Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Certain Personal Matters - The Amateur Nature-Lover

Transcript

Certain Personal Matters - The Amateur Nature-Lover · The H. G. Wells Library

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty six of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells, Chapter thirty six.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: The amateur nature Lover. It is possible that an education
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: entirely urban is not the best conceivable preparation for descriptive
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: articles upon the country. On the other hand, your professional
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: nature lover is sometimes a little over familiar with his subject.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: He knows the names of all the things, and he
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: does not spare you. Besides, he is subtle. The prominent
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: features are too familiar to him, and he goes into details.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: What respectable townsmen, for instance, knows what scabiosa is. It
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: sounds very unpleasant. Then the professional nature lover assumes that
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: you know trees. No Englishman can tell any tree from
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: any other tree, except a very palpable oak or poplar.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: So that we may, at least, as an experiment, allow
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a good Londoner to take his unsophisticated eyes out into
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the sweet country for once and try his skill at
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: nature loving. Though his botany has been learned over the counter,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: of flower shops and his zoology on Saturday afternoons, when
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: they have the band in the gardens. He makes his
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: way then over by Epsom Downs towards Sutton, trying to
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: assimilate his mood to the proper flavor of appreciation as
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: he goes, and with a little notebook in the palm
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: of his hand to assist an ill trained memory. And
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the burthen of his song is, of course the autumn tints.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: The masses of trees towards Epsom and Eywell, with the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: red houses and Elizabethan facades peeping through their interstices, contain
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: it would seem every conceivable color except perhaps sky blue.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: There are brilliant yellow trees, and a kind of tree
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: of the most amazing gamboge green, almost the green of
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: spring come back, and tan colored trees, deep brown, red
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: and deep crimson trees. Here and there the wind has
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: left its mark, and the gray brown branches and the
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: purple tracery of twigs with a suggestion of infinite depth
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: behind show through the rents. In the leafy covering. There
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: are deep green trees. The amateur nature lover fancies they
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: may be used with their dense, warm foliage arranged in
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: horizontal masses, like the clouds low down in a sunset,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: and certain other evergreens, one particularly with a bluish green
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: covering of upstanding needles, are intensely conspicuous among the flame
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: tints around on a distant church tower and nearer disputing
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the possession of a gabled red house with a glowing
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: creeper is some ivy. And never is the perennial green
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: of Ivy so delightful as it is now, when all
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: else is alight with the somber fire of the sunset
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of the year. The amateur nature lover proceeds over the down,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: appreciating all this as hard as he can appreciate, and
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: anon gazing up at the gray and white cloud shapes
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: melting slowly from this form to that, and showing lakes
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: and wide expanses and serene distances of blue between their gaps.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: And then he looks around him for a zoological item. Underfoot,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the grass of the down is recovering from the summer
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: drought and growing soft and green again, and plentiful little
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: flattened snail shells lie about, and here and there a
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: late hairbell still nods in the breeze. Yonder bolts a rabbit,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and then something whizzes by the amateur nature lover's ear.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: They shoot here somewhere, he remembers, suddenly, and then, looking
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: round in a palpitating state, is reassured by the spectacle
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: of a lone gulfer looming over the brow of the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: down and gesticulating black and weird against the sky. The Londoners,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: with an abrupt affectation of nonchalance, flings himself flat upon
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: his back, and so remains comparatively safe until the gulfer
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: has passed. These golfers are strange creatures, rabbit colored, except
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: that many are bright red about the middle. And they repel,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: and yet are ever attracted by a devil in the
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: shape of a little white ball, which leads them on
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: through toothed briars, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns, cursing
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: the thing, weeping even and anon laughing at their own
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: foolish rambling, muttering, heating no one to the right or
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: left of their career, demented creatures, as though these balls
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: were their souls, that they ever sought to lose, and
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: ever repented losing, and silent, ever at the heel of
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: each is a familiar spirit, an eerie human hedgehog, all
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: set about with walking sticks, a thing like a cylinder umbrella,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: stand with a hat and boots, and a certain suggestion
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: of a leg. And so they pass and are gone. Rising,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the amateur nature lover finds he has been reclining on
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: a puffball. These puffballs are certainly the most remarkable example
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: of adaptation to circumstances known to English botanists. They grow
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: abundantly on golf grounds and are exactly like golf balls
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: in external appearance. They are, however, pharisees and white headed sepulchers,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and within they are full of a soft mess of
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: a most unpleasant appearance. The amateur nature lover has some
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: on him now which stuff contains the spores. It is
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: a case of what naturalists call mimicry, one of nature's
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: countless adaptations. The golf player smites these things with force,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: covering himself with ridicule and spores, and so disseminating this
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: far sighted and ingenious fungus far and wide about the lynx.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: The amateur nature lover passes off the down and towards
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Banstead Village. He is on the watch for characteristic objects
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: of the countryside, and rustling through the leaves beneath a
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: chestnut avenue, he comes upon an old boot. It is
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: a very very old boot, all its blacking washed off
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: by the rain, and two spreading chestnut leaves yellow they
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: are with blotches of green. With their broad fingers extended
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: rest upon it, as if they would protect and altogether
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: cover the poor old boot in its last resting place.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: It is as if Mother Nature, who lost sight of
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: her product at the tanner's yard, meant to claim her
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: own trampled child again at last, after all its wanderings.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: So we go on, noting a sardine tin gleaming brightly
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: in the amber sunlight through a hazel hedge, and presently
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: another old boot, some hawthorn berries, some hoary clematis we notice,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: and then another old boot. Altogether, it may be remarked
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: in this walk the amateur nature lover saw eleven old boots,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: most of them dropped in the very sweetest bits of hedge,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: tangle and grassy corner about banstead. It is natural to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: ask whence come all these old boots? They are, as
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: everyone knows, among the commonest objects in a country walk,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: so common indeed, that the professional nature lover says very
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: little about them. They cannot grow there, they cannot be
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: dropped from above. They are distinctly earth worn boots. I
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: have inquired of my own domestic people, and caused inquiry
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to be made in a large number of households, and
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: there does not appear to be any irregular custom of
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: taking boots away to remote and picturesque spots to abandon them.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Some discarded boots of my own were produced, but they
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: were quite different from the old boot of the outer air.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: These home kept old boots were lovely in their way, hoary,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: with mold running into the most exquisite tints of glacophane
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: and blue gray. But it was a different way altogether
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: from that of the wild boot. A friend says that
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: these boots are cast away by tramps people. He states,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: give your tramp old boots and hats and great profusion,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and the modesty of the recipient drives him to these
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: picturesque and secluded spots to affect the necessary change. But
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: no nature lover has ever observed the tramp or tramp
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: family in the act of changing their clothes. And since
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: there are even reasons to suppose that their garments are
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: not detachable. It seems preferable to leave the wayside boot
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: as a pleasant flavoring of mystery to our ramble. Another point,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: which also goes to explode this tramp theory, is that
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: these countryside boots never occur in pairs, as any observer
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: of natural history can testify. So our Cockney Jeffreys proceeds
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: presently coming upon a cinder path. The use cinders a
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: lot about Sutton to make country paths with it gives
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: you an unexpected surprise the first time it occurs. You
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: drop suddenly out of a sweetly tangled lane into a
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: veritable bit of the black country, and go on with
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: loathing in your soul for your fellow creatures. There is
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: also an abundance of that last product of civilization, barbed wire.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Oh that I were Gideon, with thorns and briars of
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the wilderness. What I teach these elders of Sutton but
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: a truce to dark thoughts. We take our last look
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: at the country from the open down above Sutton blue Hills.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Beyond Blue Hills recede into the remote distance. From Banstead
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: down one can see into Oxfordshire. Windsor Castle is in
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: minute blue silhouette to the left, and to the right
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: and nearer is the Crystal Palace, and closer clusters red
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: roofed Sutton and its tower than Chium with its white spire.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: And further is Ywele, set in a variegated texture of
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: autumn foliage. Water gleams a silver thread at Ewel, and
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the sinking sun behind us catches a window here and
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: there and turns it into an eye of flame. And
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: so to Sutton Station and home to Cockneydom once more.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: End of chapter thirty six. The Amateur nature Lover