Part 11
On the question of drink, of course, the dogmatisms are even fiercer; in no other sphere is there such universal intolerance. The abstainers want every one else to abstain, and denounce them if they do not; the heavy drinkers want every one else to drink heavily and despise them if they do not; most bigoted and intolerant of all, the temperate drinkers want every one else to drink temperately and denounce and despise both the other parties. The whole subject is limp with sentimentality--the sentimentality which identifies drink with the devil, and the sentimentality which identifies drink with humanity, Christianity, and all the popular virtues. Every mug of beer and every cup of tea is now become symbolic; every drink is viewed _sub specie aeternitatis_, and it is difficult for the ordinary man as he drinks not to feel that his act is the illustration of some great and universal principle, and to enrol it, so to say, under the banner of one of the conflicting dogmatisms.
With most of these lunacies and sentimentalities, as such, the walker is not concerned. But he has above all men a very direct and practical interest in food and drink, as the fuel of his walking system, and he is bound to search the dogmatisms for any truth which may be latent in them. But when the practical eye is turned upon them, what nonsense they become! Put three men on the hills with a beef-sandwich, an egg-sandwich, and a jam-sandwich: can your proteid analysts tell you which of them will be going strongest at four o’clock? Give one man a whiskey-flask, and one a mountain stream: can you say which will walk the further or sleep the sounder? Above all, if you have come to the conclusion by experiment that certain foods and drinks are best for you, by what right can you try to thrust them down the throats of other men? The fact is that the human body is a very wonderful machine, sharing something of the individuality of the soul: and within certain limits there is no saying what exact form of nourishment will suit it best. A few general truths we can fix, such as that unripe apples and cyanide of potassium are unhealthy, and that more than two lobsters are not a good preparation for violent exercise; but the rest of the matter is one glorious uncertainty, and the only law which we can find is the great and universal empirical principle: ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison,’ or, ‘It takes all sorts to make a world.’
If then any one wishes to dogmatise about food and drink, let him do so frankly on the ground that he likes certain things, and expects other people to like them too. Let us have no more of proteids and food-values: above all, let us have no more of the moral aspects of food and drink. It is a man’s business to find out what will suit him best, what will keep his body at its maximum capacity for its various duties. This he can only discover experimentally, and in the process he must not be limited in the range of his experiments by any analytic tables or moral taboos: he must try proteids, sulphides, and oxalates impartially: he must try meat-eating as well as fruitarianism (avoiding crime): he must try beer as well as water, and, even more important, he must try water as well as beer. When he has found his right diet, then let him begin to dogmatise if he will; but let it be the dogmatism of a good citizen, who has found a truth and wants others to share it, not the dogmatism of a tyrant seeking to bind others by his own measure.
The worst foe to freedom is not science or morality but sentiment. There is a sentimental picture, dear to many imaginations, of a walker sitting down (generally in his boots) after a ‘few score’ of miles (to quote Canon Crisparkle) devouring large slices of meat washed down by tankards of beer, the whole subsequently enhaloed in tobacco. So popular is this fancy among the more sentimental part of the population, that when a walker refuses meat (as some do), or beer (as some do), or tobacco (as a very few do), it is thought something almost wrong, something out of the picture, an error of taste; and many walkers, either from cowardice or from courtesy to the weaknesses of others, have done violence to their own canons of diet in order to fit into the popular picture. On what exactly this sentiment rests it is difficult to see: it and the sister sentiment of disreputability seem to be merely aberrant fancies of imaginative people for their unlikes--of the clean for the slovenly, the abstemious for the greedy. In order to satisfy the imagination of the naturally clean and temperate sentimentalist, the naturally clean and temperate walker has to dress badly and overeat.
Most potent and most vicious of all is the sentiment for beer. No article of diet shines brighter in the imagination of those who do not take it: probably none is worse, on the whole, for walkers. Some walkers, of course, in the fulfilment of the great experimental law, take beer and thrive upon it, but for a large number it is a faithless friend or an open foe. Yet, so strong is the sentiment in its favour, that we rarely hear a word spoken against beer on other than purely moral grounds; those who cannot take it are apt to be almost apologetic, as though for a defect in themselves. In the interests of the beer sentiment every other kind of feeling is shamelessly exploited: aesthetically, we are asked to admire its beautiful colour: historically, we are reminded of its long tradition as the national drink of merry England: democratically, we are bidden to drink beer as a symbol of our unity with the heart of the people.
What is wanted is a little sentiment on the other side. It may be thought difficult to raise much sentiment on the subject of water, but at least on the grounds taken by the beer-devotees water need fear no comparison. Aesthetically, perhaps, water does not look as beautiful as beer in a glass; but sight is only one of the senses, and water never causes anything like the aura of a beer-mug the morning after. Historically, beer can simply make no show; it needs an emotional interpretation of history to carry back the tradition of beer even a thousand years; whereas water dates back to the dimmest beginning of things, and in its tradition the praise of Pindar is but as yesterday. Democratically, beer is even more utterly out of it: the constituency of beer consists mainly of men, and does not contain all of them. But the constituency of water is world-wide and heaven-high: it includes women; it includes children; it includes animals: nay, in a sense, it includes earth itself. When I drink beer I may be symbolically sympathising with seven men out of ten in the street; but when I drink water I am symbolically at one with the whole order of creation from the beginning.
Nay, drinker of beer, an thou’lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou. What is your drink after all? It is a compound of vegetable substances, whose main function is to ferment--_i.e._ in plain English, to go bad. These substances are sentimentally supposed to be malt and hops: in reality, they include a long and ghastly category of chemical drugs and substitutes known only to the Inland Revenue Department and the troubled consciences of brewers. These substances are mixed by some malodorous processes, with a Government Official standing by in hope of detecting a certain percentage of the fraud involved; and the outcome is put in barrels of not over-clean wood, and stowed in dirty and stuffy cellars until the time arrives for it to be passed through a metal beer-engine into tankards and glasses, which may or may not have been cleaned, and so down the throats of the long-suffering public, who have the consolation of reflecting that the cost price of their liquor is less than half what they pay, and that the rest is passing through the tortuosities of dubious finance into the pockets of the casual investor, that incubus upon the body politic.
But water is not compounded by any human hand: there is no list of authorised substitutes to be used in its composition. It is given to us complete; and our only care is, when our civilisation has contaminated it, to restore it to the form in which it was given to us. What other drink is there that can be taken _in situ_? What cask or beaker so fine as a rocky pool or a grass-tangled spring? What cup so satisfying as the scooping hand? Even when it comes through the medium of waterworks and pipes and jugs, it is still an element; it is taking us in its ordained cycle of mist, and rain, and river, and sea; it is making us one stage in the secular process. Let us drink water, then, if we are to reverence the framework of the creation: let us drink water, if we are to honour our remoter ancestors: let us drink water, if we wish to symbolise the solidarity of the living world.
* * * * *
The difference between proper emotion and sentimentality is like the difference between healthy fresh air and a deadly draught: one is what I like, and the other is what I don’t like. But I think an appeal may be made on something wider than personal grounds for a little less sentimentality in food and drink, and a little more proper emotion in costume and the rest of the walker’s equipment. Food and drink are important things, and must be taken seriously: they have a direct practical purpose, and their consideration must not be influenced by emotion. Every man ought to feel himself free to experiment in the most cold and scientific spirit, undistracted by conflicting sentimentalities, in order to find the diet most suitable to him; and not till this is done should any emotion attach to articles of food or drink. But dress and equipment, as we have seen, involve something more than material considerations; they symbolise something far beyond practical ends and purposes; and it is only fitting that a walker, contemplating the panoply of his craft, should be uplifted above the regions of prose.
When the epic of walking comes to be written, there are at least two moments in which equipment will be charged with the full force of the poetic current. One is at the very beginning of a walk, when everything is fresh and clean, when shirts are cool and unrumpled, and boots are new-greased, and the walking-stick lies cold and hard in the hand, and the knapsack sits on the shoulders like a bird new-poised and still unfamiliar with its perch. At such a moment who can think of practical and material purposes? Reason may whisper that the grease will make our boots pliable, that the stick will prove useful, that the knapsack contains many indispensable things for the ending of the day. But at the moment we have no such thoughts of the practical value of equipment: we feel only that we are equipped, that we are armed for the combat with time and space and wind and weather and mental depression and abstract thinking; and so we fling out our chests and stamp our feet on Mother Earth, and away to the rhythm of the dotted tribrach. ‘And Telemachus girt on his sharp sword and grasped his spear and stood by his seat at his father’s side armed with gleaming bronze.’
The other moment comes later, when we are some days upon our way. Boots have grown limp: clothes have settled into natural skin-like rumples: the stick is warm and smooth to our touch: the map slips easily in and out of the pocket, lucubrated by dog’s-ears: every article in the knapsack has found its natural place, and the whole has settled on to our shoulders as its home. The equipment is no longer an external armour of which we are conscious: it is part of ourselves that has come through the combat with us, and is indissolubly linked with its memories. At the start this coat was a glorious thing to face the world in: now it is merely an outer skin. At the start this stick was mine: now it is myself.
When it is all over the coat will go back to the cupboard and the curved suspensor, and the shirts and stockings will go to the wash, to resume conventional form and texture, and take their place in the humdrum world. But the stick will stand in the corner unchanged, with mellowed memories of the miles we went together, with every dent upon it recalling the austerities of the high hills, and every tear in its bark reminding me of the rocks of the Gable and Bowfell. And in the darkest hours of urban depression I will sometimes take out that dog’s-eared map and dream awhile of more spacious days; and perhaps a dried blade of grass will fall out of it to remind me that once I was a free man on the hills, and sang the Seventh Symphony to the sheep on Wetherlam.
VIII
WALKING ALONE
WITH A DIGRESSION ON LONDON WALKING
‘Lass, O Welt, O lass mich sein.’
VIII
WALKING ALONE
WITH A DIGRESSION ON LONDON WALKING
Walking alone is, of course, on a much lower moral plane than walking in company. It falls under the general ban on individual as opposed to communal pursuits. The solitary walker, like the golfer or sculler, is a selfish and limited being, unlike the rower, footballer, or cricketer, who is a member of a community. The point cannot be seriously argued. Prevaricators may call attention artlessly to certain features of communal pursuits--to cricket scores and lists of averages and interviews with eminent athletes; they may even review our country as a whole, and expatiate on the widely diffused spirit of toleration, mutual good-will, and readiness to co-operate which our national sports have produced. But their gibes are unavailing: it is plainly better to do things in company than alone: and the solitary walker, if he is honest, will at once resign all claim to the halo of patriotism, disinterested devotion, esprit de corps and good citizenship which encircles the brow of the footballer.
I will not even pray in aid the great names of Stevenson and Hazlitt. Their defence of solitary walking rested largely on the mistaken idea that if you walk in company you are bound to talk; they did not realise that even silence can be corporate, nay, that there is a concrete and positive taciturnity of two far more satisfying than the negative voicelessness of one. They did not know how grunts can reveal the man and ejaculations create and foster friendship. The silent contemplation of walking is aided, not hindered, by the presence of another silent contemplator at your side.
Walking alone, then, is a thing only to be justified by special circumstances; it is an abnormal function of life, a subject for pathology rather than physiology. But as life is not yet quite perfect and normal in all departments, there is a place for pathology: as the proper circumstances of walking are not always attainable, there is a place for walking alone. Without elaborating a scheme of casuistry, we can imagine certain conditions under which walking alone is defensible if not laudable; and it is only fair to the solitary walker, pursuing his lonely way under the ban of moral disapproval, to indicate some of these.
I have mentioned above four classes of walkers--six milers, twelve milers, eighteen milers, and twenty-four milers. The figures are not to be taken too literally; but I think walkers, as a whole, fall more or less definitely into four groups, whose average daily maxima are at, or near, these figures. The differences extend to other points--to pace, to length of stride, even, I think, to opinions and disposition, although here the classification becomes less definite. Class A, the twenty-four milers, average about 4½ miles an hour on a good road, and stride 40 inches or over: they tend to be mugwumps, mistrusters of rhetoric, lovers of the classic in art and music and literature, of the distilled and clarified products of human imagination or insight. Class B, the eighteen milers, average 4 miles an hour, and stride 36 inches: they are generally those who might have been in Class A but for a lack of real comprehensive capacity and for a love of talking and disputation: they tend to spasmodic intensities within a limited area instead of the wide and equable appreciation of Class A: they read Meredith, but talk about his philosophy, and have no proper grasp of Dickens. Class C, average 3½ miles an hour and call it ‘about 4,’ and stride 30 inches: they often have Class A capacities, but are physically disabled: they insist on large meals and a good deal of drink, and talk much of ‘scorching.’ Class D, average 2½ miles an hour, and stride 25 inches: they have no illusions about either, and are mainly occupied in catching a train home at the earliest opportunity.
Now it is obvious that if a Class B walker is set down to walk with one from Class D, one of two things must happen: either the D man must rise above his normal maxima, or the B man must sink below them. The usual supposition is that B must give way, on the ground that it is dangerous and distressing for D to exceed his limits. It is not generally recognised in such cases what a sacrifice is imposed on B. He has got to drop his pace from 4 miles to 2½; he has got to shorten his stride from 36 to 25 inches; he will probably not be allowed to talk politics; D has never read Meredith’s poetry, and by the time B is feeling a little warm, D will be beginning to think about the trains home. Now suppose that B has had a hard week’s work, is mentally confused, is contemplating marriage or an investment, is just changing his politics or metaphysics, or is in some other condition when his mind wants cleaning up and straightening out: would he not be to some extent justified in refusing to modify his distance, pace, and stride, and in offering D the alternatives of either complying with the B conditions or going to the D--that is, consorting with other members of his own class?
Those who hold that B would not be justified miss, I think, the distinction between walking and strolling; they consider that B will get some sort of motion through pleasant country, and that this ought to be enough for him, whatever his condition. The instance taken is purposely extreme; normally, it is admitted, a stroll in company is better than a walk alone. But there are times when B must have a proper walk, at whatever cost; when his primary need is for 18 miles at 4 miles an hour; nay, there are times when he is simply not fit for company, and must go walking alone, and recapture something of himself before he can properly consort with his fellows.
This condition of B’s which justifies solitary walking is called by many names in medical works or in the impassioned autobiographies of advertisement--neurasthenia, brain-fag, nervous collapse, or even Weltschmerz. But there is a better and more expressive name, covering a larger range of symptoms, which popular idiom created for us, and a poet then marked for ever as our own. I mean the Hump. The use of this phrase illustrates once more the truth that once we are conscious of a thing we have subdued it. When a man says he has neurasthenia, he understands nothing except a vague sense of discomfort somewhere unlocalised in himself: but when he says he has the Hump, the very word brings a clear vision of something unnatural and extraneous, of a definite deformity which he can attack and cure. The disease is isolated and identified, and is no longer a vague oppression; it is something which is not his real self, but is temporarily connected with him, and may, by an effort, be shaken off. Civilisation has pressed too heavily on one part of him, on his porter’s shoulder-knot; and the forces of his being, which should be employed in varying ways on different tasks, have concentrated themselves unnaturally to resist the pressure: his shoulder has become hypertrophied: in short, he has the Hump. Let him take a walk, let his being resume its natural course: let the forces settle instinctively back into their natural channels: let him realise the world around and about him, calling and answering to each of his separate faculties and not to one only; and lo! the pressure is lightened, the Hump is reduced, and he resumes his natural shape, and is fit for the company of his fellows.
And then you will find that the sun and the wind, And the Djinn of the garden too, Have lifted that Hump, that horrible Hump, The Hump that was black and blue.
The poet, it is true, wrote of the Hump that comes from having too little to do: but his words apply equally to that which comes of too much.
But it is not only abnormal mental conditions, such as the Hump, which justify solitary walking: there are abnormal physical conditions which at times render it necessary. Chief among these are the peculiar conditions of streets, pavements, and aggregated humanity which make up towns. Walking in company in a town is really a mockery. Not only are you hampered by other people, so that your attention is kept perpetually on them and off your companions: but your line is for ever being broken and reuniting, so that there is no chance of developing a communal swing and stride. Worse than that, the atmosphere of a town induces that dangerous combination of physical oppression and mental activity which leads to brilliant conversation: you shout epigrams across the roar of the traffic, and coruscate with wit as you dodge among perambulators. Town-walking in company, in fact, tends to become like an evening party, and the only possible thing in a town is to walk alone.
This being so, it may be asked whether town-walking is worth doing at all. Many people would say that it is not, and as regards the great majority of towns I should agree with them; the only thing to be done with such towns is to walk away from them as quickly as possible, and to achieve this it is pardonable to undergo the degradation of bicycling or even being driven in a vehicle. But there is one exception, and that is London. London walking is a quite distinct and peculiar thing, utterly unlike any other town-walking. It is a unique branch of walking in general and solitary walking in particular: for all the circumstances which make town-walking solitary apply tenthousandfold in London. But if you accept this condition, and walk London alone, you will find a very curious thing, namely that in this biggest and most monstrous of all towns you approach most nearly to pure rusticity. The strictly physical conditions, dirt, noise, smell, constriction of outlook, multiplicity of people, are as bad or worse in London than other towns; but in certain other points, by no means unimportant to a walker, the end of the series is like the beginning, the infinite is like the infinitesimal. What was possible on the South Downs, difficult in Cheltenham, and unthinkable in Liverpool, becomes possible again in London.
It all springs from one simple fact: there are so many people in London that they do not notice each other. If the Londoner paid the slightest attention to his neighbour he would go mad in a fortnight. It is physically impossible for him to notice every one he sees; consequently, he gets into the habit of simply overlooking them, and as their _esse_ is _percipi_, they become, for practical purposes, not there. A Londoner walking along a crowded street is really alone in the wilderness: the men are simply as trees walking. The difference between walking along Oxford Street and along the Embankment is only the difference between walking through a copse where there are many trees or on a field track where there are few.