Elsewhere in modern literature there are signs, though only a few, that walking is coming to its own. The most cheering example is Mr. Belloc, who not only records walks, but writes in the true walking mood, with plenty of irrelevancy, plenty of dogmatism, and thorough conviction on the matter of eating and drinking. Mr. Wells also sends his young people out for walks occasionally, with the best results. But the best description of walking, or rather Walking Out, in modern literature outside Meredith is in Browning’s ‘Last Ride Together.’ It is true that he wrote it about riding, but I am sure that this was really a mistake. Any one who has ever started on a walk after a hard week’s work can only admit one interpretation to the lines:
My soul
Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll,
Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
It may have been simply a printer’s error: by adding two letters we can set the matter right:
What if we still stride on, we two,
With life for ever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree
The instant made eternity—
And heaven just prove that I and she
Stride, stride together, forever stride.
This at least was what the young gentleman was saying to the young lady that afternoon, when I overtook them just short of Newland’s Corner. It is a grassy track, and it was well that I stepped on a stick.
NOTE A
On the Rates of Walking of Various Persons in the Egoist, Chapters 25 sqq.
It will be remembered that Clara and Crossjay walked to the station after breakfast, followed first by Vernon and later by De Craye. A close scrutiny of the details given produces some very interesting information.
The first point is the time of the train. Willoughby says that ‘eleven is the hour,’ but as he adds airily that there is ‘a card in the smoking-room,’ we cannot trust this evidence alone. But Vernon, we are told, timed himself to reach the station at ten minutes to eleven, and this before he met Dr. Corney, who drove him part of the way. On getting to the station he tells Clara that she has ‘full fifteen minutes, besides fair chances of delay.’ It seems fairly clear then that the train was due at just about eleven, that Vernon reached the station at 10.44 or so, and Clara some time earlier.
If the train was due at eleven, the distance to the station can be approximately fixed. When Clara starts the drive back, she passes her own train ‘eighteen minutes late by her watch.’[5] She arrives at the Hall just as twelve is striking. The drive consequently took just over forty-two minutes. The roads were wet, and Flitch’s horse probably decrepit: the distance by road may therefore be fixed at about four miles. By taking the footpath, according to Crossjay, ‘you save a mile.’ Crossjay may be trusted on a point like this, and we may thus estimate the field way at three miles.