The re-imagined story …
Everyone with the name Jefferies wanted to tell us their memories of the man, even those who were unrelated and had never met him. The Swindon Advertiser had already published a fulsome obituary notice on the local writer Richard Jefferies but Mr Morris wanted me to come up with something more, something from a different perspective.
I did a bit of research and discovered that Mrs Jefferies sisters lived in town, so I made an appointment to visit them.
Mrs Jefferies came from a large farming family. Her father had married twice and produced some fourteen children. Mrs Jefferies was the eldest of the second family. The sisters who lived at 20 Sheppard Street hailed from the first family and were considerably older than the recently widowed Jessie Jefferies.
I was greeted at the front door of the red brick villa by Miss Blanche Baden who introduced herself as niece and companion to the Misses Baden. The two sisters were waiting for me in the parlour.
The ladies were dressed in the old country fashion and were frail and elderly. Miss Mary, the younger of the two, spoke for her sister Miss Emma, explaining that she had been deaf and dumb since birth.
Looking out across the road to the looming railway factory, Miss Mary talked about a childhood spent at Day House Farm and their near neighbours, the Jefferies family who lived on the farm at Coate.
In pride of place on the bookcase was a set of Jefferies books. I was invited to select a volume, each one a first edition, inscribed by their famous brother-in-law.
I wrote what I thought was an interesting piece about the Misses Baden and their literary legacy, but Mr Morris didn’t like it. I had missed the point of the exercise, I was told. He’d wanted more insight into Jefferies ambition, the political motivation of the man and what had driven him, not a non-story about two old ladies who had done nothing of note.
It was then that I decided the Swindon Advertiser was not the vehicle for my work and that I would devote my life to writing about the lives of women who had supposedly ‘done little of note.’
The facts …
Death of a Distinguished Wiltshire Man
A large circle of readers will be sorry to hear that Mr Richard Jefferies died at Goring on Sunday morning. He will be known to all classes of readers as the author of a charming series of books and fugitive articles on rural life and kindred subjects, that were as interesting to dwellers in town as to those in the country. He united to a singularly close insight into the natural workings of animal and vegetable life a power of description almost unrivalled. His books and articles were redolent of the air of the country, and dealt with nature in so picturesque and graphic a style that the dweller in a city might almost fancy himself in the midst of the scenes described. These scenes were mostly taken from his native county of Wiltshire. The son of a farmer, he soon fell to writing on his favourite subjects in local journals. He soon, however, went to London, where he at once made himself a name as a writer of books and contributor of essays to magazines and periodical literature. Many will remember the delightful freshness of “The Gamekeeper at Home,” which introduced him to the London public about ten years ago. This was followed at short intervals by “Wild Life in a Southern County,” “Round about a Great Estate,” “Hodge and his Masters,” “Nature near London,” “The Life of the Fields,” “Red Deer,” and “The Open Air,” the last of which was published two years ago. Mr Jefferies also wrote a number of works of fiction, which are certainly not so well known – and perhaps deservedly so – as his pictures on country scenes. Thus between 1874 and the present year he published “The Scarlet Shawl,” “Restless Human Hearts,” “World’s End,” “Greene Fern Farm,” “Wood Magic,” “Bevis, the story of a Boy,” “The Dewy Morn,” “After London, or Wild England,” and “Amaryllis at the Fair,” the last in the present year. Also he wrote in 1883 a work of great interest entitled “The Story of my Heart, an Autobiography.”
Extract from The Swindon Advertiser, Saturday, August 20, 1887.
Emma Jane Baden aged 76 years of 20 Sheppard Street was buried on March 24, 1894 in grave plot E7206. Mary Hannah Baden aged 79 years of 15 Avenue Road was buried with her sister on November 27, 1907.
Radnor Street Cemetery 