upon us a unity of impression that would only be disturbed and
dissipated if we stayed longer. Clear vision goes with the quick foot.
Things fall for us into a sort of natural perspective when we see them
for a moment in going by; we generalise boldly and simply, and are gone
before the sun is overcast, before the rain falls, before the season can
steal like a dial-hand from his figure, before the lights and shadows,
shifting round towards nightfall, can show us the other side of things,
and belie what they showed us in the morning. We expose our mind to the
landscape (as we would expose the prepared plate in the camera) for the
moment only during which the effect endures; and we are away before the
effect can change. Hence we shall have in our memories a long scroll of
continuous wayside pictures, all imbued already with the prevailing
sentiment of the season, the weather, and the landscape, and certain to
be unified more and more, as time goes on, by the unconscious processes
of thought. So that we who have only looked at a country over our
shoulder, so to speak, as we went by, will have a conception of it far
more memorable and articulate than a man who has lived there all his
life from a child upwards, and had his impression of to-day modified by
that of to-morrow, and belied by that of the day after, till at length
the stable characteristics of the country are all blotted out from him
behind the confusion of variable effect.
I began my little pilgrimage in the most enviable of all humours: that
in which a person, with a sufficiency of money and a knapsack, turns his
back on a town and walks forward into a country of which he knows only
by the vague report of others. Such an one has not surrendered his will
and contracted for the next hundred miles, like a man on a railway. He
may change his mind at every finger-post, and, where ways meet, follow
vague preferences freely and go the low road or the high, choose the
shadow or the sunshine, suffer himself to be tempted by the lane that
turns immediately into the woods, or the broad road that lies open
before him into the distance, and shows him the far-off spires of some
city, or a range of mountain-tops, or a rim of sea, perhaps, along a low
horizon. In short, he may gratify his every whim and fancy, without a
pang of reproving conscience, or the least jostle to his self-respect.
It is true, however, that most men do not possess the faculty of free
action, the priceless gift of being able to live for the moment only;
and as they begin to go forward on their journey, they will find that
they have made for themselves new fetters. Slight projects they may have
entertained for a moment, half in jest, become iron laws to them, they
know not why. They will be led by the nose by these vague reports of
which I spoke above; and the mere fact that their informant mentioned
one village and not another will compel their footsteps with
inexplicable power. And yet a little while, yet a few days of this
fictitious liberty, and they will begin to hear imperious voices calling
on them to return; and some passion, some duty, some worthy or unworthy
expectation, will set its hand upon their shoulder and lead them back
into the old paths. Once and again we have all made the experiment. We
know the end of it right well. And yet if we make it for the hundredth
time to-morrow, it will have the same charm as ever; our heart will beat
and our eyes will be bright, as we leave the town behind us, and we
shall feel once again (as we have felt so often before) that we are
cutting ourselves loose for ever from our whole past life, with all its
sins and follies and circumscriptions, and go forward as a new creature
into a new world.
It is well, perhaps, that I had this first enthusiasm to encourage me up
the long hill above High Wycombe; for the day was a bad day for walking
at best, and now began to draw towards afternoon, dull, heavy, and
lifeless. A pall of grey cloud covered the sky, and its colour reacted
on the colour of the landscape. Near at hand, indeed, the hedgerow trees
were still fairly green, shot through with bright autumnal yellows,
bright as sunshine. But a little way off, the solid bricks of woodland
that lay squarely on slope and hill-top were not green, but russet and
grey, and ever less russet and more grey as they drew off into the
distance. As they drew off into the distance, also, the woods seemed to
mass themselves together, and lay thin and straight, like clouds, upon
the limit of one's view. Not that this massing was complete, or gave the
idea of any extent of forest, for every here and there the trees would
break up and go down into a valley in open order, or stand in long
Indian file along the horizon, tree after tree relieved, foolishly
enough, against the sky. I say foolishly enough, although I have seen
the effect employed cleverly in art, and such long line of single trees
thrown out against the customary sunset of a Japanese picture with a
certain fantastic effect that was not to be despised; but this was over
water and level land, where it did not jar, as here, with the soft
contour of hills and valleys. The whole scene had an indefinable look of
being painted, the colour was so abstract and correct, and there was
something so sketchy and merely impressional about these distant single
trees on the horizon that one was forced to think of it all as of a
clever French landscape. For it is rather in nature that we see
resemblance to art, than in art to nature; and we say a hundred times,
"How like a picture!" for once that we say, "How like the truth!" The
forms in which we learn to think of landscape are forms that we have got
from painted canvas. Any man can see and understand a picture; it is
reserved for the few to separate anything out of the confusion of
nature, and see that distinctly and with intelligence.
The sun came out before I had been long on my way; and as I had got by
that time to the top of the ascent, and was now treading a labyrinth of
confined by-roads, my whole view brightened considerably in colour, for
it was the distance only that was grey and cold, and the distance I
could see no longer. Overhead there was a wonderful carolling of larks
which seemed to follow me as I went. Indeed, during all the time I was
in that country the larks did not desert me. The air was alive with them
from High Wycombe to Tring; and as, day after day, their "shrill
delight" fell upon me out of the vacant sky, they began to take such a
prominence over other conditions, and form so integral a part of my
conception of the country, that I could have baptised it "The Country of
Larks." This, of course, might just as well have been in early spring;
but everything else was deeply imbued with the sentiment of the later
year. There was no stir of insects in the grass. The sunshine was more
golden, and gave less heat than summer sunshine; and the shadows under
the hedge were somewhat blue and misty. It was only in autumn that you
could have seen the mingled green and yellow of the elm foliage, and the
fallen leaves that lay about the road, and covered the surface of
wayside pools so thickly that the sun was reflected only here and there
from little joints and pin-holes in that brown coat of proof; or that
your ear would have been troubled, as you went forward, by the
occasional report of fowling-pieces from all directions and all degrees
of distance.
For a long time this dropping fire was the one sign of human activity
that came to disturb me as I walked. The lanes were profoundly still.
They would have been sad but for the sunshine and the singing of the
larks. And as it was, there came over me at times a feeling of isolation
that was not disagreeable, and yet was enough to make me quicken my
steps eagerly when I saw some one before me on the road. This
fellow-voyager proved to be no less a person than the parish constable.
It had occurred to me that in a district which was so little populous
and so well wooded, a criminal of any intelligence might play
hide-and-seek with the authorities for months; and this idea was
strengthened by the aspect of the portly constable as he walked by my
side with deliberate dignity and turned-out toes. But a few minutes'
converse set my heart at rest. These rural criminals are very tame
birds, it appeared. If my informant did not immediately lay his hand on
an offender, he was content to wait; some evening after nightfall there
would come a tap at his door, and the outlaw, weary of outlawry, would
give himself quietly up to undergo sentence, and resume his position in
the life of the country-side. Married men caused him no disquietude
whatever; he had them fast by the foot. Sooner or later they would come
back to see their wives, a peeping neighbour would pass the word, and my
portly constable would walk quietly over and take the bird sitting. And
if there were a few who had no particular ties in the neighbourhood, and
preferred to shift into another county when they fell into trouble,
their departure moved the placid constable in no degree. He was of
Dogberry's opinion; and if a man would not stand in the Prince's name,
he took no note of him, but let him go, and thanked God he was rid of a
knave. And surely the crime and the law were in admirable keeping:
rustic constable was well met with rustic offender. The officer sitting
at home over a bit of fire until the criminal came to visit him, and the
criminal coming--it was a fair match. One felt as if this must have been
the order in that delightful seaboard Bohemia where Florizel and Perdita
courted in such sweet accents, and the Puritan sang psalms to hornpipes,
and the four-and-twenty shearers danced with nosegays in their bosoms,
and chanted their three songs apiece at the old shepherd's festival; and
one could not help picturing to oneself what havoc among good people's
purses, and tribulation for benignant constable, might be worked here by
the arrival, over stile and footpath, of a new Autolycus.
Bidding good-morning to my fellow-traveller, I left the road and struck
across country. It was rather a revelation to pass from between the
hedgerows and find quite a bustle on the other side, a great coming and
going of school-children upon by-paths, and, in every second field,
lusty horses and stout country-folk a-ploughing. The way I followed took
me through many fields thus occupied, and through many strips of
plantation, and then over a little space of smooth turf, very pleasant
to the feet, set with tall fir-trees and clamorous with rooks making
ready for the winter, and so back again into the quiet road. I was now
not far from the end of my day's journey. A few hundred yards farther,
and, passing through a gap in the hedge, I began to go down hill through
a pretty extensive tract of young beeches. I was soon in shadow myself,
but the afternoon sun still coloured the upmost boughs of the wood, and
made a fire over my head in the autumnal foliage. A little faint vapour
lay among the slim tree-stems in the bottom of the hollow; and from
farther up I heard from time to time an outburst of gross laughter, as
though clowns were making merry in the bush. There was something about
the atmosphere that brought all sights and sounds home to one with a
singular purity, so that I felt as if my senses had been washed with
water. After I had crossed the little zone of mist, the path began to
remount the hill; and just as I, mounting along with it, had got back
again, from the head downwards, into the thin golden sunshine, I saw in
front of me a donkey tied to a tree. Now, I have a certain liking for
donkeys, principally, I believe, because of the delightful things that
Sterne has written of them. But this was not after the pattern of the
ass at Lyons. He was of a white colour, that seemed to fit him rather
for rare festal occasions than for constant drudgery. Besides, he was
very small, and of the daintiest proportions you can imagine in a
donkey. And so, sure enough, you had only to look at him to see he had
never worked. There was something too roguish and wanton in his face, a
look too like that of a schoolboy or a street Arab, to have survived
much cudgelling. It was plain that these feet had kicked off sportive
children oftener than they had plodded with a freight through miry
lanes. He was altogether a fine-weather, holiday sort of donkey; and
though he was just then somewhat solemnised and rueful, he still gave
proof of the levity of his disposition by impudently wagging his ears at
me as I drew near. I say he was somewhat solemnised just then; for, with
the admirable instinct of all men and animals under restraint, he had so
wound and wound the halter about the tree that he could go neither back
nor forwards, nor so much as put down his head to browse. There he
stood, poor rogue, part puzzled, part angry, part, I believe, amused. He
had not given up hope, and dully revolved the problem in his head,
giving ever and again another jerk at the few inches of free rope that
still remained unwound. A humorous sort of sympathy for the creature
took hold upon me. I went up, and, not without some trouble on my part,
and much distrust and resistance on the part of Neddy, got him forced
backward until the whole length of the halter was set loose, and he was
once more as free a donkey as I dared to make him. I was pleased (as
people are) with this friendly action to a fellow-creature in
tribulation, and glanced back over my shoulder to see how he was
profiting by his freedom. The brute was looking after me; and no sooner
did he catch my eye than he put up his long white face into the air,
pulled an impudent mouth at me, and began to bray derisively. If ever
any one person made a grimace at another, that donkey made a grimace at
me. The hardened ingratitude of his behaviour, and the impertinence that
inspired his whole face as he curled up his lip, and showed his teeth,
and began to bray, so tickled me, and was so much in keeping with what I
had imagined to myself about his character, that I could not find it in
my heart to be angry, and burst into a peal of hearty laughter. This
seemed to strike the ass as a repartee, so he brayed at me again by way
of rejoinder; and we went on for a while, braying and laughing, until I
began to grow a-weary of it, and, shouting a derisive farewell, turned
to pursue my way. In so doing--it was like going suddenly into cold
water--I found myself face to face with a prim little old maid. She was
all in a flutter, the poor old dear! She had concluded beyond question
that this must be a lunatic who stood laughing aloud at a white donkey
in the placid beech-woods. I was sure, by her face, that she had already
recommended her spirit most religiously to Heaven, and prepared herself
for the worst. And so, to reassure her, I uncovered and besought her,
after a very staid fashion, to put me on my way to Great Missenden. Her
voice trembled a little, to be sure, but I think her mind was set at
rest; and she told me, very explicitly, to follow the path until I came
to the end of the wood, and then I should see the village below me in
the bottom of the valley. And, with mutual courtesies, the little old
maid and I went on our respective ways.
Nor had she misled me. Great Missenden was close at hand, as she had
said, in the trough of a gentle valley, with many great elms about it.
The smoke from its chimneys went up pleasantly in the afternoon
sunshine. The sleepy hum of a threshing-machine filled the neighbouring
fields and hung about the quaint street corners. A little above, the
church sits well back on its haunches against the hill-side--an attitude
for a church, you know, that makes it look as if it could be ever so
much higher if it liked; and the trees grew about it thickly, so as to
make a density of shade in the churchyard. A very quiet place it looks;
and yet I saw many boards and posters about threatening dire punishment
against those who broke the church windows or defaced the precinct, and
offering rewards for the apprehension of those who had done the like
already. It was fair-day in Great Missenden. There were three stalls set
up _sub jove_, for the sale of pastry and cheap toys; and a great number
of holiday children thronged about the stalls, and noisily invaded every
corner of the straggling village. They came round me by coveys, blowing
simultaneously upon penny trumpets as though they imagined I should fall
to pieces like the battlements of Jericho. I noticed one among them who
could make a wheel of himself like a London boy, and seemingly enjoyed a
grave pre-eminence upon the strength of the accomplishment. By and by,
however, the trumpets began to weary me, and I went indoors, leaving the
fair, I fancy at its height.
Night had fallen before I ventured forth again. It was pitch dark in the
village street, and the darkness seemed only the greater for a light
here and there in an uncurtained window or from an open door. Into one
such window I was rude enough to peep, and saw within a charming _genre_
picture. In a room, all white wainscot and crimson wall-paper, a perfect
gem of colour after the black, empty darkness in which I had been
groping, a pretty girl was telling a story, as well as I could make out,
to an attentive child upon her knee, while an old woman sat placidly
dozing over the fire. You may be sure I was not behindhand with a story
for myself--a good old story after the manner of G.P.R. James and the
village melodramas, with a wicked squire, and poachers, and an
attorney, and a virtuous young man with a genius for mechanics, who
should love, and protect, and ultimately marry the girl in the crimson
room. Baudelaire has a few dainty sentences on the fancies that we are
inspired with when we look through a window into other people's lives;
and I think Dickens has somewhat enlarged on the same text. The subject,
at least, is one that I am seldom weary of entertaining. I remember,
night after night, at Brussels, watching a good family sup together,
make merry, and retire to rest; and night after night I waited to see
the candles lit, and the salad made, and the last salutations dutifully
exchanged, without any abatement of interest. Night after night I found
the scene rivet my attention and keep me awake in bed with all manner of
quaint imaginations. Much of the pleasure of the "Arabian Nights" hinges
upon this Asmodean interest; and we are not weary of lifting other
people's roofs and going about behind the scenes of life with the Caliph
and the serviceable Giaffar. It is a salutary exercise, besides; it is
salutary to get out of ourselves and see people living together in
perfect unconsciousness of our existence, as they will live when we are
gone. If to-morrow the blow falls, and the worst of our ill fears is
realised, the girl will none the less tell stories to the child on her
lap in the cottage at Great Missenden, nor the good Belgians light their
candle, and mix their salad, and go orderly to bed.
The next morning was sunny overhead and damp underfoot, with a thrill in
the air like a reminiscence of frost. I went up into the sloping garden
behind the inn and smoked a pipe pleasantly enough, to the tune of my
landlady's lamentations over sundry cabbages and cauliflowers that had
been spoiled by caterpillars. She had been so much pleased in the
summer-time, she said, to see the garden all hovered over by white
butterflies. And now, look at the end of it! She could nowise reconcile
this with her moral sense. And, indeed, unless these butterflies are
created with a side-look to the composition of improving apologues, it
is not altogether easy, even for people who have read Hegel and Dr.
M'Cosh, to decide intelligibly upon the issue raised. Then I fell into a
long and abstruse calculation with my landlord; having for object to
compare the distance driven by him during eight years' service on the
box of the Wendover coach with the girth of the round world itself. We
tackled the question most conscientiously, made all necessary allowance
for Sundays and leap-years, and were just coming to a triumphant
conclusion of our labours when we were stayed by a small lacuna in my
information. I did not know the circumference of the earth. The landlord
knew it, to be sure--plainly he had made the same calculation twice and
once before,--but he wanted confidence in his own figures, and from the
moment I showed myself so poor a second seemed to lose all interest in
the result.
Wendover (which was my next stage) lies in the same valley with Great
Missenden, but at the foot of it, where the hills trend off on either
hand like a coast-line, and a great hemisphere of plain lies, like a
sea, before one. I went up a chalky road, until I had a good outlook
over the place. The vale, as it opened out into the plain, was shallow,
and a little bare, perhaps, but full of graceful convolutions. From the
level to which I have now attained the fields were exposed before me
like a map, and I could see all that bustle of autumn field-work which
had been hid from me yesterday behind the hedgerows, or shown to me only
for a moment as I followed the footpath. Wendover lay well down in the
midst, with mountains of foliage about it. The great plain stretched
away to the northward, variegated near at hand with the quaint pattern
of the fields, but growing ever more and more indistinct, until it
became a mere hurly-burly of trees and bright crescents of river, and
snatches of slanting road, and finally melted into the ambiguous
cloud-land over the horizon. The sky was an opal-grey, touched here and
there with blue, and with certain faint russets that looked as if they
were reflections of the colour of the autumnal woods below. I could hear
the ploughmen shouting to their horses, the uninterrupted carol of larks
innumerable overhead, and, from a field where the shepherd was
marshalling his flock, a sweet tumultuous tinkle of sheep-bells. All
these noises came to me very thin and distinct in the clear air. There
was a wonderful sentiment of distance and atmosphere about the day and
the place.