Hilaire Belloc, the man and his workMandell, C. Creighton
History
Hilaire Belloc, the man and his work
Mandell, C. Creighton
Belloc, Hilaire, 1870-1953 -- Criticism and interpretation
We cannot here analyse this book in any detail, nor would its framework
bear so pedantic an insistence. The writer describes how, sitting in an
inn just within the Kentish borders of Sussex he determined to walk
across the county, admiring it by the way, and so to find his own home.
He is joined on the road by three companions, Grizzlebeard, the Sailor,
and the Poet. It would be stupid, the act of a Prussian professor, to
seek for allegories in these figures, who are described and moulded with
a quite human humour. The supernatural touch given to them in the last
pages of the book, the faint mystic flavour which clings to them from
the beginning and marks them as being just more than companions of
flesh, these things are indicated with so delicate a hand, so
reticently, that to analyse the method would be destruction--for the
writers at least.
The book should be, by rights, described as "an extraordinary medley."
As a matter of fact, it is not. Mr. Belloc gives it, as sub-title, the
description "A Farrago," but we are not very clear what that means. It
contains all manner of stuff from an excellent drinking song, an
excellent marching song (which has now seen service), and a first-rate
song about religion to the story of St. Dunstan and the Devil and an
account of Mr. Justice Honeybubbe's Decision. But all this is strung
together with such a curious tact on the string of the journey across
Sussex that the miscellaneous materials make one coherent composition.
The recurrent landscapes which mark the progress of that journey are
slight but exquisite. Take this one example, describing the gap of
Arundel, just below Amberley:
... The rain began to fall again out of heaven, but we had come to
such a height of land that the rain and the veils of it did but add
to the beauty of all we saw, and the sky and the earth together
were not like November, but like April, and filled us with wonder.
At this place the flat water-meadows, the same that are flooded
and turned to a lake in mid-winter, stretch out a sort of scene or
stage, whereupon can be planted the grandeur of the Downs, and one
looks athwart that flat from a high place upon the shoulder of
Rockham Mount to the broken land, the sand hills, and the pines,
the ridge of Egdean side, the uplifted heaths and commons which
flank the last of the hills all the way until one comes to the
Hampshire border, beyond which there is nothing. This is the
foreground of the gap of Arundel, a district of the Downs so made
than when one sees it one knows at once that here is a jewel for
which the whole County of Sussex was made and the ornament worthy
of so rare a setting. And beyond Arun, straight over the flat,
where the line against the sky is highest, the hills I saw were the
hills of home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account