Read Online On Nothing and Kindred Subjects by Hilaire Belloc - Free Book Online
Authors: Hilaire Belloc
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of impressing itself upon foreign
intruders. The smoke also of the train as it skirts the Downs is
part and parcel of what has become (thanks to the trains) our
encloistered country life; the smoke of the trains is a little
smudge of human activity which permits us to match our incomparable
seclusion with the hurly-burly from which we have fled. Upon my
soul, when I climb up the Beacon to read my book on the warm turf,
the sight of an engine coming through the cutting is an emphasis of
my selfish enjoyment. I say "There goes the Brighton train", but the
image of Brighton, with its Anglo-Saxons and its Vision of Empire,
does not oppress me; it is a far-off thing; its life ebbs and flows
along that belt of iron to distances that do not regard me.
Consider this also with regard to my railway: it brings me what I
want in order to be perfect in my isolation. Those books discussing
Problems: whether or not there is such an idea as right; the
inconvenience of being married; the worry of being Atheist and yet
living upon a clerical endowment,—these fine discussions come from
a library in a box by train and I can torture myself for a shilling,
whereas, before the railways, I should have had to fall back on the Gentleman's Magazine and the County History. In the way of
newspapers it provides me with just the companionship necessary to a
hermitage. Often and often, after getting through one paper, I
stroll down to the junction and buy fifteen others, and so enjoy the
fruits of many minds.
Thanks to my railway I can sit in the garden of an evening and read
my paper as I smoke my pipe, and say, "Ah! That's Buggin's work. I
remember him well; he worked for Rhodes…. Hullo! Here's Simpson at
it again; since when did they buy him ?…" And so forth. I lead
my pastoral life, happy in the general world about me, and I serve,
as sauce to such healthy meat, the piquant wickedness of the town;
nor do I ever note a cowardice, a lie, a bribery, or a breach of
trust, a surrender in the field, or a new Peerage, but I remember
that my newspaper could not add these refining influences to my life
but for the railway which I set out to praise at the beginning of
this and intend to praise manfully to the end.
Yet another good we owe to railways occurs to me. They keep the
small towns going.
Don't pester me with "economics" on that point; I know more
economics than you, and I say that but for the railways the small
towns would have gone to pieces. There never yet was a civilisation
growing richer and improving its high roads in which the small towns
did not dwindle. The village supplied the local market with bodily
necessaries; the intellectual life, the civic necessities had to go
into the large towns. It happened in the second and third centuries
in Italy; it happened in France between Henri IV and the Revolution;
it was happening here before 1830.
Take those little paradises Ludlow and Leominster; consider Arundel,
and please your memory with the admirable slopes of Whitchurch; grow
contented in a vision of Ledbury, of Rye, or of Abingdon, or of
Beccles with its big church over the river, or of Newport in the
Isle of Wight, or of King's Lynn, or of Lymington—you would not
have any of these but for the railway, and there are 1800 such in
England—one for every tolerable man.
Valognes in the Cotentin, Bourg-d'Oysan down in the Dauphiné in its
vast theatre of upright hills, St. Julien in the Limousin,
Aubusson-in-the-hole, Puy (who does not connect beauty with the
word?), Mansle in the Charente country—they had all been half dead
for over a century when the railway came to them and made them
jolly, little, trim, decent, self-contained, worthy, satisfactory,
genial, comforting and human [Greek: politeiae], with clergy, upper
class, middle class, poor, soldiers, yesterday's news, a college,
anti-Congo men, fools, strong riders, old maids, and all that makes
a state. In England the railway brought in that beneficent class,
the gentlemen; in
intruders. The smoke also of the train as it skirts the Downs is
part and parcel of what has become (thanks to the trains) our
encloistered country life; the smoke of the trains is a little
smudge of human activity which permits us to match our incomparable
seclusion with the hurly-burly from which we have fled. Upon my
soul, when I climb up the Beacon to read my book on the warm turf,
the sight of an engine coming through the cutting is an emphasis of
my selfish enjoyment. I say "There goes the Brighton train", but the
image of Brighton, with its Anglo-Saxons and its Vision of Empire,
does not oppress me; it is a far-off thing; its life ebbs and flows
along that belt of iron to distances that do not regard me.
Consider this also with regard to my railway: it brings me what I
want in order to be perfect in my isolation. Those books discussing
Problems: whether or not there is such an idea as right; the
inconvenience of being married; the worry of being Atheist and yet
living upon a clerical endowment,—these fine discussions come from
a library in a box by train and I can torture myself for a shilling,
whereas, before the railways, I should have had to fall back on the Gentleman's Magazine and the County History. In the way of
newspapers it provides me with just the companionship necessary to a
hermitage. Often and often, after getting through one paper, I
stroll down to the junction and buy fifteen others, and so enjoy the
fruits of many minds.
Thanks to my railway I can sit in the garden of an evening and read
my paper as I smoke my pipe, and say, "Ah! That's Buggin's work. I
remember him well; he worked for Rhodes…. Hullo! Here's Simpson at
it again; since when did they buy him ?…" And so forth. I lead
my pastoral life, happy in the general world about me, and I serve,
as sauce to such healthy meat, the piquant wickedness of the town;
nor do I ever note a cowardice, a lie, a bribery, or a breach of
trust, a surrender in the field, or a new Peerage, but I remember
that my newspaper could not add these refining influences to my life
but for the railway which I set out to praise at the beginning of
this and intend to praise manfully to the end.
Yet another good we owe to railways occurs to me. They keep the
small towns going.
Don't pester me with "economics" on that point; I know more
economics than you, and I say that but for the railways the small
towns would have gone to pieces. There never yet was a civilisation
growing richer and improving its high roads in which the small towns
did not dwindle. The village supplied the local market with bodily
necessaries; the intellectual life, the civic necessities had to go
into the large towns. It happened in the second and third centuries
in Italy; it happened in France between Henri IV and the Revolution;
it was happening here before 1830.
Take those little paradises Ludlow and Leominster; consider Arundel,
and please your memory with the admirable slopes of Whitchurch; grow
contented in a vision of Ledbury, of Rye, or of Abingdon, or of
Beccles with its big church over the river, or of Newport in the
Isle of Wight, or of King's Lynn, or of Lymington—you would not
have any of these but for the railway, and there are 1800 such in
England—one for every tolerable man.
Valognes in the Cotentin, Bourg-d'Oysan down in the Dauphiné in its
vast theatre of upright hills, St. Julien in the Limousin,
Aubusson-in-the-hole, Puy (who does not connect beauty with the
word?), Mansle in the Charente country—they had all been half dead
for over a century when the railway came to them and made them
jolly, little, trim, decent, self-contained, worthy, satisfactory,
genial, comforting and human [Greek: politeiae], with clergy, upper
class, middle class, poor, soldiers, yesterday's news, a college,
anti-Congo men, fools, strong riders, old maids, and all that makes
a state. In England the railway brought in that beneficent class,
the gentlemen; in
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