MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON IHAVE been reading this week a stout American travel-book called The Fire Ox and Other Years, in which Mr. Suydam Cutting describes eight of his journeys to inaccessible places. The book, in all probability, will be reviewed elsewhere,* but I mention it since it has brought home to me in a forcible manner the fact that travellers and travelling are of very different kinds. Mr. Cutting believes in what he calls " creative travel " ; he is a natural explorer, who derives immense pleasure from the thought that the localities which he visits have not been visited by any white man before. I quite see that such an experience would be most rewarding if it resulted in the discovery of beasts or flowers hitherto unknown. But the natural explorer loves exploring for exploring's sake ; he does not mind overmuch whether he returns to civilisation bringing back with him a panda or a new ranunculus ; the delight of finding oneself in a place which no civilised man has seen before constitutes for him an absolute delight, and makes up for all the dangers and inconveniences of his expedition. I have never, to my knowledge, visited any place in which my advent has not been preceded by generations of missionaries, doctors and engineers ; but were I to discover that I had set my foot upon a spot on which no white foot had trod before, I should not experience sensations of pleasure ; I should feel lonely, dispirited and lost ; my only desire would be to get back quickly. The difference between Mr. Cutting and myself is more than a greater or lesser degree of endurance and courage: it is the eternal difference between the classic and romantic tempera- ment. I have a Greek preference for observing the unknown from a safe distance ; he possesses an Elizabethan passion for the unknown as an aim in itself. To him the rational and the recognisable are tame ; to me the irrational is most disturbing. Reading a sturdy adventurous book such as his, realising how much I should have loathed to share his experiences, causes me to sigh desperately and to see myself as plump and smug. * * * * Sundered as we are by this great gulf between the classic and the romantic, there is one point at which the feelings of Mr. Cutting and myself coincide. Since although he takes pleasure in long treks across the swamps and ridges of the earth, he also possesses a healthy liking for luxury travel ; he enjoys large and very expensive yachts ; what he cannot stand is the middle way, the bugs and plumbing of fifth-rate inns. For him, as for me, travel divides itself into two distinct categories : either one travels in a public conveyance or else one provides the conveyance for oneself ; if one is carried and housed by other people, then assuredly the comforts and facilities should be as lavish as one can afford ; but if one carries and houses oneself, then one can accept with greater tolerance such discomforts as may result. When I was young and ignorant I imagined that it was wise and manly to economise on transport. I have travelled third-class from Hanover to Siena accompanied by a dog and two suitcases weighted with books. There were many changes, and when on the second morning the dawn crept gently over the Tuscan hills, I gazed with lustreless eyes upon the land- scape, conscious only of my aching limbs and the fog of garlic with which my compartment was filled. It is untrue that by such methods one sees more of real life ; one's powers of observation, one's gift of sensibility, are blurred and blunted by the physical exhaustion entailed. If one cannot afford to make long journeys comfortably, then it is surely more prudent to make short journeys comfortably. Since apart from the ordeal of getting there, one has the anticipated ordeal of getting back. * *
I have a collector's snobbishness about different modes of con- veyance. .I regret that I have never been carried in a palanquin, ridden in a jinricksha, or lounged in a house-boat in Kashmir. But I have had a sufficiently varied experience of public conveyances— from camels to aeroplanes—to know what I like. Aeroplanes are a means of communication ; they are not a method of travel. As one * It is ; on page 500. leaves the aerodrome it is interesting, for a moment, to observe the development of town-planning and the garden designs of suburban mansions ; but as the machine gathers height this varied earth is reduced to a monochrome, one misses all the gradations, the baptistery at Pisa becomes a white pebble on a brown beach, the Cyclades dwindle into a few limestone rocks. Infinitely preferable are the long blue or brown trains which thread their ways across Europe through the night. How pleasurable is the memory of wagon- lit mornings when—after a night in which the rumble of the train, the sighs of the pneumatic brake and the tinkle upon the little table of an Evian bottle against a heavy brass ash-tray had formed the undertone to dreams—one let the blind swing up and the rocks of Provence flashed into the dark compartment, pink and amethyst in the rising sun! How satisfactory it was in the early hours of the morning, to twitch the stiff blind aside and to see Olympus hanging white under a round moon! Ships also possess a certain attraction as means of public conveyance, provided they be very expensive and equipped with swimming baths and gymnasiums. One acquires for a few days an agreeable sense of detachment from the noise and worries of the world, and a happy combination of aloofness and intimacy, of purposelessness and a sense of direction.
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Yet I agree with Mr. Cutting that the full savour of travel can only be obtained when one discards public conveyances and provides the conveyance for oneself. I do not, it is true, really envy our ancestors when they trundled across Europe in their yellow travelling carriages with the servants and the footmen following in the fourgon behind. It must have been a slow and tiring business ; the swaying of their equipages induced sea-sickness and headaches ; the inns were often crowded and always insanitary ; the postilions sulky and in- temperate ; and the carriages, even when made in England, were constantly tumbling to pieces. They were always being held up at places like Orange or Empoli because of a broken axle or a dis- lodged wheel. Even Madame Recamier, whom we regard as the most static of all legendary beauties, was twice tumbled down the Jura because the axle snapped. It was reserved for our generation to experience the full delights of private conveyance. The car would be swung high into the air at Dover or Newhaven not to touch earth again until it was lowered gently upon the quay-side at Calais or Dieppe. The tank was refilled, the water and the oil provided, the simple formalities completed, and there one was seated in the familiar driving-seat with the whole of Europe before one and the choice, as one engaged the clutch, of continuing to Vladivostock or Brindisi, to Stettin or Istamboul. Yet the charm of private con- veyance can only be fully appreciated by those who have travelled, whether on foot or horseback, with their own camp train. The servants, when one had risen and washed, would rapidly dismantle the tents and pack them on the backs of mules. The breakfast-table would be left until the last, and one would sit on there sipping tea and eating apricot jam while the encampment around one was flattened into a jumble of rope and canvas. And in the evening, when one arrived after a long day, there would be one's tent again, erect and taut, with one's shaving-brush in exactly the same place and the smoke of the camp-fire rising slowly into the dusk. * * * * I am at one with Mr. Cutting in feeling that of all forms of private conveyance the camp-train is the most agreeable. Obviously, it is more pleasant to pitch one's own tent among the pomegranates than to endure the stinking staircases and the acrid smoke of caravanserais. Yet only on the condition of being able to choose one's own climate and the right time of year. I should not relish Thibetan gales or rats as large as squirrels or centipedes which creep into one's boots. I prefer meadows of wild tulip and a gentle stream. Which merely proves that travellers are of different kinds, the romantic and the classical, the adventurous and the timid. And that I, for one, in spite of my enjoyment of varied means of conveyance, was not intended by nature to be a pioneer.
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