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40 chapters
HILLS AND THE SEA
HILLS AND THE SEA
METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. DEDICATION THE NORTH SEA THE SINGER ON "MAILS" THE PYRENEAN HIVE DELFT THE WING OF DALUA ON ELY THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE A FAMILY OF THE FENS THE ELECTION ARLES THE GRIFFIN THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH THE SEA-WALL OF THE WASH THE CERDAGNE CARCASSONNE LYNN THE GUNS THE LOOE STREAM RONCESVALLES THE SLANT OFF THE LAND THE CANIGOU THE MAN AND HIS WOOD THE CHANNEL THE MOWING OF A FIELD THE ROMAN ROAD THE
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TOTHE OTHER MANMR PHILIP KERSHAW
TOTHE OTHER MANMR PHILIP KERSHAW
There were once two men. They were men of might and breeding. They were young, they were intolerant, they were hale. Were there for humans as there is for dogs a tribunal to determine excellence; were there judges of anthropoidal points and juries to, give prizes for manly race, vigour, and the rest, undoubtedly these two men would have gained the gold and the pewter medals. They were men absolute. They loved each other like brothers, yet they quarrelled like Socialists. They loved each other be
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THE NORTH SEA
THE NORTH SEA
It was on or about a Tuesday (I speak without boasting) that my companion and I crept in by darkness to the unpleasant harbour of Lowestoft. And I say "unpleasant" because, however charming for the large Colonial yacht, it is the very devil for the little English craft that tries to lie there. Great boats are moored in the Southern Basin, each with two head ropes to a buoy, so that the front of them makes a kind of entanglement such as is used to defend the front of a position in warfare. Throug
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THE SINGER
THE SINGER
The other day as I was taking my pleasure along a river called "The River of Gold," from which one can faintly see the enormous mountains which shut off Spain from Europe, as I walked, I say, along the Mail, or ordered and planted quay of the town, I heard, a long way off, a man singing. His singing was of that very deep and vibrating kind which Gascons take for natural singing, and which makes one think of hollow metal and of well-tuned bells, for it sounds through the air in waves; the further
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ON "MAILS"
ON "MAILS"
A "Mail" is a place set with trees in regular order so as to form alleys; sand and gravel are laid on the earth beneath the trees; masonry of great solidity, grey, and exquisitely worked, surrounds the whole except on one side, where strong stone pillars carry heavy chains across the entrance. A "Mail" takes about two hundred years to mature, remains in perfection for about a hundred more, and then, for all I know, begins to go off. But neither the exact moment at which it fails nor the length o
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THE PYRENEAN HIVE
THE PYRENEAN HIVE
Shut in between two of the greatest hills in Europe—hills almost as high as Etna, and covering with their huge bases half a county of land—there lies, in the Spanish Pyrenees, a little town. It has been mentioned in books very rarely, and visited perhaps more rarely. Of three men whom in my life I have heard speak its name, two only had written of it, and but one had seen it. Yet to see it is to learn a hundred things. There is no road to it. No wheeled thing has ever been seen in its streets. T
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DELFT
DELFT
Delft is the most charming town in the world. It is one of the neat cities: trim, small, packed, self-contained. A good woman in early middle age, careful of her dress, combined, orderly, not without a sober beauty—such a woman on her way to church of a Sunday morning is not more pleasing than Delft. It is on the verge of monotony, yet still individual; in one style, yet suggesting many centuries of activity. There is a full harmony of many colours, yet the memory the place leaves is of a united
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THE WING OF DALUA
THE WING OF DALUA
Time was, and that not so long ago, when the Two Men had revealed to them by their Genius a corner of Europe wherein they were promised more surprises and delights than in any other. It was secretly made known to them that in this place there were no pictures, and no one had praised its people, and further that no Saint had ever troubled it; and the rich and all their evils (so the Two Men were assured) had never known the place at all. It was under the influence of such a message that they at o
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ON ELY
ON ELY
There are two ways by which a man may acquire any kind of learning or profit, and this is especially true of travel. Everybody knows that one can increase what one has of knowledge or of any other possession by going outwards and outwards; but what is also true, and what people know less, is that one can increase it by going inwards and inwards. There is no goal to either of these directions, nor any term to your advantage as you travel in them. If you will be extensive, take it easy; the infini
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THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE
THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE
Whatever, keeping its proportion and form, is designed upon a scale much greater or much less than that of our general experience, produces upon the mind an effect of phantasy. A little perfect model of an engine or a ship does not only amuse or surprise; it rather casts over the imagination something of that veil through which the world is transfigured, and which I have called "the wing of Dalua"; the medium of appreciations beyond experience; the medium of vision, of original passion and of dr
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A FAMILY OF THE FENS
A FAMILY OF THE FENS
Upon the very limit of the Fens, not a hundred feet in height, but very sharp against the level, there is a lonely little hill. From the edge of that hill the land seems very vague; the flat line of the horizon is the only boundary, and that horizon mixes into watery clouds. No countryside is so formless until one has seen the plan of it set down in a map, but on studying such a map one understands the scheme of the Fens. The Wash is in the shape of a keystone with the narrow side towards the se
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THE ELECTION
THE ELECTION
The other day as I was going out upon my travels, I came upon a plain so broad that it greatly wearied me. This plain was grown in parts with barley, but as it stood high in foreign mountains and was arid, very little was grown. Small runnels, long run dry under the heat, made the place look like a desert—almost like Africa; nor was there anything to relieve my gaze except a huddle of small grey houses far away; but when I reached them I found, to my inexpressible joy, a railway running by and a
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ARLES
ARLES
The use and the pleasure of travel are closely mingled, because the use of it is fulfilment, and in fulfilling oneself a great pleasure is enjoyed. Every man bears within him not only his own direct experience, but all the past of his blood: the things his own race has done are part of himself, and in him also is what his race will do when he is dead. This is why men will always read records , and why, even when letters are at their lowest, records still remain. Thus, if a diary be known to be t
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THE GRIFFIN
THE GRIFFIN
A specialist told me once in Ealing that no inn could compare with the Griffin, a Fenland inn. "It is painted green" he said, "and stands in the town of March. If you would enjoy the Griffin, you must ask your way to that town, and as you go ask also for the Griffin, for many who may not have heard of March will certainly have heard of the Griffin." So I set out at once for the Fens and came at the very beginning of them to a great ditch, which barred all further progress. I wandered up and down
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THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH
THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH
I very well remember the spring breaking ten years ago in Lorraine. I remember it better far than I shall ever remember another spring, because one of those petty summits of emotion that seem in boyhood like the peaks of the world was before me. We were going off to camp. Since every man that fires guns or drives them in France—that is, some hundred thousand and more at any one time, and taking in reserves, half a million—must go to camp in his time, and that more than once, it seems monstrous t
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THE SEA-WALL OF THE WASH
THE SEA-WALL OF THE WASH
The town of Wisbeach is very like the town of Boston. It stands upon a river which is very narrow and which curves, and in which there rises and falls a most considerable tide, and which is bounded by slimy wooden sides. Here, as at Boston, the boats cannot turn round; if they come in frontways they have to go out backwards, like Mevagissey bees: an awkward harbour. As I sat there in the White Hart, waiting for steak and onions, I read in a book descriptive of the place that a whale had come to
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THE CERDAGNE
THE CERDAGNE
There is a part of Europe of which for the moment most people have not heard, but which in a few years everybody will know; so it is well worth telling before it is changed what it is like to-day. It is called the Cerdagne. It is a very broad valley, stretching out between hills whose height is so incredible—or at least, whose appearance of height is so incredible—that when they are properly painted no one will believe them to be true. Indeed, I know a man who painted them just as they are, and
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CARCASSONNE
CARCASSONNE
Carcassonne differs from other monumental towns in this: that it preserves exactly the aspect of many centuries up to a certain moment, and from that moment has "set," and has suffered no further change. You see and touch, as you walk along its ramparts, all the generations from that crisis in the fifth century when the public power was finally despaired of—and after which each group of the Western Empire began to see to its own preservation—down to that last achievement of the thirteenth, when
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LYNN
LYNN
Every man that lands in Lynn feels all through him the antiquity and the call of the town; but especially if he comes, as I came in with another man in springtime, from the miles and miles of emptiness and miles of bending grass and the shouting of the wind. After that morning, in which one had been a little point on an immense plane, with the gale not only above one, as it commonly is, but all around one as it is at sea; and after having steeped one's mind in the peculiar loneliness which haunt
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THE GUNS
THE GUNS
I had slept perhaps seven hours when a lantern woke me, flashed in my face, and I wondered confusedly why there was straw in my bed; then I remembered that I was not in bed at all, but on manoeuvres. I looked up and saw a sergeant with a bit of paper in his hand. He was giving out orders, and the little light he carried sparkled on the gold of his great dark-blue coat. "You, the Englishman," he said (for that was what they called me as a nickname), "go with the gunners to-day. Where is Labbé?" L
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THE LOOE STREAM
THE LOOE STREAM
Of the complexity of the sea, and of how it is manifold, and of how it mixes up with a man, and may broaden or perfect him, it would be very tempting to write; but if one once began on this, one would be immeshed and drowned in the metaphysic, which never yet did good to man nor beast. For no one can eat or drink the metaphysic, or take any sustenance out of it, and it has no movement or colour, and it does not give one joy or sorrow; one cannot paint it or hear it, and it is too thin to swim ab
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RONCESVALLES
RONCESVALLES
Sitting one day in Pampeluna, which occupies the plain just below the southern and Spanish escarpment of the Pyrenees, I and another remembered with an equal desire that we had all our lives desired to see Roncesvalles and the place where Roland died. This town (we said) was that which Charlemagne destroyed upon his march to the Pass, and I, for my part, desired here, as in every other part of Europe where I had been able to find his footsteps, to follow them, and so to re-create his time. The r
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THE SLANT OFF THE LAND
THE SLANT OFF THE LAND
We live a very little time. Before we have reached the middle of our time perhaps, but not long before, we discover the magnitude of our inheritance. Consider England. How many men, I should like to know, have discovered before thirty what treasures they may work in her air? She magnifies us inwards and outwards; her fields can lead the mind down towards the subtle beginning of things; the tiny irridescence of insects; the play of light upon the facets of a blade of grass. Her skies can lead the
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THE CANIGOU
THE CANIGOU
A man might discuss with himself what it was that made certain great sights of the world famous, and what it is that keeps others hidden. This would be especially interesting in the case of mountains. For there is no doubt that there is a modern attraction in mountains which may not endure, but which is almost as intense in our generation as it was in that of our fathers. The emotion produced by great height and by the something unique and inspiring which distinguishes a mountain from a hill has
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THE MAN AND HIS WOOD
THE MAN AND HIS WOOD
I knew a man once that was a territorial magnate and had an estate in the county of Berkshire. I will not conceal his name. It was William Frederick Charles Hermann-Postlethwaite. On his estate was a large family mansion, surrounded by tasteful gardens of a charming old kind, and next outside these a great park, well timbered. But the thing I am going to talk about was a certain wood of which he was rightly very proud. It stood on the slope of a grass down, just above the valley, and beneath it
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THE CHANNEL
THE CHANNEL
Friends of mine, friends all, and you also, publishers, colonials and critics, do you know that particular experience for which I am trying to find words? Do you know that glamour in the mind which arises and transforms our thought when we see the things that the men who made us saw—the things of a long time ago, the origins? I think everybody knows that glamour, but very few people know where to find it. Every man knows that he has in him the power for such revelations, and every man wonders in
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THE MOWING OF A FIELD
THE MOWING OF A FIELD
There is a valley in South England remote from ambition and from fear, where the passage of strangers is rare and unperceived, and where the scent of the grass in summer is breathed only by those who are native to that unvisited land. The roads to the Channel do not traverse it; they choose upon either side easier passes over the range. One track alone leads up through it to the hills, and this is changeable: now green where men have little occasion to go, now a good road where it nears the home
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THE ROMAN ROAD
THE ROMAN ROAD
The other day (it was Wednesday, and the air was very pure) I went into the stable upon my way toward the wood, and there I saw my horse Monster standing by himself, regarding nothingness. And when I had considered what a shame it was to take one's pleasure in a wood and leave one's helpless horse at home, I bridled him and saddled him and took him out, and rode him the way that I had meant to go alone. So we went together along the Stene under the North Wood until we got to the edge of the fore
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THE ONION-EATER
THE ONION-EATER
There is a hill not far from my home whence it is possible to see northward and southward such a stretch of land as is not to be seen from any eminence among those I know in Western Europe. Southward the sea-plain and the sea standing up in a belt of light against the sky, and northward all the weald. From this summit the eye is disturbed by no great cities of the modern sort, but a dozen at least of those small market towns which are the delight of South England hold the view from point to poin
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THE RETURN TO ENGLAND
THE RETURN TO ENGLAND
In Calais harbour, it being still very early in the morning, about half-past five, I peered out to see how things were looking, for if that coast corresponded at all to ours, the tide should be making westerly by six o'clock that day—the ebb tide—and it was on the first of that tide that I should make the passage to England, for at sea you never can tell. At sea you never can tell, and you must take every inch the gods allow you. You will need that and more very often before evening. Now, as I p
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THE VALLEY OF THE ROTHER
THE VALLEY OF THE ROTHER
There is in that part of England which is very properly called her Eden (that centre of all good things and home of happy men, the county of Sussex), there is, I say, in that exalted county a valley which I shall praise for your greater pleasure, because I know that it is too jealously guarded for any run of strangers to make it common, and because I am very sure that you may go and only make it the more delightful by your presence. It is the valley of the River Rother; the sacred and fruitful r
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THE CORONATION
THE CORONATION
My companion said to me that there was a doom over the day and the reign and the times, and that the turn of the nation had come. He felt it in the sky. The day had been troubled: from the forest ridge to the sea there was neither wind nor sun, but a dull, even heat oppressed the fields and the high downs under the uncertain, half-luminous confusion of grey clouds. It was as though a relief was being denied, and as though something inexorable had come into that air which is normally the softest
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THE MAN OF THE DESERT
THE MAN OF THE DESERT
I lay once alone upon the crest of a range whose name I have never seen spelt, but which is pronounced "Haueedja," from whence a man can see right away for ever the expanse of the Sahara. It is well known that Mount Atlas and those inhabited lands where there is a sufficient rainfall and every evidence of man's activity, the Province of Africa, the plateaux which are full of the memories of Rome, end abruptly towards the sun, and are bounded by a sort of cliff which falls sheer upon the desert.
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THE DEPARTURE
THE DEPARTURE
Once, in Barbary, I grew tired of unusual things, especially of palms, and desired to return to Europe and the things I knew; so I went down from the hills to the sea coast, and when after two days I had reached the railway, I took a train for Algiers and reached that port at evening. From Algiers it is possible to go at once and for almost any sum one chooses to any part of the world. The town is on a sharp slope of a theatre of hills, and in the quiet harbour below it there are all sorts of sh
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THE IDEA OF A PILGRIMAGE
THE IDEA OF A PILGRIMAGE
A pilgrimage is, of course, an expedition to some venerated place to which a vivid memory of sacred things experienced, or a long and wonderful history of human experience in divine matters, or a personal attraction affecting the soul impels one. This is, I say, its essence. So a pilgrimage may be made to the tomb of Descartes, in Paris, or it may be a little walk uphill to a neighbouring and beloved grave, or a modern travel, even in luxury, on the impulse to see something that greatly calls on
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THE ARENA
THE ARENA
It was in Paris, in his room on the hill of the University, that a traveller woke and wondered what he should do with his day. In some way—I cannot tell how—ephemeral things had captured his mind in the few hours he had already spent in the city. There is no civilisation where the various parts stand so separate as they do with the French. You may live in Paris all your life and never suspect that there is a garrison of eighty thousand men within call. You may spend a year in a provincial town a
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AT THE SIGN OF THE LION
AT THE SIGN OF THE LION
It was late, and the day was already falling when I came, sitting my horse Monster, to a rise of land. We were at a walk, for we had gone very far since early morning, and were now off the turf upon the hard road; moreover, the hill, though gentle, had been prolonged. From its summit I saw before me, as I had seen it a hundred times, the whole of the weald. But now that landscape was transfigured, because many influences had met to make it, for the moment, an enchanted land. The autumn, coming l
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THE AUTUMN AND THE FALL OF LEAVES
THE AUTUMN AND THE FALL OF LEAVES
It is not true that the close of a life which ends in a natural fashion—life which is permitted to put on the pomp of death and to go out in glory—inclines the mind to repose. It is not true of a day ending nor the passing of the year, nor of the fall of leaves. Whatever permanent, uneasy question is native to men, comes forward most insistent and most loud at such times. There is a house in my own county which is built of stone, whose gardens are fitted to the autumn. It has level alleys standi
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THE GOOD WOMAN
THE GOOD WOMAN
Upon a hill that overlooks a western plain and is conspicuous at the approach of evening, there still stands a house of faded brick faced with cornerings of stone. It is quite empty, but yet not deserted. In each room some little furniture remains; all the pictures are upon the walls; the deep red damask of the panels is not faded, or if faded, shows no contrast of brighter patches, for nothing has been removed from the walls. Here it is possible to linger for many hours alone, and to watch the
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THE HARBOUR IN THE NORTH
THE HARBOUR IN THE NORTH
Upon that shore of Europe which looks out towards no further shore, I came once by accident upon a certain man. The day had been warm and almost calm, but a little breeze from the south-east had all day long given life to the sea. The seas had run very small and brilliant, yet without violence, before the wind, and had broken upon the granite cliffs to leeward, not in spouts of foam, but in a white even line that was thin, and from which one heard no sound of surge. Moreover, as I was running de
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