William Hazlitts On Going a Journey

Its fortunate that William Hazlitt enjoyed his own company, for this talented British essayist was not, by his own admission, a very pleasant companion: I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those that would reform them.(On Depth and Superficiality, 1826) The Romantic poet William Wordsworth echoed this assessment when he wrote that the miscreant Hazlitt ... is not a proper person to be admitted into respectable society. Yet the version of Hazlitt that emerges from his essays -- witty, passionate, plain speaking -- continues to attract devoted readers. As the writer Robert Louis Stevenson observed in his essay Walking Tours, Hazlitts On Going a Journey is so good that there should be a tax levied on all who have not read it. Hazlitts On Going a Journey  originally appeared in the New Monthly Magazine  in 1821 and was published that same year in the first edition of  Table-Talk. On Going a Journey One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey, but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, Nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone. The fields his study, Nature was his book. I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticising hedgerows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room and fewer encumbrances. I like solitude when I give myself up to it for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for --a friend in my retreat,Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet. The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation May plume her feathers and let grow her wings,That in the various bustle of resortWere all too ruffled, and sometimes impaird, that I absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaise or in a tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours march to dinner--and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud, I plunge into my past being and revel there as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten things, like sunken wrack and sumless treasuries, burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alon e is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, alliteration, alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I do; but I sometimes had rather be without them. Leave, oh, leave me to my repose! I have just now other business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is with me the very stuff o the conscience. Is not this wild rose sweet without a comment? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat of emerald? Yet if I were to explain to you the circumstance that has so endeared it to me you would only smile. Had I not better then keep it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon? I should be but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have heard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself, and indulge your reveries. But this looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, and you are thinking all the time that you o ught to rejoin your party. Out upon such half-faced fellowship, say I. I like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposal of others; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. I was pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbetts, that he thought it a bad French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time. So I cannot talk and think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversation by fits and starts. Let me have a companion of my way, says Sterne, were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines. It is beautifully said: but, in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid: if you have to explain it, it is making a toil of a pleasure. You cannot read the book of Nature without being perpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the benefit of others. I am for the synthetical method on a journey in preference to the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then and to examine and anatomise them afterward. I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I have no objection to  argue  a point with  any one  for twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you remark the scent of a bean-field crossing the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant object, perhaps he is short-sighted and has to take out his glass to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the  colour  of a cloud, which hits your fancy, but the effect of which you are unable to account for. There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way, and in the end probably produces ill-humour. Now I never quarrel with  myself and take all my own conclusions for granted till I find it necessary to defend them against objections. It is not merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and circumstances that present themselves before you--they may recall a number of ideas, and lead to associations too delicate and refined to be possibly communicat ed to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch  them when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before  company seems extravagance or affectation; on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must give it an understanding, but no tongue. My old friend C-- [Samuel Taylor Coleridge], however, could do both. He could go on in the most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale, a summers day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode. He talked far above singing. If I could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps wish to have  someone  with me to admire the swelling theme; or I could be more content, were it possible for me still to bear his echoing voice in the woods of All-Foxden. They had that fine madness in th em which our first poets had; and if they could have been caught by some rare instrument, would have breathed such strains as the following --Here be woods as greenAs any, air likewise as fresh and sweetAs when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleetFace of the curled streams, with flowrs as manyAs the young spring gives, and as choice as any;Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,Arbours oergrown with woodbines, caves and dells:Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,Or gather rushes to make many a ringFor thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyesShe took eternal fire that never dies;How she conveyd him softly in a sleep,His temples bound with poppy, to the steepHead of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,Gilding the mountain with her brothers light,To kiss her sweetest.—Faithful Shepherdess Had I words and images at  command  like these, I would attempt to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the evening clouds: but at the sight of Nature my fancy, poor as it  is droops  and closes up its leaves, like flowers at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spot: I must have time to collect myself. In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects: it should be reserved for Table-talk. L-- [Charles Lamb]  is, for this reason, I take it, the worst company in the world out of doors; because he is the best within. I grant, there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey; and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night. The open air improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the road heightens the  flavour  of the viands we expect at the end of it. How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to take ones ease at ones inn! These eventful moments in our lives are in fact too precious, too full of solid,  heart-felt  happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop: they will do to talk of or to write about  afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea, The cups that cheer, but not inebriate and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what we shall have for supper--eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in  onions or an excellent veal-cutlet! Sancho in such a situation once fixed on cow heel; and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then, in the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen--  Procul, O  procul  este  profani!  These hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts hereafter. I would not waste them in idle talk; or if I must have the integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would rather it were by a stranger than a friend. A stranger takes his hue and character from the time and place:  his  is a part of the furniture and costume of an inn. If he is a Quaker, or from the West Riding of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do not even try to  sympathise  with him , and  he breaks no squares. I associate nothing with my  travelling  companion but present objects and passing events. In his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself. But a friend reminds one of other things, rips up old grievances, and destroys the abstraction of the scene. He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginary character. Something is dropped in the course of conversation that gives a hint of your profession and pursuits; or from having  someone  with you that knows the less sublime portions of your history, it seems that other people do. You are no longer a citizen of the  world; but  your unhoused free condition is put into circumspection and confine. The  incognito  of an inn is one of its striking privileges--lord  of ones self,  uncumbered  with a name. Oh! it is great to shake off the trammels of the world and of public opinion--to lose our importunate, tormenting, ever-lasting personal identity in the elements of nature, and become the creature of the moment, clear of all ties--to hold to the universe only by a dish of  sweet-breads, and to owe nothing but the score of the evening--and no longer seeking for applause and meeting with contempt, to be known by no other title than  the Gentleman in the  parlour! One may take ones choice of all characters in this romantic state of uncertainty as to ones real pretensions, and become indefinitely respectable and negatively right-worshipful. We baffle prejudice and disappoint conjecture; and from being so to others, begin to be objects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more those hackneyed commonplaces that we appear in the world; an inn restores us to the level of Nature, and quits scores with society! I have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns--sometimes when I have been left entirely to myself and have tried to solve some metaphysical problem, as once at Witham-common, where I found out the proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas--at other times, when there have been pictures in the room, as at St Neots (I think it was) where I first met with Gribelins engravings of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once; and at a little inn on the borders of Wales, where there happened to be hanging some of Westalls drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that I had, not for the admired artist) with the figure of a girl who had ferried me over the Severn, standing up in a boat between me and the fading twilight--at other times I might mention luxuriating in books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at an i nn at Bridgewater, after being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through two volumes of  Madam  DArblays Camilla. It was on the 10th of  April 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and cold chicken. The letter I chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he first caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de Vaud, which I had brought with me as a  bon  bouche  to crown the evening with. It was my birthday, and I had for the first time come from a place in the  neighbourhood  to visit this delightful spot. The road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing a certain point you come all at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either side, with green upland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst o f them. The valley at this time glittered green with sunny showers, and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to walk along the high road that overlooks the delicious prospect, repeating the lines which I have just quoted from  Mr. Coleridges poems! But besides the prospect which opened beneath my feet, another also opened to my inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which were written, in letters large as Hope could make them, these four words, Liberty, Genius, Love, Virtue; which have since faded in the light of common day, or mock my idle gaze. The Beautiful is vanished, and returns not. Still, I would return some time or other to this enchanted  spot; but  I would return to it alone. What other self could I find to share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the traces of which I could hardly conjure up myself, so much have they been broken and defaced! I could stand on some tall rock and overlook the precipice of years that separates me from what I then was. I was at that time going shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named. Where is he now? Not only I myself have changed; the world, which was then new to me, has become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in thought, O sylvan Dee, as then thou wert, in joy, in youth and gladness; and thou shalt always be to me the river of Paradise, where I will drink the waters of life freely! There is hardly anything that shows the short-sightedness or capriciousness of the imagination more than  travelling  does. With  change  of place we change our ideas; nay, our opinions and feelings. We can by an effort indeed transport ourselves to old and long-forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the mind revives  again; but  we forget those that we have just left. It seems that we can think but of one place at a time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, and if we paint one set of objects upon it, they immediately efface every other. We cannot enlarge our conceptions, we only shift our point of view. The landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye; we take our fill of  it; and  seem as if we could form no other image of beauty or grandeur. We pass on and think no more of it: the horizon that shuts it from our  sight,  also blots it from our memory like a dream. In  travelling  through a wild, barren country, I can form no idea of a w oody and cultivated one. It appears to me that all the world must be barren, like what I see of it. In the  country, we forget the town and in the  town, we despise the country. Beyond Hyde Park, says Sir Fopling Flutter, all is a desert. All that part of the map which we do not see before  us  is a blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded into another,  country  joined to  country, kingdom to kingdom, lands to seas, making an image voluminous and vast; the mind can form  no  larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single glance. The rest is a name written on a map, a calculation of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification of that immense mass of territory and population, known by the name of China to us? An inch of paste-board on a wooden globe, of no more account than a China orange! Things near us are seen of the size of life; things at a distance are diminished to the si ze of the understanding. We measure the universe by  ourselves and even comprehend the texture of our own being only piece-meal. In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same times excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot as it  were unfold  the whole web of our existence; we must pick out the single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived and with which we have intimate associations,  every one  must have found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression: we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names, that we had not thought of for years; but for the time all the rest of the world is forgotten! -- To return to the question I have quitted above. I have no objection to  go  to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for the former reason reversed. They are intelligible  matters and will bear talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit, but communicable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a party of pleasure, the first consideration always is where we shall go to: in taking a solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the way. The mind is its own place; nor are we anxious to arrive at the end of our journey. I can myself do the  honours  indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no mean  Ãƒ ©clat--shewed  them that seat of the Muses at a distance, With glistening spires and pinnacles adornd descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quadrangles and stone walls of halls and colleges--was at home in the  Bodleian; and  at Blenheim quite superseded the powdered Cicerone that attended us, and that pointed in vain with his wand to commonplace beauties in matchless pictures. As another exception to the above reasoning, I should not feel confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign country without a companion. I should want at intervals to hear the sound of my own language. There is an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an Englishman to foreign manners and notions that  requires  the assistance of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from home increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would almost feel stifled to find himself in the deserts of Arabia without friends and countrymen: there must be allowed to be something in the view of Athens or old Rome that claims the utterance of  speech; and  I own that the Pyramids are too mighty for any single contemplation. In such situations, so opposite to all ones ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species by ones self, a limb torn off from society, unless one can meet with instant fellowship and support. Yet I did not feel this wan t or craving very pressing  once when I first set my foot on the laughing shores of France. Calais was peopled with novelty and delight. The confused, busy murmur of the place was like oil and wine poured into my ears; nor did the  mariners hymn, which was sung from the top of an old crazy vessel in the  harbour, as the sun went down, send an alien sound into my soul. I only breathed the air of general humanity. I walked over the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France, erect and satisfied; for the image of man was not cast down and chained to the foot of arbitrary  thrones: I was at no loss for language, for that of all the great schools of painting was open to me. The whole  is vanished  like a shade. Pictures, heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled: nothing remains but the Bourbons and the French people! There is undoubtedly a sensation in  travelling  into foreign parts that  is  to be had nowhere  else; but  it is more pleasing at the time than lastin g. It is too remote from our habitual associations to be a common topic of discourse or reference, and, like a dream or another state of existence, does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is an animated but a momentary hallucination. It demands an effort to exchange our actual for our ideal identity; and to feel the pulse of our old transports revive very keenly, we must jump all our present comforts and connections. Our romantic and itinerant character is not to be domesticated, Dr. Johnson remarked how little foreign travel added to the facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad. In fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful and in one sense instructive; but it appears to be cut out of our substantial, downright existence, and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the same, but another, and perhaps more enviable individual, all the time we are out of our own country. We are lost to ourselves, as well as to our friends. So the poet somewhat quain tly sings: Out of my country and myself I go. Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be said only to  fulfil  our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in  travelling  abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend  afterwards  at home!