Moth-Mullein/Chapter I

the outward or homeward bound traveller on the Thames what a contrast betwixt the Kent and the Essex sides of the river: the Kent side, with its pleasant chalk hills, woods, and apple orchards; the Essex side flat, treeless, receiver-general of the London sewage!

When Jutes and Saxons invaded Britain, and came to divide the land, then the Jutes said, ‘We have had the flats in our ancestral Jutland, time out of mind; we will take the hills, and if you don’t like the swamps you must fight us.’ The Saxons growled and accommodated themselves with the Essex side of the river, and the Jutes kept their feet dry, and rheumatism out of their bones, and ague out of their blood, on the Kent side.

Once on a time the Thames and Medway were all one—that was a grand mouth for the river, and then the hills looked down on the water from Greenwich to Gadshill; but now Kent has made a concession to Essex, and acquired a flat alluvial tract that divides the Thames from the Medway.

Above Greenhythe the chalk hills are much honeycombed with quarries, and huge kilns smoke perpetually, resolving the chalk into cement. Further inland the hills are covered with trees, and form that region so dear to naturalists—Darenth Wood. Now to one unfamiliar with the district, who first traverses Darenth Wood, the trees are calculated to excite surprise, for every other is patched with a viscous, sweet, and dark substance, and he will stop and say, ‘What is the matter with these trees? Have they got some sort of disease with which I am unfamiliar?’

He will be answered, ‘Nothing of the sort. This is done by the moth-hunters. Darenth Wood is famous for the rare lepidoptera caught in it, and it is for the Noctuina group that the collectors hunt here. They spread treacle and beer, mixed, on the trunks of the trees, and catch the moths that are attracted by the mixture. There are as many as three hundred British species of Noctuina alone. Then there are the Bombycidæ, which are not caught by treacle. The collectors hatch out a female and place her on a tree, when numerous males of the species gather about her. This method is not peculiar to the Bombycidæ, though I know of no sort that assembles so vigorously as that species; it may, however, be satisfactorily tried with many of the Liparidæ and Chelonidæ, as well as with the Endromis versicolora, and Saturnia Pavonia minor.’

‘Exactly. I merely asked about the smears, without wanting to plunge into lepidopterology. Of course this moth-catching takes place only in summer.’

‘Not at all. The Eriogaster lacustris appears in February, and the Pœcilocampa populi in November and December. Of course the majority of moths are found in warmer months.’

At the edge of Darenth Wood stood, and perhaps stands still, a little house; it was inhabited by a forester, a man who trimmed and attended to the trees, thinning, pruning, planting. His name was Mullins; his wife was dead, but he had a daughter of the age of twenty—a remarkably handsome girl, with clear complexion, blue eyes, and singularly fair hair, that in the sun looked almost white; it was not quite silver, but of a yellowish tinge, an amalgam of gold and silver. She was tall and straight, had been spoiled by her father, and knowing herself to be a beauty was vain and coquettish.

If she had had only her father’s little wage to dress on, she could not have adorned herself with such good clothes as those she affected; but Jessie Mullins had a subsidiary source of income—she herself collected and sold moths and butterflies, and she provided tea and supper for naturalists coming to Darenth Wood for lepidoptera.

The little room in which naturalists regaled themselves whilst waiting for the proper time to smear the trees was surrounded with cases in which butterflies and moths were displayed with spread wings. A whole case, containing many varieties of species, might be purchased, or else some of Jessie’s small glass boxes, which she made herself, about a square or oblong block of wood, in which a single specimen or a pair of specimens was fastened by a delicate pin to a cork glued to the glass bottom.

Jessie furnished dealers with such specimens of British moths and butterflies as were to be caught in Darenth Wood, or on the downs, or in the chalk pits. Her skill in setting up specimens was great; her dainty fingers manipulated the delicate insects without bruising their wings or brushing off any of their plumage.

Perhaps it was her observation of the colouring of these beautiful insects that gave training to her eye, and cultivated her taste. Certain it is that Jessie Mullins dressed becomingly. She never wore colours that disagreed with her complexion and hair. Her favourite tints were silver gray and pearl, and she wore a ribbon of pink or blue, but never much positive colour. That caused all the naturalists who came to Darenth Wood to say, ‘Jessie Mullins dresses like a lady. To look at her you would swear she was a lady.’

Now this century is especially the age in which natural history is prosecuted with ardour, not only by spectacled professors but by schoolboys and young men. My own son began collecting butterflies when he was six, and I have a baby that catches flies. Accordingly Jessie had a regular sale for her collections, and throughout a large part of the year had gatherings of naturalists, old, middle-aged and young, at her cottage, who desired to be provided with lanterns, treacle and ale, and a supper when they returned from their chase in the wood.

Jessie was very much admired by the naturalists, and flattered by them; she made herself agreeable to them. Who could say but she might some day catch a naturalist on his way to catch a moth?

But, though the Bombycidæ are caught, the Bombycidæ catchers would not be caught. They were ready to joke with Jessie Mullins, flutter about her, keep up a simmering flirtation, but that was all. Jessie was too haughty to consider the pretensions of those of her own class. Those who ventured to approach were thrust off. For some time two or three of a genus above her own did buzz about her and were not absolutely repelled—they were tolerated; but they retired, all of their own accord. One there was, one man persistent, unabashed, whom no rebuff would banish, about whom more presently.

Tom Redway, the young plasterer, had been very much struck with Jessie. ‘Plasterer,’ sneered the girl, ‘what is a plasterer?’ She sent him up an oak tree to catch Purple Emperors—gorgeous butterflies that fly high, and hover about the tops of the king of the British sylva.

So high do these splendid creatures fly that to catch them a ring net must be affixed to a pole forty feet long. But who can manage a net with the dexterity needed—that is, at the end of so long a pole?

Tom climbed an oak and brandished a pole with a net in vain throughout a day and caught nothing. Then Jessie laughed at him for his pains. He must be a fool not to know that the Purple Emperor loved home-made goose berry wine, and might be enticed from his aërial altitudes by a bowl of that liquor. After this Tom was so joked by his comrades about being ‘sent up a tree’ by Jessie Mullins that he kept away from Darenth Wood and the forester’s daughter, and soon after—it was said out of spite—married a spinster ten years older than himself.

The next to hover round Jessie was Joseph Ruddle, the carpenter. She sent him in quest of the caterpillars of the rare Cinxia, that were to be found in webs about plantains halfway down the side of the chalk cliffs.

Joe had fallen in his efforts to carry up a web of the caterpillars and had broken his leg. After that Joseph Ruddle went no more up the lane to the cottage of the forester.

Sam Underwood was another admirer. He was a young farmer. She encouraged him after a fashion. A match with him would not be a bad one at all. But Jessie trifled with him; she was like a player on musical glasses, who touches one, sets it humming, then another, and keeps a score in vibration at once. Sam did not appreciate this. He thought she carried on a little too much with a young Oxford man, son of Parkinson the brewer, and, in dudgeon, he withdrew.

There was a fourth, an owner of large strawberry fields, from which he supplied the London market; a sleepy man who took long to make up his mind. She bewildered him with her learned talk about lepidoptera, and became silent when he ought to have spoken, and no touches at last brought any quiver in his heart, or sound out of him.

There was a fifth, Mr Parkinson, but Jessie was not sure that he was sincere; a vain and impudent young man.

And there was a sixth, who would not be shaken off, little Dicky Duck, an active, cheerful fellow with no fixed profession or trade, but always ready in any quarter to make himself useful. He was usually called in to assist the naturalists at night in the wood. He carried the lantern or painted the tree boles. He was not so tall as Jessie.

It was preposterous of him, a fellow stunted in his growth, to look up to her with matrimonial prospects in his absurd little head. Jessie snubbed him without compunction. But he remained a faithful follower, and held on after Tom Redway, Joseph Ruddle, Sam Underwood, and Benjamin Polson, who owned the strawberry fields had fallen away.

Everyone liked Dicky Duck; he was always cheerful, obliging, and good-natured; a wonderfully active little fellow, who darted about like a squirrel, and, as already said, was ready to turn his hand to anything. But, though everyone liked Dicky, everyone laughed at him: partly because he was small; partly because he never resented being made fun of, and so was a safe person on whom to whet the wit; partly also because his fresh, cheery face was laughter-provokng, it had a natural comicality about it. He was not bad-looking, there was no deformity about him, but there was an indefinable something about his face which set those who observed it a-laughing. I had a pair of fire-screens once, on which were two heads with gaping mouths, and whoever took up one of these screens was set a-yawning; so everyone who took up and talked to Dicky Duck was set a-laughing. He was not brilliant, he never said a witty thing in his life, and yet he was a good companion, because he excited risibility in those he was with.

The tall, dignified, handsome Jessie Mullins was ill-pleased that this absurd little whipper-snapper should be her persistent admirer; it offended her self-esteem.

As yet nothing has been said of the nickname given to Jessie. It was a nickname that could not fail to attach to her, partly from her business, partly from her appearance and colour. She was called the Moth-Mullein, and it cannot be said that she disliked the nickname, for the Moth-Mullein is a stately plant, that stands up and shows itself off. She was not a modest retreating violet, not ordinary as a daisy, not fresh as a buttercup, not sweet as a rose; no, she was a Moth-Mullein, that stood by itself and held its head high.