A book of bridges

by Walter Shaw Sparrow

No one knows how many invasions were broken up by the forests and fens of England before the Romans came with their colonising methods, and linked their scattered camps together by means of paved highways, great roads destined to be used for many centuries, and by many raids and armies. The earliest prehistoric tribes came along a bridge of land by which England was united to France; they found in their course some of the nature-made bridges ([p. 114]), and the spoor and tracks of formidable animals, such as the mastodon and the mammoth. Much later invasions, also prehistoric, must have come over the sea in boats, for the bridge of land had the history of most bridges, the water swallowed it up; but every boat may be regarded as a floating bridge which is moved from place to place, so that a pontist when he studies the sea-borne invasions keeps in touch with his favourite subject. On their arrival in England the later prehistoric colonists found that most of the nature-made bridges had been copied, and that a great many footpaths and tracks rambled from settlements to watering-places and through the forests where huntsmen risked their lives in a sport of habit.

The men of the Bronze Period were supplanted in Europe by a race more powerful, whose clenched fists needed larger sword-handles; it was a race of manly and swaggering nomads, strong and fierce; and yet, as Darwin believed, their success in the war of life may have been aided still more by their superiority in the arts. Can we fix a date for the introduction of bronze into the British Isles? Here is a matter of opinion; but, according to Sir John Evans, the most likely date is separated from the Christian era by about 1400 years, perhaps 200 years less. Iron belongs to a much later time. Probably, in the fourth century B.C., it was known as a metal in South Britain; and about a century later it began to supersede bronze in the manufacture of cutting implements.[4]

Then, as now, England waited for great discoveries to be imported. Many British tribes were hermits of convention, willing drudges to a routine of fixed habits and customs. For example, the highest form of prehistoric bridge-building, the lake-village, came to England not earlier than the Bronze Age, and we shall see ([p. 137]) that a lake-village, with its late Celtic handicrafts, existed at Glastonbury when in its neighbourhood the Romans were at work. But I do not wish to imply that no British tribe had any alertness. As Cæsar found out to his cost, there were Britons with an enterprising conservatism, whose war-chariots were managed with a skilful bravery. This wheeled traffic postulates a good road here and there, with bridges over some deep rivers; and to this supposition two facts must be added: the war-chariots were small, and their wheels were primitive, so in a wet climate they would have been useless on unmended tracks. Let us infer, then, that the Roman conquest of England was aided by some British landways which were genuine roads, valued for their service and kept in repair. Is not this implied also by the circulation of Druidism from its venerated heart in Anglesey? There is no evidence better than that of a just inference from known events, for events cannot lie, whereas the eye-witness can, and very often he does.

Again, to think of the aggression which has travelled along roads and over bridges, is to think also of the five phases through which civilization has evolved many times. During the first phase a new home is won by invasion; and during the second phase the new home is extended by invasions, and efforts are made to co-ordinate the separated parts by improving their intercommunications. Then civil and economic competitions not only multiply, but become too active in the body social; wealth breeds wealth, and poverty, poverty. So the classes grow discordant, and put too much strain on each other, just as diseased lungs poison the strongest heart, or as virile hearts rupture weak arteries. Here is the fourth phase; it means a gradual disintegration brought about partly by the economic war, partly by a relaxing faith in stern duties and in patriotism. Amusement becomes a passion, even a mania, and discontent seethes under the fool-fury of the merry-making. Then comes the gradual break-up or downfall, which may be hastened by invasions from a younger and more militant country. Each phase may be a long development, sometimes delayed by events, and sometimes hurried; and the final phase may be postponed for a long time when the strife of poverty is relieved by constant emigration. Human gunpowder does not explode if it is shipped to a happier country where a day’s work brings comfort enough for three days. But the main point is this: that civilizations have travelled always in the same direction and ended always in a break-up, just as great rivers have flowed always toward their destiny in the sea, though all have changed their beds many times and widened their valleys.

When we meditate on the part played by bridges and roads in the rise and fall of ambitious nations, we should choose a fit environment, such as a Roman bridge crippled by three forms of war: floods, winds, and human strife. France has three or four Roman bridges of this kind, but let us take an Italian example. Brangwyn has chosen the Ponte Rotto, at Rome, and the great ruins of the bridge at Narni. It was Augustus Cæsar who erected Narni Bridge, in order to join two hills together across the valley of the Nera, on the Flaminian Way, in the Sabine country. There were four arches of white marble, and the finest one had a span of 142 feet. The others varied much in breadth.[5] The Romans plumbed the river and chose the best natural foundations for their piers; stability was more to them than a sequence of uniform arches. At the present time only one arch remains; but under its great vault, as you stand on the left bank, you will feel alone with the pity and terror that history brings to those who see past events as clearly as painters behold their concepts.

RUINS OF THE GREAT ROMAN BRIDGE OVER THE NERA AT NARNI, ITALY

Under this arch at Narni many types of society have passed, with their customs, religions, fears, hopes, ambitions, predatory trades and pillaging armies; have passed one after the other, and vanished. Tempus edax devoured them; and now they are studied in relics of their arts and crafts, their mute historians. What permanent social good did they do? Ought we to be as forgetful of them as they were of their buried generations? Do they merit any praise at all? They were proud, of course, and looked upon change as abiding progress, yet the more they altered the more their egotism was the same thing, either intensified and developed, or slackened and degraded; for the ruling motive powers of their life were but variations of the aboriginal war between the enfeebled and the strengthened. The social rule tried to prove that “Each for All, yet Each for Himself,” was the only sane doctrine for men to be guided by in their civil competitions. Everybody had to do much for the commonweal, but yet he was taught to believe that astuteness, even more than upright ability, would enable him to gain control over a number of slaves, or serfs, or servants, whose lot would be what he thought fit to make it. This habitual struggle for Dominion over others was a friend to the fortunate classes only: it bred microbes in the body social and produced fever and disruption. Is it surprising that civilizations withered away? Their autopsies have a horrible sameness; but from their mute historians—their books, pictures, sculpture, potteries, bridges, roads, and other relics of a lasting communism—we learn to have faith in useful work done thoroughly. In all that endures there is some altruism. Who would care a fig for ancient Greece if all her mute historians had perished with her incompetent social order?

The Middle Ages exist for us, not in records of their freebooting social aims, but in the work done by a few men of genius and their pupils and assistants. More than one mediæval century is represented by a few churches, a few castles, a few bridges, a few books, a damaged house here and there, and some weapons, tools, and furniture. All else in the story of its life is tragic and sinister, a wild pilgrimage whose shrines are battlefields and whose ranks are visited periodically by the plague.