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026 - XXVI A Zigzag Walk · Gentle Art of Tramping

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Speaker 1: Chapter twenty six of The Gentle Art of Tramping by
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Speaker 1: Stephen Graham, first published in nineteen twenty six. This is
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Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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Speaker 1: The Gentle Art of Tramping, Chapter twenty six. I have
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Speaker 1: mentioned the zigzag walk? Did you ever make one? Probably not,
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Speaker 1: for it is my secret. I invented it. A frequent
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Speaker 1: wish of the traveler and wanderer is to obtain genuinely
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Speaker 1: chance impressions of cities and countries. He would trust neither
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Speaker 1: his own choice of road, nor the guide's choice, nor
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Speaker 1: the map. But if he goes forth aimlessly, he inevitably
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Speaker 1: finds himself either making for the gayer and better lighted
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Speaker 1: places or returning to his own door. The problem is
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Speaker 1: to let chance and the town take charge of you,
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Speaker 1: for the world we travel in is more wonderful than
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Speaker 1: human plan or idle heart's desire. One day in New York,
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Speaker 1: wishing to explore that great city in a truly haphazard way,
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Speaker 1: I hit on the following device, a zigzag walk. The
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Speaker 1: first turning to the left is the way of the heart.
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Speaker 1: Take it at random, and you are sure to find
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Speaker 1: something pleasant and diverting. Take the left again, and the
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Speaker 1: piquancy may be repeated. But reason must come to the rescue,
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Speaker 1: and you must turn to the right in order to
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Speaker 1: save yourself from a mere uninteresting circle. To make a
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Speaker 1: zigzag walk, you take the first turning to the left,
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Speaker 1: the first to the right, then the first to the
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Speaker 1: left again, and so on. I't a wonderful night's walking
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Speaker 1: thus in New York, taking cross sections of that marvelous
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Speaker 1: cosmopolitan and city. And many were the surprises and delights
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Speaker 1: and curiosities that the city unfolded to me in its
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Speaker 1: purlieus and alleys and highways and keys. That was several
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Speaker 1: years ago. After New York, I saw Paris for the
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Speaker 1: first time and watered that way there. Curiously enough, I
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Speaker 1: started from the conventional and tourist stricken Avenue de l'aopara,
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Speaker 1: and the zigzag plan led me across the Seine to
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Speaker 1: the courtier Latin and bohemian Montparnasse. I saw more of
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Speaker 1: Paris in a night than many may do in a month.
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Speaker 1: After Paris, I tried the experiment in Cologne. That was
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Speaker 1: after I had marched in with my regiment from the
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Speaker 1: wilds of the Ordennes in southern Germany. I explored the
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Speaker 1: city in that way. How unusual and real and satisfactory
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Speaker 1: were the impressions obtained by going not the crowd's way,
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Speaker 1: but the way of the zigzag diagonal between heart and reason. However,
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Speaker 1: the most charming and delightful associations of my zigzag walk
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Speaker 1: are not those of the great foreign cities which I
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Speaker 1: have known, but of our mysterious and crooked street at
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Speaker 1: capital London herself. Was Christmas time, and I said to
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Speaker 1: my wife, let us do our shopping on the zigzag way.
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Speaker 1: We had not gone forth on such an adventure before,
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Speaker 1: and were full of excitement, wondering where we should be led.
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Speaker 1: What exactly we bought on the way I do not
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Speaker 1: wholly remember, but London was generous to us in its
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Speaker 1: cross section of houses and shops. On this occasion we
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Speaker 1: started on the road of reason, since we had a
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Speaker 1: definite purpose in view, and we took the first on
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Speaker 1: the right and the first on the left. Instead the
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Speaker 1: first on the left and the first on the right.
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Speaker 1: It may be thought that made no difference. Believe me,
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Speaker 1: all the difference in the world. The first we knew
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Speaker 1: quite well. The second was an asphalt alley where scores
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Speaker 1: of children were playing Hop of my Thumb on the
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Speaker 1: white scrolled flagstones. The third street was one of the
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Speaker 1: great film streets of London, with cinemas stores from end
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Speaker 1: to end, and shop windows lurid with horror posters. The
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Speaker 1: fourth turning brought us to the famous market of Pulteney,
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Speaker 1: where all the surplus fruit and jobs blots of vegetables
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Speaker 1: from Covent Garden are exhibited on donkey barrows and cried
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Speaker 1: by vociferous hawkers. Here we could buy too great fruit
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Speaker 1: on occasion for a penny, and the rare and refreshing
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Speaker 1: fruit which the Wizard from Wales once offered to the
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Speaker 1: poor as a result of legislation, could here be obtained
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Speaker 1: by chance and in abundance. From the market, we went
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Speaker 1: by a crooked road from Rupert Street to Callard's Cake
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Speaker 1: Shop and Regent Street, happy forethought of London. We had
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Speaker 1: coffee and mustard and cress sandwiches in this jolly shop
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Speaker 1: and bought a cake. Then we crossed Regent Street bought
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Speaker 1: two chickens at Luisgautias in Swallow Street and plunged for Piccadilly.
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Speaker 1: We came out at Saint James's Church, and fortune was
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Speaker 1: kind enough to make it possible to visit Hatchhods. We
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Speaker 1: went in and browsed around for a while and ordered
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Speaker 1: a copy of The Sweet Scent It name. Our way
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Speaker 1: was then by Duke Street, Jeremine Street, and some others
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Speaker 1: to Saint James's Street with its clubs, and we turned
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Speaker 1: up Saint James's place. As we passed number five rated
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Speaker 1: Tat tat from a little window, rattling and jumping like
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Speaker 1: the sound of an old fashioned motor, went the typing
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Speaker 1: machine of the secretary of the world's greatest newspaper chief.
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Speaker 1: We thought we had arrived at a cul de sact,
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Speaker 1: and that we should have to retrace our footsteps, one
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Speaker 1: of the nat rules of the walk. But we found
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Speaker 1: an eye of a needle through which the rich men
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Speaker 1: have to pass to get to the paradise of the
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Speaker 1: green Park. It is always explained to the rich that
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Speaker 1: the eye of the needle in the Gospel is only
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Speaker 1: a figure of speech, and that there was a needle
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Speaker 1: gate through which a camel without too great a hump
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Speaker 1: could pass, and the alley from Saint James's Place, will
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Speaker 1: just admit the not too stout. When we got to
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Speaker 1: the fields beyond, the great city played with us and
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Speaker 1: led us a comic dance along the paths of the
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Speaker 1: green Park. Westminster Cathedral was in view. There was a
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Speaker 1: large balloon overhead in the murk of the London sky,
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Speaker 1: and many people were looking up at it. Our steps
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Speaker 1: took us along various grand crescents of pathway, and the
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Speaker 1: intention of the city with regard to our ultimate destination
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Speaker 1: began to seem very obscure. There were several knotty points
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Speaker 1: as to which was a turning and which was not.
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Speaker 1: And when I made an artful decision, the companion of
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Speaker 1: my way said to me, you want to shape things
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Speaker 1: to your own ends. No, said I, I want to
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Speaker 1: be faithful. And just a stiff discussion said in and
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Speaker 1: we could not get the matter straight. However, we eventually
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Speaker 1: found ourself in Saint James Park and there was an
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Speaker 1: issue for us into bird Cage Walk, where in the
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Speaker 1: barracks beyond we saw the soldiers at drill. Little did
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Speaker 1: I think at the time that I was destined to
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Speaker 1: drill there and be on Sentry there myself in time
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Speaker 1: to come. So the walk went on and we passed
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Speaker 1: the London Soldiers Home near Buckingham Gate, made her last
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Speaker 1: purchase at a little shop in Wilfrid Street, past Westminster
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Speaker 1: City School, and entered Victoria Street by Palace Street and
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Speaker 1: took an omnipus home. Thus end at the first lap
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Speaker 1: of our zigzag walked through London, and we promised ourselves
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Speaker 1: to return to the point we had left off and
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Speaker 1: continue this way of chance as soon as a convenient
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Speaker 1: moment came. Therefore, one Sunday afternoon, and not long after,
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Speaker 1: we took the omnibus back to the corner of Pallas
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Speaker 1: Street and resumed. Fate allowed us to miss Victoria Station
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Speaker 1: and its many lines of rail, and we entered Flattam
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Speaker 1: and Belgravia. Not the best part of Belgravia, but the
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Speaker 1: sadder and more fatte streets, these streets where the lamps
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Speaker 1: of joy had died down and gut heed out. Then
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Speaker 1: we passed by Morton Terrace to Lupis Street. What a
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Speaker 1: name for a London street, says g A. B. Doer
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Speaker 1: in his Sad Tale of Letty. Is not all London
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Speaker 1: Wolfish streets for our letties, Colchester Street, Chichester Street, Claverton Street,
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Speaker 1: streets of Fate at Grandeur, the Embankment. Then over the
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Speaker 1: river we go by Chelsea Bridge and find ourselves in
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Speaker 1: the district hitherto unvisited by us. We entered Battersea Park
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Speaker 1: and had such a time in its mazes of paths
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Speaker 1: that we were obliged to make a second rule for
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Speaker 1: our walks, and that was that, henceforward we should enter
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Speaker 1: no parks. A friend to whom we had communicated the
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Speaker 1: secret of our street adventure, had warned us that if
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Speaker 1: in the near future we should disappear from London life,
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Speaker 1: he would come in search of us to the maze
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Speaker 1: at Hampton Court, from which he was afraid. Once entered,
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Speaker 1: we should never extricate ourselves. So we made a rule,
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Speaker 1: no parks, no mazes. Incidentally, however, we spent a remarkable
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Speaker 1: and amusing hour in that artificial wilderness of Battersea. If
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Speaker 1: zigzagging should ever become fashionable, I am afraid that most
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Speaker 1: people will consider it des regard to follow out the
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Speaker 1: mazes and labyrinths to the last intricacy and the correct issue,
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Speaker 1: and that they will not have the courage to cut
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Speaker 1: the Gordian knot as we did, and starting pedantically, they
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Speaker 1: will finish pedantically in the literal sense, for asnut pastes
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Speaker 1: padis afoot. There were many Gordian knots, which are footsteps
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Speaker 1: made in the inns and outs of London. Having given
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Speaker 1: Battersea Park the go buy, we threaded many typically poor streets,
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Speaker 1: not slum, just better than that. How deplorable a sight,
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Speaker 1: very poor and dirty houses which you feel moving to
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Speaker 1: be worse, with broken windows here and there, and derelict
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Speaker 1: barrows in the roadway. We passed under gloomy railway arches,
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Speaker 1: so gloomy as if crimes had been committed there arches
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Speaker 1: where at night spooning couples lurk or solitary bodies furtively
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Speaker 1: eat fish and chips. So we came to a little
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Speaker 1: house which in the course of time we ought to
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Speaker 1: have visited, but probably would not. And there we called
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Speaker 1: in our unexpected way, a call not without its sequence
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Speaker 1: in our after life. This was all in the realm
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Speaker 1: of Lavender Walk and Battersea Rise. In one of the
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Speaker 1: streets we came on two demure villas called Alpha and Omega,
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Speaker 1: and very fitly passed from Battersea to Wandsworth. Another day,
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Speaker 1: in full fresh air, we walked along Bowlingbroke Grove in
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Speaker 1: the fringe of the Common, and Nightingale Lane, through very
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Speaker 1: respectable suburbia, where the houses are just so, and there
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Speaker 1: were plaster angels in the cemeteries. That day we went
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Speaker 1: home from Earlsfield station. Next time we passed Saint Barnabas's
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Speaker 1: Church within niches left in the Brooks for Saints. We
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Speaker 1: made our exit from real London, watching from a railway
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Speaker 1: arch the mad red caterpillars of tube trains going to
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Speaker 1: and fro. The houses grew higher and the roads more spacious,
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Speaker 1: and great elm trees were in the front gardens with
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Speaker 1: wild wind and rolling sky, TwixT Putney Heath and the
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Speaker 1: golf links of Wimbledon. We finished up one jolly afternoon
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Speaker 1: by coming out unexpectedly to tea at the house of
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Speaker 1: another friend, to which without jitter pokery, the zigzagway had
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Speaker 1: led us. The next afternoon, on which we ventured forth,
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Speaker 1: we wandered to sad Merton and the fringe of outer suburbia.
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Speaker 1: There were fields, but they had destinies mark upon them.
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Speaker 1: They were doomed to be imprisoned with brick by the
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Speaker 1: London which was encroaching, encroaching. Coming to the pseudo country,
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Speaker 1: we made another rule. When footpaths occur, we have the
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Speaker 1: option whether to take them or no. In future, as
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Speaker 1: I have observed, all footpaths will no doubt be de rigor.
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Speaker 1: A footpath took us to lower Morton, and another footpath
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Speaker 1: took us through much mud, to farms, to old houses
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Speaker 1: with meadows in front of them and fine trees with
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Speaker 1: many angles. The path degenerated from a rolling series of
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Speaker 1: cart ruts to a faint track along the margin of
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Speaker 1: a field, and away at last into worm run grass.
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Speaker 1: A dreadful moment, presently spying round, we saw a fainted
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Speaker 1: notice on a board no footpath. But man is man
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Speaker 1: and master of his fate, and we made another rule.
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Speaker 1: In short, we cut cross the fields to a row
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Speaker 1: of houses protected by fierce looking barbed wire entanglements. We
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Speaker 1: got on to another footpath, and the footpath became a road,
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Speaker 1: and the road became a grand drive. I think we
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Speaker 1: got to Blenheim Road and that this degenerated to a
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Speaker 1: cart track, and we were led over fields to the
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Speaker 1: Westbourne's Road, where trams and buses were running, and we
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Speaker 1: saw scrawled in front of us in big white letters,
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Speaker 1: eternity in heaven or hell. Vote Now we voted Somehow,
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Speaker 1: We got to Rains Park and were much pleased with
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Speaker 1: the front garden of Carter's Seat establishment and the many
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Speaker 1: flower pots and the ice plants. Next day we reflected
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Speaker 1: that we had become enmeshed in a net of our
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Speaker 1: own contrivance. Our little plan didn't at all fit in
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Speaker 1: with the arrangement of the district. Suburbia with crocuses and
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Speaker 1: bloom got rather on our nerves. But by many circumlocutions,
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Speaker 1: we returned to Wimbledon. We did not know the name
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Speaker 1: of the place was Wimbledon, but when we discovered this
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Speaker 1: melancholy fact, we realized that we had blisters on our feet.
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Speaker 1: Another day, we walked to Malden where we bought an
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Speaker 1: excellent chicken, which we took home in time for supper.
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Speaker 1: Then by Sycamore Grove we walked to Poplar Grove, and
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Speaker 1: by Poplar Grove we walked to Lime Grove, and by
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Speaker 1: Limegrove to Elm Road. By Elm Road to Beechgrove, we
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Speaker 1: took the option of a footpath and skid it from
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Speaker 1: this region of trees to the main highway, where the
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Speaker 1: fine Hampton Court electric cars speed their handsome way. We
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Speaker 1: went straight into Kingston without any more beating about the bush.
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Speaker 1: We should ordinarily have gone in by the open high road,
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Speaker 1: but an alley forestalled that conventionality, and we entered by
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Speaker 1: a wee way which took us inside the house of
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Speaker 1: the parish. We saw the children playing everywhere upon the
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Speaker 1: floor rather slummy. We passed Milner Villas, built nineteen o two.
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Speaker 1: We passed the Victoria, the Six Bells and the three Tons,
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Speaker 1: past the Kingston Grammar School where the boys have scarlet caps,
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Speaker 1: and the Bunian Baptist Tabernacle, where the pastor had the
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Speaker 1: kenspeckle name of Isaac Staalberg. There was a strong smell
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Speaker 1: of marmalade from Saint James's works, and Kingston Station was
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Speaker 1: puffing with locomotive steam. Night had spread its glamor over everything.
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Speaker 1: We walked by several slums down to the Jolly Brewers,
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Speaker 1: along paved passages and in the pertlus of the gas works.
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Speaker 1: By further passages where were no houses, to the side
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Speaker 1: of the greenish mud colored river and the rusty coppery
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Speaker 1: railway bridge. The old stone Bridge of Kingston also stood
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Speaker 1: beautifully in our view. When we returned to Kingston, there
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Speaker 1: was a lonely but lovely walk along Thames side, seeking
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Speaker 1: a bridge to give us a turning on the left,
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Speaker 1: with sun and wind and rain, and ducks falling through
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Speaker 1: the air, with a shish and cunning swans sailing forward
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Speaker 1: expecting food and crying gulls was the towing path toward
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Speaker 1: Teddington Lock. The riverside houses came down to the water,
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Speaker 1: with lawns and landing stages, terraces, gardens, formal beauties. The
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Speaker 1: Thames is a fair stream. We have made it fair
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Speaker 1: once it was otherwise in England, also unnamed, unloved, wild
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Speaker 1: woody marshy Man has made it dear unto himself. In
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Speaker 1: the ever freshening morning, we stood on the bridge at
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Speaker 1: Teddington and looked at the waters rolling over the dam,
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Speaker 1: and the green portarkland and the gardens beyond. We wondered
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Speaker 1: very much how we should depart from the other bank
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Speaker 1: of the river, what direction fate would have us take,
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Speaker 1: But we never could guess in advance. Generally we would
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Speaker 1: say I believe to day we shall land up somewhere
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Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of this place or that. But our
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Speaker 1: prognostications were never justified. Thus we would have expected that,
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Speaker 1: having passed through Teddington, we should arrive at the other
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Speaker 1: side of Kingston Stone Bridge and be called upon to
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Speaker 1: return to our starting point. We wandered through an area
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Speaker 1: of large houses possessing a certain sort of pomp and gloom,
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Speaker 1: happy in the summer, not so happy in the winter,
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Speaker 1: and then an area of little Hope cottages in may villas.
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Speaker 1: Somewhere in the neighborhood of Seymour Road and lower Teddington Road,
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Speaker 1: we came to a highly disputable loop of roadway which
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Speaker 1: betrayed us to the return over Kingston Bridge. We felt
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Speaker 1: highly annoyed when we saw this main plank which we
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Speaker 1: were about to be forced to walk. I with Machavelian cunning,
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Speaker 1: proposed to return to that fatal loop of roadway and
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Speaker 1: reinterpret its bearing. And we stood on the triangular refuge
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Speaker 1: in the middle of the roadway and discussed the point hotly.
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Speaker 1: This is distinctly not a walk on which to embark
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Speaker 1: with one's wife. It reveals points of difference, brings out
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Speaker 1: the hidden crookedness of character confirms all obstinacies and predeterminations.
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Speaker 1: It is possible to get more excited over a trivial
18:39
Speaker 1: turning mark you trivial a place where three ways meet,
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Speaker 1: than over the most portentous decision in real life. I
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Speaker 1: imagine it is always so. In any case, we stood
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Speaker 1: on the triangle at Kingston and argue the point two
18:56
Speaker 1: stout policemen of the cinema picture type stood over on
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Speaker 1: the paved regarding us and nodding their heads together. What
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Speaker 1: do you think is their little game, one was possibly
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Speaker 1: saying to the other. And they must have viewed me
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Speaker 1: with a considerable amount of suspicion when I returned to
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Speaker 1: that loop and obtained a heretical reading of the truth
19:16
Speaker 1: to suit my purpose, My dear Watson, I hear the
19:20
Speaker 1: arch detectives saying the simplest of crimes are always the
19:24
Speaker 1: most difficult to fathom. I think it would have puzzled
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Speaker 1: the smartest of playing clothes men had he followed us
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Speaker 1: on our marvelous way from Kingston back to Kingston, or
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Speaker 1: from Kingston the second town to Hampton Court onward to
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Speaker 1: Hampton said, I we cannot tell what joys await us.
19:42
Speaker 1: There we went into Bushy Park, thus infringing one of
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Speaker 1: our own rules. But there was an excellent road going through,
19:50
Speaker 1: and we like to see the deer grazing near us
19:53
Speaker 1: like cows. Fortune led us into Hampton, that gay and
19:57
Speaker 1: lively rivertown, and from Hampton we wandered among gray reservoirs
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Speaker 1: in green embankments to Sunbury. Possibly fate intervened to punish
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Speaker 1: us for our refusal to pass over Kingston Bridge, for
20:12
Speaker 1: soon we found ourselves clinging to the Thames. It was
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Speaker 1: March by now. The blackthorn was in bloom, the Japanica
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Speaker 1: and the almond were in blossom, the celadine was in
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Speaker 1: bud and birds were singing everywhere. At Ashford there were
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Speaker 1: lots of daffodils, and I remember we passed the girls
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Speaker 1: of the high school walking in crocodile and looking very
20:35
Speaker 1: frisky and fresh, despite the primness of the teacher. We
20:40
Speaker 1: came to the pretty and rural village of Laleham, Arnold's
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Speaker 1: Village with its old church with thickly ivied tower, ancient
20:48
Speaker 1: yew trees and graves of the Arnolds and of the
20:50
Speaker 1: village there were two goodly inns, the Turk's head, the
20:55
Speaker 1: three horseshoes. At the ladder, we had tea, and we
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Speaker 1: learned that Arnold's house had been pulled down in the
21:01
Speaker 1: present National School had been made from the bricks. We
21:04
Speaker 1: walked along the towing path once more, but it was
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Speaker 1: now a full rushing river and was often in the flood.
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Speaker 1: Well over the bank. The Thames had a wild aspect,
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Speaker 1: reflecting livid clouds, and icy gale whipped the stream. There
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Speaker 1: was a rush of snow, and the storm raged across
21:22
Speaker 1: the whiteness of the horizon like smoke. We sheltered in
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Speaker 1: the coping of deserted river houses, and in order to
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Speaker 1: make progress when the storm abeate, it were obliged to
21:32
Speaker 1: walk on the iron rungs of railings. Even so we
21:36
Speaker 1: did not escape many a bootful. In this way we
21:39
Speaker 1: passed Pentanhook and reached fairly and truly stains one of
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Speaker 1: the bright capitals of Father Thames Kingdom. At Staines, we
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Speaker 1: took the bridge, or rather the bridge took us over
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Speaker 1: to the other side of the river, where we waited
21:54
Speaker 1: all the way to running Meat in Magnacota Island, the
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Speaker 1: way all kings evidently have to go, but we signed
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Speaker 1: no charter of rights. Had we worn crowns, we stood
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Speaker 1: in more likelihood of imitating that other remarkable feat of
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Speaker 1: King John by losing our symbols of royalty. In the flood.
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Speaker 1: We were slaves of the road, and the road led
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Speaker 1: us into the water. I think we should have got
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Speaker 1: to Windsor Castle, and might conceivably have called on the
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Speaker 1: King himself, the latest after King John, but the water
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Speaker 1: gods intervene or pan had other things in view. For
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Speaker 1: I was warped. We were walked away to Egham and
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Speaker 1: Virginia Water. I was able to call on my artist
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Speaker 1: friend Helen Cross, who had that time lived at Egham,
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Speaker 1: and was doing the emblems from my idealistic first novel,
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Speaker 1: Priest of the Ideal, a joyous surprise visit, for I
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Speaker 1: could not tell her in advance that I was coming.
22:50
Speaker 1: I did not know whether the zigzag way led to
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Speaker 1: her gate. However, many nice people and some others are
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Speaker 1: on the zigzag path in the Zigzag Puzzle of Life.
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Speaker 1: We went from Egham to Thorpe Green and Inglefield Green.
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Speaker 1: We went down Prune Hill and to Whitehall Farm, and
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Speaker 1: the length of many a Longish country road, it's a
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Speaker 1: long lane that has no turning. In fact, we were
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Speaker 1: often comforted by that proverb, and never found it disproved.
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Speaker 1: All roads in England, except the horrible cul de sacts
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Speaker 1: which prey you avoid, have turnings to the left, door
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Speaker 1: to the right, according to the heart, or consonant to
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Speaker 1: the reason. The crookedness has some reason in it, and
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Speaker 1: even the worst, though it has a way in, has
23:37
Speaker 1: also a way out. From Virginia Water, the zigzag way
23:42
Speaker 1: leads on to Kennecare and further to a place which
23:45
Speaker 1: I have sometimes heard called the back hook beyond. At
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Speaker 1: the same time, it may be said that you will
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Speaker 1: not know the name of the place until you get there.
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Speaker 1: You can put no destination label on your rucksack, and
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Speaker 1: if any one asked where you are going, you may
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Speaker 1: tell him in confidence, whisper the dreadful fact in his ear.
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Speaker 1: Honestly you do not know. The adventure is not getting there.
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Speaker 1: It's the on the way. It is not the expected.
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Speaker 1: It is the surprise, not the fulfillment of prophecy, but
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Speaker 1: the providence of something better than that prophesied. You are
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Speaker 1: not choosing what you shall see in the world, but
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Speaker 1: are giving the world an even chance to see you.
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Speaker 1: I'm still on that zigzag way, pursuing the diagonal between
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Speaker 1: the reason and the heart. The chart could be made
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Speaker 1: by drawing lines from star to star, and the night sky,
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Speaker 1: not forgetting many dim, shy, fitfully glimmering out of the
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Speaker 1: waist stars which one would not purpose visiting. I said
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Speaker 1: we would not enter a maze, but we have made
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Speaker 1: one in our in one, the maze of Andalusia and Dalmatia,
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Speaker 1: and of Anahook and Anatolia, of seven rovers land and
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Speaker 1: seven kings. The first to the left, the next to
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Speaker 1: the right, No blind alleys, A long way bokou zigzag
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Speaker 1: eh end of Chapter twenty six. A zigzag walk. End
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Speaker 1: of the Gentle Art of Trapping by Stephen Graham,