In books as a whole marshes are described as desolate and colourless,
great fields of clay or sedge, vast horizons of drab or grey. But this,
like many other literary associations, is a piece of poetical injustice.
Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its
sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There
are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sightseers. It is a matter
of taste, that is of personality, whether marshes are monotonous; but it
is a matter of fact and science that they are not monochrome. The tops
of high mountains (I am told) are all white; the depths of primeval
caverns (I am also told) are all dark. The sea will be grey or blue
for weeks together; and the desert, I have been led to believe, is the
colour of sand. The North Pole (if we found it) would be white with
cracks of blue; and Endless Space (if we went there) would, I suppose,
be black with white spots. If any of these were counted of a monotonous
colour I could well understand it; but on the contrary, they are always
spoken of as if they had the gorgeous and chaotic colours of a cosmic
kaleidoscope. Now exactly where you can find colours like those of a
tulip garden or a stained-glass window, is in those sunken and sodden
lands which are always called dreary. Of course the great tulip gardens
did arise in Holland; which is simply one immense marsh. There is
nothing in Europe so truly tropical as marshes. Also, now I come to
think of it, there are few places so agreeably marshy as tropics. At
any rate swamp and fenlands in England are always especially rich in
gay grasses or gorgeous fungoids; and seem sometimes as glorious as
a transformation scene; but also as unsubstantial. In these splendid
scenes it is always very easy to put your foot through the scenery. You
may sink up to your armpits; but you will sink up to your armpits in
flowers. I do not deny that I myself am of a sort that sinks--except
in the matter of spirits. I saw in the west counties recently a swampy
field of great richness and promise. If I had stepped on it I have no
doubt at all that I should have vanished; that aeons hence the
complete fossil of a fat Fleet Street journalist would be found in that
compressed clay. I only claim that it would be found in some attitude of
energy, or even of joy. But the last point is the most important of all,
for as I imagined myself sinking up to the neck in what looked like a
solid green field, I suddenly remembered that this very thing must have
happened to certain interesting pirates quite a thousand years ago.
For, as it happened, the flat fenland in which I so nearly sunk was
the fenland round the Island of Athelney, which is now an island in the
fields and no longer in the waters. But on the abrupt hillock a stone
still stands to say that this was that embattled islet in the Parrett
where King Alfred held his last fort against the foreign invaders, in
that war that nearly washed us as far from civilization as the Solomon
Islands. Here he defended the island called Athelney as he afterwards
did his best to defend the island called England. For the hero always
defends an island, a thing beleaguered and surrounded, like the Troy
of Hector. And the highest and largest humanitarian can only rise to
defending the tiny island called the earth.
One approaches the island of Athelney along a low long road like an
interminable white string stretched across the flats, and lined with
those dwarfish trees that are elvish in their very dullness. At one
point of the journey (I cannot conceive why) one is arrested by a toll
gate at which one has to pay threepence. Perhaps it is a distorted
tradition of those dark ages. Perhaps Alfred, with the superior science
of comparative civilization, had calculated the economics of Denmark
down to a halfpenny. Perhaps a Dane sometimes came with twopence,
sometimes even with twopence-halfpenny, after the sack of many cities
even with twopence three farthings; but never with threepence. Whether
or no it was a permanent barrier to the barbarians it was only a
temporary barrier to me. I discovered three large and complete coppers
in various parts of my person, and I passed on along that strangely
monotonous and strangely fascinating path. It is not merely fanciful to
feel that the place expresses itself appropriately as the place
where the great Christian King hid himself from the heathen. Though
a marshland is always open it is still curiously secret. Fens, like
deserts, are large things very apt to be mislaid. These flats feared to
be overlooked in a double sense; the small trees crouched and the whole
plain seemed lying on its face, as men do when shells burst. The
little path ran fearlessly forward; but it seemed to run on all fours.
Everything in that strange countryside seemed to be lying low, as if to
avoid the incessant and rattling rain of the Danish arrows. There were
indeed hills of no inconsiderable height quite within call; but those
pools and flats of the old Parrett seemed to separate themselves like
a central and secret sea; and in the midst of them stood up the rock of
Athelney as isolate as it was to Alfred. And all across this recumbent
and almost crawling country there ran the glory of the low wet lands;
grass lustrous and living like the plumage of some universal bird; the
flowers as gorgeous as bonfires and the weeds more beautiful than the
flowers. One stooped to stroke the grass, as if the earth were all one
kind beast that could feel.
Why does no decent person write an historical novel about Alfred and his
fort in Athelney, in the marshes of the Parrett? Not a very historical
novel. Not about his Truth-telling (please) or his founding the British
Empire, or the British Navy, or the Navy League, or whichever it was
he founded. Not about the Treaty of Wedmore and whether it ought (as
an eminent historian says) to be called the Pact of Chippenham. But an
aboriginal romance for boys about the bare, bald, beatific fact that
a great hero held his fort in an island in a river. An island is fine
enough, in all conscience or piratic unconscientiousness, but an island
in a river sounds like the beginning of the greatest adventure story on
earth. “Robinson Crusoe” is really a great tale, but think of Robinson
Crusoe's feelings if he could have actually seen England and Spain from
his inaccessible isle! “Treasure Island” is a spirit of genius: but
what treasure could an island contain to compare with Alfred? And then
consider the further elements of juvenile romance in an island that was
more of an island than it looked. Athelney was masked with marshes; many
a heavy harnessed Viking may have started bounding across a meadow only
to find himself submerged in a sea. I feel the full fictitious splendour
spreading round me; I see glimpses of a great romance that will never be
written. I see a sudden shaft quivering in one of the short trees. I see
a red-haired man wading madly among the tall gold flowers of the marsh,
leaping onward and lurching lower. I see another shaft stand quivering
in his throat. I cannot see any more, because, as I have delicately
suggested, I am a heavy man. This mysterious marshland does not sustain
me, and I sink into its depths with a bubbling groan.