Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/4



ITCHINGHAM is a distinctly cosy Norfolk village, small and picturesque. Ditchingham House is a typical Norfolk home. It stands in the midst of a perfect shelter provided by the surrounding elms and beeches, for the winds which come across from the glorious valley of the Waveney, and over the Bath Hills, or the Earl's Vineyard, as it was once called—one of the prettiest hillsides in this part of Norfolk—are keen and cutting, and blow cold o' nights. Here Mr. Rider Haggard—barrister, justice of the peace, farmer and novelist—lives. It is no easy matter to realise that he who wanders about a compact little farm of a hundred and fifty acres, and inquires of the bailiff as critically looks into a pig pen—"Which of these pigs are you going to kill?"—or singles out a grand turkey with a view to its successful appearance on the Christmas dinner table, is the brilliant writer of such fascinating works as "King Solomon's Mines," "Jess," "Colonel Quaritch," "Cleopatra, "Eric Brighteyes," and the creator of that immortal woman "She." There is positively little about Mr. Haggard—whom, perhaps, one might describe as a country gentleman by profession and a novelist by accident—suggestive of the literary man. Literature! We talked of gardening and flowers over the dinner table; learnt how he had brought many of the ferns in his fern-house three thousand miles—carrying them on mules overland and in canoes down the rivers from tropical Mexico. Some of these ferns are curious, by the way. There is one the leaves of which are five or six feet long, and a curious spotted species which grows on the ledges of rocks, in shape resembling a diminutive cart-wheel. He is passionately fond of gardening. Literature at the dinner table! It is interesting to hear him relate the most paying agricultural feat he ever accomplished, when, while on a visit to some property in South Africa, together with the assistance of his partner and a couple of Zulu Kaffirs and a mowing machine, he cut and sold hay to the value of nearly £300 in little more than a fortnight. Dinner over, we go into the drawing-room and play "Proverbs,"