THE ART OF WALKING

Away with the stupid adage about a man being as old as his

arteries!

He is as old as his calves-his garteries.

T

-Meditations of Andrew McGill.

HERE was fine walking on the hills in the direction of the sea."

This heart-stirring statement, which I find in an account of the life of William and Dorothy Wordsworth when they inhabited a quiet cottage near Crewkerne in Dorset, reminds me how often the word "walking" occurs in any description of Wordsworth's existence. De Quincey assures us that the poet's props were very ill shapen-"they were pointedly condemned by all female connoisseurs in legs"-but none the less he was princeps arte ambulandi. Even had he lived to-day, when all our roads are barbarized by exploding gasoline vapours, I do not think Wordsworth would have flivvered. Of him the Opium Eater made the classic pronouncement: "I calculate that with these identical legs W. must have traversed a distance of 175,000 to 180,000 English

miles a mode of exertion which, to him, stood in the stead of alcohol and all other stimulants whatsoever to the animal spirits; to which, indeed, he was indebted for a life of unclouded happiness, and we for much of what is most excellent in his writings."

A book that says anything about walking has a ready passage to my inmost heart. The best books are always those that set down with "amorous precision" the satisfying details of human pilgrimage. How one sympathizes with poor Pepys in his outburst (April 30, 1663) about a gentleman who seems to have been "Always Taking the Joy Out of Life":

Lord! what a stir Stankes makes, with his being crowded in the streets, and wearied in walking in London, and would not be wooed to go to a play, nor to Whitehall, or to see the lions, though he was carried in a coach. I never could have thought there had been upon earth a man so little curious in the world as he is.

Now your true walker is mightily "curious in the world," and he goes upon his way zealous to sate himself with a thousand quaintnesses. When he writes a book he fills it full of food, drink, tobacco, the scent of sawmills on sunny afternoons, and arrivals at inns late at night. He writes what Mr. Mosher calls a book-a-bosom.

Diaries and letters are often best of all because they abound in these matters. And because walking can never again be what it was-the motorcars will see to that-it is our duty to pay it greater reverence and honour.

Wordsworth and Coleridge come first to mind in any talk about walking. The first time they met was in 1797 when Coleridge tramped from Nether Stowey to Racedown (thirty miles in an air-line, and full forty by road) to make the acquaintance of William and Dorothy. That is practically from the Bristol Channel to the English ditto, a rousing stretch. It was Wordsworth's pamphlet describing a walk across France to the Alps that spurred Coleridge on to this expedition. The trio became fast friends, and William and Dorothy moved to Alfoxden (near Nether Stowey) to enjoy the companionship. What one would give for some adequate account of their walks and talks together over the Quantocks. They planned a little walking trip into Devonshire that autumn (1797) and "The Ancient Mariner" was written in the hope of defraying the expenses of the adventure.

De Quincey himself, who tells us so much jovial gossip about Wordsworth and Coleridge, was no mean pedestrian. He describes a fortymile all-night walk from Bridgewater to Bristol,

on the evening after first meeting Coleridge. He could not sleep after the intellectual excitement of the day, and through a summer night "divinely calm" he busied himself with meditation on the sad spectacle he had witnessed: a great mind hastening to decay.

I have always fancied that walking as a fine art was not much practised before the eighteenth century. We know from Ambassador Jusserand's famous book how many wayfarers were on the roads in the fourteenth century, but none of these were abroad for the pleasures of moving meditation and scenery. We can gather from Mr. Tristram's "Coaching Days and Coaching Ways" that the highroads were by no means safe for solitary travellers even so late as 1750. In "Joseph Andrews" (1742) whenever any of the characters proceed afoot they are almost certain to be held up. Mr. Isaac Walton, it is true, was a considerable rambler a century earlier than this, and in his Derbyshire hills must have passed many lonely gullies; but footpads were more likely to ambush the main roads. It would be a hardhearted bandit who would despoil the gentle angler of his basket of trouts. Goldsmith, too, was a lusty walker, and tramped it over the Continent for two years (1754-6) with little more baggage than a flute: he might have written "The

Handy Guide for Beggars" long before Vachel Lindsay. But generally speaking, it is true that cross-country walks for the pure delight of rhythmically placing one foot before the other were rare before Wordsworth. I always think of him as one of the first to employ his legs as an instrument of philosophy.

After Wordsworth they come thick and fast. Hazlitt, of course have you paid the tax that R.L.S. imposes on all who have not read Hazlitt's "On Going A Journey?" Then Keats: never was there more fruitful walk than the early morning stroll from Clerkenwell to the Poultry in October, 1816, that produced "Much have I travelled in the realms of gold." He must have set out early enough, for the manuscript of the sonnet was on Cowden Clarke's table by breakfast time. And by the way, did you know that the copy of Chapman's Homer which inspired it belonged to the financial editor of the Times? Never did financial editor live to better purpose!

There are many words of Keats that are a joyful viaticum for the walker: get these by rote in some membrane of memory:

The great Elements we know of are no mean comforters: the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown-the Air is our robe of state-the Earth is our throne, and the sea a mighty minstrel playing before it.