Frederick Whishaw - The Romance of the Woods

I once had a strange dream. I dreamed that I was dead, and that dying I suddenly discovered all my preconceived ideas as to the future state to have been entirely erroneous, at any rate in so far as concerned such persons as myself—the respectable middle class, so to call it, of mundane sinners. Had I belonged to the aristocracy of piety and goodness, which, alas! I did not, or had I occupied a position at the lower end of the list, other things might have befallen me, better or worse, as the case deserved; but being, as I say, one of the decently respectable middle-class sinners, I was shown, in this foolish dream of mine, into a committee-room marked No. 2, and there informed that since I was neither very good nor very bad, my present destiny was to continue to inhabit this planet for a number of years—I forget how many—not, indeed, in my present corporeal form, but as a spiritual essence; and that I might select any place this side of the dark river, the Styx, as my temporary abode, there to live in Nature's bosom and to assimilate and be assimilated until the simplicity and beauty of Nature, uncontaminated by man, should have purified me of all the harmful taints which I had acquired during my terrestrial existence among fellow-mortals.

And I remember that, in my dream-foolishness, I clasped my hands and fell on my knees, and with streaming eyes assured the committee of Mahatmas (for such, in the dream, they appeared to be) that I wished for no more beautiful heaven than this that they had offered me; and that I implored them to allow me to stay on for ever in the paradise they had prepared for me, and never to pass me onward and upward to attain further joys, however blessed!

And then, in my dream, those Mahatmas flashed their shining eyes at me (there was very little but eye and flowing cloak about them, I remember), and said "Silence!" and frightened me thereby out of my dream-dead wits.

That, they added, was not my affair nor theirs. All I had to do at present was to make my choice of a place from among those I had best loved during life, and to do so as quickly as I conveniently could, because their hands were somewhat full of business this morning, and they could not spare me more than, at most, five minutes.

I remember that I looked over my shoulder at this and perceived an innumerable host of persons, all, presumably, in a similar position to my own, and all ready to take their turns, in strict rotation, before the committee of Mahatmas in room No. 2; and I could not help reflecting that the middle-class sinner must indeed be a very large class, and that I should do wisely to select some rather unfrequented spot for my future home, lest my domain should be trespassed upon by other spiritual essences, and my peace marred by—to use a mundane expression—unseemly rows.

And then I became conscious of a great difficulty in the matter of this choosing of a place to live in. Picture after picture came up before my mind's eye, each more fascinatingly beautiful than the other. There was a lovely little bit of Devonshire coast, and another shore in Pembrokeshire; there were delicious spots in half the counties of England—woods, and hedgerows, and rivers, and waving fields wherein my spiritual being might disport itself in the contemplation of the teeming secret life of Nature; there were Kensington Gardens, a certain central glade of which I had loved well enough, and which my spiritual essence might find a handy spot in case the longing for human fellowship were to assail me—when I could so easily perch myself unseen amid the branches of a tree overlooking Bayswater Road, and drink in, to my heart's content, the familiar sights and sounds of London, or even take a ride on the top of an Acton 'bus; but at this point of my reflections one of the Mahatmas wagged his head at me and said:

"Oh no! You can't do that, you know. No 'bus-driving. Twenty miles from any town, if you please!"

It did not strike me as curious that this Mahatma should have read my thoughts, neither did it occur to me to wonder how he knew that I was animadverting upon the delights of the twopenny 'bus. However, his remark narrowed my field of selection, and I thought on as intensely as I could. I crossed the seas and flew, in spirit, to Finland, to a lovely island in the midst of a beautiful river—the Voksa—teeming with trout, great and small, and with silver grayling; and then I thought of Ostramanch, the home of the capercailzie, of the blackcock; the scene of a hundred and one superb days with the gun, and of as many nights spent in the perfect happiness of solitude and observation beneath the tall pines and the bright stars of the northern sky, in the hush and the solemn majesty of the darkness and silence. And I had almost cried, "Give me Ostramanch!" when I remembered that this dearly loved spot would not, after all, do. It had passed from English into Russian hands, and my spiritual self could never be really happy there under such circumstances. What if my essence were suddenly to happen upon a Russian sportsman taking a family shot at a young covey of blackgame or willow-grouse, huddled together upon a sand-dune, or hiding behind a tuft of purple-fruited bilberry? Could my spiritual voice cry out upon such a deed, or my spiritual fingers close upon the throat of the delinquent, or my phantasmal toe perform a corporeal function? Could I even spread bony arms before his eyes and play the common vulgar ghost upon him, to punish him withal? Alas! I thought, no. Ostramanch will not do. And then, at last, the picture of Erinofka rose before my eyes, and I knew that I had found my Fate. I pictured myself strolling year-long over the purple moors, through the dark belts of forest, by bog and morass and snipe-haunted waste. I remembered many trudges—days of delight—in those same woods, gun-laden, full of ardour, unwearied by day-long tramping, oblivious of hunger, impatient of oncoming darkness; and I imagined myself repeating such delightful experiences ad infinitum , and laughed aloud in the joy of my foolish dream-heart. The Mahatmas immediately interfered; they flashed their great eyes and fluttered their long black mantles at me, and cried:

"No guns, no guns!"

"And no fishing-rods!" added one of them.

"What! no guns and no rod?" I said, growing grave very suddenly. To be at Erinofka and never to hear the popping of another cartridge seemed a dreadful prospect.

"Oh, you can carry a gun if you please," said the presiding Mahatma, who was growing strangely like a London police magistrate, "but you must use smokeless and noiseless powder, and no shot."

"And a rod without a reel," said another Mahatma.

"And a line without a hook," added a third.

"And see that you have a license," put in a fourth.

"But, sirs," I began, "what am I to do with myself, if I may not–"

"Take life?" interrupted the Chairman. "Silence, prisoner at the bar, and learn to be happy without killing! To Erinofka with him, gaoler!"

"How long, your worship?" said that functionary.

Four thousand five hundred years was, I think, the figure, but it may have been four hundred thousand. I was still puzzling over the matter when I awoke. Afterwards, when I thought upon this dream of mine, it struck me that my sentence was, after all, a most enviable one. Thousands of years at Erinofka, with no terrestrial cares to weigh me down; face to face and heart to heart with Nature, learning her secrets day long; a life-atom among myriads of others; a little part of an infinite whole; harmless, free, careless, contented, in fellowship with bird and beast and insect, and with every form of life that has a vested interest in wood and moor and wet morass. For such an existence I had chosen, I thought, the right place. At any rate my spiritual essence, if weary of wandering about armed with a gun that would not work, could amuse itself by recalling those dear, unregenerate days when guns, unprohibited by stern Mahatmas, popped freely, and reels craked, and when the glad voice of the sportsman was heard upon these moors, and among them my own, together with the popping of many terrestrial cartridges. One day, especially, and that the day of my first acquaintance with the place, lingers more fondly than others in the memory, and would afford material for much spiritual contemplation, perhaps even unto forty-five thousand years, if there were nothing better to do! And it is of that particular day that I propose to tell, now that this somewhat extended preface has been got through.