Everyone to whom I have recommended this book loved it. In Wild Lone: The Story of a Pytchley Fox, the reader experiences the sights and sounds of the woodlands by day, and the silence and stealth of the forest by night—not from our usual vantage point in the saddle, five or six feet above the ground, but down low, nearer the earth, where dry stalks of grass brush past our ears and our noses inhale the musky scent of decaying leaves.
Because the reader becomes acquainted with Rufus when he is whelped and gets to know him and his habits intimately, we feel his pain when he becomes caught in the wire snare and we root for him when pushed by foxhounds. We care about him deeply, because we know and respect him. Yet Rufus is an opportunist and kills whenever he can—birds, mice, hedgehogs, rabbits, chickens. He kills so often and so casually that we hardly notice. We feel nothing for these creatures—his quarry—because they are, unlike Rufus, anonymous.
The book’s message is revealed to us by a consummate woodsman: that life and death happen to every creature in the forest, mostly shortly after birth. Nature is harsh, but that is its way. And the pressure put on each species serves to improve the species, for only the best examples (and the luckiest) survive for a fulfilling time—as does Rufus.
The following excerpt, in which the author exercises his full powers of language and imagery, is quite lyrical. Yet, if an adventure story is what you prefer, I promise you won’t be disappointed by Wild Lone.
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March was here, shouting March, the Merry Monarch of the Months. He set the fir trees tossing with boisterous glee, and made the ash poles rock until they shrieked for mercy under his rude and merry jests. He brushed and garnished the woodlands, and made them ready for the new fresh harvest as he had done for a million years. And from out of the blue oceans of sky where cloud got short shrift, the first chiff-chaff came into the welcome shelter of the budding thorns, to rest after his passage over the sea. Hesitatingly, at first, he sang, as though he were apologetic, and to this halting music Rufus’ first children were born.
Some days before their birthday, the vixen ceased to hunt, and Rufus did the nightly foraging, as became a solicitous husband. And, after the five mole-coloured babies arrived, Rufus continued to supply his family, different indeed from his father. In all fairness to the latter, however, it must be remembered that a litter of February cubs does not get the same parental attention as a March litter, so the old gentlemen cannot be too sorely blamed—we will not slander the dead.
The blind babies, sucking helplessly at her teats, sent a creeping thrill of pleasure through their beautiful slim mother. Soon, too, she could hunt again, and it seemed as if a load were lifted from her body. The noses of the little cubs were pink, though they soon darkened. At fourteen days they began to see dim lights coming to their growing brains. Their eyes did not open equally, and at seventeen days the backward of the litter still had one eye completely closed, which gave him a very sly expression. As the colour of their coats changed to brown (the brown appearing first in streaks on the head) their baby blue eyes changed to amber. The vixen began to sleep away from her babies, but was ever at hand to protect and suckle when the occasion required.
Rufus, now that the vixen hunted too for game, became less solicitous, and began hunting forays unaccompanied by his wife. Indeed, they now chose to hunt apart every night, and game was plentiful so that the cubs throve exceedingly. Every evening now they came and played round the mouth of the earth, just as their father had played in long ago. One bright morning the willow warblers were filling the woodland with their gentle scales of music, for they had come in during the night. They hopped about among the immature leaves that were opening in the sheltered places, seeming like tender buds themselves in the greenish sulphur hues. And soon a whitethroat was chattering like a mountain beck outside the earth, in the whitethorn bushes. He sang in a chuckling hurry, as though he must be done with his song, full of the exuberance of life. He told the cubs what a beautiful world was in store for them (silly bird knew nothing of hunting and bitter winter famines), and he showed them in the bubbling vigor of his song how the dog-roses would soon be cascading in a pink and white waterfall down the high hedges. The willow warblers sang to them of the tender opening of little green things and of life born anew. And the cubs sat about the mouth of the earth, listening with all their ears. Then, as children get restive under adult amusement, they would tumble and play about the dead leaves, and with the exercise their little bodies gained strength and stature.
Soon the first cuckoo came shouting through the woods. The call arrested the cubs at play; so unbirdlike a sound was puzzling and they listened intently. So he had come down the long, long centuries, with his clean spring music, and the while man fought and struggled and loved and hated in his own very little world of which he thought so much. But the cuckoo was older than man even, like the badger and the stoat, knowing only the simple things, the sunshine and the wind, the ripple of the summer breeze over the mowing fields, and the hot sun of light-drenched lands, far over the sea.
And then, one evening that was very still, when sturdy lambs were proclaiming from the green pastures, a nightingale came to the whitethorn. His lovely mellow notes startled the woodland into a reverent silence, and proud of his powers he sang to the cubs with exultant beauty. His song was a maturer song than any of the other birds, and he sang, not of green baby things and the opening of life, but of the beauty of woodland cloisters where no man comes; of mossy badger-haunted rides and summer glory, and the cool recesses of the inmost fastness of whitethorn. He sang thus about this England that he loved because he had never seen her in her old age. It was to him a land that was ever young, like a maiden that never grows old.
With all this promise of good things the cubs frisked and played in great high spirits, knowing perhaps, too, that in the bosky shadows, a lithe and loving mother was ready to lay down her life for their sakes, and the world was good.
Posted September 22, 2015
Wild Lone: The Story of a Pytchley Fox by “BB,” illustrated by D.J. Watkins-Pitchford with a foreword by Sir Charles Frederick, ex-MFH, the Pytchley, was published in the U.S. by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York in 1938, and has gone through numerous subsequent editions. Used copies may be obtained through Amazon.com and Abebooks.com.
This article by Norman Fine was published in similar form in Covertside, July, 2002.