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Certain Personal Matters - Bleak March in Epping Forest · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty seven of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Rowan Etsel. Find me on YouTube under Rowan
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  Speaker 1: Etsel Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells Bleak March
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  Speaker 1: in Epping Forest. All along the salvage of Epping Forest
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  Speaker 1: there was excitement before the swallows, before the violets, long
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  Speaker 1: before the cuckoo, with only untimely honeysuckle bushes showing a
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  Speaker 1: trace of green. Two trippers had been seen traversing the district,
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  Speaker 1: making their way towards High Beach and settling a while
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  Speaker 1: near the Forest Hotel. Whether there were belated survivals from
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  Speaker 1: last season or exceptionally early hatchlings of the coming year
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  Speaker 1: was a question of considerable moment to the natives, and
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  Speaker 1: has since engaged the attention of the local natural histories
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  Speaker 1: as sets. But we know that as a matter of fact,
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  Speaker 1: they were of little omen, being indeed but insignificant people
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  Speaker 1: from Hampstead, and not true trippers at all, who were
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  Speaker 1: curious to see this forest in raw winter. For some
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  Speaker 1: have argued that there is no Epping Forest at all
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  Speaker 1: in the winter time, that is in fact taken up
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  Speaker 1: and put away, and that agriculture is pursued there. Others
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  Speaker 1: assert that the forest is shrouded with wrappers, even as
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  Speaker 1: a literary man's study is shrouded by dusty women when
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  Speaker 1: they clean him out. Others again have supposed that it
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  Speaker 1: is a delightful place in winter, far more delightful than
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  Speaker 1: in summer, but that this is not published because no
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  Speaker 1: writing man hath ever been there in the cold season,
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  Speaker 1: and much more of unreal speculation, but nothing which bore
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  Speaker 1: upon it the stamp of truth. So these two, and
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  Speaker 1: I am one of the two, went down to Epping
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  Speaker 1: Forest to see that it was still there, and how
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  Speaker 1: it fared in the dismal weather. The sky was a
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  Speaker 1: greasy gray that guttered down to the horizon, and the
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  Speaker 1: wind smote damp and chill. There was a white fringe
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  Speaker 1: of ice in the cartwheel ruts, but withal the frost
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  Speaker 1: was not so crisp as to prevent a thin and
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  Speaker 1: slippery glaze of softened clay upon the road. The decaying
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  Speaker 1: triumphal arch outside the station sadly lacked a coat of
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  Speaker 1: paint and was indistinctly regretful of remote royal visits and
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  Speaker 1: processions gone forever. Then we passed, shuddering by many vacant
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  Speaker 1: booths that had once resounded with the revelry of ninepenny
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  Speaker 1: tees and the ginger beer cork staccato, and their forms
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  Speaker 1: were piled together, and their trestles overturned, and the wind ravened,
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  Speaker 1: and no human beings were to be seen. So up
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  Speaker 1: the hill to the left, and along the road leading
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  Speaker 1: by devious windings between the black hedges and through clay
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  Speaker 1: wallows to the hilly part round high Beach. But upon
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  Speaker 1: the shoulder of a hill we turned to a gate
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  Speaker 1: to scrape off the mud that made our boots unwieldy.
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  Speaker 1: At that moment came a threadbare place in the cloud
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  Speaker 1: curtain that was sweeping across the sun, and our shadows
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  Speaker 1: showed themselves for an instant to comfort us. The amber
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  Speaker 1: patch of sunlight presently slipped from us and traveled down
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  Speaker 1: the meadows toward the distant blue of the hills by
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  Speaker 1: Waltham Abbey, touching with miraculous heeling a landscape erst dead
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  Speaker 1: and shrouded in gray. This transitory gleam of light gladdened
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  Speaker 1: us mightily at the time, but it made the after
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  Speaker 1: sky seem all the darker. So through the steep and
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  Speaker 1: tortuous village to high Beach, and then leaving the road,
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  Speaker 1: we wandered in among big trees and down slopes ankle
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  Speaker 1: deep with rustling leaves, toward Chingford. Again. Here was pleasanter
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  Speaker 1: walking than the thawing clay, But now and then one
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  Speaker 1: felt the threat of an infinite oozy softness beneath the stiff,
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  Speaker 1: frozen leaves. Once again, while we were here, the drifting
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  Speaker 1: haze of the sky became thinner, and the smooth green
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  Speaker 1: gray beech stems and rugged oak trunks were brightly illuminated,
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  Speaker 1: but only for a moment, and thereafter the sky became
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  Speaker 1: came not simply unsympathetic, but ominous, and the misery of
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  Speaker 1: the wind grew apace. Presently we wandered into that sinister
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  Speaker 1: corner of the forest where the beech trees have grown
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  Speaker 1: so closely together that they have had perforce to lift
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  Speaker 1: the branches vertically divested of leaves. The bare gray limbs
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  Speaker 1: of these seem strangely restless, these trees reaching so eagerly upward.
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  Speaker 1: Have an odd resemblance to the weird Figures of Horror,
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  Speaker 1: in which William Blake delighted. Arms, hands, hair all stretch
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  Speaker 1: intensely to the zenith. They seem to be straining away
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  Speaker 1: from the spot to which they are rooted. It is
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  Speaker 1: a lacohen grouping, a wordless, concentrated struggle for the sunlight,
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  Speaker 1: and disagreeably impressive. The trippers longed to talk, and were
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  Speaker 1: tongue tied. They looked now and then over their shoulders.
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  Speaker 1: They were glad when the eerie influence was past, though
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  Speaker 1: they traversed a morass to get away from it. Then
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  Speaker 1: across an open space dismal with the dun hulls of
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  Speaker 1: lost cows and the clatter of their bells, over a
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  Speaker 1: brook full of dead leaves, and edged with rusty clay,
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  Speaker 1: through a briery thicket that would fain have detained us,
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  Speaker 1: and so to a pathway of succulent green that oozed
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  Speaker 1: black under our feet. Here, some poor lost a wayfarer
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  Speaker 1: has blazed his way, with rustic seats, now rheumatic and
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  Speaker 1: fungus eaten. And here too the wind which had sought
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  Speaker 1: us howling, found us at last and stung us sharply
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  Speaker 1: with a shower of congealing rain drops. This grew to
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  Speaker 1: a steady downfall as the open towards Chingford Station was
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  Speaker 1: approached at last, after devious winding in the forest, then
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  Speaker 1: coming upon the edge of the wood, and seeing the
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  Speaker 1: lone station against the gray sky, we broke into a
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  Speaker 1: shout and began running. But it is dismal running on
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  Speaker 1: imperfectly frozen clay, in rain and a gusty wind, we
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  Speaker 1: slipped and floundered, and one of us wept sore that
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  Speaker 1: she should never see her home again. And worse, the
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  Speaker 1: only train sleeping in the station was awakened by our cries,
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  Speaker 1: and with an elegant shriek at the unseasonable presence of trippers,
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  Speaker 1: fled incontinently londonward, smeared with clay and dead leaves, almost
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  Speaker 1: beyond human likeness. We staggered into the derelict station and
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  Speaker 1: found from an outcast porter that perhaps another train might,
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  Speaker 1: after the lapse of two hours, accumulate sufficiently to take
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  Speaker 1: us back to Gospel Oak and a warm world again.
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  Speaker 1: So we speared if there were amusements to be got
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  Speaker 1: in this place, and he told us some very nice
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  Speaker 1: walks to refrain from homicide. We left the station and
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  Speaker 1: sought a vast red hotel that loomed the drift on
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  Speaker 1: a steep hill, and in the side of this a
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  Speaker 1: door that had not been locked, Happily one had been forgotten.
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  Speaker 1: And entering at last we roused a hibernating waiter, and
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  Speaker 1: he exhumed us some of his winter victual. In this
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  Speaker 1: way we were presently to some degree comforted, and could
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  Speaker 1: play chess until a train had been sent for our relief.
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  Speaker 1: And this did at last happen, And toward the hour
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  Speaker 1: of dinner we joined our anxious friends, and all the
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  Speaker 1: evening time we boasted of a pleasant day, and urged
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  Speaker 1: them to go even as we had gone. End of
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  Speaker 1: Bleak March in Epping Forest recording by Rowan Etsel. Find
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  Speaker 1: me on YouTube under Rowan Etsel