him lunch from the car, as it was difficult for him to get about. When
I did get back I found him lying down, not very near the place, saying
he felt very ill and he thought it was the smell "from those remains."
He had done no work, and refused even to try to eat till we got a long
way away from the skulls. I explained to him that there was no smell,
and he said, "But didn't you see one has an eye still?" But I knew
that all four eyes had withered away months before. There must have
been something strange about the place.

Most of these summer months John Masefield was working on the Somme
battlefields. He preferred to work out there on the spot. He would get
a lift out from Amiens in the morning on a motor or lorry, work all
day by himself at some spot like La Boisselle, and walk back to the
bridge at Albert and look out for a lift back to Amiens. If we worked
out in this direction, on the way home our eye was always kept on the (p. 041)
look-out for him; but really it never appeared to matter to him if he
got back or not. I don't believe he minded where he was as long as he
could ponder over things all alone.

[Illustration: XV. _Adam and Eve at Peronne._]

The small towns and villages in this part of the country, behind the
old fighting line of 1916, were, for the most part, dirty and usually
uninteresting; but once clear of them the plains of Picardy had much
charm and beauty, great, undulating, rolling plains, cut into large
chequers made by the different crops. When a hill became too steep to
work on, it was cut into terraces, like one sees in many of the
vineyards in the South; these often have great decorative charm. A
fair country--I remember Joffroy sometimes used the word "graceful"
regarding different views in those parts, and the word gives the
impression well.

There is a beautiful valley on the left, as one goes from Amiens to
Albert: one looked down into it from the road, a patchwork of greens,
browns, greys and yellows. I remember John Masefield said one day it
looked to him like a post-impressionist table-cloth; later, white
zigzagging lines were cut all through it--trenches.

In the spring of 1917 it was strange motoring out from Amiens to
Albert. Just beyond this valley everything changed. Suddenly one felt
oneself in another world. Before this point one drove through ordinary
natural country, with women and children and men working in the
fields; cows, pigs, hens and all the usual farm belon