The Riddle of the Ivy
More than a month ago, when I was leaving London for
a holiday, a friend walked into my flat in Battersea
and found me surrounded with half-packed luggage.
“You seem to be off on your travels,”
he said. “Where are you going?”
With a strap between my teeth I replied, “To
Battersea.”
“The wit of your remark,” he said, “wholly
escapes me.”
“I am going to Battersea,” I repeated,
“to Battersea via Paris, Belfort, Heidelberg,
and Frankfort. My remark contained no wit.
It contained simply the truth. I am going to
wander over the whole world until once more I find
Battersea. Somewhere in the seas of sunset or
of sunrise, somewhere in the ultimate archipelago
of the earth, there is one little island which I wish
to find: an island with low green hills and great
white cliffs. Travellers tell me that it is called
England (Scotch travellers tell me that it is called
Britain), and there is a rumour that somewhere in
the heart of it there is a beautiful place called
Battersea.”
“I suppose it is unnecessary to tell you,”
said my friend, with an air of intellectual comparison,
“that this is Battersea?”
“It is quite unnecessary,” I said, “and
it is spiritually untrue. I cannot see any Battersea
here; I cannot see any London or any England.
I cannot see that door. I cannot see that chair:
because a cloud of sleep and custom has come across
my eyes. The only way to get back to them is
to go somewhere else; and that is the real object
of travel and the real pleasure of holidays.
Do you suppose that I go to France in order to see
France? Do you suppose that I go to Germany
in order to see Germany? I shall enjoy them both;
but it is not them that I am seeking. I am seeking
Battersea. The whole object of travel is not
to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set
foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.
Now I warn you that this Gladstone bag is compact and
heavy, and that if you utter that word ‘paradox’
I shall hurl it at your head. I did not make
the world, and I did not make it paradoxical.
It is not my fault, it is the truth, that the only
way to go to England is to go away from it.”
But when, after only a month’s travelling, I
did come back to England, I was startled to find that
I had told the exact truth. England did break
on me at once beautifully new and beautifully old.
To land at Dover is the right way to approach England
(most things that are hackneyed are right), for then
you see first the full, soft gardens of Kent, which
are, perhaps, an exaggeration, but still a typical
exaggeration, of the rich rusticity of England.
As it happened, also, a fellow-traveller with whom
I had fallen into conversation felt the same freshness,
though for another cause. She was an American
lady who had seen Europe, and had never yet seen England,
and she expressed her enthusiasm in that simple and
splendid way which is natural to Americans, who are
the most idealistic people in the whole world.
Their only danger is that the idealist can easily become
the idolator. And the American has become so
idealistic that he even idealises money. But
(to quote a very able writer of American short stories)
that is another story.
