Gilbert White
Journals of Gilbert White. Edited by Walter Johnson. (Rout. ledge. 218. ) Jr is hard to believe, in a book-making age among a people possessed by a passion for natural history, that the diaries of Gilbert White have lain all these years in a museum unread, unsung. He was among the most English of Englislunen, the father of a cult that spreads round the world. Few quotations have so pleased the reviewer as a paragraph from a German historian introduced to him years ago by that fine German scholar, Mr. J. L. Garvin : "The Compleat Angler and the Natural History of Selborne are types of literature peculiar to this country. In these classical productions we are introduced into the nursery of English thought, poetry—nay, science itself," and he further com- mends White as local historian. In this brief biography and almost perfectly edited diary we get, if not a new, a delightfully-emphasized White and emphasized Selborne. Who wishes to know England and the English cannot omit this record. One hopes that these diaries (hitherto unpub- lished save for partial and mauled excerpts) will have a greater vogue than fell to the charming volume of the Rev. J. Mulso's correspondence, whose affectionate though rather unmanly letters tell us much of his friend White, urge him to authorship, prophesy his fame, and leave a delightful sense of friendship. White was as English as the King of Yvetot was French. Both traversed their peculiar realms on humble mounts, and both slept happily without thought of the fame that was to come to them !
One laughed at Mulso. When White says very much the same thing—about his cucumbers, or tortoise, or the weather—one laughs with him. Selborne enfolds us, and a hundred and fifty years become as yesterday. This book tells us more than we knew before of White's life outside his last parish, of his travels about England, of his proctorship at Oxford, and of his acquaintance ; but the diary is almost pure Selborne, a Hampshire village that happens to be an epitome of Southern England in its geology, its scenery, its natural history, and its life. Any diary is apt to be rather dry, staccato, parochial, petty and difficult to read. White's is not wholly exempt from the handicaps of the form ; but it triumphs over them beyond belief. He was presented with a special book with ruled and contracted spaces for different sorts of entry, and began in his very slow, careful and scholarly way and neat handwriting to follow the guiding lines ; but happily his zest soon began to overflow the banks, in bulk as in spirit. His friends, the Marshams, became better and more famous phenOlogists in the stricter sense of the term, but White retained his character as High Priest of a holy of holies in the deep, deep country. It is the crime of the previously-published extracts that they seem to reduce White to a mere recorder who notes exact dates for a cold and specific scientific purpose. He was, of course, essentially scientific, and therefore accurate. Even in his most widely advertised blunder—that swallows hibernated— he began in the end to disprove his own theory. It was almost a shock in an early page of this diary to discover that he did not distinguish the tree;pipit-:--with its peculiar and peculiarly charming pattern of song and flight—from a the meadow-pipit. Other examples of the sort are scarcely to be found. In general he was making daily discoveries and correcting inaccuracies. His range of close personal observa-
tion compares with Fabre's observation of insects. But Fabre was consciously literary, as White never was. His gift was utter pleasure in getting knowledge of what he saw about him. In the correspondence with Pennant it is clear
that Pennant has ulterior motives—foenum babel in cornu- White only wanted to know for the mere pleasure of the knowledge of what he loved. Like the larks he loved, he was "True to the kindred points of heaven and home."
His very cucumber frames were roofed by heaven, his pipits sang at heaven's gate, the hangar was "the gold bar of
heaven," and the geology of the parish made of universal stuff. A sense of serenity comes over us still as we read, and we fall in love with his unhurried happiness. No detail appears to be petty. We grow curiously interested in the
deliberate movements of Timothy, the tortoise, a character comparable with the Fat Boy in Pickwick. On October 13th, 1780, he "scarcely moves," and again on November 3rd, "scarce moves" in his retreat "under a hen coop near the fruit wall." We are interested but not Surprised to read on November 9th : "Timothy does not stir," and look forward with deep interest to his awaking in the next spring. How compact of drama, therefore, is the entry of April 2nd, 1781: "Tortoise out. Timothy weighs 6 lb. 8f oz. The beginning of May last he weighed only 6 lb. 4 oz." It prepares US for the final triumph :
" Ap. 3. Timothy eats heartily. The wryneck appears and pipes. Bombylius medius still : bobs his tail in flight against the grass, as if in the act of laying eggs."
There are plenty of records of historical interest. On February 13th he saw a bustard—long since extinct—on Salisbury Plain, and wild geese consumed the farmers' wheat. But it is not such facts—it is White himself- and Selborne- that really delight us. His pleasure sings in his phrases, through the don, the parson, the precisian and the diary form, conquering them all :
"May 19. Blackcap sings sweetly, but rather inwardly- It is a songster of the first rate. Its notes are deep and sweet. -'Called in Norfolk the mock nightingale."
That " inwardly " is on a level with Wordsworth's "inward eye," which White possessed, but not consciously like Words-
worth. He possessed the "deep power of joy" without knowing it. He was, in short, minus a gift for passion, what Wordsworth wanted to be. So it comes about that
even the cucumbers, to which his very last entries (in June, 1,793) refer, take colouring from the quiet eye of the little parson who " cut " them and set down the tale in his diary.
He did not moralize or poetize or compose or play the man of science, but did everything for its own sake so uncon- sciously as scarcely to be aware of his own gusto. The diary helps us to feel all this with accented force—perhaps because it has fewer gaps than the letters and contains much more
of White as a gardener. He is even more marvellously at home there than on the hangar. He looked on his garden as he died ; and even that last transference seems a quiet gradation. One almost expects to turn the page and find in the coming spring a note of re-emergence as in the case of Timothy : "Entered Paradise."
Previous page
