Walking through the centuries

Press, 24 April 1987, Page 19

Walking through the centuries

Walken. By Miles Jebb. Constable, 1986. 198 pp. Index. $53.88. (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley)

“I have two doctors, my left leg and my right” is the brief and positive sentence which opens Leslie Stephens* “Essay on Walking.” One could describe this book as an expansion of the statement for it is a celebration of the pleasures of walking. All forms of walking are extolled in these pages; the long hard tramp, the gentle stroll, the ramble to gaze on natural sights, the lengthy journey from one land to another, even the honeymoon tramp. “Be sure to take a double sleeping bag and not to be too disconcerted if the cold wet nose of a hedgehog touching your beloved’s cheek may cause her to rend the air with a shriek,” advises Stephen Graham in "The Gentle Art of Tramping” published in the early years of this century. Miles Jebb has collected an amazing amount of material for his book from a wide variety of sources. It is full of fascinating snippets of information. Keats’ “Ode to Autumn” was written one evening in Winchester after a day’s walk in the beautiful Itchen valley. Belloc’s masterpiece “The Path to Rome,” describing his walk across Europe from London to the Eternal City, was the result of a sudden and

seemingly irresponsible decision by an impecunious man with a wife and

baby to support Obviously there had to be some classification of this material, if only for the purposes of chapter headings, but the divisions he has made, Pilgrims, Tourers, Romantics, Intellectuals, and so on, often seem forced and arbitrary. Some stroll comfortably together; Rousseau, the Wordsworths, Keats, Heine and Balzac fill the Romantic chapter compatibly. But other chapters present ill-assorted companions. A straight chronological record may well have been simpler for the author to manage and much easier for the reader to assimilate. Several of the chapters are confused and muddled. The very first one, entitled “Pilgrims,” deals briefly with the great pilgrim routes of the Middle Ages, describes some individual walkers of the seventeenth century who could only loosely be described as pilgrims, and finishes with a resume of Christian’s

journey in “Pilgrim’s Progress.” And at the end the appendix on Warriors is inappropriate and skimpy. The astonishing achievements of the infantry in armies throughout the

centuries needs a whole book rather than five hastily added pages.

The author has a habit of summarising many of the books he refers to — a habit which is irritating when one knows the book well. None of the charm of Robert Louis Stevenson’s "Travels with a Donkey,” seems to be captured by Mr Jebb’s retelling of it It can, however, prompt the reader to explore the literature of walking more fully and Patrick Leigh Pernor’s “A Time of Gifts,” is now on my reading list for the future. “Walkers” is anecdotal, slightly muddled, but never boring. It contains a good deal of evidence to support Tolstoy, who wrote, "By a long series of doubts, searchings, and reflection, I have reached the extraordinary truth that man has eyes in order to see, ears in order to hear, legs in order to walk, and hands and a back to work with, and that if he does not use them for their natural purpose it will be the worse for him.”

Interesting it certainly is, but whether anyone is prepared to pay the huge price of $53.88 for a fairly plainly produced collection of walkers’ tales remains to be seen.