Richard Jefferies Society : Election to the Executive Council

After what I think is about seven or 8 years it was wonderful to be back at the Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate, on the outskirts of Swindon, Wiltshire. Though this time in a different capacity to my former visits.

Marble bust of Jefferies recently arrived at the Museum on long loan from The Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate. Bust created in 1904 in marble by W.J.S Webber.  

Around a decade ago I found myself spending a lot of time at the Richard Jefferies Museum. Then I was a Trustee of the Museum Trust. The Museum is housed within the birthplace of the influential natural history writer Richard Jefferies. At the time of his birth on the 6th of November 1848, his parents had the farm here, though in reality as the farm was less than 40 acres this was a large smallholding and by all accounts not that successful. However this farm, Coate Water which the land backed on to and the surrounding Wiltshire countryside had a profound influence on the young Jefferies and cemented his pragmatic view of natural history observation at a time of great change. In many ways his writing is as relevant, if not more, in 2023 than it was 150 years ago.

My visit was not to be involved with the Museum, but as a potential member of the Richard Jefferies Society Executive Council. In late January of this year I received an email out of the blue, within which was a question "Would I consider being nominated and proposed as a member of the Executive Council". 

At the Executive Council Meeting of the Richard Jefferies Society a week or so before, my name had been suggested as one who may be willing to replace one of the vacancies now created given a couple of members of the Council planned to step down later in the year. Initially, though honoured and thrilled, I hesitated to accept, for a short while at least. I'm not a scholar of Jefferies work. I've read many of his essays and books but would consider myself a reader rather than a knowledgeable devotee of his work. He is however a massive influencer for anyone who writes about English natural history, not just back then but today. Therefore after a quiet and brief discussion in my head, I replied that I'd be delighted and honoured.

Which is how (and why) I found myself walking through those familiar yet oddly different Museum grounds on a glorious sunny spring day on April 29th to attend the Annual General Meeting. I entered as a member of the Society. I left a few hours later as an Executive Council member.

Sometimes I worry that Richard Jefferies is encumbered with a noun ascribed to him every time he is written about. Victorian nature writer Richard Jefferies.  

Certainly he was a Victorian,  his short life ended before his fortieth year in 1887. However his writing has a timeless sense of place for those of us today reading his canon of essays, books, journalism and an astonishing Utopian novel about London after a natural disaster renders it unliveable. His influence continues and crosses genre, art, music and a mindfulness psyche of what it means to be in an English countryside. Edward Thomas, a huge admirer of Jefferies, wrote a perfect biography of him. The author W.H. Hudson who knew Jefferies work, so admired him and wanted to be buried next to him (some sources say with him). Modern day writers like Henry Williamson, John Fowles and Robert Macfarlane all quote Jefferies influence. Yet for the wider public he is somewhat unknown.

His thoughts in Victorian times really do resonate in the 21st Century, but for different reasons. Unlike writers such as Thomas Hardy or W.H. Hudson who looked backwards at a vanishing way of life in their writing, Jefferies was a realist, an acute observer, a pragmatist but not one who versed himself in some bucolic idyll. While he discussed the changes in the customs, ways and fashions of his nineteenth century countryside, and as a journalist in his early career wrote about the need to provide agricultural labourers with a better standard of living, he also embraced the new. He wrote about the railways then sweeping across the landscape and the benefits they should bring, neatly exemplified at the Museum which now has its own 'HALT' on the recently constructed Coate Park miniature railway at the boundary of what was once the Jefferies farm. Jefferies would I'm sure see the visitors who alight here to enter the museum as a positive reflection in the modern world.

I however came by car, and after my 65 mile journey upon entering the Museum, the first person I saw was John Price, the erstwhile chair of the Society. It was a lovely reacquaintance with an old friend. Immediately I felt at home. During a break in the proceedings later in the day John showed me his latest personal acquisition, a 1st Edition book of Jefferies Red Deer published in 1884, inside of which was written a short but loving inscription to E Jefferies, (Richard Jefferies mother), from the most loving author. I held that book, a tangible handing down through the eons of time. Jefferies, then living in Surbiton will have handled that book while writing the inscription to his beloved mother.  Now 175 years after his birth and with thanks to John, I too handled this book, albeit quite carefully it has to be said.

Although we were meeting at the Museum, which provided light refreshments, the Museum is run by the Museum Trust. The Richard Jefferies Society, whose membership is global, has a small influence in the Museum but is separate to it, and having been formed in 1950 the Society's main remit is, to quote from its literature  

" To promote interest in, and respect for the life and works of Richard Jefferies."

The Society does this through individual membership, meetings, regular Society newsletters and a journal, social media, research and maintains a book collection of Jefferies' output and more recent works on the author. The Society also does what it can to maintain physical links to Jefferies such as maintaining his grave in Broadwater and Worthing Cemetery in Worthing, and his memorial plaque in Salisbury Cathedral. All for an individual membership cost of £12 a year, which I feel is a bargain. 

And of course the Society hosts an Annual General Meeting for its members, the very reason I was there siting amongst fellow members watching a large screen. I sat there watching the faces on the screen again thinking what would Jefferies make of these Zoom members streaming into his childhood home via Wi-Fi, modern technology connecting a global audience to the home of a writer who spread his thoughts using the works of his pen. One of the ladies there was Jefferies great, great, great, granddaughter (I think I have the number of greats correct) who happily sacrificed her breakfast in California to take part.

In due course the AGM got onto electing new members to the Executive Council and after a show of hands, thankfully unanimous, I was voted in for a three year term. What I hadn't expected was after the vote Colin the vice-chair turned to me and said "Andrew, would you like to say a few words to introduce yourself". Caught off guard I rambled on incoherently for what seemed hours, but in reality was less than a minute, and having completed my rambling discourse a lovely chap called Roy sitting next to me whispered, "well done and you're very welcome". I must have made some sense then, that's a first.

With the AGM concluded members had time to fill before the afternoon lecture. Time for lunch. I popped out into the garden to look at the mulberry tree Jefferies used to sit under and think. It looked a little older than I remember, but, like the Red Deer book earlier, a tangible link back to the author. Those of us having lunch outside had a discussion about this theme of tangibility over our home provisioned picnic fare. It went along the lines of - with the advancement of on-line and digital storage, in 150 years time, what will people interested in history actually have to physically connect with? Will emails, e-books and documents be available, be readable or will the technology of today be as obsolete as wig powder and quill pens of the past.  It is an interesting topic for discussion.

Ahead of the afternoon lecture; A Sweet View : The Making of the English Idyll, given by its author  Malcolm Andrews via Zoom, I explored the grounds a little more. On one of my last visits to the Museum, we trustees were involved in a discussion about what to do with the farmyard. There are larger plans which one day I'm sure will be fulfilled, in the meantime the area provides fresh food for the Museum café. It still feels rural and unspoilt from this direction, in reality however Swindon has now all but encircled the farm. Sprawling residential areas built in the last few years now cover the fields Jefferies once walked over towards Liddington Hill, one of his favourite walks.  

While I personally find it sad that the uninterrupted view from the farm over the fields to Liddington has gone, a view I remember well myself, maybe given Jefferies himself had a pragmatic approach to change, it may be fitting that progress is not arrested just because of one man's legacy, a man who himself decamped to live near London to earn a better living. Once he had moved away he was only ever to return to Wiltshire three times before his death, yet while away from the land he loved, he wrote some of his best works.

And for me Jefferies legacy is what inspired me to accept the invitation and why I felt deeply honoured to be asked to be on the Executive Council of the Society. At the close of the afternoon lecture a question and answer discussion took place. One member piped up with this reminder of how important Jefferies is to nature writing and our views on the natural world. He continued by noting that Rachel Carson who in 1962 wrote her seminal conservation work Silent Spring, herself said she was mostly influenced in her thinking by two colossus of natural history writers. W.H. Hudson, and yes, a Wiltshire lad who wrote some of the most influential natural history books ever, Richard Jefferies. 

A fitting end to my first 24 hours on the Executive Council as I begin to do my best, and to try and promote the life and works of Richard Jefferies.

Links : 

Richard Jefferies Society :  https://www.richardjefferiessociety.org

Andrews, Malcolm A Sweet View :  The Making of the English Idyll (2021). 

Richard Jefferies Museum :  https://www.richardjefferies.org/

Thomas, Edward, Richard Jefferies:  His Life and Work (London: Hutchinson, 1909).

List of Jefferies works (non exhaustive list of books published in his lifetime - from Wikipedia) : 

The Scarlet Shawl (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874)

Restless Human Hearts (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1875)

World's End (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1877)

The Gamekeeper at Home (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1878) 

Wild Life in a Southern County (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1879)

The Amateur Poacher (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1879) 

Greene Ferne Farm (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1880)

Hodge and His Masters (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1880)

Round About a Great Estate (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1880)

Wood Magic (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., 1881)

Bevis: the Story of a Boy (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1882)

Nature Near London (London: Chatto & Windus, 1883)

The Story of My Heart: An Autobiography (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1883)

Red Deer (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1884)

The Life of the Fields (London: Chatto & Windus, 1884)

The Dewy Morn (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1884)

After London; Or, Wild England (London: Cassell & Company, Ltd., 1885)

The Open Air (London: Chatto & Windus, 1885)

Amaryllis at the Fair (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1887)