of his devotion to his hobby, encouraged him to deal in realities. He
gave the genuine sentiment which his contemporaries would only give
indirectly, transfigured and bedizened with due ornaments of classic
or romantic pattern. There is just a faint touch of unreality—a barely
perceptible flavour of the sentimental—about his personages; but
only enough to give a permissible touch of pastoral idealism. Walton
is painting directly from the life. The 'honest alehouse,' where he
finds 'a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads
stuck about the wall,' was standing then on the banks of the Lea, as
in quiet country nooks, here and there, occasional representatives of
the true angler's rest are still to be found, not entirely corrupted
by the modern tourist. The good man is far too much in earnest to be
aiming at literary ornament; he is a genuine simple-minded enthusiast
revealing his kindly nature by a thousand unconscious touches. The
common objection is a misunderstanding. Everybody quotes the phrase
about using the frog 'as though you loved him;' and it is the more
piquant as following one of his characteristically pious remarks.
The frog's mouth, he tells, grows up for six months, and he lives
for six months without eating, 'sustained, none but He whose name is
Wonderful knows how.' He reverently admires the care taken of the frog
by Providence, without drawing any more inference for his own conduct
than if he were a modern physiologist. It is just this absolute
unconsciousness which makes his love of the sport attractive. He has
never looked at it from the frog's point of view. Your modern angler
has to excuse himself by some scientific hypothesis as to feeling in
the lower animals, and thereby betrays certain qualms of conscience
which had not yet come to light in Walton's day. He is no more cruel
than a schoolboy, 'ere he grows to pity.' He is simply discharging
his functions as a part of nature, like the pike or the frog; and
convinced, at the very bottom of his heart, that the angler represents
the most eminent type of enjoyment, and should be the humble inheritor
of the virtues of the fishers of Galilee. The gentlest and most pious
thoughts come naturally into his mind whilst his worm is wriggling on
his hook to entice the luckless trout. It is particularly pleasant
to notice the quotations, which give a certain air of learning to
his book. We see that the love of angling had become so ingrained
in his mind as to direct his reading as well as to provide him with
amusement. We fancy him poring on winter evenings over the pages of
Aldrovandus and Gesner and Pliny and Topsell's histories of serpents
and four-footed beasts, and humbly accepting the teaching of more
learned men, who had recorded so many strange facts unobserved by the
simple angler. He produces a couple of bishops, Dubravius and Thurso,
as eye-witnesses, to testify to a marvellous anecdote of a frog
jumping upon a pike's head and tearing out his eyes, after 'expressing
malice or anger by swollen cheeks and staring eyes.' Even Walton
cannot forbear a quiet smile at this quaint narrative. But he is ready
to believe, in all seriousness, that eels, 'like some kinds of bees
and wasps,' are bred out of dew, and to confirm it by the parallel
case of young goslings bred by the sun 'from the rotten planks of
an old ship and hatched up trees.' Science was not a dry museum of
hard facts, but a quaint storehouse of semi-mythical curiosities; and
therefore excellently fitted to fill spare hours, when he could not
meditatively indulge in 'the contemplative man's recreation.' Walton
found some queer texts for his pious meditations, and his pursuit is
not without its drawbacks. But his quaintness only adds a zest to
our enjoyment of his book; and we are content to fall in with his
humour, and to believe for the nonce that the love of a sport which so
fascinates this simple, kindly, reverent nature must be, as he takes
for granted, the very crowning grace of a character moulded on the
principles of sound Christian philosophy. Angling becomes synonymous
with purity of mind and simplicity of character.
Mr. Lowell, in one of the most charming essays ever written about a
garden, takes his text from White of Selborne, and admirably explains
the charm of that worthy representative of the Waltonian spirit. 'It
is good for us now and then,' says Mr. Lowell, 'to converse in a
world like Mr. White's, where man is the least important of animals;'
to find one's whole world in a garden, beyond the reach of wars and
rumours of wars. White does not give a thought to the little troubles
which were disturbing the souls of Burke and George III. The 'natural
term of a hog's life has more interest for him than that of an
empire;' he does not trouble his head about diplomatic complications
whilst he is discovering that the odd tumbling of rooks in the air is
caused by their turning over to scratch themselves with one claw. The
great events of his life are his making acquaintance with a stilted
plover, or his long—for it was protracted over ten years—and finally
triumphant passion for 'an old family tortoise.' White of Selborne did
not live in the rough old days when a country house had occasionally
to be a fastness; nor in our own, when he would have to consider
whether his property ought not to be 'nationalized.' He was merely a
good, kindly, domestic gentleman, on friendly terms with the parson
and the gamekeeper, and ready for a chat with the rude forefathers
of the hamlet. His horizon, natural and unnatural, is bounded by
the soft round hills and the rich hangers of his beloved Hampshire
country. There is something specially characteristic in his taste for
scenery. Though 'I have now travelled the Sussex Downs upwards of
thirty years,' he says, 'I still investigate that chain of majestic
mountains with fresh admiration year by year;' and he calls 'Mr.
Ray' to witness that there is nothing finer in any part of Europe.
'For my own part,' he says, 'I think there is somewhat peculiarly
sweet and amusing in the shapely figured aspects of chalk hills in
preference to those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and
shapeless.' I, for my part, agree with Mr. White—so long, at least,
as I am reading his book. The Downs have a singular charm in the
exquisite play of long, gracefully undulating lines which bound their
gentle edges. If not a 'majestic range of mountains,' as judged by an
Alpine standard, there is no want of true sublimity in their springing
curves, especially when harmonised by the lights and shadows under
cloud-masses driving before a broad south-westerly gale; and when
you reach the edge of a great down, and suddenly look down into one
of the little hollows where a village with a grey church tower and a
grove of noble elms nestles amidst the fold of the hills, you fancy
that in such places of refuge there must still be relics of the quiet
domesticities enjoyed by Gilbert White. Here, one fancies, it must
be good to live; to discharge, at an easy rate, all the demands of
a society which is but a large family, and find ample excitement in
studying the rambles of a tortoise, forming intimacies with moles,
crickets and fieldmice, and bats, and brown owls, and watching the
swifts and the nightjars wheeling round the old church tower, or
hunting flies at the edge of the wood in the quiet summer evening.
In rambling through the lanes sacred to the memory of White, you may
(in fancy, at least) meet another figure not at first sight quite in
harmony with the clerical Mr. White. He is a stalwart, broad-chested
man in the farmer's dress, even ostentatiously representing the old
British yeoman brought up on beer and beef, and with a certain touch
of pugnacity suggestive of the retired prizefighter. He stops his
horse to chat with a labourer breaking stones by the roadside, and
informs the gaping rustic that wages are made bad and food dear by
the diabolical machinations of the Tories, and the fundholders and
the boroughmongers, who are draining away all the fatness of the land
to nourish the portentous 'wen' called London. He leaves the man to
meditate on this suggestion, and jogs off to the nearest country
town, where he will meet the farmers at their ordinary, and deliver
a ranting radical address. The squire or the parson who recognises
William Cobbett in this sturdy traveller, will mutter a hearty
objurgation, and wish that the disturber of rustic peace could make
a closer acquaintance with the neighbouring horsepond. Possibly most
readers who hear his name have vaguely set down Cobbett as one of the
demagogues of the anti-reforming days, and remember little more than
the fact that he dabbled in some rather questionable squabbles, and
brought back Tom Paine's bones from America. But it is worth while
to read Cobbett, and especially the 'Rural Rides,' not only to enjoy
his fine homespun English, but to learn to know the man a little
better. Whatever the deserts or demerits of Cobbett as a political
agitator, the true man was fully as much allied to modern Young
England and the later type of conservatism as to the modern radical.
He hated the Scotch 'feelosophers'—as he calls them—Parson Malthus,
the political communists, the Manchester men, the men who would break
up the old social system of the country, at the bottom of his heart;
and, whatever might be his superficial alliances, he loved the old
quiet country life when Englishmen were burly, independent yeomen,
each equal to three frog-eating Frenchmen. He remembered the relics
of the system in the days of his youth; he thought that it had begun
to decay at the time of the Reformation, when grasping landlords and
unprincipled statesmen had stolen Church property on pretence of
religion; but ever since, the growth of manufactures, and corruption,
and stockjobbing had been unpopulating the country to swell the towns,
and broken up the old, wholesome, friendly English life. That is the
text on which he is always dilating with genuine enthusiasm, and the
belief, true or false, gives a pleasant flavour to his intense relish
for true country scenery.
He looks at things, it is true, from the point of view of a farmer,
not of a landscape-painter or a lover of the picturesque. He raves
against that 'accursed hill' Hindhead; he swears that he will not go
over it; and he tells us very amusingly how, in spite of himself, he
found himself on the very 'tip top' of it, in a pelting rain, owing to
an incompetent guide. But he loves the woodlands and the downs, and
bursts into vivid enthusiasm at fine points of view. He is specially
ecstatic in White's country. 'On we trotted,' he says, 'up this pretty
green lane, and, indeed, we had been coming gently and gradually
up-hill for a good while. The lane was between high banks, and pretty
high stuff growing on the banks, so that we could see no distance from
us, and could receive not the smallest hint of what was so near at
hand. The lane had a little turn towards the end, so that we came,
all in a moment, at the very edge of the hanger; and never in my life
was I so surprised and delighted! I pulled up my horse, and sat and
looked. It was like looking from the top of a castle down into the
sea, except that the valley was land and not water. I looked at my
servant to see what effect this unexpected sight had upon him. His
surprise was as great as mine, though he had been bred amongst the
North Hampshire hills. Those who have so strenuously dwelt on the dirt
and dangers of this road have said not a word about the beauties, the
matchless beauties, of the scenery.' And Cobbett goes on to describe
the charms of the view over Selborne, and to fancy what it will be
'when trees, and hangers, and hedges are in leaf, the corn waving, the
meadows bright, and the hops upon the poles,' in language which is
not after the modern style of word-painting, but excites a contagious
enthusiasm by its freshness and sincerity. He is equally enthusiastic
soon afterwards at the sight of Avington Park and a lake swarming with
wild fowl; and complains of the folly of modern rapid travelling. 'In
any sort of carriage you cannot get into the _real country places_. To
travel in stage-coaches is to be hurried along by force in a box with
an air-hole in it, and constantly exposed to broken limbs, the danger
being much greater than that of ship-board, and the noise much more
disagreeable, while the company is frequently not a great deal more to
one's liking.' What would Cobbett have said to a railway? And what has
become of the old farmhouse on the banks of the Mole, once the home
of 'plain manners and plentiful living,' with 'oak clothes-chests,
oak bedsteads, oak chests of drawers, and oak tables to eat on, long,
strong, and well supplied with joint stools?' Now, he sighs, there is
a '_parlour_! aye, and a _carpet_, and _bell-pull_ too! and a mahogany
table, and the fine chairs, and the fine glass, and all as barefaced
upstart as any stockjobber in the kingdom can boast of!' Probably the
farmhouse has followed the furniture, and, meanwhile, what has become
of the fine old British hospitality, when the farmer and his lads and
lasses dined at one table, and a solid Englishman did not squeeze
money out of his men's wages to surround himself with trumpery finery?
To say the truth, Cobbett's fine flow of invective is a little too
exuberant, and overlays too deeply the picturesque touches of scenery
and the occasional bits of autobiography which recall his boyish
experience of the old country life. It would be idle to inquire how
far his vision of the old English country had any foundation in fact.
Our hills and fields may be as lovely as ever; and there is still
ample room for the lovers of 'nature' in Scotch moors and lochs, or
even amongst the English fells, or among the storm-beaten cliffs of
Devon and Cornwall. But nature, as I have said, is not the country.
We are not in search of the scenery which appears now as it appeared
in the remote days when painted savages managed to raise a granite
block upon its supports for the amusement of future antiquaries. We
want the country which bears the impress of some characteristic social
growth; which has been moulded by its inhabitants as the inhabitants
by it, till one is as much adapted to the other as the lichen to the
rock on which it grows. How bleak and comfortless a really natural
country may be is apparent to the readers of Thoreau. He had all the
will to become a part of nature, and to shake himself free from the
various trammels of civilised life, and he had no small share of the
necessary qualifications; but one cannot read his account of his
life by Walden pond without a shivering sense of discomfort. He is
not really acclimatised; so far from being a true child of nature, he
is a man of theories, a product of the social state against which he
tries to revolt. He does not so much relish the wilderness as to go
out into the wilderness in order to rebuke his contemporaries. There
is something harsh about him and his surroundings, and he affords an
unconscious proof that something more is necessary for the civilised
man who would become a true man of the woods than simply to strip off
his clothes. He has got tolerably free from tailors; but he still
lives in the intellectual atmosphere of Cambridge debating-rooms.
To find a life really in harmony with a rustic environment, we must
not go to raw settlements where man is still fighting with the outside
world, but to some region where a reconciliation has been worked out
by an experience of centuries. And amidst all the restlessness of
modern improvers we may still find a few regions where the old genius
has not been quite exorcised. Here and there, in country lanes, and
on the edge of unenclosed commons, we may still meet the gipsy—the
type of a race adapted to live in the interstices of civilisation,
having something of the indefinable grace of all wild animals, and
yet free from the absolute savagery of the genuine wilderness. To
mention gipsies is to think of George Borrow; and I always wonder
that the author of the 'Bible in Spain' and 'Lavengro' is not more
popular. Certainly, I have found no more delightful guide to the
charming nooks and corners of rural England. I would give a good
deal to identify that remarkable dingle in which he met so singular
a collection of characters. Does it really exist, I wonder, anywhere
on this island? or did it ever exist? and, if so, has it become a
railway-station, and what has become of Isopel Berners and 'Blazing
Bosville, the flaming Tinman?' His very name is as good as a poem,
and the battle in which Borrow floored the Tinman by that happy
left-handed blow is, to my mind, more delightful than the fight in
'Tom Brown,' or that in which Dobbin acted as the champion of Osborne.
Borrow is a 'humourist' of the first water. He lives in a world of
his own—a queer world with laws peculiar to itself, and yet one which
has all manner of odd and unexpected points of contact with the
prosaic world of daily experience. Borrow's Bohemianism is no revolt
against the established order. He does not invoke nature or fly to
the hedges because society is corrupt or the world unsatisfying, or
because he has some kind of new patent theory of life to work out.
He cares nothing for such fancies. On the contrary, he is a staunch
conservative, full of good old-fashioned prejudices. He seems to be
a case of the strange re-appearance of an ancestral instinct under
altered circumstances. Some of his forefathers must have been gipsies
by temperament if not by race; and the impulses due to that strain
have got themselves blended with the characteristics of the average
Englishman. The result is a strange and yet, in a way, harmonious and
original type which made the 'Bible in Spain' a puzzle to the average
reader. The name suggested a work of the edifying class. Here was a
good respectable emissary of the Bible Society going to convert poor
papists by a distribution of the Scriptures. He has returned to write
a long tract setting forth the difficulties of his enterprise, and
the stiff-neckedness of the Spanish people. The luckless reader who
took up the book on that understanding was destined to a strange
disappointment. True, Borrow appeared to take his enterprise quite
seriously, indulges in the proper reflections, and gets into the
regulation difficulty involving an appeal to the British minister.
But it soon appears that his Protestant zeal is somehow mixed up
with a passion for strange wanderings in the queerest of company. To
him Spain is not the land of staunch Catholicism, or of Cervantes,
or of Velasquez, and still less a country of historic or political
interest. Its attraction is in the picturesque outcasts who find ample
roaming-ground in its wilder regions. He regards them, it is true, as
occasional subjects for a little proselytism. He tells us how he once
delivered a moving address to the gipsies in their own language to his
most promising congregation. When he had finished he looked up and
found himself the centre of all eyes, each pair contorted by a hideous
squint, rivalling each other in frightfulness; and the performance,
which he seems to have thoroughly appreciated, pretty well expressed
the gipsy view of his missionary enterprise. But they delighted to
welcome him in his other character as one of themselves, and yet as
dropping amongst them from the hostile world outside. And, certainly,
no one not thoroughly at home with gipsy ways, gipsy modes of thought,
to whom it comes quite naturally to put up in a den of cutthroats,
or to enter the field of his missionary enterprise in company with
a professional brigand travelling on business, could have given us
so singular a glimpse of the most picturesque elements of a strange
country. Your respectable compiler of handbooks might travel for years
in the same districts all unconscious that passing vagabonds were so
fertile in romance. The freemasonry which exists amongst the class
lying outside the pale of respectability enables Borrow to fall in
with adventures full of mysterious fascination. He passes through
forests at night, and his horse suddenly stops and trembles, whilst he
hears heavy footsteps and rustling branches, and some heavy body is
apparently dragged across the road by panting but invisible bearers.
He enters a shadowy pass, and is met by a man with a face streaming
with blood, who implores him not to go forwards into the hands of a
band of robbers; and Borrow is too sleepy and indifferent to stop, and
jogs on in safety without meeting the knife which he half expected.
'It was not so written,' he says, with the genuine fatalism of your
hand-to-mouth Bohemian. He crosses a wild moor with a half-witted
guide, who suddenly deserts him at a little tavern. After a wild
gallop on a pony, apparently half-witted also, he at last rejoins the
guide resting by a fountain. This gentleman condescends to explain
that he is in the habit of bolting after a couple of glasses, and
never stops till he comes to running water. The congenial pair lose
themselves at nightfall, and the guide observes that if they should
meet the Estadéa, which are spirits of the dead riding with candle in
their hands—a phenomenon happily rare in this region—he shall 'run
and run till he drowns himself in the sea, somewhere near Muros.' The
Estadéa do not appear, but Borrow and his guide come near being hanged
as Don Carlos and a nephew, escaping only by the help of a sailor who
knows the English words knife and fork, and can therefore testify to
Borrow's nationality; and is finally liberated by an official who is
a devoted student of Jeremy Bentham. The queer stumbling upon a name
redolent of everyday British life throws the surrounding oddity into
quaint relief. But Borrow encounters more mysterious characters. There
is the wondrous Abarbenell, whom he meets riding by night, and with
whom he soon becomes hand and glove. Abarbenell is a huge figure in a
broad-brimmed hat, who stares at him in the moonlight with deep calm
eyes, and still revisits him in dreams. He has two wives and a hidden
treasure of old coins, and when the gates of his house are locked,
and the big dogs loose in the court, he dines off ancient plate made
before the discovery of America. There are many of his race amongst
the priesthood, and even an Archbishop, who died in great renown for
sanctity, had come by night to kiss his father's hand. Nor can any
reader forget the singular history of Benedict Mol, the wandering
Swiss, who turns up now and then in the course of his search for the
hidden treasure at Compostella. Men who live in strange company learn
the advantage of not asking questions, or following out delicate
inquiries; and these singular figures are the more attractive because
they come and go, half-revealing themselves for a moment, and then
vanishing into outside mystery; as the narrator himself sometimes
merges into the regions of absolute commonplace, and then dives down
below the surface into the remotest recesses of the social labyrinth.