to London, thinking that soon the woods would be down, and houses with their inevitable laurel and rhododendron bushes crowd together in regular patches; the sooner, perhaps, the better. Memory of former days was only too poignantly present.

In the cars sat the women and the men, each one clasping a flower or a fragment of blossom--of hawthorn, apple, or chestnut tree; the little children wriggled and chattered, holding in their arms great bunches of bluebells with their sappy stalks gleaming white where the sun had not stained them; boys with purple-dusty grass bennets and girls with lilac-coloured cuckoo flowers and drooping buttercups. A phantom carillon still chimed from the wild hyacinths, though their towers were fallen and the belfries wrecked. I looked at the transfigured faces of the children--old or young, they were all children--who breathed in the smoke and worked in the shadow, and saw that the beauty of the wild flowers had passed into their eyes; although the woods were ravaged, the spoiling and pillaging had not been in vain. For two or three days wilting flowers and stolen blossom would remind them of the sunlight and the fresh air, of the cloud shadow that swept up and the warmth that followed when the beams of light lacquered the branches of the trees.