Among the many places of magic visited by Pantagruel and his company
during the progress of their famous voyage, few surpass that island
whose roads did literally “go” to places—_“ou les chemins cheminent,
comme animaulx”_: and would-be travellers, having inquired of the road
as to its destination, and received satisfactory reply, _“se guindans”_
(as the old book hath it—hoisting themselves up on) _“au chemin
opportun, sans aultrement se poiner ou fatiguer, se trouvoyent au lieu
destiné.”_
The best example I know of an approach to this excellent sort of
vitality in roads is the Ridgeway of the North Berkshire Downs. Join it
at Streatley, the point where it crosses the Thames; at once it strikes
you out and away from the habitable world in a splendid, purposeful
manner, running along the highest ridge of the Downs a broad green
ribbon of turf, with but a shade of difference from the neighbouring
grass, yet distinct for all that. No villages nor homesteads tempt it
aside or modify its course for a yard; should you lose the track where
it is blent with the bordering turf or merged in and obliterated by
criss-cross paths, you have only to walk straight on, taking heed of no
alternative to right or left; and in a minute ’tis with you
again—arisen out of the earth as it were. Or, if still not quite
assured, lift you your eyes, and there it runs over the brow of the
fronting hill. Where a railway crosses it, it disappears indeed—hiding
Alpheus-like, from the ignominy of rubble and brick-work; but a little
way on it takes up the running again with the same quiet persistence.
Out on that almost trackless expanse of billowy Downs such a track is
in some sort humanly companionable: it really seems to lead you by the
hand.
The “Rudge” is of course an exceptional instance; but indeed this
pleasant personality in roads is not entirely fanciful. It exists as a
characteristic of the old country road, evolved out of the primitive
prehistoric track, developing according to the needs of the land it
passes through and serves: with a language, accordingly, and a meaning
of its own. Its special services are often told clearly enough; but
much else too of the quiet story of the country-side: something of the
old tale whereof you learn so little from the printed page. Each is
instinct, perhaps, with a separate suggestion. Some are martial and
historic, and by your side the hurrying feet of the dead raise a
ghostly dust. The name of yon town—with its Roman or Saxon suffix to
British root—hints at much. Many a strong man, wanting his _vates
sacer,_ passed silently to Hades for that suffix to obtain. The little
rise up yonder on the Downs that breaks their straight green line
against the sky showed another sight when the sea of battle surged and
beat on its trampled sides; and the Roman, sore beset, may have gazed
down this very road for relief, praying for night or the succouring
legion. This child that swings on a gate and peeps at you from under
her sun-bonnet—so may some girl-ancestress of hers have watched with
beating heart the Wessex levies hurry along to clash with the heathen
and break them on the down where the ash trees grew. And yonder, where
the road swings round under gloomy overgrowth of drooping boughs—is
that gleam of water or glitter of lurking spears?
Some sing you pastorals, fluting low in the hot sun between dusty
hedges overlooked by contented cows; past farmsteads where man and
beast, living in frank fellowship, learn pleasant and serviceable
lessons each of the other; over the full-fed river, lipping the
meadow-sweet, and thence on either side through leagues of hay. Or
through bending corn they chant the mystical wonderful song of the
reaper when the harvest is white to the sickle. But most of them,
avoiding classification, keep each his several tender significance; as
with one I know, not so far from town, which woos you from the valley
by gentle ascent between nut-laden hedges, and ever by some touch of
keen fragrance in the air, by some mystery of added softness under
foot—ever a promise of something to come, unguessed, delighting. Till
suddenly you are among the pines, their keen scent strikes you through
and through, their needles carpet the ground, and in their swaying tops
moans the unappeasable wind—sad, ceaseless, as the cry of a warped
humanity. Some paces more, and the promise is fulfilled, the hints and
whisperings become fruition: the ground breaks steeply away, and you
look over a great inland sea of fields, homesteads, rolling woodland,
and—bounding all, blent with the horizon, a greyness, a gleam—the
English Channel. A road of promises, of hinted surprises, following
each other with the inevitable sequence in a melody.
But we are now in another and stricter sense an island of _chemins qui
cheminent:_ dominated, indeed, by them. By these the traveller,
veritably _se guindans,_ may reach his destination _“sans se poiner ou
se fatiguer”_ (with large qualifications); but _sans_ very much else
whereof he were none the worse. The gain seems so obvious that you
forget to miss all that lay between the springing stride of the early
start and the pleasant weariness of the end approached, when the limbs
lag a little as the lights of your destination begin to glimmer through
the dusk. All that lay between! “A Day’s Ride a Life’s Romance” was the
excellent title of an unsuccessful book; and indeed the journey should
march with the day, beginning and ending with its sun, to be the
complete thing, the golden round, required of it. This makes that mind
and body fare together, hand in hand, sharing the hope, the action, the
fruition; finding equal sweetness in the languor of aching limbs at eve
and in the first god-like intoxication of motion with braced muscle in
the sun. For walk or ride take the mind over greater distances than a
throbbing whirl with stiffening joints and cramped limbs through a
dozen counties. Surely you seem to cover vaster spaces with Lavengro,
footing it with gipsies or driving his tinker’s cart across lonely
commons, than with many a globe-trotter or steam-yachtsman with diary
or log? And even that dividing line—strictly marked and rarely
overstepped—between the man who bicycles and the man who walks, is less
due to a prudent regard for personal safety of the one part than to an
essential difference in minds.
There is a certain supernal, a deific, state of mind which may indeed
be experienced in a minor degree, by any one, in the siesta part of a
Turkish bath. But this particular golden glow of the faculties is only
felt at its fulness after severe and prolonged exertion in the open
air. “A man ought to be seen by the gods,” says Marcus Aurelius,
“neither dissatisfied with anything, nor complaining.” Though this does
not sound at first hearing an excessive demand to make of humanity, yet
the gods, I fancy, look long and often for such a sight in these
unblest days of hurry. If ever seen at all, ’tis when after many a mile
in sun and wind—maybe rain—you reach at last, with the folding star,
your destined rustic inn. There, in its homely, comfortable
strangeness, after unnumbered chops with country ale, the hard facts of
life begin to swim in a golden mist. You are isled from accustomed
cares and worries—you are set in a peculiar nook of rest. Then old
failures seem partial successes, then old loves come back in their
fairest form, but this time with never a shadow of regret, then old
jokes renew their youth and flavour. You ask nothing of the gods above,
nothing of men below—not even their company. To-morrow you shall begin
life again: shall write your book, make your fortune, do anything;
meanwhile you sit, and the jolly world swings round, and you seem to
hear it circle to the music of the spheres. What pipe was ever thus
beatifying in effect? You are aching all over, and enjoying it; and the
scent of the limes drifts in through the window. This is undoubtedly
the best and greatest country in the world; and none but good fellows
abide in it.
Laud we the Gods,
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our blest altars.