XIV
The Mood for Walking
§ 19
A morning walk is worth the effort of getting up. Much would I give to have been of that party which, in sixteen hundred and something, "stretched their legs up Tottenham Hill towards the Thatched House in Hoddesdon on that fine fresh May morning"—I mean Messrs Piscator, Venator, and Auceps. I should have been Peregrinator; and whereas Piscator praised the water, and Venator the land, and Auceps the air, as the element in which each respectively traded, I should have praised all three, for the pedestrian's pleasures derive from no single one. And to walking I should have applied dear old Izaak Walton's own phrase, that it, like angling, was "most honest, ingenious, quiet, and harmless."[13] Upon quiet, Walton sets extraordinary stress. Quoting with approbation the learned Peter du Moulin, he tells us that "when God intended to reveal any future events or high notions to his prophets, he then carried them either to the deserts or the sea-shore, that having so separated them from amidst the press of people and business, and the cares of the world, he might settle their mind in a quiet repose, and there make them fit for revelation."[14]
It is strange that Izaak Walton, himself apparently a most quiet and contented old man (he lived to be ninety-one), should, writing at sixty years of age, and two hundred and fifty years ago—when I suppose there was no faster or noisier thing than a galloping horse—should so insistently preach and teach quiet. Yet, perhaps we must remember that he lived through the Great Rebellion. The last words of his book—and he puts them into his own, Piscator's, mouth—are:
"And [let the blessing of St Peter's Master be] upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his providence, and be quiet, and go a-angling. Study to be Quiet.—1 Thess. iv. 11."
Why, I do not exactly know, but there is to me something straightforward, honest, and simple-minded in the idea of ending a book with the words "and go a-angling." This and the quotation from 1 Thess. iv. 11 sum up for me the character of the man and the book.
§ 20
Walking rivals angling in demanding and engendering quiet. "To make a walk successful," says another dear old gentleman, writing at the same time of life but in modern times, "mind and body should be free of burthen."[15] The true and abiding joy of walking is in calm. "The mood," says John Burroughs, "in which you set out on a spring or autumn ramble or a sturdy winter walk ... is the mood in which your best thoughts and impulses come to you.... Life is sweet in such moods, the Universe is complete, and there is no failure or imperfection anywhere."[16] Only Nature can induce such moods—
"Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,"
says the soul-tossed, self-torturing Byron. Books, music, art, the drama, philosophy, science—at bottom there seems to be something disquieting in these. They come in such questionable shape. They are the works of man; and we never altogether trust the works of man. We never feel, even with the first of those who know, that our fellow-man, who is, after all, like unto ourselves, has answered every question, allayed every doubt, stilled every fear. Was something of this in Matthew Arnold's mind when he cried:
"One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,"
and prayed her to calm, to compose him to the end?—But enough in praise of calm. Calm is compatible with the highest and most exuberant spirits. Indeed, high and exuberant spirits are the first and natural outcome of a mind at peace with itself. Good old Walton is continually breaking out into pious or pastoral song—and making milkmaids and milkmaids' mothers break out into song, too.
XV
Evening Meditations
§ 21
If, as Messieurs Piscator, Venator, and Auceps, and their tuneful milkmaids, show, early morning walks tend to blithesomeness of heart, evening walks tend perhaps to meditation of mind. As day wears on—I do not know, I may be wrong, but to me it seems that as day wears on it takes a more sombre aspect. It was at dusk that Gray's Elegy was written. In the very sound of Milton's simple words,
"Then came still evening on,"
there is to me an echo of quietness, perhaps of melancholy.—Many a lesson I have learned by quiet meditation in quiet scenes, prolonged far into the night.—Indeed, he is a wise walker who chooses for himself one or more secluded spots, sequestered deep, whither he may go, there to commune with himself; or to hold high converse with the mighty dead; or to lend an expectant ear for the dryads of the woods; or, if nothing more, to rid him of the petty perturbations incident to a life lived between four walls, a floor, and a ceiling, and broken into fragments by clocks which strike the hours and watches which point to the minute.
§ 22
One such spot I have, and from it many a lesson I have learned.—It is a great amphitheatre, Nature-made, vast and open. It slopes to the north and west, and all about it and about are green trees—green trees and shrubs and lowly plants. In the whole space I am the one spectator—save for little grasses that stand on tiptoe to look and listen; save for little weeds that nod their heads; and a beetle crawling heedless over dry and shining grains of sand. In the orchestral centre, where, in ancient Greece, should stand the lighted altar, there chances to be a little crimson maple; and behind and beyond rise verdant hills. Before me, as where should be the stage, stand, in green habiliments, beech and elm and fir; oak and cedar; lithe and virginal saplings; broad-shouldered pines, staid and stalwart—a goodly company, goodly and green, wondrous green; and for me they act and pose and sing.... The drama opens.
There is no fanfaronade. On the left, against a dove-grey cloud, the topmost twigs of a silver poplar rustle, the signal to commence. Gently, and with grace supreme, the boughs begin a cosmic song, and sway the while they chant. They dip and fall, and lightly rise; take hands and touch, and smile, and sing again. Troop after troop takes up the measure as the wind sweeps through the trees, and there is revealed to the eye and to the ear sound and motion obedient to an unseen power.... The movement deepens. Great masses join the dance, swell the vespertinal hymn. Huge and cumbrous boughs sweep back and forth, melodious, eloquent; and from tremulous leaf to swaying limb rises a choric song, beautiful, wonderful.... Of what is it that they speak?
Presently, beneath the dove-grey cloud, the red sun momentarily shows. Gleams strike the amphitheatre, the stage. My neighbour grasses glint in the sheen, the beetle's wing-sheaths glow; the sand grains glisten, and, overhead, the veined leaves of the larch, which before were black against the sky, become translucent to the light. The massed greens grow radiant; solitary boughs shake sunshine from their locks; the shrubs stand out overt; a divine gleesomeness fills all the wood.... Whence comes the mystic impulse?
Then slowly evening falls. The wind dies down. A fitful breeze, now warm with Summer's breath, now chill, strays aimless; and the major song sinks to a key in flats.—The sun sinks. The green shadows grow black; and where before was great leafage, is now a great gloom, in which even the white-stemmed birches lose their tapering limbs. Gone are the leaves of the larch; the shrubs hide; the beetle creeps out of sight. A far-off rill mingles a bass maestoso sob with its treble trill; and slowly, very slowly, a thin thin mist creates itself in every cranny of the dell. Only I am left, dull of hearing, miscomprehending, obtuse.
Only a little scene in an unending play; for all through the night, and for endless days and nights, before man was, and long after man will be, these leafy persons uplift that solemn chant, enact that choric dance: now frolicsome and free; now plaintive: now expectant, patient, still.... What is it that they hymn?
§ 23
It is but little that I, I and the heedless beetle, comprehend of this mighty but mystical drama. Some supernal power impels them, so it seems, and they hymn and praise this power; some hidden force, emanating in regions far beyond the sun, yet immanent in the grass blade, in the leaflet, in the sand grains at my feet. Often a darksome power, ruthless, blind; slaying horde on horde; spilling blood like water; scattering real pain and poignant agony like hail; yet often thrilling, joyous, tremulous with bliss—inscrutable, recondite, dark. It is formed and transformed into myriad shapes, out-running time, out-living life; muted and re-muted, here into gross and ponderable matter, there into filmiest air; anon revealing itself as exuberant life; again vanishing in so-called death; a breath; a spirit; the soul of eternal things.... Some hidden power they hymn.
The darkness deepens. The mist grows thick apace, heavy and sombre. The keen jagged edge that cut the horizon is blunted. The mystic play is withdrawn; the persons of the drama vanish; and spectators and stage, proscenium and scene, the ampitheatre, the open earth, and the illimitable sky, are blent into one dark and invisible whole.
Then in the silence of night I heard the soundless voice of that Spirit of Eternal Things: that Mystery, impenetrable as the dark, impalpable: revealing itself as one with the shapes it took and one with the impulse they obeyed; in the grass blade and the leaf, and in the wind to which they swayed; in the ponderous earth that, darkling, rolls through space, and in the subtle mind that holds this earth in fee. The vast and the far-off were embraced in the vision, for from the remotest star came rays that united me with it. The minute and the trivial were summoned from their hiding to prove themselves near and akin. Magnitude and proportion were swallowed up in unity; number and computation disappeared in a stupendous integer. Not a leaf shook, not a bud burst, but was moved to motion and to life by forces infinite and remote, ante-dating sun or star, one with sun and star, older than the Milky Way, vaster than the limits of vision. For in each leaflet of the boscage ran a sap ancient as ocean; and but yesterday, in the history of Time, that whole assemblage was something far other than it is. Bud and leaf were but manifestations of a something supreme—a Force, a Spirit, a God; a mysterious Thing that took hold of dew and sunshine and soil and transformed them into shape and perfume. And sunshine and dew and soil were in turn themselves but mutations of things, chemical elements or movements of molecules; and these again but mutations of things more subtle still—atoms or electrons, infinitesimal and innominate particles; till ultimately, surely, we arrive at something immense, immutable.—Something there must be behind all change; behind all appearances Something that Appears. And the last appearance, and the sum-total of appearances, must be potential in the first, as in the acorn is contained a potential forest. Given one acorn, and enough of space and time, and there is actually possible a cosmos of oaks; and every oak different, and no two twigs alike. So, could we explain the electron, we should comprehend the inane; in the moment lies concealed the æon. Indeed, it is only to time-fettered space-bound man that these are not one and identical. And, if in leaf and bud, then in perceiving mind. For somehow mind, this wondering mind of man, arose upon this planet; uprose, appeared, became. No trailing comet, surely, in wanton sport, showered mind upon this world. Whencesoever it arose, being here, and fed and nurtured by all things here, emergent from matter, a fragment of earth and sea and sky, surely in this mind of man must also be that self-same hidden power....
I, too, then, was one of a mystic band, was in the hands of the self-same power, was indeed but a mutation amid its mutations, and had a part to play on my little stage, a part without which the mighty drama would be incomplete, however lowly it were. For, as by inexorable law the youngest leaflet in that dell was potentially existent from before all time, could not help but be and sway and flutter in the breeze, so I in my little world. But what the mighty drama portended or portrayed I knew as little as did the heedless beetle that had crept out of sight; and surely, he, poor little soul, had as much right to know as I—not many mutations, on this paltry planet, separated me from him. Only I saw, behind all, some ineffable power enacting an ineffable drama: playwright and protagonist in one; conceiving and enacting an endless plot; manifesting itself to itself, yet ever remaining the thing unmanifest; sundering itself into innumerable myriads, yet remaining one and a whole—incomprehensible—divine.[17]
By degrees the great sky broke up into clouds. A half moon, cut into fantastic shapes by the twigs, peered through the trees; and as I thridded the boles—I miscomprehending, obtuse, merely a larger atom in a small inane, finding my devious way by a doubly reflected light—the scene was shifted, fresh actors called, and the great drama went on, unfolding for ever a tale without end.
XVI
The Unity of Nature
§ 24
The lesson I learned was this: Nature is vast. Nature knows nothing of Time. Nor does Nature know anything of Space. It is we who import spatial and temporal limitations into Nature. Because we look up with two eyes, and feel forth with two arms, and walk about with two legs, we think, not only that our, but that the, universe is an infinite sphere!—an actual objective sphere of which each stupidly assumes that he is the centre! Which means that there are, supposedly, millions of centres, and each centre changing its place by millions of miles a day!—positive proof of the preposterousness of the assumption.—To an animalcule born and bred inside an old garden hose, the universe, I suppose, is an endless tunnel. To a baby cockroach hatched between floor and carpet, the universe is a limitless plane. Well, we are animalcules on a little rolling clod; and this clod may bear the same relation to some supernal, n-dimensional mansion and garden—and gardeners and Owner, as does my supposititious caoutchouc hose or patterned carpet to some terrestrial demesne.
And so with Time. Time is a matter of individual memory, of remembering past events and of anticipating (which is memory reversed, as it were; memory projected) events to come. And memory, as we know it, is purely a matter of this or that sort of nerve-substance in the brain. Had we no memory, we should know nothing whatsoever of time; an event would be a point, and no past point could be recalled, nor any future one conjectured. So, could an infinite number of memories coalesce, there would be no time either, for in that case all events would occur here and now.
Nature—the Cosmos—the All—the Deity ... He is not limited by cubical contents nor by clocks striking the hours.
§ 25
How convey a notion of this mysterious Unity? Shall we essay a gross and inadequate analogy?
There are in the blood of man little things called white corpuscles. They are alive; they are, in fact, little living personages. Indeed, it would be hard to deny that they possess a certain sort of "intelligence"; for, according to the phagocytic theory, they attack their foes and help their friends. Now, if these white corpuscles ever reason about the world which they inhabit, they must think that it consists of an immense red ocean in a perpetual flux, limitless and restless, and peopled with myriads of beings like unto themselves. Yet they are an integral part of the human frame; indeed without them the human frame could not be what it is. Well, man's place in his universe may be very similar to that of the white corpuscle in its; and the intelligence and nature of the Being of which man forms an integral part may be as inconceivable to man—to bewildered man, buried 'neath an ocean of air, and blown about space without even a "by your leave"—as are man's to the leucocytes of the blood.
If there is no such thing as Space objectively existing outside our groping human selves; and if there is no such thing as Time, also objectively existing independent of our remembering and anticipating human selves; if also Death is but Life undergoing Change (for Life is not a thing extraneous to the cosmos, and there is nothing in the cosmos that can ever go out of it); if even Change itself is but a process so named because of the necessities of our temporal and spatial conditions; and what we call "multiplicity" or "manifoldness" merely a word coined by our incompetence to perceive the interdependence of all that is ... why, then, surely, one with and interpenetrating our own little space-bound, time-fettered lives, there must be an Absolute Life, indiscerptible because coherent; immutable, because unspatial; inexorable, because timeless; not to be gainsaid, because all-embracing; whose behests the human spirit, because identical with and contained in it, must and cannot but obey.
§ 26
However, that there is a flaw in my Philosophy and a flaw in my Creed, I do not conceal from myself.—If, underlying and upholding all phenomenal multiplicity, there is a noumenal unity, how it comes about that there is evil and suffering and injustice and pain I do not know. Nor do I know how, if that Unity (including man) is governed by infrangible law, it comes about that we obtain notions of Responsibility and Will; how we feel that we ought to act thus and not otherwise, and have the power to choose the good from the evil.
Yet I comfort myself thus:—Human reason, after all, is inadequate for the explanation of anything superhuman. But there may be in man a faculty of imagination or feeling or emotion or faith—call it what you like—that insists upon our trying to act thus and not otherwise; upon our helping on the good and eradicating the bad; and that leaves the problem of the Origin of Evil and the problem of the Freedom of the Will to another sphere and another stage in the upward emergence of mind.
§ 27
Of the Origin of Evil I have no solution whatsoever. Why it is that not a single human being can go through his short threescore years and ten without pain, anguish, disappointment, the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to; why
why this solid earth is drenched with blood, and on every square inch of its surface are creatures slaughtering and stuffing creatures into their maws; why torture and agony—mental and physical—should be rampant; why innocent little babies should suffer lingering deaths—racked with pain—weak—gasping ... upon this heart-rending enigma I dare not dwell. But I cannot accept the incredible solution that an Almighty Being created this cosmos out of nothing thus, and, having created it thus, looks on at this his appalling creation unmoved.
§ 28
On the Freedom of the Will may I quote myself? Matthew Arnold has given me precedent.[18]
"There are just two misleading terms in that little phrase, the Freedom of the Will, and these are just the words 'freedom' and 'will.' There is no such thing in the bodily frame as a separate entity or faculty called a 'will' walking about like a pilot on deck and directing the course; and, if there were, such pilot would not be 'free' from the influences of wind and tide. The bodily frame is like a ship, with its captain and crew. The captain has to go by the chart (that is, by his knowledge and experience of life), and the crew have to trim the sails (that is, adapt actions to circumstances). The captain (that is, the higher coordinating centres) is not 'free,' for he is dependent on his crew (to which we may compare the nerves and the ganglia)—which, in turn, are dependent upon weather (that is, our surroundings). The captain may 'will' as much as he likes, but if his crew are mutinous, or the winds contrary, he will not make port. 'Will power' at bottom merely means an intelligent captain and an obedient crew; and 'putting-forth' or 'exercising' will power merely means that captain and crew must work in harmony. So that, if attention, if virtue, if conduct and character depend upon will power (as of course they do), Aristotle seems to be perfectly right in saying that the secret of these is εξις, or habit or practice: only a trained crew can work the ship."[19]
§ 29
One thing only is certain—and whether the certainty derives from a rational or an emotional, a social or a cosmic, an evolutionary or an intuitive, a political or an ecclesiastical source, I do not stay to ask—one thing only is certain: The evil that there is, it is our bounden duty to alleviate; "le monde subsiste pour exercer miséricorde et jugement"[20]; and I care not a fig that I have no metaphysical, philosophical, ethical, or religious basis of argument to adduce for this untransferable onus of Duty.
And I take comfort, also, in the thought that, after all, Reason has had very little to do with the moral progress of mankind. "C'est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non raison."[21] Answer me this one question: Which have exercised the greater influence for good: reasoned-out systems of philosophy; or religious evangels whose tenets no one could prove? How many pious followers has Spinoza or Leibnitz or Nietzsche? And how many Buddha or Confucius or Mohammed or—with all reverence be added his name—Jesus of Nazareth?
But the critic will say: If the religious tenet is incapable of proof, by what criterion can we judge of the authenticity of any evangel?—Well, if it teaches to alleviate suffering and to do the Right, that is criterion enough for me.
Return we to the humble topic of walking.
XVII
The Instinct for Walking
§ 30
For many reasons, walking seems to be an ingrained instinct of mankind. I cling to the perhaps fanciful theory that no primitive instinct of man is altogether lost. It is modified, amplified, refined; that is all. With all our culture, we are barbarians still. Man is a clothed savage. And now and again he delights in doffing the clothing and returning heartily to savagery. How delightful the feel of the briny breeze and the boisterous wave on the bare pelt! Mr Edward Carpenter rails at the (I think) eleven layers of clothing that intervene between our skins and the airs of heaven. Walt Whitman revelled nude in his sun bath. What a treat too, sometimes, to get away from the multi-coursed dinner and to bite downright audibly into simple food in the fresh air, and to lap water noisily from the brook! Well, walking, perhaps, is the primal instinct, ancient as Eden, where the Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. And, if my theory is correct, walking will persist till in recovered Paradise man walks with his Maker again. No mechanical contrivance for locomotion will extirpate the tribe of tramps, of those who walk from love of walking.
XVIII
A Woeful Walk
§ 31
But not all walks are occasions of unmitigated pleasure. By no means. A certain trudge, which particularly lives in my memory, was one of almost unmitigated pain.—No; I will not say that, for wert not thou, L——, cheeriest of companions, with me? What a walk that was! It rained the long day through, and as we strode westward, a cold, wet wind from the east blew hard. The roads were impassable for mud; the trees were leafless; the fields bare. Inns there were none, and at the thirteenth mile I broke a nice big flask of port wine or e'er a blessed sip of the liquid (I mean a sip of the blessed liquid) had passed our lips. A woeful walk was that, and woeful pedestrians were we.—Yet, somehow, it is with the extremest pleasure that now I recall that trudge. To beguile the time, and to try to forget the rain, we improvised a play, and shouted dialogues as we strode. We covered forty miles at a stretch; and whether it was the play, or the fresh air, or the exercise, or L——'s indomitable Mark Tapleyism, we limped (no, we lamely ran the last few yards) into our destination, in spirits, at least, buoyant, jubilant, and secure.—How mad and bad and sad it was! And oh, how we were stiff!
XIX
Autumn in Canada Again
§ 32
Yet another country walk taken in England's North American dominions lives most pleasantly in my memory.
Two of the clock one autumn afternoon found me free. I had hoped to have lost no time in beginning to put enormous stretches of space between me and my desk. Not that this desk had not its pleasures, and many of them; but one craves a change of mental atmosphere, however salubrious that usually respired. The temptation, however, of calmly and in self-righteously indolent manner enjoying the sweets of freedom was too strong, so I lounged a whole afternoon, and not till daybreak on the following morning was I booted, knapsacked, and afoot.
The task of putting space between me and my desk was not one as easy as I had anticipated. It was hours before the dust of the city was shaken off, and the mud of the country allowed to take its place; the tedium of the streets at that unfrequented hour of the day made them seem interminable. For was I not craving and in search of country sights and sounds? And yet for miles not one met the eye or ear. Yes, I am forgetting: there was one which made up for much monotony. On a humble cottage wall facing the south, far out in the suburbs, was a wealth of flowering convolvulus such as I had rarely or only in India seen before. The sight was entrancing. The various-hued blossoms seemed blatantly to trumpet forth their beauty to the sun, to borrow the terms of sound and to apply them to colour. And what colour was there! That deep, soft, velvet purple, powdered with snowy pollen—what a profound, what an acute sense it produced of something altogether beyond the limitations of time and space, of something mysterious, beneficent, divine. Never before did I see so deep a meaning in those words: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." How paltry, how tainted, seemed all human greatness beside those simple petals; how marred, how deformed! And why? Why should Nature alone be able to smile openly before her Maker's eyes, and man be ever hiding himself from the presence of the Lord God? Ah! there is more than one interpretation of the text, "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." ... Those brilliant blossoms aroused many a thought. How earnestly have all poets of Nature striven to find expression for the emotions that natural beauty evokes! And yet none has completely succeeded, and none will succeed till the hidden links are discovered between the beautiful thing, the mind that perceives it, and the Hand that fashions it. How is it that a sunset, a landscape, a green field even, or a growing fern, will sometimes in a moment of time cause to blaze up in a man a thrill, a joy, so intense that under its influence one feels dazed and dumb? A great power is, as it were, suddenly let loose; beauty incarnated momentarily reveals its divine presence, and one feels an all but overwhelming impulse to yield oneself to it and be rapt away whithersoever it leads. But—whither it leads we cannot go.
Of all poets who have given utterance to this deep and mystical emotion, Wordsworth perhaps has best succeeded. What can rival the following lines?—which will bear constant quotation:—
If only Wordsworth had written oftener in that strain of higher mood! To me this passage, even with just such narrow meaning as one not worthy to call himself a Wordsworthian can read into it, has been invaluable. In the mass of that hidden, cloudy, inner signification with which (I think it is Mr Ruskin who insists that) all poetry should be instinct, these lines are marvellous. They more nearly reach the goal of that "struggle to conceive the inconceivable, to utter the unutterable, that longing after the Infinite, that love of God," which Professor Max Müller describes as the basis of all religions, than all the creeds such religions have constructed.
Wordsworth saw, as perhaps no one before him ever quite so clearly saw, the Spiritual Unity underlying those two things:—the one called External Nature; the other, this spark of life called the Human Soul—the product of, and burning in, that External Nature, as a flame feeds upon the air which it illumines.—But to return to my walk.
§ 33
Curiously enough, I had hardly reached the confines of the town which I was leaving before I fell in with a youth apparently possessed of the same motive as myself—namely, to enjoy to the full the delights of the country after a year's inclusion in a thronged city; and, in order the better to do so, to use as means of locomotion his own two legs, and a stout stick. I say "apparently," for very short converse with him revealed the fact that he was utterly blind to the charms of Nature. He was nice-mannered and polite to a degree; but as a companion to aid in discovering rural beauty he was simply worse than none at all. His two negative or denominatorial eyes and ears completely cancelled, made useless, and altogether put out of existence my two positive or numeratorial senses. I was prepared to take infinite delight in the most trivial and insignificant of Nature's works, to extol her most commonplace manifestations, to find the longest sermons in the tiniest pebbles; but to do this by the side of the most antipathetic of, to all intents and purposes, blind and deaf of fellow-pedestrians—it was out of the question. I nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice when I say that that utterance of his most pregnant with observation of the passing scene was contained in the words, "That's a potato-patch!" The early morning sun fought its way between dense grey clouds, and fell in cheering light on the tops of the trees, and in silver showers on the gleaming lake below; the rich green meadows caught the rays, the very air seemed laden with treasures of sunlight; young and graceful maples, in crimson autumn tints, like Mænads at vintage-time, flung flaming torches towards the sky, unmindful of the morn; the sumach and the gorgeous virginia-creeper were ablaze with beauty; yet of all this he saw nothing; a brown potato-patch by the highway rim a brown potato-patch was to him, and it was nothing more. Yes, by the by, it was something more: it was an appreciable piece of property, a prospective town lot at so much per foot frontage, one-third cash down and the balance in half-yearly instalments to suit the purchaser, all local improvements paid by.... At least some such jargon caught my inattentive ear. Real estate is, I gladly grant, a topic of (often too) absorbing interest; but one does not exactly wish to be confronted with intricate monetary calculations, connected with barter and commerce, when engaged in the not very kindred and decidedly delicate task of wooing Nature. Barter and commerce when Wordsworth is ringing in one's ears, incorporated companies and syndicates when bird and bush ask your attention—these things, in the language of the pharmacopœia, are incompatibles.
§ 34
I had thus two causes of complaint against my companion. So I left him: I took a bypath; he kept to the highway. Nor was I sorry. It is pleasant now and again for short periods to get away from one's fellow-men. Familiarity breeds contempt, it is said; perhaps it is as true of aggregations of men as of individuals. At all events, one comes back from a temporary seclusion with a sweeter temper, a more kindly and tolerant regard for those about one. Nor was I sorry. The main road contained too many curious starers. To walk for pleasure was a thing wholly outside the limits of their comprehension. "'Tisn't 'cause 'tis cheaper?" asked one irrepressible inquirer (always this matter of money!); and he was still more puzzled at the explanation that hotel bills largely exceeded railway fare....
§ 35
Yet one seeks entertainment when travelling long alone. The mind becomes overfull, it gathers from every sight and sound and scent, and craves another mind as depositary for the surplus, as sharer of the spoils. In time also it wearies of constant observation, and would give much for a companion. In lieu of a concrete one, I found myself quite unconsciously imitating Macaulay, and substituting an abstract one by quoting Milton; and never did his ponderous yet marvellously poised lines sound to me so grand as when rolled ore rotundo to the accompaniment of Ontario's rolling wave. M. Henri Cochin, Matthew Arnold tells us, speaks of "the majestic English iambic." It is to Milton surely that the English iambic owes the praise of majesty. To me, I confess, the exceeding beauty of much of Milton's verse is a snare—as is also much of Mr Ruskin's prose: the ear is so captivated by the sound that the mind strays from the sense.
§ 36
Toronto was my starting point, and my course lay eastwards on the northern shore of great Lake Ontario by what is always known as the Kingston Road, one of the oldest in the country, the precursor of the Grand Trunk Railway, the track of which, indeed, it closely follows. The country through which it runs varies but little in scenery, being a great undulating stretch of fertile land thickly settled with farms and orchards, and as thickly wooded with pine, maple, larch, elm, fir, beech, hickory, and other trees common in Canada. Here and there a small river runs to the lake, and here and there the shore rises into cliffs of eighty or a hundred feet. Cows and sheep, and pigs and poultry, meet one all along the road, showing us the occupations of the inhabitants; as do also the fields of barley and wheat, and the great orchards gay with the unrivalled Canadian apple, which gleams at us from the boughs with every hue and size. The Kingston Road is a king's highway with a vengeance; hard, well-travelled, and dotted, I should say, along its whole length, with comfortable, often elaborate, habitations standing in the midst of fields and trees. At every ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty miles these habitations cluster into villages or towns; sometimes where road and railway intersect, when there spring up factories and warehouses; sometimes down by the shore, when there rise elevators and wharves. I cannot pretend to say that these are interesting. They consist for the most part each of one straggling main street, itself a part of the Kingston Road, and differentiated from it only by the unkempt habitations that line its length, and by the inevitable wooden pavements, broad in the central portions, but narrowing to a single plank in the outskirts—where, no doubt, it was in reality, if not in name, the "Lovers' Walk." They were not quaint, no ancient and few historical traditions clung to them, neither did they appear to me to possess any distinguishing characteristics.
§ 37
I have spoken of a quiet country town. A country town of a Sunday afternoon in Canada is the quietest of existing things. Everything in it seems lifeless. Not a sound is heard from any side. One's own cough startles one in the very streets. Two cows slowly wend their way homewards; an over-ripe apple falls heavily in an unkempt front garden—even these signs of semi-life are a relief. Rows of youths, all dressed in sombre black, and all smoking cigars fearfully if not wonderfully made, lean against the walls of the inn at the corner, or stand in silent knots about the horse-gnawed "hitching-post." The jaded afternoon sunlight falls slantingly and weariedly on untidy plots in which weeds strive for mastery successfully with flowers, on empty verandahs with blistered paint, on the dusty grass encroaching ever on the street. I enter the inn. It is chilly, and in the common room which serves many purposes a battered stove lacking two-thirds of its mica radiates a dry and suffocating heat. On deal chairs, mostly tipped up, sit the youths but just now lounging without. They say nothing; only they sit and smoke, and spit—how they spit! They themselves probably are all unconscious of the incessant salivary sharp-shooting; but I—I sit in terror, like a nervous woman dreading the pistol shots on the stage. Soon church bells begin to clang. None heeds them, nor are they over-inviting; one is cracked, they are not in harmony, and they seem to be ringing a race in which the hindmost is to win. In the space of about an hour, however, the youths begin to move, as if with the feeling that at last will come a small relief from the awful ennui which they cannot express. Church is coming out. They go out and draw up before the doors. A heavy yellow light streams across the street, and with it issues an odour, perhaps, of sanctity, but much disguised by kerosene. Greetings follow between the out-coming damsels and the waiting youths, and curious raucous laughs intended to be tender are heard disappearing into darkened ways. Soon all is again hushed, and but for here and there the slow and lugubrious sounds of hymn tunes played on old and middle-aged organs, the little town might be a buried city of the East.
§ 38
Yet no doubt it had its tragedies, this seemingly peaceful and sequestered spot: indeed signs of most pathetic tragedies came under my own eyes, few as were the hours which I spent in it. Hanging about the unpretentious hostelry about which those uncouth youths gathered, were two specimens of what was once humanity that made the heart ache to look on. One was a case, I think, hopeless: a gaunt and dirty figure, his last drink still dripping from his beard, clothed in the vilest of shirts, and in things that were once trousers, which last hung loose over large and faded carpet slippers, he moved disgust as well as pity. The other was of a different class. Drink had been his bane also, but there was not in his face that absence of all shame, that despair merging into careless defiance, which stamped his fellow-sufferer's case as beyond the cure of man. They called him "Doc," and there were still evidences of birth and education upon his bloated features. What had driven him thus far? I could not help but conjecture. Was there a woman at the bottom of it? If so, where and what was she now? Somebody else's.... But this was idle guesswork. There was yet another case, a woman herself this time, still more tragic. Her motto, stamped upon every feature, expressed in every gesture, was "The heart knoweth its own bitterness." A tall, dark, and once handsome spinster, a femme de trente ans, she waited upon us at table; but with such an air of utter indifference, with such complete abstraction from things material and ephemeral, that she awed the very persons to whose wants she ministered. Her face wore a settled and unaltering expression of something missed yet never to that day for one moment forgotten. A machine could not have carried plates and moved dishes with more unfailing stolidity. Her thoughts were remotely away in the past, and it seemed as if nothing, nothing upon all this earth, could fetch them back. Cato's statue would have smiled as soon as she. It was pathetic in the extreme. One longed to give her if but one moment's peace of mind. Did she never forget? What was it she brooded on? How long would the feminine heart and brain stand that strain? Tragedies! Yes, there were tragedies there, as everywhere else.
§ 39
Such is Sunday in a country town. But in truth, after the rush and hurry of city life, in the country it seems always Sunday. There is a leisure, a calm, a restfulness, and, away by the fields, a quiet sanctity which pervades its every part and unconsciously influences its every inhabitant. By degrees, too, on the traveller through the country this calming influence comes. The still green meadows, the gently swaying boughs, the sunshine sleeping pillowed on the clouds—all tend to meditative and restful peace, and one reaps the harvest of a quiet eye. And if one yields to this beneficent mood there is much, very much, to be gained. Alone with Nature, all around the spacious earth, above the immeasurable heavens, alone in a vast expanse, one finds oneself, in Amiel's fine phrase, tête-à-tête with the Infinite. At such times the great problem of Life flares upon us like a flash of lightning, so sudden, so intense, so vivid is its irruption on the mental vision. Time and space, like the darkness of night, are annihilated, earthly bounds are burst, and there is revealed a realm of Being beyond the confines of the relative, the limited, the finite. We recognise the infinity of unity, the brotherhood of all things. Terms of proportion and comparison lose their significance: there is no great or little, important or trivial, for the minutest object is an essential part of the All, without which this All would cease to be.
§ 40
Curious thoughts, or "half-embodyings of thoughts" as Coleridge called them, that lonely walk aroused. What was this All? And what portion of this All was I—I, this tiny biped crawling ant-like between earth and sky? I looked over the flat earth, and remembered that it was not flat but round, and but one of myriads like itself, and among them, perhaps, as paltry as, upon it, I. I looked up at the sky, filled with the radiance of the sun, and again remembered that, sown through space like seed, were countless other suns, and ours perhaps the least in all that host. And when night came, and the stars shone, I remembered that even then I saw only what came in at the pin-prick of the eye, and that to the mighty All that myriad-studded sky was perhaps as trivial as to it was earth or sun. Yet, trivial as we were, we were not naught—not quite nothing. That was the wonder of it. So far from naught, indeed, that to me, this tiny biped crawling, himself was very important; his little pains, his aches, even these his questionings were very real. If incommensurable suns swung high overhead, he at least was the centre of his own little world, and not the most astounding facts of science could alter or remove that egocentric view.—And, if not nothing, if something in all that vast inane, then what? How came it that, prompted by what entered at that pin-prick eye, something within him could fling itself, fling itself faster than light, far beyond the outermost boundary of vision, and put to the immensity of Being questions which, could Being hear, would surely put it to the blush? Those pains, those aches, were they nothing to the All? To the tiny mighty atom they were much.—But the world spun round, and the sun set, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
§ 41
It is well now and again, I think, to withdraw into the holy of holies of one's own self, "where dwells the Nameless,"[22] in its shapeless and vague impenetrability, "as a cloud." The world is too much with us. The myriad trivial details of everyday life hide from us that of which they ought in reality perpetually to remind us. For, after all, what is all action, even as manifested in these trivial details, but a struggle to overcome space and time, the limitations of the finite; and what, again, is all thought but a struggle to conceive the infinite?
§ 42
Yet another thought this spacious prospect gave me. The endless green fields and the endless blue lake seemed a symbol of the unrealisability of the ideal. With both I was enamoured, and with the beauty of both I craved in some dim and unknown way to take my fill of delight: both were at my feet, but both stretched away and away until they met the eternal and unapproachable heavens at the horizon. Yes, the fields were green, but not the spot on which I stood; the water was blue, but not in the cup with which I tried to assuage my thirst.—But there is a limit to ontological and psychological speculations of sombre hue.
XX
The Walking Tour
§ 43
Up to the present we have considered the country walk only. The walking trip or tour is a more serious affair. If it requires as vacuous a frame of mind, it necessitates a more deliberate preparation. Much depends upon the country and the locality chosen. If inviting hostelries abound, one needs to weight oneself with little; if they are infrequent, or nonexistent, food and clothing become matters of moment. This may sound a truism; but it is a truism that many a tripper wishes he had laid more earnestly to heart when, miles from house and home, he finds himself wet, hungry, and fatigued. It is better to carry a few extra pounds far than to run short soon; for a worn-out body means a useless mind, and hunger and cold, with their attendant depression of spirits, not only rob the tour of its pleasure, but rob the tourist of his zest. Start, therefore, comfortable, and comfortably provided. This is not Sybaritism; it is common-sense.
For an extended trip, send on some luggage ahead, if you can; and some money (I speak of civilised regions). It is impossible, if you are alone—unless, like Stevenson, you hire a donkey—to transport on your own back food and clothing to keep you going for more than a few days at a stretch—unless you shoot, or fish, or trap—which is sport or prospecting, not walking.
Your first care should be for your feet—another truism not seldom neglected. See that your boots fit—fit, remembering that the feet swell (I speak to tenderfoots).
If you are unaccustomed to walking, a good plan is to start with an extra pair of leather soles inside your boots. These can be taken out when the feet swell.
If you prefer shoes to boots, wear gaiters or putties—to keep out the wet in winter, to keep out the dust in summer. The only occasion upon which I suffered from blisters was on a sixty-mile walk in tennis shoes on a dusty road in August. Take two or three changes of socks. If you walk in a populous region, carry a pair of light shoes. These will come in handy if you run across a friend who asks you to dinner. Carry also a collar or two; not only hosts and hostesses, but landlords and landladies look askance at too trampish an appearance. I once felt rather uncomfortable sitting at the head of a table d'hôte at the excellent Hôtel Kaltenbach on the American side at Niagara (the landlord knew me well), for I was in rough flannels and tweeds, and my fellow-guests were dressed like (and some of them probably were) millionaires and millionairesses. Verbum sapientibus satis.—Do not refuse an invitation to dinner. Follow Napoleon's advice and let the country you pass through support you, falling back upon your own food-supply when necessary. Help yourself to as much fruit as you can, or as the owners thereof and their dogs permit. A too concentrated diet is unwholesome. Expatiate upon this to the owners of orchards, and—back your theories with a dole.
§ 44
But nothing equals the evening meal cooked over your own fire—if you are not too tired to cook it. Of the cookery I shall speak later; but the fire is as invigorating as the food. Would you taste the consummation of human masculine contentment, stretch your tired legs before your own fire after a long, long walk followed by a full meal: your chamber, the forest primæval, green, indistinct in the twilight; your couch, the scented earth; your canopy, the heavens, curtained with clouds; in your nostrils the incense of burning wood; in your heart the peace which the world giveth not.—The elaborately ornamented modern hearth, with its carved oak or its sculptured marble, is the direct lineal descendant of the nomad fire—the earliest institution of man, the first promoter of civilisation, the binder-together of troglodytic families into tribes. "Hearth and Home" is an ancient, a very ancient, sentiment. It dates back, I take it, to the Glacial Epoch—far enough, in all conscience.—In my mind's eye I see the shivering Cave-man, appalled at the encroaching ice, the deepening cold. He gathers wood, huddles him in caves, the drops from his furry, ill-smelling clothing (there was no tanning then) sputtering in the flames. For self-protection, and from lack of fuel, family makes alliance with family, and the first-formed human community squats silent about the first-formed human hearth. What friendships must have there been cemented, what tales told; what a strange first unburthening of human heart to human heart! What ecstatic love-making, too, must have been enacted in the darksome corners of the sooty cave, the while the grey gorged hunters snored, and toothless beldames gesticulated dumb-crambo scandal by the smouldering brands!—No wonder præhistoric associations cluster even now about what is too often represented by a flamboyant mantelpiece with immaculate tiles and polished brasses. Pro Aris et Focis! The smoking altar is the consecrated symbol of the lowly hearth.
XXI
The Tramp's Dietary
§ 45
As to food—bacon, flour, and beans are the stand-by. The curious in the matter of concentrated and portable foods will do well to consult Nansen's elaborate and carefully calculated lists of these.[23] Carry some chocolate: it staves off hunger and is nourishing. Milk, if you can get it, has wonderful staying powers, and by most people—especially under stress of prolonged exertion—is easily digested. Wear wool next the skin, and wear it loose. Let everything be loose. And see that your tailor puts pockets—deep and wide ones—in every conceivable and inconceivable part of your costume. As to books, sketching or writing materials, or a camera—every tramp has his hobby: indulge yours to the full; what are you walking for if not to enjoy life? Lastly, do not forget that, if you are not far from the haunts of men, you will over and over again be indebted to your fellow-men for little kindnesses and civilities. A pocketful of small change will make many a rough place smooth. I might mention also sotto voce that so will a flask of good whisky. To these you may add a couple of bandages, some chlorodyne, a few ounces of cognac, a small styptic, a needle and some thread, a small razor, and a cake of soap. Also, if you wear an eye-glass or glasses, by no means forget to carry some extra ones. As for the rest, a pipe, a very big pouch of tobacco (many will dip into it), a stout stick, and abundance of matches ought to make you independent of everything and everybody for days together.
§ 46
A word, too, on beverages, which are as important as is food.—Eschew alcohol in every shape or form, unless you are dog-tired at the end of a long day and must make a few miles ere nightfall. Alcoholic stimulation spells ruination to muscular exertion the moment the stimulus has passed off. It was said that on the march to the relief of Ladysmith in the South African War the drinkers could be told as plainly as if they had been labelled.
The best example I know of the wise and efficacious use of alcohol is in Edith Elmer Wood's "An Oberland Chalet." The author, her sister-in-law, and her brother, with a guide, were climbing the Strahlegg Pass.
"All the way up that eight hundred feet of rock wall, there was never a ledge large enough to rest on with the entire two feet at once!... The numbness of my hands was so great that my control over them was most uncertain. My life and that of my companions depended on the grip I should keep with those cramped, aching fingers, but though I concentrated my will power on them I felt no certainty that the next minute they would not become rigid and refuse to obey me.... After the first few minutes, I never looked downward. I was not inclined to dizziness, but the drop was too appalling.... Once we got all four on a little ledge not as wide as the length of our feet, but solid enough to stand on without balancing. We paused there to take breath, and somebody said 'Cognac.' Now our experience in the Alpine hut the night before had nearly made teetotalers of us. But at this moment we decided that stimulants might have a legitimate use. Frater produced his silver pocket flask and handed it round. We took a swallow in turn, and it was like liquid life running down our throats. I never experienced anything so magical.... I was at the very last point of endurance. I had lost faith in ever reaching the summit of the cliff. I had no more physical force with which to lift my sagging weight upward. I had lost the will power that lashes on an exhausted body. My numb hands were stiffening. My lungs were choked and labouring. I could neither go on nor go back. Then those two teaspoonfuls, or thereabouts, of fiery cognac that burned down my throat sufficed to give me back my grip on myself, physical and mental. I moved my cramped fingers and they answered. I took a deep long breath and felt strengthened. A hope, almost a confidence, crept into my heart that we might reach the top alive."[24]
§ 47
The best all-round stimulant is tea. I say it advisedly, knowing full well that to Dr Alexander Haig and the anti-uric-acid dietists tea is Anathema Maranatha. But every mining prospector, every railroad constructor, every lumberman, every out-in-the-wilds worker throughout Australia and America drinks tea—proof, surely, that it is efficacious, even if it be in a sense deleterious. In huge quantities, and constantly taken, I dare say it is deleterious. But personally I know of no pick-me-up preferable to tea, when, cold, hungry, and tired at the end of a long day's tramp, you find yourself "all in" and unable to eat.
I recall an instance of the extraordinary efficacy of tea—quite weak, but hot. It was at the end of a forty-mile walk through a monotonous country in cold, wind, and rain. We arrived tired out; and although we knew we were hungry (for we had had precious little to eat all day), the thought of food was repulsive, though the restaurant we had reached displayed a variety of viands. I ordered hot tea in the biggest teapot procurable. It was brought. We sipped I forget how many cups each. Then we supped indeed; and after supper one of the party proposed to walk the forty miles back!
Perhaps Dr Haig will say that plain hot water would have done just as well. Humph! Give me weak, but good, tea.
Hot milk, of course, is an incomparable pick-me-up. But who, on a trudge, can always, by demanding it, obtain hot milk? If you can get it, milk, in any shape or form, is unrivalled. More than once it has raised me from the depths of low spirits, produced by hunger and thirst and fatigue, to the most contented of moods.—I was walking once on a hot summer's day along a barren and dusty road where was no habitation nor signs of men. My knapsack was empty, so was my water-bottle. Not a brook or a stream could I find. It was late in the day. I was heart-sick and weary. But the miracle happened. Did I believe my eyes, or was that a man there milking cows over yonder in that field? I made straight for him, and, after passing the time of day and being generally polite (the while my tongue clave to my palate), I presently asked if I might have some of his priceless liquid—I called it simply "milk." Genially he pointed to a pail—a pail, and bade me help myself. I put that vessel to my lips, and I rather think that the vertical arc described by any given point on the periphery of the bottom of that utensil during the process of deglutition was not a small one! When I put that pail down (and a twenty-five-cent piece beside it) I was a new man, and laughed at miles and melancholy.
Very often, when walking, especially in hot weather, one finds oneself tired when only a few miles have been covered. It is not real fatigue; it is want of fluid. The skin exudes moisture; the blood thickens; the serums and synovial fluids run short; waste matter is not excreted; the muscles and tendons require lubrication. A copious draught of water will put all to rights. Not everyone knows this. I myself owe the hint to a friend.[25]
§ 48
Each walker must, however, discover for himself what is the food best suited to his needs—remembering always that it is quite possible to spoil a whole day by even trivial dietetic mistakes. If you walk to see and to enjoy, unless you possess that youth which can digest anything, and that vitality which can attack anything, take heed as to what you eat and what you attempt.—Most unfortunate is the remembrance of an otherwise lovely walk I took one day over one of the most lovely of the passes of the Jura. The day was superb; the road by the soft green pastures was superb; and superb was the climb through the tangled brushwood of the slopes. Filmy clouds formed themselves to leeward of the peaks and hid the tops of the pines; above, I gazed into a deep blue sky; beneath, I gazed into a deep green vale; and a tumbling brook sent its music up the heights. But—I had started foodless, and had stuffed into my pockets only a stodgy roll and a box of sardines. By noon I was hungry. I finished the roll and the sardines. With deplorable result. The pancreas rebelled, the senses were dulled, and all the beauties of the Jura were lost upon heu me miserum!—Fellow-tramp, take thought for your provender—and provender good old Dr Johnson defines as "dry food for brutes."—That is the diet to walk on.
§ 49
But, after all, one's impedimenta must be chosen according to one's tastes. Mr Hilaire Belloc equipped himself for his seven-hundred-mile walk from Toul to Rome with "a large piece of bread, half-a-pound of smoked ham, a sketch-book, two Nationalist papers, and a quart of the wine of Brulé"[26] (but one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!); though farther on he tells us he also carried "a needle, some thread, and a flute."[27] But then Mr Belloc's path lay through thickly-peopled districts; he rarely slept in the open; travelled in summer-time; and not once, I think, lighted a fire: and certes he reached Rome in sorry plight.