First and Last

H >> H. Belloc >> First and Last

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Now it took the French forty years and more before each of these plain
facts (and I have only cited half a dozen out of as many hundred) got
into their letters and their print: they have not yet got into the
letters and the print of other nations. But an honest man travelling in
Barbary on his own account would pick up every one of these truths in
two or three days, except the one about the lions; to pick up that truth
you must go to the very edge of the country, for the lion is a shy beast
and withdraws from men.

The wise man who really wants to see things as they are and to
understand them, does not say: "Here I am on the burning soil of
Africa." He says: "Here I am stuck in a snowdrift and the train twelve
hours late"--as it was (with me in it) near Setif in January, 1905. He
does not say as he looks on the peasant at his plough outside Batna:
"Observe yon Semite!" He says: "That man's face is exactly like the face
of a dark Sussex peasant, only a little leaner." He does not say: "See
those wild sons of the desert! How they must hate the new artificial
world around them!" Contrariwise, he says: "See those four Mohammedans
playing cards with a French pack of cards and drinking liqueurs in the
cafe! See, they have ordered more liqueurs!" He does not say: "How
strange and terrible a thing the railway must be to them!" He says: "I
wish I was rich enough to travel first, for the natives pouring in and
out of this third-class carriage, jabbering like monkeys, and treading
on my feet, disturb my tranquillity. Some hundreds must have got in and
out during the last fifty miles!"

In other words, the wise man has permitted eye-openers to rain upon him
their full, beneficent, and sacramental influence. And if a man in
travelling will always maintain his mind ready for what he really sees
and hears, he will become a whole nest of Columbuses discovering a
perfectly interminable series of new worlds.

A man can only talk of what he himself knows. Let me give further
examples. I had always heard until I visited the Pyrenees how French
civilization (especially in the matter of roads, motors, and things like
that) went up to the "Spanish" frontier and then stopped dead. It
doesn't. The change is at the Aragonese frontier. On the Basque third of
the frontier the people are just as active and fond of wealth, and of
scraping of stone and of cleanliness, and of drawing straight lines, to
the north as to the south of it. They are all one people, as
industrious, as thrifty, and as prosperous as the Scots. So are the
Catalans one people, and you get much the same sort of advantages and
disadvantages (apart from the effect of government) with the Catalans to
the north as with the Catalans to the south of the border.

So with religion. I had thought to find the Spanish churches crowded. I
found just the contrary. It was the French churches that were crowded,
not the Spanish; and the difference between the truth--what one really
sees and hears--and the printed legend happens to be very subtly
illustrated in this case of religion. The French have inherited (and are
by this time used to, and have, perhaps grown fond of) a big religious
debate. Those who side with the national religion and tradition
emphasize their opinion in every possible way--so do their opponents.
You pick up two newspapers from Toulouse, for instance, and it is quite
on the cards that the leading article of each will be a disquisition
upon the philosophy of religion, the one, the "Depeche" of Toulouse,
militantly, and often solently atheist; the other as militantly
Catholic.

You don't get that in Pamplona, and you don't get it in Saragossa. What
you get there is a profound dislike of being interfered with, ancient
and lazy customs, wealth retained by the chapters, the monasteries, and
the colleges, and with all this a curious, all-pervading indifference.

One might end this little train of thought by considering a converse
test of what the eye-opener is in travel; and that test is to talk to
foreigners when they first come to England and see how they tend to
discover in England what they have read of at home instead of what they
really see. There have been very few fogs in London of late, but your
foreigner nearly always finds London foggy. Kent does not show along its
main railway line the evidence of agricultural depression: it is like a
garden. Yet, in a very careful and thorough French book just published
by a French traveller, his bird's-eye view of the country as he went
through Kent just after landing would make you think the place a desert;
he seems to have thought the hedges a sign of agricultural decay. The
same foreigner will discover a plebeian character in the Commons and an
aristocratic one in the House of Lords, though he shall have heard but
four speeches in each, and though every one of the eight speeches shall
have been delivered by members of one family group closely intermarried,
wealthy, titled, and perhaps (who knows?) of some lineage as well.

The moral is that one should tell the truth to oneself, and look out for
it outside one. It is quite as novel and as entertaining as the
discovery of the North Pole--or, in case that has come off (as some
believe), the discovery of the South Pole.

The Public

I notice a very curious thing in the actions particularly of business
men to-day, and of other men also, which is the projection outward from
their own inward minds of something which is called "The Public"--and
which is not there.

I do not mean that a business man is wrong when he says that "the public
will demand" such and such an article, and on producing the article
finds it sells widely; he is obviously and demonstrably right in his use
of the word "public" in such a connexion. Nor is a man wrong or subject
to illusion when he says, "The public have taken to cinematograph
shows," or "The public were greatly moved when the Hull fishermen were
shot at by the Russian fleet in the North Sea." What I mean is "The
Public" as an excuse or scapegoat; the Public as a menace; the Public as
a butt. That Public simply does not exist.

For instance, the publisher will say, as though he were talking of some
monster, "The Public will not buy Jinks's work. It is first-class work,
so it is too good for the Public." He is quite right in his statement of
fact. Of the very small proportion of our people who read only a
fraction buy books, and of the fraction that buy books very few indeed
buy Jinks's. Jinks has a very pleasant up-and-down style. He loves to
use funny words dragged from the tomb, and he has delicate little
emotions. Yet hardly anybody will buy him--so the publisher is quite
right in one sense when he says, "The Public" won't buy Jinks. But where
he is quite wrong and suffering from a gross illusion is in the motive
and the manner of his saying it. He talks of "The Public" as something
gravely to blame and yet irredeemably stupid. He talks of it as
something quite external to himself, almost as something which he has
never personally come across. He talks of it as though it were a Mammoth
or an Eskimo. Now, if that publisher would wander for a moment into the
world of realities he would perceive his illusion. Modern men do not
like realities, and do not usually know the way to come in contact with
them. I will tell the publisher how to do so in this case.

Let him consider what books he buys himself, what books his wife buys;
what books his eldest son, his grandmother, his Aunt Jane, his old
father, his butler (if he runs to one), his most intimate friend, and
his curate buy. He will find that not one of these people buys Jinks.
Most of them will talk Jinks, and if Jinks writes a play, however dull,
they will probably go and see it once; but they draw the line at buying
Jinks's books--and I don't blame them.

The moral is very simple. You yourselves are "The Public," and if you
will watch your own habits you will find that the economic explanation
of a hundred things becomes quite clear.

I have seen the same thing in the offices of a newspaper. Some simple
truth of commanding interest to this country, involving no attack upon
any rich man, and therefore not dangerous under our laws, comes up for
printing. It is discussed in the editor's room. The editor says, "Yes,
of course, we know it is true, and of course it is important, but the
Public would not stand it."

I remember one newspaper office of my youth in which the Public was
visualized as a long file of people streaming into a Wesleyan chapel,
and another in which the Public was supposed to be made up without
exception of retired officers and maiden ladies, every one of whom was a
communicant of the English Established Church, every one of good birth,
and yet every one devoid of culture.

Without the least doubt each of these absurd symbols haunted the brain
of each of the editors in question. The editor of the first paper would
print at wearisome length accounts of obscure Catholic clerical scandals
on the Continent, and would sweat with alarm if his sub-editors had
admitted a telegram concerning the trial of some fraudulent Protestant
missionary or other in China.

Meanwhile his rather dull paper was being bought by you and me, and bank
clerks and foreign tourists, and doctors, and publicans, and brokers,
Catholics, Protestants, atheists, "peculiar people," and every kind of
man for many reasons--because it had the best social statistics, because
it had a very good dramatic critic, because they had got into the habit
and couldn't stop, because it came nearest to hand on the bookstall. Of
a hundred readers, ninety-nine skipped the clerical scandal and either
chuckled over the fraudulent missionary or were bored by him and went on
to the gambling news from the Stock Exchange. But the type for whom all
that paper was produced, the menacing god or demon who was supposed to
forbid publication of certain news in it, did not exist.

So it was with the second paper, but with this difference, that the
editor was right about the social position of those who read his sheet,
but quite wrong about the opinions and emotions of people in that social
position.

It was all the more astonishing from the fact that the editor was born
in that very class himself and perpetually mixed with it. No one perhaps
read "The Stodge" (for under this device would I veil the true name of
the organ) more carefully than those retired officers of either service
who are to be found in what are called our "residential" towns. The
editor was himself the son of a colonel of guns who had settled down in
a Midland watering-place. He ought to have known that world, and he did
know that world, but he kept his illusion of his Public quite apart from
his experience of realities.

Your retired officer (to take his particular section of this particular
paper's audience) is nearly always a man with a hobby, and usually a
good scientific or literary hobby at that. He writes many of our best
books demanding research. He takes an active part in public work which
requires statistical study. He is always a travelled man, and nearly
always a well-read man. The broadest and the most complete questioning
and turning and returning of the most fundamental subjects--religion,
foreign policy, and domestic economics--are quite familiar to him. But
the editor was not selecting news for that real man; he was selecting
news for an imaginary retired officer of inconceivable stupidity and
ignorance, redeemed by a childlike simplicity. If a book came in, for
instance, on biology, and there was a chance of having it reviewed by
one of the first biologists of the day, he would say: "Oh, our Public
won't stand evolution," and he would trot out his imaginary retired
officer as though he were a mule.

Artists, by which I mean painters, and more especially art critics, sin
in this respect. They say: "The public wants a picture to tell a story,"
and they say it with a sneer. Well, the public does want a picture to
tell a story, because you and I want a picture to tell a story. Sorry.
But so it is. The art critic himself wants it to tell a story, and so
does the artist. Each would rather die than admit it, but if you set
either walking, with no one to watch him, down a row of pictures you
would see him looking at one picture after another with that expression
of interest which only comes on a human face when it is following a
human relation. A mere splash of colour would bore him; still more a
mere medley of black and white. The story may have a very simple plot;
it may be no more than an old woman sitting on a chair, or a landscape,
but a picture, if a man can look at it all, tells a story right enough.
It must interest men, and the less of a story it tells the less it will
interest men. A good landscape tells so vivid a story that children (who
are unspoilt) actually transfer themselves into such a landscape, walk
about in it, and have adventures in it.

They make another complaint against the public, that it desires painting
to be lifelike. Of course it does! The statement is accurate, but the
complaint is based on an illusion. It is you and I and all the world
that want painting to imitate its object. There is a wonderful picture
in the Glasgow Art Gallery, painted by someone a long time ago, in which
a man is represented in a steel cuirass with a fur tippet over it, and
the whole point of that picture is that the fur looks like fur and the
steel looks like steel. I never met a critic yet who was so bold as to
say that picture was a bad picture. It is one of the best pictures in
the world; but its whole point is the liveliness of the steel and of the
fur.

Finally, there is one proper test to prove that all this jargon about
"The Public" is nonsense, which is that it is altogether modern. Who
quarrelled with the Public in the old days when men lived a healthy
corporate life, and painted, wrote, or sang for the applause of their
fellows?

If you still suffer from the illusion after reading these magisterial
lines of mine, why, there is a drastic way to cure yourself, which is to
go for a soldier; take the shilling and live in a barracks for a year;
then buy yourself out. You will never despise the public again. And
perhaps a better way still is to go round the Horn before the mast. But
take care that your friends shall send you enough money to Valparaiso
for your return journey to be made in some comfort; I would not wish my
worst enemy to go back the way he came.

On Entries

I am always planning in my mind new kinds of guide books. Or, rather,
new features in guide books.

One such new feature which I am sure would be very useful would be an
indication to the traveller of how he should approach a place.

I would first presuppose him quite free and able to come by rail or by
water or by road or on foot across the fields, and then I would describe
how the many places I have seen stand quite differently in the mind
according to the way in which one approaches them.

The value of travel, to the eye at least, lies in its presentation of
clear and permanent impressions, and these I think (though some would
quarrel with me for saying it) are usually instantaneous. It is the
first sharp vision of an unknown town, the first immediate vision of a
range of hills, that remains for ever and is fruitful of joy within the
mind, or, at least, that is one and perhaps the chief of the fruits of
travel.

I remember once, for instance, waking from a dead sleep in a train (for
I was very tired) and finding it to be evening. What woke me was the
sudden stopping of the train. It was in Italy. A man in the carriage
said to me that there was some sort of accident and that we should be
waiting a while. The people got out and walked about by the side of the
track. I also got out of the carriage and took the air, and when I so
stepped out into the cool of that summer evening I was amazed at the
loneliness and tragedy of the place.

There were no houses about me that I could see save one little place
built for the railway men. There was no cultivation either.

Close before me began a sort of swamp with reeds which hardly moved to
the air, and this gradually merged into a sheet of water above and
beyond which were hills, barren and not very high, which took the last
of the daylight, for they looked both southward and to the west. The
more I watched the extraordinary and absolute scene the less I heard of
the low voices about me, and indeed a sort of positive silence seemed to
clothe the darkening landscape. It was full of something quite gone
down, and one had the impression that it would never be disturbed.

As the light lessened, the hills darkened, the sky took on one broad and
tender colour, the sheet of water gleamed quite white, and the reeds
stood up like solid shadows against it. I wish I could express in words
the impression of recollection and of savage mourning which all that
landscape imposed, but from that impression I was recalled and startled
by the guard, who came along telling us that things were righted and
that the train would start again; soon we were in our places and the
rapid movement isolated for me the memory of a singularly vivid scene. I
thought the place must have a name, and I asked a neighbour in the
carriage what it was called; he told me it was called Lake Trasimene.

Now I do not say that this tragic site is to be visited thus. It was but
an accident, though an accident for which I am most grateful to my fate.
But what I have said here illustrates my meaning that the manner of
one's approach to any place in travel makes all the difference.

Thus one may note how very different is Europe seen from the water than
seen from any other opportunity for travel. So many of the great
cathedrals were built to dominate men who should watch them from the
wharves of the mediaeval towns, but I think it is almost a rule if you
have leisure and can take your choice to choose this kind of entry to
them. Amiens is quite a different thing seen from the river below it to
the north and east from what it is seen by a gradual approach along the
street of a modern town. The roofs climb up at it, and it stands
enthroned. So Chartres seen from the little Eure; but the Eure is so
small a river that he would be a bold man who would travel up it all
this way. Nevertheless it is a good piece of travel, and anyone who will
undertake it will see Louviers and will pass Anet, where the greatest
work of the Renaissance once stood, and will go through lonely but rich
pastures until at last he gets to Chartres by the right gate. Thence he
will see something astonishing for so flat a region as the Beauce. The
great church seems mountainous upon a mountain. Its apse completes the
unclimbable steepness of the hill and its buttresses follow the lines of
the fall of it. But if you do not come in by the river, at least come in
by the Orleans road. I suppose that nine people out of ten, even to-day
when the roads are in proper use again, come into Chartres by that
northern railway entry, which is for all the world like coming into a
great house by a big, neglected backyard.

Then if ever you have business that takes you to Bayonne, come in by
river and from the sea, and how well you will understand the little town
and its lovely northern Gothic!

Some of the great churches all the world knows must be seen from the
water, and most of the world so sees them. Ely is one, Cologne is
another, but how many people have looked right up at Durham as at a
cliff from that gorge below, or how many have seen the height of Albi
from the Tarn?

As for famous cities with their walls, there is no doubt that a man
should approach them by the chief high road, which once linked them with
their capital, or with their nearest port, or with Rome--and that
although this kind of entry is nowadays often marred by ugly suburbs.
You will get much your finest sight of Segovia as you come in by the
road from the Guadarama and from Madrid. It is from that point that you
were meant to see the town, and you will get much your best grip on
Carcassonne, old Carcassonne, if you come in by the road from Toulouse
at morning as you were meant to come, and so Coucy should be approached
by that royal road from Soissons and from the south, while as for Laon
(the most famous of the hill towns), come to it from the east, for it
looks eastward, and its lords were Eastern lords.

Ranges of hills, I think, are never best first seen from railways.
Indeed, I can remember no great sight of hills so seen, not even the
Alps. A railway must of necessity follow the floor of the valley and
tunnel and creep round the shoulders of the bulwarks. There is perhaps
one exception to this rule, which is the sight of the Pyrenees from the
train as one comes into Tarbes. It is a wise thing if you are visiting
those hills to come into Tarbes by night and sleep there, and then next
morning the train upon its way to Pau unfolds you all the wall of the
mountains. But this is an accident. It is because the railway runs upon
a sort of high platform that you see the mountains so. With all other
hills that I remember it is best to have them burst suddenly upon you
from the top of some pass lifted high above the level and coming, let us
say, to a height half their own. Certainly the Bernese Oberland is more
wonderful caught in one moment from the Jura than introduced in any
other way, and the snows on Atlas over the desert seem like part of the
sky when they come upon one after climbing the red rocks of the high
plateaux and you see them shining over the salt marshes. The Vosges you
cannot thus see from a half-height; there is no platform, and that is
perhaps why the Vosges have not impressed travellers as they should. But
you can so watch the grand chain of old volcanoes which are the rampart
of Auvergne. You can stand upon the high wooden ridge of Foreze and see
them take the morning across the mists and the flat of the Limagne,
where the Gauls fought Caesar. Further south from the high table of the
Velay you can see the steep backward escarpment of the Cevennes, inky
blue, desperately blue, blue like nothing else on earth except the
mountains in those painters of North Italy, of the parts north and east
of Venice, the name of whose school escapes me--or, rather, I never knew
it.

Now, as for towns that live in a hollow, it is great fun to come upon
them from above. They are not used to being thus taken at a disadvantage
and they are both surprised and surprising. There are many towns in
holes and trenches of Europe which you can thus play "peep-bo" with if
you will come at them walking. By train they will mean nothing to you.
You will probably come upon them out of a long, shrieking tunnel, and by
the high road they mean little more, for the high road will follow the
vale. But if you come upon them from over their guardian cliffs and
scars you catch them unawares, and this is a good way of approaching
them, for you master them, as it were, and spy them out before you enter
in. You can act thus with Grenoble and with many a town on the Meuse,
and particularly with Aubusson, which lies in the depths of so dreadful
a trench that I could wonder how man ever dreamt of living and building
there.

The most difficult of all places on which to advise, I think, would be
the very great cities, the capitals. They seem to have to-day no noble
entries and no proper approach. Perhaps we shall only deal with them
justly when we can circle down to them through the air and see their
vast activity splashed over the plain. Anyhow, there is no proper way of
entering them now that I know of. Berlin is not worth entering at all.
Rome (a man told me once) could be entered by some particular road over
the Janiculum, I think--which also, if I remember right, was the way
that Shelley came--but I despair of Paris, and certainly of London. I
cannot even recall an entry for Brussels, though Brussels is a
monumental city with great rewards for those who love the combination of
building and hills.

Perhaps, after all, the happiest entries of all and the most easy are
those of our many market towns, small and not swollen in Britain and in
Northern Gaul and in the Netherlands and in the Valley of the Rhine.
These hardly ever fail us, and we come upon them in our travels as they
desire that we should come, and we know them properly as things should
properly be known--that is, from the beginning.

Companions of Travel

I write of travelling companions in general, and not in particular,
making of them a composite photograph, as it were, and finding what they
have in common and what is their type; and in the first place I find
them to be chance men. For there are some people who cannot travel
without a set companion who goes with them from Charing Cross all over
the world and back to Charing Cross again. And there is a pathos in
this: as Balzac said of marriage, "What a commentary on human life, that
human beings must associate to endure it." So it is with many who cannot
endure to travel alone: and some will positively advertise for another
to go with them.

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