Things near & far

in the heart of the fields, remote even from the by-ways—and this one house must have fallen into ruin eighty or a hundred years ago. From what remained one judged that it had been the petit manoir of some dead and forgotten race of little squires; it was of grey stone, of fifteenth-century workmanship, and the corbels supporting the chimney were still sound and clean cut. All about the old broken house were the ruins of the garden, apple trees and plum trees run wild, hedges that had become brakes, a confusion of degenerate flowers; and by the tumbledown stile that led to this deserted place I would linger for an hour or more, wondering and dreaming and setting my heart on the hopeless endeavour of letters. Weather made no difference to my goings; a heavy greatcoat, boots with soles an inch thick, and leather gaiters up to the knee, made a wild wet winter’s day a thing to be defied and enjoyed; and indeed I loved to get abroad on such days and see all the wells of the hills overflowing and rushing down to swell the Soar or the Canthwr, red and foaming, and making whirlpools of barmy froth as they fell into the brooks. And then, when the rain changed to snow, what a delight to stand on some high, lonely place and look out on the wide, white land, and on the hills where the dark pines stood in a ring about some ancient farm: to see the wonder of the icy sunlight, of the violet winter sky. These were my great adventures, and I know not whether in reality there are any greater, since it is a great thing to stand on the very verges of an unknown world. So the winter of ’84–85 went on and I dreamed and wondered and did nothing, though I was nearing the age at which many a young man has produced his first novel with success and acclaim. I never could do these things, and still I cannot do them. I knew that I had no business to be loafing and mooning about the rectory, a burden on my poor father—the “John” of that happy return of the ’fifties had by this time experienced sorrows and pains and miseries of all sorts. My mother had been a hopeless invalid for fifteen years, my father’s health had failed and…