Many at seventeen their fortunes seek,
But at three score it is too late a week!
This portentous growth is indeed past praying for. “Every wind that blows from north or south, east or west, from India, China, America, or Australia, feeds it; every wheel that turns at home, every colonist who digs or watches his flocks at the antipodes, intensifies it. The marrow of London is in the backbone of the world; its blood is the blood of myriad kindred populations; its million hands seize upon the fruits, the corn, the gold, the oil, and wine of every zone.” Its choice suburbs, indeed, may be considered as stretching out to the Riviera, the Swiss Lakes, or the Bohemian Forest. But, as yet, the county in which the greatest of modern cities chiefly lies has a remnant of rustic charms it cannot be too coy of displaying to the cosmopolitan multitude pent up within its spreading bounds. Nor are these busy throngs blind to the charms of Nature. As willingly as the yokel seeks its streets paved with gold and gleaming with lights, so the smoked Londoner loves to wash his eyes in greenery, or to bask in the “good gigantic smile of the old brown earth,” if only on a holiday stroll to Hackney Downs or Wormwood Scrubs.
Then thy spruce citizen, wash’d artisan,
And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air:
Thy coach of hackney, whisky, one-horse chair,
And humblest gig through sundry suburbs whirl,
To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow make repair;
Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl,
Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl.
Some o’er thy Thamis row the ribbon’d fair,
Others along the safer turnpike fly;
Some Richmond Hill ascend, some scud to Ware,
And many to the steep of Highgate hie.
To leave his beehive behind him, the townsman of this age has to go further afield; further and faster he does go by his trains, trams, and other machines such as those foreseen by Wordsworth in a spirit of prophesy, on which Byron’s “spruce citizen” and “snug apprentice” can now
Glance along
Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air,
And they were butterflies to wheel about
Long as the summer lasted.
Or those foretold by an earlier poet:
The filthy beasts that never chew the cud
Still grunt and squeak and sing their troublous song,
And oft they plunge themselves the mire among;
But ay the ruthless driver goads them on,
And ay of barking dogs the bitter throng
Makes them renew their unmelodious moan.
Yet it is doubtful if dusty cyclist or goggled motorist see as much of the country as their slow-going grandfathers, and that not only because there is less of open country to see. In their haste to get away from the streets they might as well travel on the Underground Railway. These speedy wayfarers—“machines themselves, and governed by a clock”—go in the traces of a road, blinkered by its rows of suburban houses, and ready to drop for fatigue when taken out of the shafts of pace-making and record-breaking. Nay, I could name one philosopher of note who on Sundays became peripatetic, but never thought of leaving his hard-paved rounds till I opened his eyes by turning him on to grass for a dozen miles, by ways undreamt of in his philosophy.
Among authors, only popular novelists or journalists can afford to keep gigs, not to speak of motor-cars and the like, so one need not make a virtue of necessity. But no one should presume to write a book about Middlesex without having tramped all over its hills and dales on the green lanes and winding field-paths, too many of which have been obliterated, but many are guarded more carefully than ever now that the sons of Mammon or of Nimrod would fain enclose them against the like of me. In taking these quiet byways between bustling highroads, I cannot help observing how few persons one meets, and these few—if not whispering lovers, for whom their primrose path cannot be too lonely—are apt to be men of my own time of life rather than our juniors, who, when the hoardings and the gate-money are not too high, may be seen packed into fields for their beloved sports, some score of them playing, perhaps, while some hundreds or thousands take the exercise of noisily looking on.