One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I
like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors,
nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when
alone.
"The fields his study, nature was his book."
I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I
am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for
criticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to
forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this
purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I
like more elbow-room, and fewer incumbrances. I like solitude, when I
give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for
"----a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet."
The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do
just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all
impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind, much
more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little
breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation
"May plume her feathers and let grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd,"
that I absent myself from the town for awhile, without feeling at a
loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a
post-chaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary
the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with
impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green
turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours'
march to dinner--and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start
some game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for
joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud, I plunge into my past
being, and revel there, as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into
the wave that wafts him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten
things, like "sunken wrack and sumless treasuries," burst upon my
eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead
of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull
common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which
alone is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, alliterations,
antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I do; but I sometimes
had rather be without them. "Leave, oh, leave me to my repose!" I have
just now other business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is
with me "very stuff of the conscience." Is not this wild rose sweet
without a comment? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its
coat of emerald? Yet if I were to explain to you the circumstance that
has so endeared it to me, you would only smile. Had I not better then
keep it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to
yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to the far-distant
horizon? I should be but bad company all that way, and therefore
prefer being alone. I have heard it said that you may, when the moody
fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself, and indulge your reveries.
But this looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, and you
are thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin your party. "Out
upon such half-faced fellowship," say I. I like to be either entirely
to myself, or entirely at the disposal of others; to talk or be
silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. I was
pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbett's, that "he thought it a
bad French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that an
Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time." So I cannot talk and
think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversation by fits
and starts, "Let me have a companion of my way," says Sterne, "were it
but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines." It is
beautifully said: but in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes
interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon the mind,
and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what you feel in a kind of
dumb show, it is insipid: if you have to explain it, it is making a
toil of a pleasure. You cannot read the book of nature, without being
perpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the benefit of
others. I am for the synthetical method on a journey, in preference to
the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to
examine and anatomise them afterwards. I want to see my vague notions
float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have
them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I
like to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are
alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I have no objection to
argue a point with any one for twenty miles of measured road, but not
for pleasure. If you remark the scent of a beanfield crossing the
road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a
distant object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his
glass to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the
colour of a cloud which hits your fancy, but the effect of which you
are unable to account for. There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy
craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way,
and in the end probably produces ill humour. Now I never quarrel with
myself, and take all my own conclusions for granted till I find it
necessary to defend them against objections. It is not merely that you
may not be of accord on the objects and circumstances that present
themselves before you--these may recal a number of objects, and lead
to associations too delicate and refined to be possibly communicated
to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly
clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way
to our feelings before company, seems extravagance or affectation; and
on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at
every turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise
the end is not answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must
"give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old friend C----,
however, could do both. He could go on in the most delightful
explanatory way over hill and dale, a summer's day, and convert a
landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode. "He talked far above
singing." If I could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words,
I might perhaps wish to have some one with me to admire the swelling
theme; or I could be more content, were it possible for me still to
hear his echoing voice in the woods of All-Foxden. They had "that fine
madness in them which our first poets had;" and if they could have
been caught by some rare instrument, would have breathed such strains
as the following.
"----Here be woods as green
As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet
As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curled stream, with flow'rs as many
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any;
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
Arbours o'ergrown with woodbine, caves and dells;
Choose where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes to make many a ring
For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,
How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies;
How she convey'd him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest."----
Faithful Shepherdess.
Had I words and images at command like these, I would attempt to wake
the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the evening
clouds: but at the sight of nature my fancy, poor as it is, droops and
closes up its leaves, like flowers at sunset. I can make nothing out
on the spot:--I must have time to collect myself.--
In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects: it should be
reserved for Table-talk. L---- is for this reason, I take it, the
worst company in the world out of doors; because he is the best
within. I grant, there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk
on a journey; and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get
to our inn at night. The open air improves this sort of conversation
or friendly altercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every
mile of the road heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the
end of it. How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted
just at the approach of night-fall, or to come to some straggling
village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and
then after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place
affords, to "take one's ease at one's inn!" These eventful moments in
our lives' history are too precious, too full of solid, heart-felt
happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I
would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop: they
will do to talk of or to write about afterwards. What a delicate
speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea,
"The cups that cheer, but not inebriate,"
and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what
we shall have for supper--eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in
onions, or an excellent veal-cutlet! Sancho in such a situation once
fixed upon cow-heel; and his choice, though he could not help it, is
not to be disparaged. Then in the intervals of pictured scenery and
Shandean contemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir in the
kitchen--_Procul, O procul este profani!_ These hours are sacred to
silence and to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to feed
the source of smiling thoughts hereafter. I would not waste them in
idle talk; or if I must have the integrity of fancy broken in upon, I
would rather it were by a stranger than a friend. A stranger takes his
hue and character from the time and place; he is a part of the
furniture and costume of an inn. If he is a Quaker, or from the West
Riding of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do not even try to
sympathise with him, and he breaks no squares. I associate nothing
with my travelling companion but present objects and passing events.
In his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself.
But a friend reminds one of other things, rips up old grievances, and
destroys the abstraction of the scene. He comes in ungraciously
between us and our imaginary character. Something is dropped in the
course of conversation that gives a hint of your profession and
pursuits; or from having some one with you that knows the less sublime
portions of your history, it seems that other people do. You are no
longer a citizen of the world: but your "unhoused free condition is
put into circumscription and confine." The _incognito_ of an inn is
one of its striking privileges--"lord of one's-self, uncumber'd with a
name." Oh! it is great to shake off the trammels of the world and of
public opinion--to lose our importunate, tormenting, everlasting
personal identity in the elements of nature, and become the creature
of the moment, clear of all ties--to hold to the universe only by a
dish of sweet-breads, and to owe nothing but the score of the
evening--and no longer seeking for applause and meeting with contempt,
to be known by no other title than _the Gentleman in the parlour_! One
may take one's choice of all characters in this romantic state of
uncertainty as to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitely
respectable and negatively right-worshipful. We baffle prejudice and
disappoint conjecture; and from being so to others, begin to be
objects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more
those hackneyed commonplaces that we appear in the world: an inn
restores us to the level of nature, and quits scores with society! I
have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns--sometimes when I
have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some
metaphysical problem, as once at Witham-common, where I found out the
proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas--at
other times, when there have been pictures in the room, as at St.
Neot's, (I think it was) where I first met with Gribelin's engravings
of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once, and at a little inn on
the borders of Wales, where there happened to be hanging some of
Westall's drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that I
had, not for the admired artist) with the figure of a girl who had
ferried me over the Severn, standing up in the boat between me and the
twilight--at other times I might mention luxuriating in books, with a
peculiar interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the night
to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater,
after being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got
through two volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. It was on the tenth
of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the
inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The
letter I chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as
he first caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de
Vaud, which I had brought with me as a _bon bouche_ to crown the
evening with. It was my birth-day, and I had for the first time come
from a place in the neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The
road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing
a certain point, you come all at once upon the valley, which opens
like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on
either side, with "green upland swells that echo to the bleat of
flocks" below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the
midst of them. The valley at this time "glittered green with sunny
showers," and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the
chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to walk along the high road
that overlooks the delicious prospect, repeating the lines which I
have just quoted from Mr. Coleridge's poems. But besides the prospect
which opened beneath my feet, another also opened to my inward sight,
a heavenly vision, on which were written, in letters large as Hope
could make them, these four words, LIBERTY, GENIUS, LOVE, VIRTUE;
which have since faded into the light of common day, or mock my idle
gaze.
"The beautiful is vanished, and returns not."
Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted spot; but I
would return to it alone. What other self could I find to share that
influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the fragments of which I
could hardly conjure up to myself, so much have they been broken and
defaced! I could stand on some tall rock, and overlook the precipice
of years that separates me from what I then was. I was at that time
going shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named. Where is he
now? Not only I myself have changed; the world, which was then new to
me, has become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in
thought, O sylvan Dee, in joy, in youth and gladness as thou then
wert; and thou shalt always be to me the river of Paradise, where I
will drink of the waters of life freely!
There is hardly any thing that shows the short-sightedness or
capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling does. With
change of place we change our ideas; nay, our opinions and feelings.
We can by an effort indeed transport ourselves to old and
long-forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the mind revives again;
but we forget those that we have just left. It seems that we can think
but of one place at a time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a
certain extent, and if we paint one set of objects upon it, they
immediately efface every other. We cannot enlarge our conceptions, we
only shift our point of view. The landscape bares its bosom to the
enraptured eye, we take our fill of it, and seem as if we could form
no other image of beauty or grandeur. We pass on, and think no more of
it: the horizon that shuts it from our sight, also blots it from our
memory like a dream. In travelling through a wild barren country, I
can form no idea of a woody and cultivated one. It appears to me that
all the world must be barren, like what I see of it. In the country we
forget the town, and in town we despise the country. "Beyond Hyde
Park," says Sir Fopling Flutter, "all is a desert." All that part of
the map that we do not see before us is a blank. The world in our
conceit of it is not much bigger than a nutshell. It is not one
prospect expanded into another, county joined to county, kingdom to
kingdom, lands to seas, making an image voluminous and vast;--the mind
can form no larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single
glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a calculation of
arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification of that
immense mass of territory and population, known by the name of China
to us? An inch of paste-board on a wooden globe, of no more account
than a China orange! Things near us are seen of the size of life:
things at a distance are diminished to the size of the understanding.
We measure the universe by ourselves, and even comprehend the texture
of our own being only piece-meal. In this way, however, we remember an
infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical
instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them
in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time
excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot
as it were unfold the whole web of our existence; we must pick out the
single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived
and with which we have intimate associations, every one must have
found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the
spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression: we remember
circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names, that we had not
thought of for years; but for the time all the rest of the world is
forgotten!--To return to the question I have quitted above.
I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in
company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for the
former reason reversed. They are intelligible matters, and will bear
talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit, but communicable and
overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will
bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In
setting out on a party of pleasure, the first consideration always is
where we shall go to: in taking a solitary ramble, the question is
what we shall meet with by the way. "The mind is its own place;" nor
are we anxious to arrive at the end of our journey. I can myself do
the honours indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I once
took a party to Oxford with no mean _eclat_--shewed them that seat of
the Muses at a distance,
"With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd"--
descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quadrangles
and stone walls of halls and colleges--was at home in the Bodleian;
and at Blenheim quite superseded the powdered Ciceroni that attended
us, and that pointed in vain with his wand to common-place beauties in
matchless pictures.--As another exception to the above reasoning, I
should not feel confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign
country without a companion. I should want at intervals to hear the
sound of my own language. There is an involuntary antipathy in the
mind of an Englishman to foreign manners and notions that requires the
assistance of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from
home increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a
passion and an appetite. A person would almost feel stifled to find
himself in the deserts of Arabia without friends and countrymen: there
must be allowed to be something in the view of Athens or old Rome that
claims the utterance of speech; and I own that the Pyramids are too
mighty for any simple contemplation. In such situations, so opposite
to all one's ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species by
one's-self, a limb torn off from society, unless one can meet with
instant fellowship and support.--Yet I did not feel this want or
craving very pressing once, when I first set my foot on the laughing
shores of France. Calais was peopled with novelty and delight. The
confused, busy murmur of the place was like oil and wine poured into
my ears; nor did the mariners' hymn, which was sung from the top of an
old crazy vessel in the harbour, as the sun went down, send an alien
sound into my soul. I only breathed the air of general humanity. I
walked over "the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France," erect
and satisfied; for the image of man was not cast down and chained to
the foot of arbitrary thrones: I was at no loss for language, for that
of all the great schools of painting was open to me. The whole is
vanished like a shade. Pictures, heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled:
nothing remains but the Bourbons and the French people!--There is
undoubtedly a sensation in travelling into foreign parts that is to be
had nowhere else: but it is more pleasing at the time than lasting. It
is too remote from our habitual associations to be a common topic of
discourse or reference, and, like a dream or another state of
existence, does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is an
animated but a momentary hallucination. It demands an effort to
exchange our actual for our ideal identity; and to feel the pulse of
our old transports revive very keenly, we must "jump" all our present
comforts and connexions. Our romantic and itinerant character is not
to be domesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how little foreign travel
added to the facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad.
In fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful and in one
sense instructive; but it appears to be cut out of our substantial,
downright existence, and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the
same, but another, and perhaps more enviable individual, all the time
we are out of our own country. We are lost to ourselves, as well as
our friends. So the poet somewhat quaintly sings,
"Out of my country and myself I go."
Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent
themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recal them: but
we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us
birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of
my life in travelling abroad, if I could any where borrow another life
to spend afterwards at home!
_Hazlitt._