A pilgrimage is, of course, an expedition to some venerated place to
which a vivid memory of sacred things experienced, or a long and
wonderful history of human experience in divine matters, or a personal
attraction affecting the soul impels one. This is, I say, its essence.
So a pilgrimage may be made to the tomb of Descartes, in Paris, or it
may be a little walk uphill to a neighbouring and beloved grave, or a
modern travel, even in luxury, on the impulse to see something that
greatly calls one.
But there has always hung round the idea of a pilgrimage, with all
people and at all times--I except those very rare and highly decadent
generations of history in which no pilgrimages are made, nor any
journeys, save for curiosity or greed--there has always hung round it, I
say, something more than the mere objective. Just as in general worship
you will have noble gowns, vivid colour, and majestic music (symbols,
but necessary symbols of the great business you are at); so, in this
particular case of worship, clothes, as it were, and accoutrements,
gather round one's principal action. I will visit the grave of a saint
or of a man whom I venerate privately for his virtues and deeds, but on
my way I wish to do something a little difficult to show at what a price
I hold communion with his resting-place, and also on toy way I will see
all I can of men and things; for anything great and worthy is but an
ordinary thing transfigured, and if I am about to venerate a humanity
absorbed into the divine, so it behoves me on my journey to it to enter
into and delight in the divine that is hidden in everything. Thus I may
go upon a pilgrimage with no pack and nothing but a stick and my
clothes, but I must get myself into the frame of mind that carries an
invisible burden, an eye for happiness and suffering, humour, gladness
at the beauty of the world, a readiness for raising the heart at the
vastness of a wide view, and especially a readiness to give
multitudinous praise to God; for a man that goes on a pilgrimage does
best of all if he starts out (I say it of his temporal object only) with
the heart of a wanderer, eager for the world as it is, forgetful of maps
or descriptions, but hungry for real colours and men and the seeming of
things. This desire for reality and contact is a kind of humility, this
pleasure in it a kind of charity.
It is surely in the essence of a pilgrimage that all vain imaginations
are controlled by the greatness of our object. Thus, if a man should go
to see the place where (as they say) St. Peter met our Lord on the
Appian Way at dawn, he will not care very much for the niggling of
pedants about this or that building, or for the rhetoric of posers about
this or that beautiful picture. If a thing in his way seem to him
frankly ugly he will easily treat it as a neutral, forget it and pass it
by. If, on the contrary, he find a beautiful thing, whether done by God
or by man, he will remember and love it. This is what children do, and
to get the heart of a child is the end surely of any act of religion. In
such a temper he will observe rather than read, and though on his way he
cannot do other than remember the names of places, saying, "Why, these
are the Alps of which I have read! Here is Florence, of which I have
heard so many rich women talk!" yet he will never let himself argue and
decide or put himself, so to speak, before an audience in his own
mind--for that is pride which all of us moderns always fall into. He
will, on the contrary, go into everything with curiosity and pleasure,
and be a brother to the streets and trees and to all the new world he
finds. The Alps that he sees with his eyes will be as much more than the
names he reads about, the Florence of his desires as much more than the
Florence of sickly-drawing-rooms; as beauty loved is more than beauty
heard of, or as our own taste, smell, hearing, touch and sight are more
than the vague relations of others. Nor does religion exercise in our
common life any function more temporarily valuable than this, that it
makes us be sure at least of realities, and look very much askance at
philosophies and imaginaries and academic whimsies.
Look, then, how a pilgrimage ought to be nothing but a nobler kind of
travel, in which, according to our age and inclination, we tell our
tales, or draw our pictures, or compose our songs. It is a very great
error, and one unknown before our most recent corruptions, that the
religious spirit should be so superficial and so self-conscious as to
dominate our method of action at special times and to be absent at
others. It is better occasionally to travel in one way or another to
some beloved place (or to some place wonderful and desired for its
associations), haunted by our mission, yet falling into every ordinary
levity, than to go about a common voyage in a chastened and devout
spirit. I fear this is bad theology, and I propound it subject to
authority. But, surely, if a man should say, "I will go to Redditch to
buy needles cheap," and all the way take care to speak no evil of his
neighbour, to keep very sober, to be punctual in his accounts, and to
say his regular prayers with exactitude, though that would be a good
work, yet if he is to be a _pilgrim_ (and the Church has a hundred
gates), I would rather for the moment that he went off in a gay,
tramping spirit, not oversure of his expenses, not very careful of all
he said or did, but illuminated and increasingly informed by the great
object of his voyage, which is here not to buy or sell needles, or what
not, but to loose the mind and purge it in the ultimate contemplation of
something divine.
There is, indeed, that kind of pilgrimage which some few sad men
undertake because their minds are overburdened by a sin or tortured with
some great care that is not of their own fault. These are excepted from
the general rule, though even to these a very human spirit comes by the
way, and the adventures of inns and foreign conversations broaden the
world for them and lighten their burden. But this kind of pilgrimage is
rare and special, having its peculiar virtues. The common sort (which
how many men undertake under another name!) is a separate and human
satisfaction of a need, the fulfilling of an instinct in us, the
realisation of imagined horizons, the reaching of a goal. For whoever
yet that was alive reached an end and could say he was satisfied? Yet
who has not desired so to reach an end and to be satisfied? Well,
pilgrimage is for the most a sort of prefiguring or rehearsal. A man
says: "I will play in show (but a show stiffened with a real and just
object) at that great part which is all we can ever play. Here I start
from home, and there I reach a goal, and on the way I laugh and watch,
sing and work. Now I am at ease and again hampered; now poor, now rich,
weary towards the end and at last arrived at that end. So my great life
is, and so this little chapter shall be." Thus he packs up the meaning
of life into a little space to be able to look at it closely, as men
carry with them small locket portraits of their birthplace or of those
they love.
If a pilgrimage is all this, it is evident that however careless, it
must not be untroublesome. It would be a contradiction of pilgrimage to
seek to make the journey short and rapid, merely consuming the mind for
nothing, as is our modern habit; for they seem to think nowadays that to
remain as near as possible to what one was at starting, and to one's
usual rut, is the great good of travel (as though a man should run
through the _Iliad_ only to note the barbarous absurdity of the Greek
characters, or through Catullus for the sake of discovering such words
as were like enough to English). That is not the spirit of a pilgrimage
at all. The pilgrim is humble and devout, and human and charitable, and
ready to smile and admire; therefore he should comprehend the whole of
his way, the people in it, and the hills and the clouds, and the habits
of the various cities. And as to the method of doing this, we may go
bicycling (though that is a little flurried) or driving (though that is
luxurious and dangerous, because it brings us constantly against
servants and flattery); but the best way of all is on foot, where one
is a man like any other man, with the sky above one, and the road
beneath, and the world on every side, and time to see all.
So also I designed to walk, and did, when I visited the tombs of the
Apostles.