I did not cease questioning the poor woman, because she would not admit that all she had heard about Gilbert White was gone past recall. Often and often had she thought of what her mother had told her. Up to within two or three years ago she remembered it all so well. What was it now? Once more, standing dejected in the middle of the room, she would cudgel her old brains. So much had happened since she was a girl. She had been brought up to farm-work. Here would follow the names of various farms in the parishes of Selborne, Newton Valence, and Oakhanger, where she had worked, mostly in the fields; and of the farmers, long dead and gone most of them, who had employed her. All her life she had worked { 208} hard, struggling to live. When people complained of hard times now, of the little that was paid them for their work, she and her husband remembered what it was thirty and forty and fifty years ago, and they wondered what people really wanted. Cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap education for the children--everything was cheap now, and the pay more. And she had had so many children to bring up--ten; and seven of them were married, and were now having so many children of their own that she could hardly keep count of them.
It was idle to listen; and at last, in desperation, I would jump up and rush out, for the wind was calling in the pines, and the birds were calling, and what they had to tell was just then of more interest than any human story.
Not far from my cottage there was a hill, from the summit of which the whole area of the forest was visible, and the country all round for many leagues beyond it. I did not like this hill, and refused to pay it a second visit. The extent of country it revealed made the forest appear too small; it spoilt the illusion of a practically endless wilderness, where I could stroll about all day and see no cultivated spot, and no house, and perhaps no human form. It was, moreover, positively disagreeable to be stared at across the ocean of pines by a big, brand-new, red-brick mansion, standing conspicuous, unashamed, affronting nature, on some wide heath or lonely hillside.
A second hill, not far from the first, was preferable { 209} when I wished for a wide horizon, or to drink the wind and the music of the wind. Round and dome-like, it stood alone; and although not so high as its neighbour, it was more conspicuous, and seen from a distance appeared to be vastly higher. The reason of this was that it was crowned with a grove of Scotch firs with boles that rose straight and smooth and mast-like to a height of about eighty feet; thus, seen from afar, the hill looked about a hundred feet higher than it actually was, the tree-tops themselves forming a thick, round dome, conspicuous above the surrounding forest, and Wolmer's most prominent feature. I have often said of Hampshire--very many persons have said the same--that it lacks one thing--sublimity, or, let us say, grandeur. I have been over all its high, open down country, and upon all its highest hills, which, although rising to a thousand feet above the sea at one point, yet do not impress one so much as the South Downs; and I have been in all its forest lands, which have wildness and a thousand beauties, and one asks for nothing better. But the Hollywater Clump in Wolmer Forest as soon as I come in sight of it wakes in me another sense and feeling; and I have found in conversation with others on this subject that they are affected in the same way. I doubt if anyone can fail to experience such a feeling when looking on that great hill-top grove, a stupendous pillared temple, with its dome-like black roof against the sky, standing high above and dominating the sombre pine and heath country for miles around.