Walking essays. Arthur Sidgwick

am very fond of Leith Hill.’ 4. B-B4. (plunging) ‘Do you know many ways up it?’ 4. P-K Kt5. ‘Four or five.’ 5. Castles (the pun is quite accidental). ‘The Rookeries, perhaps?’ 5. P × Kt. ‘Yes, very well,’ and the Muzio gambit, that most sensational of openings, is established. If the other party is a man he should be a good fellow; if not, it is time for you to begin to think seriously.

      Such an opening is of course exceptional (like the Muzio gambit) and requires a kindred spirit; otherwise gambit is not accepted, and the game may become dull. But as a general rule most people have something to say about places: both literally and metaphorically, the subject is common ground to many different interests. Take a simple bit of road, such as that in the Mole valley by Burford Bridge. To the walker it is a quiet interlude between the classical austerity of the Roman Road and the more romantic interest of Denbies and Ranmore Common. To the motorist it is a brief moment in the morning scorch to Lewes and back in time for the inquest at noon. To the cyclist it is the last lap before the second shandy-gaff. To the Box-Hill picnicker it is the way to heaven; to the Meredithian, the road to Mecca. One and all can meet on this ground and speak each other in passing. And the walker, if he is wise, will neglect none of these other interests and points of view: there is no element which is really alien, no interest really irrelevant, to the concrete view of places which is his peculiar privilege. It is well to think of the cycling and motoring communities as you cross Burford Bridge; it is better to hear the giggles and gallant conversation of the young parties struggling up the grass slope of Box Hill; it is best of all to turn one glance to that ugly house and its little wooden annexe—and then, as you strike up through Denbies, to think of Diana and the woods which witnessed her great wrong and later on ministered to her broken spirit.

      But interesting and relevant though such associations may be to the walker, they are only elements in the real meaning which places have for him. This meaning is hard to analyse and impossible to define: in the last resort we are driven back on the metaphor of personal relations. There are places which are, so to speak, given to us from the beginning without our choice, like parents and family, places which are part of us and are not to be criticised or regarded from outside. There are places, on the other hand, like casual acquaintances which we choose for ourselves, which we see, and even see often, with pleasure, but with which we have little permanent intimacy. And there are places of a third kind, somewhere between the two former, which seem partly chosen by our conscious choice, partly given to us by a pre-ordained kinship, which may be viewed both from within and without, which have for us a special meaning and a special individuality. Whether the metaphor can be driven to a romantic-idealist conclusion, whether there is for everybody one especial place of the third type reserved for one unique intimacy, I would not venture to say. It may be so; it might, on the other hand, prove to be a case of pressing a comparison too far, and invalidating in the interests of dialectic symmetry, if not the great institution of monogamy, at least its idealistic interpretation. When it comes to places, I doubt if some of us have rounded Cape Turk.

      Conversations about places are thus really like conversations about persons, and have all the charm and interest of this familiar conversational mode. We are interested when Jones has met our family acquaintances or friends; we are also interested when he has met our parent places (wherever they are), our acquaintance Helvellyn, or our very dear friend Bowfell. Did Jones merely visit Bowfell casually (via Esk Hause), or did he dine with him and converse until a late hour in the smoking-room (Hell Gill route)? Such talk is both lively and profitable: it brightens up both parties and speedily shows them whether they are destined for friendship or acquaintance. It may be that Jones is a mere trifler, who went up Bowfell as he would have gone up Skiddaw (that mountain of banality) and talked by the way, or tried to set up a record; if so, you may treat him kindly, but it is better to pass on to Wordsworth or politics or immortality or some more trivial subject. But it may prove that he is a real walker, of a reverent and concrete mind, and then you may get out your map and go over it with him, and talk about food and the weather.

      It is in this detailed talk that the walker takes his highest flight. It may be evening, in London, in company: yet the noise of the traffic dies away; the glare of the light and the babble of others drops from you: you are alone with a kindred soul and (if possible) a map spread out between you. Then point by point and detail by detail you recall and redintegrate in memory the larger moments of your life; every path that you have taken, every stone and summit on which you stood, revive and take shape under the plastic stress of your joint memories; the outline of the eternal hills stands before you, hard and high as the call of duty: once more the soft rain enwraps you or the clean wind whips you into ecstasy. For a moment, in the midst of our dividing and abstracting civilisation, you are again a man whole and concrete. This is something better than sympathetic conversation: it is the colloquy of two beings joined by a real bond: it is common talk.

II

       WALKER MILES

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