Jefferies was a prolific author and essayist during the Victorian era, one who has been described as having “..wonderful eyes. He saw what other men did not see, or were too preoccupied by the problems of earning a living, to bother about.”

While searching antiquarian bookstores in Hay on Wye, I happened across a compendium of his writings assembled a few decades ago by a scholar and an artist, and bought it for the princely sum of six quid. In these essays, he clearly demonstrates his remarkable ability to see things from the perspective of a wide cross section of people – naturalist, farmer, farm labourer, sportsman….

The price reflects the fact that he is virtually unknown nowadays, a great pity, since what he had to say back then is
perhaps even more relevant today. For example, writing on the slaughter of small birds because ‘they eat our wheat’, he remarked in his essay The Utility of Birds:

“These birds as a matter of fact eat grain in much the same way as at a good dinner of several courses we ourselves do not disdain a morsel of bread….A pair of sparrows feeding their young were once carefully watched, and from a few gooseberry bushes close to the window in about an hour they took over one hundred caterpillars. These represent the meat part of the food of the family; it is not unreasonable to suppose that after such a banquet of juicy caterpillars they wanted a few grains of wheat i.e. bread.”

Of the essays that I have read thus far, Jefferies often returns to this theme. Living with nature means that we give a little and receive a lot. Persecute nature and we both suffer.

Sounds a bit like regenerative farming, doesn’t it?

Jefferies, Richard: Through the Eyes of the Beholder – An illustrated Anthology (Ed. C.L. McKelvie, with illustrations by E. Hundson). Ashford Press, London 1987. 208 pp. ISBN 1-85253-037-5.

– Article by Greg Holland, illustration from the book.