Leading the Blind (37 page)

Nevertheless, regarding the County of Durham's ancient customs: ‘There is a general belief that bread baked on Good Friday is a cure for most disorders. Waifs or waffs of dying persons are seen by their neighbours, and many persons even see their own waifs. Garlands are occasionally carried before the coffins of virgins. Salt is placed upon a corpse after death, and is supposed to prevent the body from swelling; and the looking-glass in the death-chamber is covered with white, from fear of the spirits which might be reflected in it. The straw used to be taken out of the bed in which a person had died, and burnt in front of the house; then search was made in the ashes for a footprint, which would be found to correspond with the foot of the person to whom the summons would come next.'

The most noticeable characteristic of the middle and eastern parts of the country is its dirt, ‘for the smoke of the collieries, which envelops these parts, injures vegetation, scatters black ashes over the fields, and hangs in a thick cloud overhead'. We are told of a terrible accident at Heaton Main Colliery on 30 April 1815. ‘There were 95 persons in the pit: 30 escaped on the first alarm, but 41 men and 34 boys perished. Of these 56 had gained a point which was not reached by the water, and perished from want of air. Their corpses were found within a space of 30 yards of each other; their positions and altitudes were various; several appeared to have fallen forwards from off an inequality, or rather step, in the coal on which they had been sitting; others, from their hands being clasped together, seemed to have expired while addressing themselves to the protection of the Deity; two, who were recognised as brothers, had died in the act of taking a last farewell by grasping each other's hand; and one poor little boy reposed in his father's arms.'

We will end our visit to the area on a less pathetic note, on reading that the villages belonging to the Duke of Northumberland had had almost all their cottages rebuilt within the last few years. ‘The village of Denwick is perhaps one of the best examples of the improved condition of labourers' dwelling-houses. The inhabitants, however, still cling to their ancient customs of sleeping in box-beds, which occupy one wall of the common sitting-room, being generally placed opposite the fire, for the sake of warmth, and being closed all day by shutters, which are opened at night. It is still almost impossible to persuade a Northumbrian peasant to do anything so “uncanny” as sleeping upstairs. The dwellings have generally a great appearance of prosperity and plenty, which is obtained as much from abundance and cheapness of coals as from the high rate of wages. The chief peculiarity of dress among the peasantry is the high
buckled
shoe, which is almost universally worn by the women and children.'

The traveller to Westmorland and Cumberland could supplement his Murray with Wordsworth's
Guide Through the District of the Lakes in the North of England, with a Description of the Scenery, &c. For the Use of Tourists and Residents
, using the fifth edition of 1835: ‘In human life there are moments worth ages. In a more subdued tone of sympathy we may affirm, that in the climate of England there are, for the lover of nature, days which are worth whole months, – I might say – even years.'

Such a guidebook emphasizes pedestrianism as the ideal (and expected) mode of locomotion, for then the traveller is able to see everything, and has time to reflect on what scenery he passes through. The often idiosyncratic style provides a calm and healing read while catching breath among the Fells, or after a hunger-slaking meal by the fireside of inn or hotel in the evening. It is not a guide in the Baedeker or even the Murray sense, for Wordsworth was too singular for that, and in any case he would have despised guidebooks which brought the undiscriminating horde to his favourite haunts. He sees the landscape with the eye of a poetic geographer, to whom the coming of the railway was little short of an assault on his soul. His guide awakens one to subtle combinations of sky and landscape, predating Ruskin's monograph
Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century
– a classic of meteorological description.

The author of A. & C. Black's later guide, however, attempts to put Wordsworth in his place. ‘Till about the middle of the eighteenth century, indeed, the rest of England took much the same Philistine view of Lakeland. Mountains in those days meant bad roads, poor inns or none, the fear of robbers, and the chance of losing one's way. But it is a mistake that, as commonly supposed, Wordsworth and Southey
made
the Lakes, from the tourist point of view. An older admirer, one of the first who taught our prosaic forefathers to look for less tame models of the picturesque, was the poet Gray. The journal of his tour may still be read with interest and amusement. One well-known guide-book was fifty years old when Wordsworth wrote his hand-book; and both he and Southey complain of the crowds of holiday “Lakers” who every summer invaded Grasmere and Keswick.'

Another Victorian guidebook to the Lakes was that of Harriet Martineau, who lived in the area after 1850. She is more down to earth and systematic, though writes for a somewhat simpler traveller than either Murray or Wordsworth: ‘There is one thing more the stranger must do before he goes into Cumberland. He must spend a day on the Mountains: and if alone, so much the better. If he knows what it is to spend a day so far above the every-day world, (unless there is danger in the case); and, if he is a novice, let him try whether it be not so. Let him go forth early, with a stout stick in his hand, provision for the day in his knapsack or his pocket; and, if he chooses, a book: but we do not think he will read today. A map is essential, to explain to him what he sees: and it is very well to have a pocket compass, in case of sudden fog, or any awkward doubt about the way. In case of an ascent of a formidable mountain, like Scawfell or Helvellyn, it is rash to go without a guide: but our tourist shall undertake something more moderate, and reasonably safe, for a beginning.'

Her tone is rather like a nanny telling the infant what to do, but she is very sensible about the perils of boating on Lake Windermere. ‘The stranger should be warned against two dangers which it is rash to encounter. Nothing should induce him to sail on Windermere, or on any lake surrounded by mountains. There is no calculating on, or accounting for, the gusts that come down between the hills; and no skill and practice obtained by boating on rivers or the waters of a flat country are any sure protection here. And nothing should induce him to go out in one of the little skiffs which are too easily obtainable here, and too tempting, from the ease of rowing them. The surface may become rough at any minute, and those skiffs are unsafe in all states of the water but the calmest. The long list of deaths occasioned in this way, – deaths both of residents and strangers, – should have put an end to the use of these light skiffs, long ago.'

There is no such warning in Black's
English Lakes
, 1905, so one can assume that the matter was put right. However, we are told by Black's that it was not always easy to find your way about. ‘The lake roads, and even the mountain paths, are well off for guide-posts, sometimes better represented by stone tablets, since foolish tourists, in exuberance of spirits, have been known to set the arms of a post awry, so as to deceive those coming after them, a most mischievous trick that deserves a tour on the treadmill.'

ENVOI

Having brought our traveller safely back to his own by no means unendowed country from foreign parts I will now mention, as a means of conclusion, a guidebook to the homeland published in French, dealing mainly with spas, seaside resorts, and known beauty spots:
Through Great Britain
by Charles Sarolea, issued by the Fédération des Syndicats d'Initiative des Municipalités Britanniques. Published in the fateful year of 1914, it was unable to serve its intended purpose of drawing French holidaymakers to Britain.

The main feature of the book is not so much its contents as the long introduction by the author who, though he may not have known it, sounded the perfect lights-out on an age of travel which, on the familiar routes at least, had reached the apex of comfort and freedom. The
fédération
in whose honour the book was produced was to hold its first congress in Great Britain that summer. Dignitaries from England and France were to take part and, it was hoped, on their return home the French were to tell ‘their compatriots of the friendship and hospitality they had received, and of the beauties of the English landscape. To frankly appreciate the importance of the task, account must be taken of the lamentable isolation of England, and of the extraordinary insularity of the English character. The European Continent is becoming more and more internationalised, and only Great Britain is not participating in this movement.'

Sarolea gives a picture of a more or less culturally united Mainland Europe, proved, he goes on, by the fact that many cities have large foreign colonies: ‘Ostend, Biarritz, Wiesbaden, Carlsbad, and even the far-off small towns of Bohemia and the Carpathian Mountains; even Biskra on the edge of the desert in Algeria has become a cosmopolitan centre, while the English towns remain the preserve of the English.'

With uncanny echoes of the early English guidebooks to the Continent, only in reverse, because England was now in need of the revenues from tourism, Sarolea explains: ‘… the English hotels are not yet good enough to rival those of Switzerland, and English hotel keepers have not yet learned to cater to the desires of foreigners, though these inconveniences may be exaggerated, and English hotels in general do not deserve the bad reputation that they have among those who live on the Continent.'

The author's reasons as to why the French in particular should be attracted to the United Kingdom are curious. Ever since the Norman Conquest, he says, the two peoples have had very strong feelings for each other, either an invincible revulsion, or attractions not less irresistible, and yet the best qualities of the French and English have much to teach both nations.

The Englishman is an individualist, the Frenchman is socially and civically inclined. The Englishman is practical, the Frenchman an idealist. In England the imagination dominates, in France intelligence. The Englishman believes in versatility, the Frenchman in unity. The Englishman triumphs in local administration, the Frenchman in centralisation. The Englishman glorifies the spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Frenchman prefers to cultivate the art of good living. It is because of that diversity of civilisation and difference in national temperament that France will always be for the English the country of intellect and art, and England for the French the teacher of initiative and energy. It is not too much to say that Great Britain can show the French traveller a new world. Even a short stay will be for the Frenchman the best school in moral and political science.

It is a long and intelligent essay on the necessity of French and English union, and of European friendship and cooperation, but it was too late, for in August of 1914 the Great War began. In the immortal words of Sir Edward Gray, the lights went out all over Europe, only to come on again, finally, in 1989, two hundred years after the Cannonade of Valmy had ensured the survival of the French Revolution.

The bibliographies of many guidebooks before the Great War refer the reader to articles on the various countries in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. Because of their authority and comprehensive range such entries were sometimes the length of short books, written by people of experience and scholarship. The
Britannica
of 1911–12 – the famous Eleventh Edition – could in fact be said to have been the guide of guides, a thirty-volume handbook to all that had been of note in Western Civilization. No more perfect encyclopaedia has been produced since.

A paragraph to a supplementary volume put out just after the Great War is worth quoting in full as a sad and fitting summing up to the end of a great era. The editor explains the difficulties of bringing out a new edition, similar to the Eleventh, after 1918:

Irrespectively, indeed, of the question whether as good a complete edition as the Eleventh could have been produced
de novo
now, it would cost in any case at least twice as much to make as it did in 1911, and it would have to be sold at a far higher price. But, from the editorial point of view, the important fact is that it could not be made to-day so as to have anything like the scholarly value of the work produced before the war by the contributors to the Eleventh Edition. Neither the minds nor the wills that are required for such an undertaking are any longer obtainable in any corresponding degree, nor probably can they be again for years to come. This is partly due to sheer ‘war-weariness,' which has taken many forms. A shifting of interest has taken place among writers of the academic type, so that there is a disinclination to make the exertion needed for entering anew into their old subjects – a necessary condition for just that stimulating, vital presentation of old issues in the light of all the accumulated knowledge about them, which was so valuable a feature of the Eleventh Edition; the impulse has temporarily been stifled by the pressure of contemporary problems. Many of the pre-war authorities, moreover, have died without leaving any lineal successors, and others have aged disproportionately during the decade, while the younger generation has had its intellectual energies diverted by the war to work of a different order. Again (a most essential factor), it would have been impossible to attain the same full measure of international cooperation, among representatives of nations so recently in conflict, and in a world still divided in 1921 by the consequences of the war almost as seriously as while hostilities were actually raging.

A Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Ruth Fainlight

Not many of the “Angry Young Men” (a label Alan Sillitoe vigorously rejected but which nonetheless clung to him until the end of his life), could boast of having failed the eleven plus exam not only once, but twice. From early childhood Alan yearned for every sort of knowledge about the world: history, geography, cosmology, biology, topography, and mathematics; to read the best novels and poetry; and learn all the languages, from Classical Greek and Latin to every tongue of modern Europe. But his violent father was illiterate, his mother barely able to read the popular press and when necessary write a simple letter, and he was so cut off from any sort of cultivated environment that, at about the age of ten, trying to teach himself French (unaware books existed that might have helped him), the only method he could devise was to look up each word of a French sentence in a small pocket dictionary. It did not take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his system, but there was no one to ask what he should do instead.