sandwiches in this jolly shop, and bought a cake. Then we crossed
Regent Street, bought two chickens at Louis Gautier’s in Swallow
Street, and plunged for Piccadilly. We came out at St. James’ Church,
and fortune was kind enough to make it possible to visit Hatchards. We
went in and “browsed around” for a while and ordered a copy of _The
Sweet-scented Name_. Our way was then by Duke Street, Jermyn Street
and some others to St. James’ Street with its clubs, and we turned
up St. James’ Place. As we passed Number Five, rat-a-tat-tat, from a
little window; rattling and jumping like the sound of an old-fashioned
motor, went the typing machine of the secretary of the world’s greatest
newspaper chief. We thought we had arrived at a cul-de-sac and that
we should have to retrace our footsteps--one of the natural rules of
the walk--but we found an eye of a needle through which the rich men
have to pass to get to the Paradise of the Green Park. It is always
explained to the rich that the eye of the needle in the Gospel is only
a figure of speech, and that there was a needle gate through which a
camel, without too great a hump, could pass, and the alley from St.
James’ Place will just admit the not too stout.
When we got to the fields beyond, the great city played with us and
led us a comic dance along the paths of the Green Park. Westminster
Cathedral was in view. There was a large balloon overhead in the murk
of the London sky, and many people were looking up at it. Our steps
took us along various grand crescents of pathway, and the intention of
the city with regard to our ultimate destination began to seem very
obscure. There were several knotty points as to which was a turning and
which was not, and when I made an artful decision the companion of my
way said to me, “You want to shape things to your own ends.”
“No,” said I. “I want to be faithful and just.”
A stiff discussion set in and we could not get the matter straight.
However, we eventually found ourselves in St. James’ Park, and there
was an issue for us into Birdcage Walk where, in the barracks beyond,
we saw the soldiers at drill, though little did I think at the time
that I was destined to drill there, and be on sentry there myself in
time to come.
So the walk went on, and we passed the London Soldiers’ Home near
Buckingham Gate, made our last purchase at a little shop in Wilfred
Street, passed Westminster City School, and entered Victoria Street by
Palace Street and took an omnibus home.
Thus ended the first lap of our zigzag walk through London, and we
promised ourselves to return to the point where we had left off and
continue this way of chance as soon as a convenient moment came.
Therefore, one Sunday afternoon, and not long after, we took the
omnibus back to the corner of Palace Street and resumed. Fate allowed
us to miss Victoria Station, and its many lines of rail, and we entered
Flatdom and Belgravia, not the best part of Belgravia, but the sadder
and more faded streets, the streets where the lamps of joy had died
down and guttered out. Then we passed by Moreton Terrace to Lupus
Street (“What a name for a London street!” says G. A. B. Dewar, in
his sad tale of _Letty_--“Is not all London wolfish street for our
Lettys?”), Colchester Street, Chichester Street, Claverton Street,
streets of faded grandeur, the Embankment. Then over the river we go by
Chelsea Bridge and find ourselves in a district hitherto unvisited by
us.
We entered Battersea Park and had such a time in its mazes of paths
that we were obliged to make a second rule for our walks, and that was
that henceforward we should enter no parks. A friend to whom we had
communicated the secret of our street adventure had warned us that
if in the near future we should disappear from London life he would
come in search of us to the Maze at Hampton Court, from which, he was
afraid, once entered, we should never extricate ourselves. So we made a
rule: No parks, no mazes. Incidentally, however, we spent a remarkable
and amusing hour in that artificial wilderness of Battersea. If
zigzagging should ever become fashionable I am afraid that most people
will consider it _de rigueur_ to follow out the mazes and labyrinths
to the last intricacy and the correct issue, and that they will not
have the courage to cut the Gordian knot as we did. And starting
pedantically they will finish pedantically--in the literal sense, for
is not _pes_, _pedis_, a foot. There were many Gordian knots which our
footsteps made in the ins and outs of London.
Having given Battersea Park the go-by, we threaded many typically poor
streets, not slum, just better than that. How deplorable a sight! Very
poor and dirty houses which you feel moving to be worse, with broken
windows here and there, and derelict barrows in the roadway. We passed
under gloomy railway arches, so gloomy, as if crimes had been committed
there, arches where at night spooning couples lurk or solitary bodies
furtively eat fish and chips. So we came to a little house which, in
the course of time, we ought to have visited, but probably would not,
and there we called in our unexpected way--a call not without its
sequence in our after-life. This was all in the realm of Lavender
Walk and Battersea Rise. In one of the streets we came on two demure
villas called Alpha and Omega, and very fitly passed from Battersea to
Wandsworth.
Another day, in full fresh air, we walked along Bolingbroke Grove and
the fringe of the Common and Nightingale Lane, through very respectable
Suburbia, where the houses are just so, and there are plaster angels
in the cemeteries. That day we went home from Earlsfield Station.
Next time we passed St. Barnabas’ Church with the niches left in the
bricks for saints. We made our exit from real London, watching from
a railway arch the mad red caterpillars of tube trains going to and
fro. The houses grew higher and the roads more spacious, and great elm
trees were in the front gardens. With wild wind and rolling sky, ’twixt
Putney Heath and the golf links of Wimbledon, we finished up one jolly
afternoon by coming unexpectedly to tea at the house of another friend
to which without jiggery-pokery the zigzag way had led us.
The next afternoon on which we ventured forth we wandered to sad
Merton and the fringe of outer Suburbia. There were fields, but they
had Destiny’s mark upon them; they were doomed to be imprisoned with
brick by the London which was encroaching, encroaching.
Coming to this pseudo-country we made another rule. When footpaths
occur we have the option whether to take them or no. (In future, as I
have observed, all footpaths will no doubt be _de rigueur_.) A footpath
took us to Lower Morden and another footpath took us through much mud,
to farms, to old houses with meadows in front of them, and fine trees
with many angles. The path degenerated from a rolling series of cart
ruts to a faint track along the margin of a field, and faded away at
last into wormrun grass. A dreadful moment. Presently, spying round, we
saw a faded notice on a board--NO FOOTPATH--but,
_Man is man, and master of his fate,_
and we made another rule.
In short we cut across the fields to a row of houses protected by
fierce-looking barbed-wire entanglements. We got on to another footpath
and the footpath became a road and the road became a grand drive. I
think we got to Blenheim Road, and that this degenerated to a cart
track, and we were led over fields to the West Barnes Road, where trams
and busses were running and we saw scrawled in front of us in big white
letters--“ETERNITY--IN HEAVEN OR HELL. Vote Now.” We voted. Somehow
we got to Raynes Park, and were much pleased with the front garden of
Carter’s Seed Establishment and the many flowerpots and the ice plants.
Next day we reflected that we had become enmeshed in a net of our own
contrivance. Our little plan didn’t at all fit in with the arrangement
of the district. Suburbia, with crocuses in bloom, got rather on our
nerves. By many circumlocutions we returned to Wimbledon. We did not
know the name of the place was Wimbledon, but when we discovered this
melancholy fact we realized that we had blisters on our feet.
Another day we walked to Malden, where we bought an excellent chicken
which we took home in time for supper. Then by Sycamore Grove we
walked to Poplar Grove, and by Poplar Grove we walked to Lime Grove,
and by Lime Grove to Elm Road, by Elm Road to Beech Grove. We took
the option of a footpath and skidded from this region of trees to the
main highway, where the fine Hampton Court electric cars speed their
handsome way. We went straight into Kingston without any more beating
about the bush. We should ordinarily have gone in by the open highroad,
but an alley forestalled that conventionality, and we entered by a wee
way which took us inside the house of the parish, and we saw all the
children playing everywhere upon the floor. Rather slummy. We passed
Milner Villas (built 1902), we passed The Victoria, The Six Bells, and
The Three Tuns, passed the Kingston Grammar School, where the boys
have scarlet caps, and the Bunyan Baptist Tabernacle where the pastor
had the kenspeckle name of Isaac Stalberg. There was a strong smell of
marmalade from St. James’ Works, and Kingston Station was puffing with
locomotive steam. Night had spread its glamour over everything, and we
walked by several slums down to The Jolly Brewers, along paved passages
and in the purlieus of the gas works, by further passages where were no
houses, to the sight of the greenish mud-colored river and the rusty
coppery railway bridge. The old stone bridge of Kingston also stood
beautifully in our view.
When we returned to Kingston there was a lonely but lovely walk along
Thames side, seeking a bridge to give us a turning on the left, with
sun and wind and rain, and ducks falling through the air with a _ssh_,
and cunning swans sailing forward expecting food, and crying gulls. It
was the towing path toward Teddington Lock. The riverside houses came
down to the water with lawns and landing stages, terraces, gardens,
formal beauties. The Thames is a fair stream; we have made it fair.
Once it was otherwise, and England also--unnamed, unloved, wild, woody,
marshy. Man has made it dear unto himself. In the ever freshening
morning we stood on the bridge at Teddington and looked at the waters
rolling over the dam, and the green park land and the gardens beyond.
We wondered very much how we should depart from the other bank of the
river, what direction Fate would have us take. But we never could
guess in advance. Generally we would say: “I believe to-day we shall
land up somewhere in the neighborhood of this place or that,” but our
prognostications were never justified. Thus, who would have expected
that having passed through Teddington we should arrive at the other
side of Kingston stone bridge and be called upon to return to our
starting point!
We wandered through an area of large houses possessing a certain sort
of pomp and gloom, happy in the summer, not so happy in the winter. And
then an area of little Hope Cottages and May Villas. Somewhere in the
neighborhood of Seymour Road and Lower Teddington Road we came to a
highly disputable loop of roadway which betrayed us to the return over
Kingston Bridge.
We felt highly annoyed when we saw this main plank which we were about
to be forced to walk. I, with Machiavellian cunning, proposed to
return to that fatal loop of roadway and reinterpret its bearing, and
we stood on the triangular refuge in the middle of the roadway, and
discussed the point hotly. This is distinctly not a walk on which to
embark with one’s wife. It reveals points of difference. It brings
out the hidden crookedness of character, confirms all obstinacies and
predeterminations. It is possible to get more excited over a trivial
turning (mark you, trivial, a place where three ways meet) than over
the most portentous decision in real life. I imagine it is always
so. In any case, we stood on the triangle at Kingston and argued the
point. Two stout policemen of the cinema picture type stood over on the
pavement, regarding us and nodding their heads together. “What do you
think is their little game?” one was possibly saying to the other, and
they must have viewed me with a considerable amount of suspicion when I
returned to that loop and obtained a heretical reading of the truth to
suit my purpose.
“My dear Watson,” I hear the arch-detective saying, “the simplest
of crimes are always the most difficult to fathom.” I think it would
have puzzled the smartest of plain-clothes men had he followed us on
our marvelous way from Kingston back to Kingston, or from Kingston the
second time to Hampton Court.
“Onward to Hampton,” said I. “We cannot tell what joys await us there.”
We went into Bushey Park, thus infringing one of our own rules, but
there was an excellent road going through, and we liked to see the
deer grazing near us, like cows. Fortune led us into Hampton, that
gay and lively river town, and from Hampton we wandered among gray
reservoirs and green embankments to Sunbury. Possibly Fate intervened
to punish us for our refusal to pass over Kingston Bridge, for soon
we found ourselves clinging to the Thames. It was March by now. The
blackthorn was in bloom, the japonica and the almond were in blossom,
the celandine was in bud, and birds were singing everywhere. At Ashford
there were lots of daffodils, and I remember we passed the girls of
the High School all walking in crocodile and looking very frisky and
fresh, despite the primness of the teacher.
We came to the pretty and rural village of Laleham, Arnold’s village,
with its old church with thickly ivied tower, ancient yew trees, and
graves of the Arnolds and of the village. There were two goodly inns,
the Turk’s Head, the Three Horseshoes. At the latter we had tea, and
we learned that Arnold’s house had been pulled down and the present
National School had been made with the bricks.
We walked along the towing path once more, but it was now a full,
rushing river and was often in flood, well over the bank. The Thames
had a wild aspect, reflecting livid clouds. An icy gale whipped the
stream. There was a rush of snow, and the storm raged across the
whiteness of the horizon like smoke. We sheltered in the coping of
deserted river houses, and in order to make progress when the storm
abated were obliged to walk on the iron rungs of railings. Even so,
we did not escape many a bootful. In this way we passed Penton Hook,
and reached, fairly and truly, Staines, one of the bright capitals of
Father Thames’ kingdom.
At Staines we took the bridge, or rather the bridge took us over to
the other side of the river where we waded all the way to Runnymede
and Magna Carta Island--the way all Kings evidently have to go. But
we signed no charter of rights. Had we worn crowns we stood in more
likelihood of imitating that other remarkable feat of King John, by
losing our symbols of royalty in the flood. We were slaves of the road,
and the road led us into the water. I think we should have got to
Windsor Castle and might conceivably have called on the King himself,
the latest after King John, but the water gods intervened, or Pan had
other things in view. For I was warped, we were warped away to Egham
and Virginia Water. I was able to call on my artist friend, Helen
Cross, who at that time lived at Egham and was doing the emblems for my
idealistic first novel _Priest of the Ideal_; a joyous surprise visit,
for I could not tell her in advance that I was coming. I did not know
whether the zigzag way led to her gate. However, many nice people and
some others are on the zigzag path in the jig-saw puzzle of life.
We went from Egham to Thorpe Green and Englefield Green. We went down
Prune Hill and to Whitehall Farm and the length of many a longish
country road. It’s a long lane that has no turning; in fact we were
often comforted by that proverb and never found it disproved. All roads
in England, except the horrible cul-de-sacs (which, pray you, avoid)
have turnings to the left or to the right, according to the heart or
consonant to the reason. The crookedest has some reason in it, and even
the worst, though it has a way in, has also a way out.
From Virginia Water the zigzag way leads on to Kennaquhair, and further
to a place which I have sometimes heard called the “back of beyond.” At
the same time, it may be said that you will not know the name of the
place until you get there. You can put no destination label on your
rucksack, and if any one asks where you are going, you may tell him in
confidence, whisper the dreadful fact in his ear--“honestly, you do not
know.” The adventure is not getting there, it’s the on-the-way. It is
not the expected; it is the surprise; not the fulfillment of prophecy,
but the providence of something better than that prophesied. You are
not choosing what you shall see in the world, but are giving the world
an even chance to see you.
I am still on that zigzag way, pursuing the diagonal between the
reason and the heart; the chart could be made by drawing lines from
star to star in the night sky, not forgetting many dim, shy, fitfully
glimmering out-of-the-way stars, which one would not purpose visiting.
I said we would not enter a maze, but we have made one and are in one,
a maze of Andalusia and Dalmatia, of Anahuac and Anatolia, of Seven
Rivers Land and Seven Kings. The first to the left, the next to the
right! No blind alleys. A long way. _Beaucoup zigzag, eh!_
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.