Part 12
From this two important consequences follow; first, that in London you can wear what you please. No one will notice or criticise, and even if they did there are always a hundred people worse dressed than you, with dirtier boots, with more _négligé_ hats, with baggier trousers. You may, of course, meet some one you know; but here again the abnormal size of London comes to your aid. If it is 5 to 1 on meeting a friend in Cheltenham, it is 50 to 1 against in London. Second, and even more important, is the fact that in London you can sing in the streets. The roar of the traffic will drown all but the strongest passages in the highest register: and even if this lulls for a moment nobody will notice. You can even conduct with your stick if the beat of your foot is not enough. Difficult orchestral passages with variations of colour can be safely attempted in London streets: even the difference between a trumpet and a horn (which involves making faces if it is done properly) can be represented without any one heeding you.
Traversing thus the London streets, singing and in comfortable clothes, unheeding and unheeded by other people, the solitary walker can come near to, if he cannot attain, the proper mood of walking. It is true that a crowd may disturb his repose at times, and dodging the people and the traffic may break the rhythm of his stride: but the sixth sense which Londoners develop enables him to avoid most obstructions without thinking, and it is surprising, as a matter of fact, how rarely one’s stride is broken in a London street. The rhythm of street walking can never be quite the same as the rhythm of country walking: there is always something hard and metallic in the contact of foot and paved surface. None the less, there is a rhythm, and it can do something towards pacifying the body, enlarging the mind, and beating the disordered discourse of intellect into the smooth series of contemplation. Here again the mere size of London comes to the solitary walker’s aid. It is large enough to give him the feeling of direction, to feed his innate craving for big lines. True, in London as in other towns you have frequently to make a sharp turn, giving a violent wrench to your internal organ of orientation. But if your main line be a sufficiently big one, as it can be in London, it is possible to regard these turns as temporary irregularities, and merge them in a larger whole. For example, as you go from Charing Cross to Chelsea, you start with a piece of the Strand, turn a little to cut across the lower end of Trafalgar Square and out into the Mall, and then swing round to the left, to the right, again to the right and again to the left, before you resume the big line of the King’s Road.[6] But if you envisage the whole in a sufficiently large spirit, the little irregularity of Trafalgar Square and the four turns necessitated by the intrusion of Buckingham Palace need not trouble you; they are mere modern excrescences on a line which must have existed before Buckingham Palace was built or Trafalgar fought, the line by which the citizens of London went to Chelsea to eat buns.
By walking in this way along big lines it is possible to gain some real idea of London, the relations of its parts, and the characteristic of each. The bus or cab-rider cannot really understand London: by allowing himself to be carried he loses all grip of actuality. The underground traveller is even more benighted: to him London is an unintelligible congeries of districts linked by memories of the under world. He conceives Hampstead Heath as something near Hampstead station--an awful perversion. But the walker realises Hampstead Heath in its relation to London; he has approached it through the drab monochrome vistas of Camden Town (with the sudden leap into modernity, red brick, and green blinds at the lower end of the heath) or along the pompous and innocently self-satisfied High Street, or up the interminable sameness of Fitz John’s Avenue. He knows Parliament Hill as the end of an hour’s hard walk, from which he looks back over the way that he has come: he knows the cattle-trough as the first landmark in Alf Holliday’s famous walk out of London to St. Albans, which drops him over the Spaniard’s Road into a new world, with a high ridge between him and London, twists him deftly through Temple Fortune, takes him into Hendon the back way by the recreation ground, and speeds him from the foot of the hill across the thirteen fields traversed by the river Silk, where a man can stretch his legs and forget all urban things awhile until confronted by the imposing structure of the Hendon Union workhouse.
But the greatest and most inspiring thing in London is the river. On the purely physical side, it ventilates the town as nothing else can do; on the most stifling days, when stone and brick have been so heated overnight that they have killed the freshness of dawn and brought the new day to birth already old, when the feet are as lead and every breath is an oppression, when the most congenial music is a symphony of Tschaikowsky--there is still some freshness beside the river. On the aesthetic side, who shall fitly sing the praises of the river, with the morning sun catching it as one drops on to the embankment from the north, the silver mornings when the air is clear, the gold mornings with a slight fog, and the copper mornings with a thicker fog? Or the November view up river at sunset from one of the Chelsea bridges? But the best gift of the river to London is simply itself, the long curving line on which the whole town is based, which links Fulham to Westminster and Battersea to the Docks, which shapes as nothing else can shape the walker’s conception of London. Give me the man that knows his bridges and has walked the whole range of all the embankments, from Blackfriars to the uttermost parts of Chelsea beneath the shadow of the four chimneys; he alone is the true Londoner.
It is clear then that at least in London there is something to be said for solitary walking; the London walker can come near to the mood of true walking. If he is debarred from real country he can yet gain something of the country conditions; though a townsman, he approaches in many ways to rusticity. A curious confirmation of this view may be found in the Local Government system of this country. While every other town has its Borough Council, London has a County Council; on the South Downs you are in a county, in Liverpool you are in a borough, but in London you are in a county again. In the eye of the Local Government Board, we Londoners are mere chawbacons; we are tending sheep, and sowing corn, and abiding the verdict of the seasons; we dwell beneath our own vine-trees, and wait for a chance traveller to come by and tell us whether Ladysmith is relieved. There is much humanity in Acts of Parliament.
* * * * *
But however much we may make of London walking, let it never be considered as anything but a _pis aller_. The first principle of all walkers who live in London is to get away, if possible. If you must remain in London, walk there by all means, and trump up whatever defence of it looks most plausible. But as soon as it becomes possible to get away, do not dream for an instant of remaining; beside a real country walk, the biggest London line, the finest view from the Embankment, the most transcendental conception of Hampstead are as dust in the balance. Have done with all such flummery; take your stick and your Walker Miles and go. And, unless you have the hump, do not go alone. Walking _from_ London (as opposed to walking _in_ London) is one of the finest forms of communal walking; as an education in citizenship it need fear no comparison, whether with cricket, football, or any other organised game.
Consider for a moment the qualities needed by one who has undertaken the organisation of a party of walkers--if a mixed party, so much the better. To perform his functions successfully he must be a combination of Cook’s agent, weather-prophet, geographical specialist, Bradshaw expert, commissariat officer, guide, nurse, hostess, and chaperon. First he must arrange the day and time, and train, so as to suit everybody, which involves a hail of postcards, telephone conversations, and personal interviews. Then he must provide a fine day--by far his easiest task. Then he must arrange the route, his choice being limited only by the fact that each member of the party has his own views about pace, distance, time for lunch, and character of country, agreeing only that there must be no undue hurrying or waiting for the train home at the end of the walk. Then his functions as guide begin: he must necessarily lead the party, while keeping an eye behind to see that no one is straggling; he must never show even a momentary hesitation as to the route; he must receive with gratitude and attention the suggestions of his companions, who don’t care about the map, but are sure they came that way with their uncle some years ago, and are quite certain the guide is wrong; he must watch the time all through, making painful mental calculations of rates and distances; he must be sure, if the route passes any ancient churches, public-houses, or registry offices, that no members of the party whose tastes incline thereto linger too long with irretrievable results; and unless and until the party have reached a proper taciturnity, he must originate and stimulate interesting conversation. If the walk continues into the late afternoon--as it will if the leader has an ounce of sporting instinct--he must find a suitable place for tea at exactly the right time, and finally march his party down to their train with not more than five minutes to wait.
Many walkers when guiding a party prefer to stick to familiar routes, and so lessen some of the difficulties; but, if this plan is safer, it misses some of the most exciting moments of walking in company. There is nothing in life quite like guiding a company against time across unknown or dimly remembered country. With a map it is stimulating enough; but it is perhaps even more fun with Walker Miles. For the leader feels that not only himself but also Walker Miles is on his trial; he has to justify to the company not only his own intelligence, but also that of his master. And he knows that tracks may have been changed or landmarks moved, and that a passage is just coming in the text which requires careful attention to make certain of the master’s meaning. He turns the critical corner at the dividing of the ways, and has to decide instantly and without hesitation on the right route. He chooses one, and looks ahead to the next point in the text which marks a decisive point--a fork in the road, or a stile in the hedge. Time passes and the track continues, every yard more fatal if the last turn was wrong. And then in a sudden glory the track forks or the stile appears; the master is justified; and with something of the feeling of Wellington when Blucher appeared, or Euclid when the forty-seventh proposition worked out, he brushes the doubt and anxiety of the past from his mind, and hurls himself joyously on the next problem.
* * * * *
It would be untruthful and ungrateful to close an account of walking in company on a note of criticism or discontent. Really, the difficulties can easily be exaggerated: the disasters are mostly might-have-beens, which as a matter of fact were not. Only at certain points, and those mostly in the earlier stages, is it really anxious work. As the day wears on doubts and difficulties diminish: the party instinctively settles down to unanimity and good fellowship: the amateur geographer becomes less dogmatic, the conversationalist less brilliant: differences wear off, and the company is linked together by the influences of motion and their surroundings. When they started they were discrepant units of humanity, with every element that could divide and distract them hypertrophied by civilisation: now they have won their way back to the simpler and commoner things that unite. They have eaten in common the sacramental sandwich: they have trodden together twenty miles of their mother earth: and the gorse of Ranmore Common, or the autumn beechwoods of Buckinghamshire shall burn in their memory as a token of good fellowship.
* * * * *
Wherefore, O companions, that I may close as I began, let me with my last words put it on record that I bear no malice. There may have been little difficulties at times: when one of you was guiding, I may have offered irritating suggestions and comments: when I was guiding, I may have been inaccurate, heedless, impatient of criticism. But I do not think that these difficulties play much part in our joint stock of memories. What we remember is not the quarrels by the way, but the way itself--that steep run down Muckish and homeward tramp to the strain of John Brown, that April evening on the Longmynd, that wonderful chequered day of sun and cloud on the Gable, that hot afternoon pull over Watendlath, that moment on Moel Hebog when Snowdon burst into view (and the wall into which we crashed at the bottom), the ridge from the White Horse down to Lambourn, where we talked biology, those Whitsun walks along the back of the world, called the South Downs, those damp lunches on Bookham Common, that clear winter day in Buckinghamshire, and at all seasons and under every sky Leith Hill. Times and places and persons--they are linked together by an imperishable bond: and my last memories are not of bickerings and failures, but of toleration, good-will, and sympathy which lightened the way and sent the miles spinning backward beneath the tread of our feet.
But why use the past tense only? We are not yet old or decrepit, the earth is still firm under us, the wind yet blows, and there is a sun (we are told) still shining in the sky. In part for amusement, but in part as a tribute to our common memories of walking, I have twined these inadequate words. But there is a better thing we can do; let us put on our boots and take our sticks and go forth upon the road once more. There are several new tracks which I am anxious to show you.
_EPILOGUE_
_And after all (the readers cry) What is your great conclusion? That walks are good, and hills are high, Et cetera, in profusion. We bore the burden of your prose Through all its painful stages, Are platitudes as trite as those To be our only wages?_
_Yes, reader; there is nothing new, Nothing the least exciting. One truth, one only I pursue In all this waste of writing-- Old as the hills on which we stood, Trite as our path descending, That walks are good, that walks are good-- I ask no better ending._
_You seek for novel theories The world without to wisen, To open other people’s eyes And broaden their horizon;_ _And so you set but little store By works (like this) which lead to What some one else has said before And every one agreed to._
_Yet, you must own, the world proceeds Mainly by commonplaces, With platitude to serve its needs, Banality its basis. It takes its customary roll Around the same old axis, And whispers to the fretting soul ‘Οὐ γνῶσις ἀλλὰ πρᾶξις.’_
_Your theories so vast and vain, What are they all but vapour Which the cold workings of the brain Precipitate on paper? Your learning (if indeed you learn) Is but a puny fraction Of that sure knowledge that men earn Who set their limbs in action._
_If you would know that walks are good Put intellect behind you; Go, mount the hill and thrid the wood, Let sun and shade enwind you. The flimsy phantoms of your brains Are blown away in tatters; One platitude alone remains-- The only one which matters._
_Once you have grasped these simple facts There needs no further talking (A futile process, which reacts Injuriously on walking), So you can take your stick and start, A sadder man, but wiser; And I can wish you, as we part, Farewell and Gute Reise._
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I am not including the so-called dancer who shakes hands with his hostess, smiles genially round, and then edges to the door and goes home to bed.
[2] This was written in 1910: now perhaps the ‘Chocolate Soldier’ or the ‘Rosary’ should be substituted. But I hate the ‘Merry Widow’ so much that I gladly let the anachronism stand.
[3] _De Mot. An. 7._
[4] Arguments are now proceeding about this, and it may prove that they _did_ go along the Guildford-Ranmore Common track; in which case I withdraw the above.
[5] I do not feel sure whether ‘by her watch’ is intentionally emphasised. It will be remembered that at breakfast her watch was four minutes slow: but presumably she set it. In any case, the difference hardly affects the argument.
[6] I feel bound to call attention here, if only in the interests of historical record, to an outrage which took place at some time between October 1911 and March 1912. The road which runs down the middle of Eaton Square is the King’s Road, the same which continues west from Sloane Square. An attempt was made to disguise this fact by calling it Clevedon Place in one part: but the fact is undoubted, and used to be made quite clear by a tin plate on the palings at the eastern end of Eaton Square; as this was beyond the part masquerading under an alias, the evidence was conclusive. The tin plate has now been removed, probably by some inferior novelist who found his ideals of Eaton Square incompatible with anything remotely related to Chelsea Town Hall and the World’s End. This tyrannical attempt to relegate the domain of the King’s Road to the part west of Sloane Square must not be allowed to stand. In the name of all London walkers I call for the restoration of the tin plate. After all, the novelist is straining at a gnat: if he will turn to the London Directory he will find that the correct postal address of his hero and heroine is Eaton Square, Pimlico, S.W.