The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (44 page)

300
‘remote and lovely’
, Eric Ravilious, letter to Helen Binyon, ?30 May 1940, in Ravilious at War, p. 93.

300
‘unearthly existence’
: Eric Ravilious, letter to Diana Tuely, ?30 May 1940, in Ravilious at War, p. 93.

303
the paired summits of Walker’s Hill and Knapp Hill
: Walker’s Hill and Adam’s Grave, the nickname of the long barrow on its summit, feature in Thomas’s poem ‘Lob’, about the ghostly Englishman who walks to ‘keep clear old paths that no one uses’. ACP, p. 77.

Chapter 14: Flint

Pages

307
‘The long white roads … of the past’
: SC, pp. 108–9.

308
‘the first music of England … oak trees’
: this is Peter Ackroyd’s account of Taine’s 1860 claim, as given in Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination (London: Chatto & Windus, 2002), p. 3.

309
‘
On the ancient tracks … and be content’
: Helen Thomas, preface to Edward Thomas, The South Country (London: J. M. Dent, 1909), pp. 13–14.

309
‘a contemporary … of a landscape’
: Albert Camus, notebook entry for 29 October 1946, in Notebooks 1942–1951, trans. Justin O’Brien (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee Publishers, 2010), p. 217.

309
‘Roads go on … That shoots and is gone’
: ACP, p. 106.

310
‘wealth of poetry’
: SC, p. 4.

310
‘airy motion … doubles round the head of a coombe’
: SC, p. 148.

310
‘a curve is latent’
: IW, p. vi.

310
‘sheaf of half-a-dozen footpaths worn side-by-side’
: SC, p. 50.

310
‘grassy track[s] of great breadth … traveller’s joy’
: SC, p. 214.

310
‘gentleman of the road … umbrella man’
: SC, pp. 185–95.

311
‘The hill road wet with rain … If we trod it not again’
: ACP, p. 106.

311
‘the outer world … to a tunnel’
: USW, p. 110.

312
‘crushing attacks of gloom and wretchedness’
: USW, p. 113.

312
‘the ancient ways … not only with [her] legs’
: USW, p. 123.

313
‘Every hillside, every wood and meadow … Edward and I took there’
: USW, p. 160.

314
There are two intertwined histories of modern wayfaring
: see R. A. Leeson, Travelling Brothers (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979).

315
‘brewed tea … the treadmill of the mid-Thirties’
: Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (London: Penguin, 1969), p. 62.

319
‘if on a moonless night … when you go on it follows’
: the folklore of Chanctonbury is helpfully collected by Jacqueline Simpson in her ‘Legends of Chanctonbury Ring’, Folklore 80 (1969), 122–31. See also Arthur Beckett, The Spirit of the Downs (London: Methuen, 1943) and Philip Gosse, Go to the Country (London: Cassell, 1936).

321
‘
AGRIMONIA
… 1 or 2 achenes’
: C. A. Johns, Flowers of the Field (1851; London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1919), pp. 153–4.

322
‘in vernation … like roof-tiles’
: Johns, Flowers of the Field, p. xix.

322
‘a roving spirit everywhere’
: SC, p. 182.

322
‘white ribbon of possible travel’
: Robert Louis Stevenson, quoted by Duncan Minshull in the foreword to his invaluable The Vintage Book of Walking (London: Vintage, 2000), p. xvii.

322
‘never … As it winds on for ever’
: ACP, p. 107.

323
‘to take root forever … to do with change’
: SC, p. 161.

323
‘For … never knew a home again’
: Helen Thomas, preface to SC.

324
‘faintly-seen silvery stars … whiteness in the dark’
: W. H. Hudson, Nature in Downland (1900; Middlesex: Echo Library, 2006), pp. 1–2.

325
‘edge of consciousness’
: F. R. Leavis, New Bearings in English Poetry (1932; Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1965), p. 69.

325
‘Many a road … in they sink’
: ACP, p. 136.

326
‘a kind of pursuit … through the past’
: Richard Holmes, Footsteps (1985; London: Penguin, 1986), p. 26.

326
‘You would never … quite catch them’
: Holmes, Footsteps, p. 27.

326
the mind was a landscape
: I adapt the phrase from Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 6.

329
‘I like the country we are in … have been beautiful’
: Edward Thomas, letter to Gordon Bottomley, 1 March 1917, ETGB, p. 278.

329
‘Now all roads … And their brief multitude’
: ACP, pp. 107–8.

330
‘ghostland’:
IW
, p. vi.

Chapter 15: Ghost

Pages

333
‘bright warm Easter day’
: CET, p. 175.

333
‘the light of the new moon … meant by God’
:
CET
, pp. 175–6.

334
‘aware of some completely invisible track’
: LFY, p. 6.

334
‘you would not walk … in a new way’
: LFY, p. 32.

335
‘flowers of rose-bay … Chatham Railway’
: SC, p. 99.

335
‘only peace would be to be needed by him’
: USW, p. 49.

335
‘[I]t seems strange now … opened for giving’
: USW, p. 36.

337
‘I hate my work … I do harm’
: Edward Thomas, note to self dated 9 October 1907 (later discovered by Helen Thomas), SLET, p. 44.

337
‘to be let into the light again’
: USW, p. 49.

337
He admires ‘Sumer is icumen in’
: SC, p. 4.

337
‘wind[s] like silver … the current of their feet’
: ACP, p. 72.

339
‘everything except the power … hissing grass’
: SC, p. 275.

339
‘tender loveliness’
: USW, p. 152.

339
‘I am not a part of nature … the rain without’
: IW, p. 281.

339
‘the sense of roads … roads of great purpose and destiny’
: IW, pp. 6–7.

340
‘grew … like the handle of a walking stick’
: RJ, p. 179. I draw here and elsewhere on Lucy Newlyn’s subtle discussion of Thomas’s relationship with Jefferies, Hazlitt and the idea of walking, in ‘Hazlitt and Edward Thomas on Walking’, Essays in Criticism 56: 2 (April 2006), 163–87.

340
‘primitive act … a pristine majesty
: IW, p. 31.

340
‘The prettiest things … Or separately charactered’
: ACP, p. 34.

340
‘[o]f texture midway between life and books’
: I borrow the quotation from Newlyn, ‘Hazlitt and Edward Thomas on Walking’. The source is William Wordsworth, The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. Paul D. Sheats (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), p. 145.

340
‘champagne corks … wheat coloured’
: Edward Thomas, letter of 15 January 1908 to Gordon Bottomley, ETGB, p. 155.

340
‘Not one [pebble] … beyond my thinking’
: Edward Thomas, letter of 7 February 1908 to Gordon Bottomley, ETGB, p. 157.

341
‘Something they knew … while they sang’
: ACP, p. 35.

341
‘keyless chamber[s] of the brain’
: SC, p. 13.

341
‘integral … Edward lived it’
: LFY, p. 153.

341
‘the wind, the rain … the storm were one’
: IW, p. 13.

341
‘he walked … and his big hands’
: LFY, p. 232.

342
‘muddy untruthful reflection of words’
: SC, p. 13.

342
‘on wavering footpaths through the fields’
: Robert Frost, letter to Sidney Cox, 18 May 1914. I am indebted for this detail, and that of Frost’s ‘talks-walking’ coinage, to Matthew Hollis, who quotes it in his outstanding biography of Thomas’s last years, Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), pp. 126, 128.

342
‘produced … same man in another key’
: LFY, p. 56.

343
‘slowly growing into a conscious Englishman’
: Edward Thomas, letter to Jesse Berridge, in Letters of Edward Thomas to Jesse Berridge, ed. Anthony Berridge (London: Enitharmon, 1983), p. 74.

343
‘He could have been safe … chosen to be’
: LFY, p. xix.

343
‘moral map … flight of 3 kestrels’
: Edward Thomas, letter to Gordon Bottomley, June 1915, in ETGB, p. 129.

343
‘I read the sign. Which way shall I go?’
: ACP, p. 37.

344
‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood … as just as fair’
: Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken’, in The Poetry of Robert Frost, ed. Edward Connery Lathem (London: Cape, 1971). I am grateful here to Matthew Hollis, whose discussion of the role this poem played in Thomas’s decision to go to war sharpened my sense of its more-than-metaphoric importance. See Hollis, Now All Roads Lead to France, pp. 233–9.

344
‘Several people … could not answer yet’
: LFY, p. 153.

344
‘the natural culmination of … moods & thoughts’
: Edward Thomas, letter to Gordon Bottomley, 21 July 1915, ETGB, p. 253.

344
‘No, no, no, not that’
: USW, p. 153.

345
‘the future and the maps … I was waiting for’
: ACP, p. 134.

345
He doesn’t mind poets knowing he’s a soldier
: LFY, p. 218.

345
‘black despair … calm acceptance’
: USW, p. 158.

345
‘It is fine and wintry here … 2,000 years ago’
: LFY, p. 191.

346
‘Remember that, whatever happens … hangs in the air
: USW, p. 172.

348
‘what things that same moon … the Meuse’
: Edward Thomas, The Last Sheaf (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928), p. 221.

350
‘confoundedly cheeky … old Hun’
: LFY, p. 253.

352
‘new position, fancy … catkins are soft dark white’
: SLET, pp. 153–4.

353
‘delighting in what beauty … together once again’
: USW, p. 204.

353
‘Dearest Here I am … All and always yours Edwy’
: SLET, p. 165.

355
‘For a moment indeed … very great and splendid’
: USW, p. 210.

355
‘Where any turn may lead … up hill after rain’
: CET, p. 176.

Chapter 16: Print

Page

359
Seven thousand to five thousand years ago
: I draw here and elsewhere in this chapter on the work of, letters from, and conversations with, Gordon Roberts; and on Jennifer Lewis and Jennifer E. Stanistreet (eds.), Sand and Sea: Sefton’s Coastal Heritage: Archaeology, History and Environment of a Landscape in North-West England (Sefton: Leisure Services, 2008).

Select Bibliography

‘We walk for a thousand reasons,’ wrote Thomas in 1913, ‘because we are tired of sitting, because we cannot rest, to get away from towns or to get into them, or because we cannot afford to ride; and for permanent use the last is perhaps the best, as it is the oldest.’ Walking is among our most ancient of practices, and it has been undertaken for an irreducibly complex variety of causes and desires. The literature of walking and paths is extensive and wayward; this bibliography includes a selection of the books, essays and articles that I have read about these subjects, as well as those concerning the book’s other broad preoccupations: archaeology, cartography, grief, joy, landscape, metaphor, navigation, orientation, pilgrimage, touch, tracking and toponymy, among others. I have asterisked those works which I have found especially interesting, or to which I am especially indebted for information or inspiration. Asserted facts, suggested details, unattributed uncertainties and explicit lacunae in the two biogeographies of Ravilious (‘Snow’) and Thomas (‘Ghost’) may be confirmed or falsified in the appropriate works cited in the notes and bibliography, on the scholarship and memories of which I have closely drawn. All inadvertent errors and deliberate deviations are mine.

Abram, David,
The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More than Human World
(New York: Pantheon, 1996)

Abulafia, David,
The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
(London: Allen Lane, 2011)

Ackroyd, Norman, and Douglas Dunn,
A Line in the Water
(London: Royal Academy, 2009)

Ackroyd, Peter,
Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination
(London: Chatto & Windus, 2002)

Amato, Joseph,
On Foot: A History of Walking
(New York: New York University Press, 2004)

Barrie, J. M.,
Courage
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922)

*Basso, Keith H.,
Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1996)