The Vogue of Richard Jefferies

Extract

No one, so far as I know, has attempted to analyze the significant disagreement between the perfervid admirers of Richard Jefferies and those who read his books with mild respect. Henley's familiar phrase, “a reporter of genius,” which from the point of view of those outside the cult seems more than just, falls far short of satisfying those within the cult. They prefer the unmixed adulation implied in the very title of the biography by Walter Besant, The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies. They prefer the judgment of Mr. Henry Salt, who centres his praise, not on The Gamekeeper at Home, but on The Story of My Heart, which future ages are to read with “tears of pity and admiration.” They prefer the poetically phrased criticism of his latest disciple and biographer, Mr. Edward Thomas, who tells us that the mystical Jefferies “fought in the dim, far-off, wavering van, of which we have yet no sure tidings.”