‘Lass, O Welt, O lass mich sein.’

VIII
WALKING ALONE
WITH A DIGRESSION ON LONDON WALKING

Walking alone is, of course, on a much lower moral plane than walking in company. It falls under the general ban on individual as opposed to communal pursuits. The solitary walker, like the golfer or sculler, is a selfish and limited being, unlike the rower, footballer, or cricketer, who is a member of a community. The point cannot be seriously argued. Prevaricators may call attention artlessly to certain features of communal pursuits—to cricket scores and lists of averages and interviews with eminent athletes; they may even review our country as a whole, and expatiate on the widely diffused spirit of toleration, mutual good-will, and readiness to co-operate which our national sports have produced. But their gibes are unavailing: it is plainly better to do things in company than alone: and the solitary walker, if he is honest, will at once resign all claim to the halo of patriotism, disinterested devotion, esprit de corps and good citizenship which encircles the brow of the footballer.

I will not even pray in aid the great names of Stevenson and Hazlitt. Their defence of solitary walking rested largely on the mistaken idea that if you walk in company you are bound to talk; they did not realise that even silence can be corporate, nay, that there is a concrete and positive taciturnity of two far more satisfying than the negative voicelessness of one. They did not know how grunts can reveal the man and ejaculations create and foster friendship. The silent contemplation of walking is aided, not hindered, by the presence of another silent contemplator at your side.

Walking alone, then, is a thing only to be justified by special circumstances; it is an abnormal function of life, a subject for pathology rather than physiology. But as life is not yet quite perfect and normal in all departments, there is a place for pathology: as the proper circumstances of walking are not always attainable, there is a place for walking alone. Without elaborating a scheme of casuistry, we can imagine certain conditions under which walking alone is defensible if not laudable; and it is only fair to the solitary walker, pursuing his lonely way under the ban of moral disapproval, to indicate some of these.

I have mentioned above four classes of walkers—six milers, twelve milers, eighteen milers, and twenty-four milers. The figures are not to be taken too literally; but I think walkers, as a whole, fall more or less definitely into four groups, whose average daily maxima are at, or near, these figures. The differences extend to other points—to pace, to length of stride, even, I think, to opinions and disposition, although here the classification becomes less definite. Class A, the twenty-four milers, average about 4½ miles an hour on a good road, and stride 40 inches or over: they tend to be mugwumps, mistrusters of rhetoric, lovers of the classic in art and music and literature, of the distilled and clarified products of human imagination or insight. Class B, the eighteen milers, average 4 miles an hour, and stride 36 inches: they are generally those who might have been in Class A but for a lack of real comprehensive capacity and for a love of talking and disputation: they tend to spasmodic intensities within a limited area instead of the wide and equable appreciation of Class A: they read Meredith, but talk about his philosophy, and have no proper grasp of Dickens. Class C, average 3½ miles an hour and call it ‘about 4,’ and stride 30 inches: they often have Class A capacities, but are physically disabled: they insist on large meals and a good deal of drink, and talk much of ‘scorching.’ Class D, average 2½ miles an hour, and stride 25 inches: they have no illusions about either, and are mainly occupied in catching a train home at the earliest opportunity.

Now it is obvious that if a Class B walker is set down to walk with one from Class D, one of two things must happen: either the D man must rise above his normal maxima, or the B man must sink below them. The usual supposition is that B must give way, on the ground that it is dangerous and distressing for D to exceed his limits. It is not generally recognised in such cases what a sacrifice is imposed on B. He has got to drop his pace from 4 miles to 2½; he has got to shorten his stride from 36 to 25 inches; he will probably not be allowed to talk politics; D has never read Meredith’s poetry, and by the time B is feeling a little warm, D will be beginning to think about the trains home. Now suppose that B has had a hard week’s work, is mentally confused, is contemplating marriage or an investment, is just changing his politics or metaphysics, or is in some other condition when his mind wants cleaning up and straightening out: would he not be to some extent justified in refusing to modify his distance, pace, and stride, and in offering D the alternatives of either complying with the B conditions or going to the D—that is, consorting with other members of his own class?

Those who hold that B would not be justified miss, I think, the distinction between walking and strolling; they consider that B will get some sort of motion through pleasant country, and that this ought to be enough for him, whatever his condition. The instance taken is purposely extreme; normally, it is admitted, a stroll in company is better than a walk alone. But there are times when B must have a proper walk, at whatever cost; when his primary need is for 18 miles at 4 miles an hour; nay, there are times when he is simply not fit for company, and must go walking alone, and recapture something of himself before he can properly consort with his fellows.

This condition of B’s which justifies solitary walking is called by many names in medical works or in the impassioned autobiographies of advertisement—neurasthenia, brain-fag, nervous collapse, or even Weltschmerz. But there is a better and more expressive name, covering a larger range of symptoms, which popular idiom created for us, and a poet then marked for ever as our own. I mean the Hump. The use of this phrase illustrates once more the truth that once we are conscious of a thing we have subdued it. When a man says he has neurasthenia, he understands nothing except a vague sense of discomfort somewhere unlocalised in himself: but when he says he has the Hump, the very word brings a clear vision of something unnatural and extraneous, of a definite deformity which he can attack and cure. The disease is isolated and identified, and is no longer a vague oppression; it is something which is not his real self, but is temporarily connected with him, and may, by an effort, be shaken off. Civilisation has pressed too heavily on one part of him, on his porter’s shoulder-knot; and the forces of his being, which should be employed in varying ways on different tasks, have concentrated themselves unnaturally to resist the pressure: his shoulder has become hypertrophied: in short, he has the Hump. Let him take a walk, let his being resume its natural course: let the forces settle instinctively back into their natural channels: let him realise the world around and about him, calling and answering to each of his separate faculties and not to one only; and lo! the pressure is lightened, the Hump is reduced, and he resumes his natural shape, and is fit for the company of his fellows.

And then you will find that the sun and the wind,
And the Djinn of the garden too,
Have lifted that Hump, that horrible Hump,
The Hump that was black and blue.