that waved like a golden lake--but there were few farmhouses. In all
the afternoon I passed but one person, a deaf man who asked for
direction. When I cried out that I was a stranger, he held his hand to
his ear, but his mouth fell open as if my words, denied by deafness
from a proper portal, were offered here a service entrance. I spread
my map before him and he put an ample thumb upon it. Then inquiring
whether I had crossed a road with a red house upon it where his friend
resided, he thanked me and walked off with such speed as his years had
left him. Birds sang delightfully on the fences and in the field, yet
I knew not their names. Shall one not enjoy a symphony without precise
knowledge of the instrument that gives the tune? If an oboe sound a
melody, must one bestow a special praise, with a knowledge of its
function in the concert? Or if a trombone please, must one know the
brassy creature by its name? Rather, whether I listen to horns or
birds, in my ignorance I bestow loosely a general approbation; yet is
the song sweet.
All afternoon I walked with the sound of wind and water in my ears,
and at night, when I had gained my journey's end and lay in bed, I
heard beneath my window in the garden the music of a little runnel
that was like a faint and pleasant echo of my hillside walk. I fell
asleep to its soothing sound and its trickle made a pattern across my
dreams.
But perhaps you yourself, my dear sir, are addicted to these country
walks, either for an afternoon or for a week's duration with a
rucksack strapped across your back. If denied the longer outing, I
hope that at least it is your custom to go forth upon a holiday to
look upon the larger earth. Where the road most winds and dips and the
distance is of the finer purple, let that direction be your choice!
Seek out the region of the hills! Outposts and valleys here, with
smoke of suppers rising. Trains are so small that a child might draw
them with a string. Far-off hills are tumbled and in confusion, as if
a giant were roused and had flung his rumpled cloak upon the plain.
Or if a road and a stream seem close companions, tag along with them!
Like three cronies you may work the countryside together! There are
old mills with dams and mossy water wheels, and rumbling covered
bridges.
But chiefly I beg that you wander out at random without too precise
knowledge of where you go or where you shall get your supper. If you
are of a cautious nature, as springs from a delicate stomach or too
sheltered life, you may stuff a bar of chocolate in your pocket. Or an
apple--if you shift your other ballast--will not sag you beyond
locomotion. I have known persons who prize a tomato as offering both
food and drink, yet it is too likely to be damaged and squirt inside
the pocket if you rub against a tree. Instead, the cucumber is to be
commended for its coolness, and a pickle is a sour refreshment that
should be nibbled in turn against the chocolate.
Food oftentimes is to be got upon the way. There is a kind of cocoanut
bar, flat and corrugated, that may be had at most crossroads. I no
longer consider these a delicacy, but in my memory I see a boy
bargaining for them at the counter. They are counted into his dirty
palm. He stuffs a whole one in his mouth, from ear to ear. His bicycle
leans against the trough outside. He mounts, wabbling from side to
side to reach the pedals. Before him lie the mountains of the world.
Nor shall I complain if you hold roughly in your mind, subject to a
whim's reversal, an evening destination to check your hunger. But do
not bend your circuit back to the noisy city! Let your march end at
the inn of a country town! If it is but a station on your journey and
you continue on the morrow, let there be an ample porch and a rail to
rest your feet! Here you may sit in the comfortable twilight when
crammed with food and observe the town's small traffic. Country folk
come about, if you are of easy address, and engage you on their crops.
The village prophet strokes his wise beard at your request and,
squinting at the sky, foretells a storm. Or if the night is cold, a
fire is laid inside and a wrinkled board for the conduct of the war
debates upon the hearth. But so far as your infirmity permits, go
forth at random with a spirit for adventure! If the prospect pleases
you as the train slows down for the platform, cast a penny on your
knee and abide its fall!
Or if on principle you abhor a choice that is made wickedly on the
falling of a coin, let an irrelevant circumstance direct your
destination! I once walked outside of London, making my start at
Dorking for no other reason except that Sam Weller's mother-in-law had
once lived there. You will recall how the elder Mr. Weller in the hour
of his affliction discoursed on widows in the taproom of the Marquis
of Granby when the funeral was done, and how later, being pestered
with the Reverend Mr. Stiggins, he immersed him in the horse-trough to
ease his grief. All through the town I looked for red-nosed men who
might be descended from the reverend shepherd, and once when I passed
a horse-trough of uncommon size I asked the merchant at the corner if
it might not be the very place. I was met, however, by such a vacant
stare--for the fellow was unlettered--that to rouse him I bought a
cucumber from an open crate against the time of lunch, and I followed
my pursuit further in the town. The cucumber was of monstrous length
and thin. All about the town its end stuck out of my pocket
inquisitively, as though it were a fellow traveler down from London to
see the sights. But although I inquired for the Weller family, it
seems that they were dead and gone. Even the Marquis of Granby had
disappeared, with its room behind the bar where Mr. Stiggins drank
pineapple rum with water, _luke_, from the kettle on the hob.
We left Dorking and walked all afternoon through a pleasant sunny
country, up hill and down, to the town of Guildford. At four o'clock,
to break the journey, we laid out our lunch of bread and cheese and
cucumber, and rested for an hour. The place was a grassy bank along a
road above a fertile valley where men were pitching hay. Their shouts
were carried across the fields with an agreeable softness. Today,
doubtless, women work in those fields.
On another occasion we walked from Maidstone to Rochester on
pilgrimage to the inn where Alfred Jingle borrowed Mr. Winkle's coat
to attend the Assembly, when he made love to the buxom widow. War had
just been declared between Britain and Germany, and soldiers guarded
the roads above the town. At a tea-room in the outskirts army
officers ate at a neighboring table. Later, it is likely, they were in
the retreat from Mons: for the expeditionary force crossed the channel
within a week. Yet so does farce march along with tragedy that our
chief concern in Rochester was the old inn where the ball was held.
A surly woman who sat behind the cashier's wicket fixed me with her
eye. "Might we visit the ballroom?" I inquired. Evidently not, unless
we were stopping at the house. "Madame," I said, "perhaps you are
unaware that the immortal Mr. Pickwick once sojourned beneath your
roof." There was no response. "The celebrated Mr. Pickwick, G. C. M.
P. C.," I continued, "who was the discoverer of the sources of the
Hampstead Ponds." At this--for my manner was impressive--she fumbled
through the last few pages of her register and admitted that he might
have been once a patron of the house, but that he had now paid his
bill and gone.
I was about to question her about the poet Augustus Snodgrass, who had
been with Mr. Pickwick on his travels, when a waiter, a humorous
fellow with a vision of a sixpence, offered to be our guide. We
climbed the stairs and came upon the ballroom. It was a small room.
Three quadrilles must have stuffed it to the edge--a dingy place with
bare windows on a deserted innyard. At one end was a balcony that
would hold not more than three musicians. The candles of its former
brightness have long since burned to socket. Vanished are "Sir Thomas
Clubber, Lady Clubber and the Miss Clubbers!" Gone is the Honorable
Wilmot Snipe and all the notables that once crowded it! Vanished is
the punchbowl where the amorous Tracy Tupman drank too many cups of
negus on that memorable night. I gave the dirty waiter a sixpence and
came away.
I discourage the usual literary pilgrimage. Indeed, if there is a
rumor that Milton died in a neighboring town, or a treaty of
consequence was signed close by, choose another path! Let neither
Oliver Cromwell nor the Magna Carta deflect your course! One of my
finest walks was on no better advice than the avoidance of a
celebrated shrine. I was led along the swift waters of a river,
through several pretty towns, and witnessed the building of a lofty
bridge. For lunch I had some memorable griddlecakes. Finally I rode on
top of a rattling stage with a gossip for a driver, whose long finger
pointed out the sights upon the road.
But for the liveliest truancy, keep an eye out for red-haired and
freckled lads, and make them your counselors! Lads so spotted and
colored, I have found, are of unusual enterprise in knowing the best
woodland paths and the loftiest views. A yellow-haired boy, being of
paler wit, will suck his thumb upon a question. A touzled black
exhibits a sulky absorption in his work. An indifferent brown, at
best, runs for an answer to the kitchen. But red-haired and freckled
lads are alive at once. Whether or not their roving spirit, which is
the basis of their deeper and quicker knowledge, proceeds from the
magic of the pigment, the fact yet remains that such boys are surer
than a signpost to direct one to adventure. This truth is so general
that I have read the lives of the voyagers--Robinson Crusoe, Captain
Kidd and the worthies out of Hakluyt--if perhaps a hint might drop
that they too in their younger days were freckled and red-haired. Sir
Walter Raleigh--I choose at random--was doubtless called "Carrots" by
his playmates. But on making inquiry of a red-haired lad, one must
have a clear head in the tumult of his direction. I was once lost for
several hours on the side of Anthony's Nose above the Hudson because I
jumbled such advice. And although I made the acquaintance of a hermit
who dwelt on the mountain with a dog and a scarecrow for his garden--a
fellow so like him in garment and in feature that he seemed his
younger and cleaner brother--still I did not find the top or see the
clear sweep of the Hudson as was promised.
If it is your habit to inquire of distance upon the road, do not
quarrel with conflicting opinion! Judge the answer by the source!
Persons of stalwart limb commonly underestimate a distance, whereas
those of broken wind and stride stretch it greater than it is. But it
is best to take all answers lightly. I have heard of a man who spent
his rainy evenings on a walking trip in going among the soda clerks
and small merchants of the village, not for information, but to
contrast their ignorance. Aladdin's wicked uncle, when he inquired
direction to the mountain of the genii's cave, could not have been so
misdirected. Shoemakers, candy-men and peddlers of tinware--if such
modest merchants existed also on the curb in those magic days--must
have been of nicer knowledge or old Kazrac would never have found the
lamp. In my friend's case, on inquiry, a certain hotel at which we
aimed was both good and bad, open and shut, burned and unburned.
There is a legend of the Catholic Church about a certain holy chapel
that once leaped across the Alps. It seems gross superstition, yet
although I belong to a protesting church, I assert its likelihood. For
I solemnly affirm that on a hot afternoon I chased a whole village
that skipped quite as miraculously before me across the country. It
was a village of stout leg and wind and, as often as I inquired, it
still kept seven miles ahead. Once only I gained, by trotting on a
descent. Not until night when the village lay down to rest beside a
quiet river did I finally overtake it. And the next morning I arose
early in order to be off first upon my travels, and so keep the lively
rascal in the rear.
In my country walks I usually carry a book in the pocket opposite to
my lunch. I seldom read it, but it is a comfort to have it handy. I am
told that at one of the colleges, students of smaller application, in
order that they may truthfully answer as to the length of time they
have spent upon their books, do therefore literally sit upon a pile of
them, as on a stool, while they engage in pleasanter and more secular
reading. I do not examine this story closely, which rises, doubtless,
from the jealousy of a rival college. Rather, I think that these
students perch upon the books which presently they must read, on a
wise instinct that this preliminary contact starts their knowledge.
And therefore a favorite volume, even if unopened in the pocket, does
nevertheless by its proximity color and enhance the enjoyment of the
day. I have carried Howell, who wrote the "Familiar Letters," unread
along the countryside. A small volume of Boswell has grown dingy in my
pocket. I have gone about with a copy of Addison with long S's, but I
read it chiefly at home when my feet are on the fender.
I had by me once as I crossed the Devon moors a volume of "Richard
Feverel." For fifteen miles I had struck across the upland where there
is scarcely a house in sight--nothing but grazing sheep and wild
ponies that ran at my approach. Sometimes a marshy stream flowed down
a shallow valley, with a curl of smoke from a house that stood in the
hollow. At the edge of this moorland, I came into a shady valley that
proceeded to the ocean. My feet were pinched and tired when I heard
the sound of water below the road. I pushed aside the bushes and saw a
stream trickling on the rocks. I thrust my head into a pool until the
water ran into my ears, and then sat with my bare feet upon the cool
stones where the runnel lapped them, and read "Richard Feverel." To
this day, at the mention of the title, I can hear the pleasant brawl
of water and the stirring of the branches in the wind that wandered
down the valley.
Hazlitt tells us in a famous passage with what relish he once read
"The New Eloise" on a walking trip. "It was on the 10th of April,
1798," he writes, "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." I
am quite unfamiliar with the book, yet as often as I read the
essay--which is the best of Hazlitt--I have been teased to buy it.
Perhaps this springs in part from my own recollection of Llangollen,
where I once stopped on a walking trip through Wales. The town lies on
the river Dee at the foot of fertile hills patched with fences, on
whose top there stand the ruins of Dinas Bran, a fortress of forgotten
history, although it looks grimly towards the English marches as if
its enemies came thence. Thrown across the river there is a peaked
bridge of gray stone, many centuries old, on which the village folk
gather at the end of day. I dined on ale and mutton of such excellence
that, for myself, a cold volume of the census--if I had fallen so
low--must have remained agreeably in memory. I recall that a
street-organ stopped beneath the window and played a merry tune--or
perhaps the wicked ale was mounting--and I paused in my onslaught
against the mutton to toss the musician a coin.
I applaud those who, on a walking trip, arise and begin their journey
in the dawn, but although I am eager at night to make an early start,
yet I blink and growl when the morning comes. I marvel at the poet who
was abroad so early that he was able to write of the fresh twilight on
the world--"Where the sandalled Dawn like a Greek god takes the
hurdles of the hills"--but for my own part I would have slept and
missed the sight. But an early hour is best, despite us lazybones, and
to be on the road before the dew is gone and while yet a mist arises
from the hollows is to know the journey's finest pleasure.
Persons of early hours assert that they feel a fine exaltation. I am
myself inclined to think, however, that this is not so much an
exaltation that arises from the beauty of the hour, as from a feeling
of superiority over their sleeping and inferior comrades. It is akin
to the displeasing vanity of those persons who walk upon a boat with
easy stomach while their companions lie below. I would discourage,
therefore, persons that lean toward conceit from putting a foot out of
bed until the second call. On the other hand, those who are of a
self-depreciative nature should get up with the worm and bird. A man
of my own acquaintance who was sunk in self-abasement for many years,
was roused to a salutary conceit by no other tonic.
And it is certain that to be off upon a journey with a rucksack
strapped upon you at an hour when the butcher boy takes down his
shutters is a high pleasure. Off you go through the village with
swinging arms. Off you go across the country. A farmer is up before
you and you hear his reaper across the field, and the neighing of his
horses at the turn. Where the hill falls sharp against the sky, there
he stands outlined, to wipe the sweat. And as your nature is, swift or
sluggish thoughts go through your brain--plots and vagrant fancies,
which later your pencil will not catch. It is in these earliest hours
while the dew still glistens that little lyric sentences leap into
your mind. Then, if at all, are windmills giants.
There are cool retreats where you may rest at noon, but Stevenson has
written of these. "You come," he writes, "to a milestone on a hill, or
some place where deep ways meet under trees; and off goes the
knapsack, and down you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You sink into
yourself, and the birds come round and look at you; and your smoke
dissipates upon the afternoon under the blue dome of heaven; and the
sun lies warm upon your feet, and the cool air visits your neck and
turns aside your open shirt. If you are not happy, you must have an
evil conscience."
And yet a good inn at night holds even a more tranquil joy. M---- and
I, who frequently walk upon a holiday, traversed recently a mountain
road to the north of West Point. During the afternoon we had scrambled
up Storm King to a bare rock above the Hudson. It was just such an
outlook as Rip found before he met the outlandish Dutchmen with their
ninepins and flagon. We lay here above a green world that was rimmed
with mountains, and watched the lagging sails and puffs of smoke upon
the river. It was late afternoon when we descended to the mountain
road that runs to West Point. During all the day there had been
distant rumbling of thunder, as though a storm mustered in a far-off
valley,--or perhaps the Dutchmen of the legend still lingered at their
game,--but now as the twilight fell the storm came near. It was six
o'clock when a sign-board informed us that we had seven miles to go,
and already the thunder sounded with earnest purpose. Far below in the
dusk we saw the lights of West Point. On a sudden, while I was still
fumbling for my poncho which was rolled inside my rucksack, the storm
burst upon us. We put up the umbrella and held the poncho against the
wind and driving rain. But the wind so whisked it about and the rain
was so eager to find the openings that presently we were drenched. In
an hour we came to West Point. Luckily the cook was up, and she
served us a hot dinner in our rooms with the washstand for a table.
When we started there was a piece of soap in the dish, but I think we
ate it in our hunger. I recall that there was one course that foamed
up like custard and was not upon the bill. It was a plain room with
meager furniture, yet we fell asleep with a satisfaction beyond the
Cecils in their lordly beds. I stirred once when there was a clamor in
the hall of guests returning from a hop at the Academy--a prattle of
girls' voices--then slept until the sun was up.
But my preference in lodgings is the low sagging half-timbered
building that one finds in the country towns of England. It has leaned
against the street and dispensed hospitality for three hundred years.
It is as old a citizen as the castle on the hill. It is an inn where
Tom Jones might have spent the night, or any of the rascals out of
Smollett. Behind the wicket there sits a shrewish female with a cold
eye towards your defects, and behind her there is a row of bells which
jangle when water is wanted in the rooms. Having been assigned a room
and asked the hour of dinner, you mount a staircase that rises with a
squeak. There is a mustiness about the place, which although it is
unpleasant in itself, is yet agreeable in its circumstance. A long
hall runs off to the back of the house, with odd steps here and there
to throw you. Your room looks out upon a coach-yard, and as you wash
you overhear a love-passage down below.
In the evening you go forth to see the town. If it lies on the ocean,
you walk upon the mole and watch the fisher folk winding up their
nets, or sitting with tranquil pipes before their doors. Maybe a booth
has been set up on the parade that runs along the ocean, and a husky
fellow bids you lay out a sixpence for the show, which is the very
same, he bawls, as was played before the King and the Royal Family.
This speech is followed by a fellow with a trombone, who blows himself
very red in the face.
But rather I choose to fancy that it is an inland town, and that there
is a quieter traffic on the streets. Here for an hour after dinner,
while darkness settles, you wander from shop to shop and put your nose
upon the glass, or you engage the lamplighter as he goes his rounds,
for any bit of news.
Once in such a town when the night brought rain, for want of other
employment, I debated divinity with a rigid parson, and until a late
hour sat in the thick curtain of his attack. It was at an inn of one
of the midland counties of England, a fine old weathered building,
called "The King's Arms." In the tap--for I thrust my thirsty head
inside--was an array of old pewter upon the walls, and two or three
prints of prize fighters of former days. But it was in the parlor the
parson engaged me. In the corner of the room there was a timid
fire--of the kind usually met in English inns--imprisoned behind a
grill that had been set up stoutly to confine a larger and rowdier
fire. My antagonist was a tall lank man of pinched ascetic face and
dark complexion, with clothes brushed to shininess, and he belonged to
a brotherhood that lived in one of the poorer parts of London along
the wharves. His sojourn at the inn was forced. For two weeks in the
year, he explained, each member was cast out of the conventual
buildings upon the world. This was done in penance, as the members of
more rigid orders in the past were flagellants for a season. So here
for a whole week had he been sitting, for the most part in rainy
weather, busied with the books that the inn afforded--advertising
booklets of the beauties of the Alps--diagrams of steamships--and
peeking out of doors for a change of sky.
It was a matter of course that he should engage me in conversation. He
was as lonesome for a chance to bark as a country dog. Presently when
I dissented from some point in his creed, he called me a heretic, and
I with gentlest satire asked him if the word yet lived. But he was not
angry, and he told me of his brotherhood. It had a branch in America,
and he bade me, if ever I met any of its priests, to convey to them
his warm regards. As for America, it was, he said, too coldly ethical,
and needed most a spiritual understanding; to which judgment I
assented. I wonder now whether the war will bring that understanding.
Maybe, unless blind hatred smothers it.
This priest was a mixture of stern and gentle qualities, and seemed to
be descended from those earlier friars that came to England in cord
and gown, and went barefoot through the cities to minister comfort and
salvation to the poor and wretched. When the evening was at last
spent, by common consent we took our candles on the landing, where,
after he inculcated a final doctrine of his church with waving finger,
he bade me good night, with a wish of luck for my journey on the
morrow, and sought his room.
My own room lay down a creaking hallway. When undressed, I opened my
window and looked upon the street. All lights were out. At last the
rain had ceased, and now above the housetops across the way, through a
broken patch of cloud, a star appeared with a promise of a fair
tomorrow.
On Livelihoods.
Somewhere in his letters, I think, Stevenson pronounces street paving
to be his favorite occupation. I fancy, indeed,--and I have ransacked
his life,--that he never applied himself to its practice for an actual
livelihood. That was not necessary. Rather, he looked on at the curb
in a careless whistling mood, hands deep in the pockets of his breeks,
in a lazy interval between plot and essay. The sunny morning had
dropped its golden invitation through his study windows, and he has
wandered forth to see the world. Let my heroes--for thus I interpret
him at his desk as the sunlight beckoned--let my heroes kick their
heels in patience! Let villains fret inside the inkpot! Down, sirs,
down, into the glossy magic pool, until I dip you up! Pirates--for
surely such miscreants lurked among his papers--let pirates, he cries,
save their red oaths until tomorrow! My hat! My stick!