Essay by GKC

VIII

The End of the World

For some time I had been wandering in quiet streets in the curious
town of Besançon, which stands like a sort of peninsula
in a horse-shoe of river. You may learn from the guide books
that it was the birthplace of Victor Hugo, and that it is
a military station with many forts, near the French frontier.
But you will not learn from guide books that the very tiles
on the roofs seem to be of some quainter and more delicate
colour than the tiles of all the other towns of the world;
that the tiles look like the little clouds of some strange sunset,
or like the lustrous scales of some strange fish. They will not
tell you that in this town the eye cannot rest on anything without
finding it in some way attractive and even elvish, a carved face
at a street corner, a gleam of green fields through a stunted arch,
or some unexpected colour for the enamel of a spire or dome.

. . . . .

Evening was coming on and in the light of it all these colours
so simple and yet so subtle seemed more and more to fit together
and make a fairy tale. I sat down for a little outside a café
with a row of little toy trees in front of it, and presently
the driver of a fly (as we should call it) came to the same place.
He was one of those very large and dark Frenchmen, a type not
common but yet typical of France; the Rabelaisian Frenchman,
huge, swarthy, purple-faced, a walking wine-barrel; he was a sort
of Southern Falstaff, if one can imagine Falstaff anything but English.
And, indeed, there was a vital difference, typical of two nations.
For while Falstaff would have been shaking with hilarity like
a huge jelly, full of the broad farce of the London streets,
this Frenchman was rather solemn and dignified than otherwise--
as if pleasure were a kind of pagan religion. After some
talk which was full of the admirable civility and equality
of French civilisation, he suggested without either eagerness
or embarrassment that he should take me in his fly for an hour's
ride in the hills beyond the town. And though it was growing late
I consented; for there was one long white road under an archway
and round a hill that dragged me like a long white cord.
We drove through the strong, squat gateway that was made by Romans,
and I remember the coincidence like a sort of omen that as we
passed out of the city I heard simultaneously the three sounds
which are the trinity of France. They make what some poet calls
"a tangled trinity," and I am not going to disentangle it.
Whatever those three things mean, how or why they co-exist;
whether they can be reconciled or perhaps are reconciled already;
the three sounds I heard then by an accident all at once make up
the French mystery. For the brass band in the Casino gardens behind
me was playing with a sort of passionate levity some ramping tune
from a Parisian comic opera, and while this was going on I heard
also the bugles on the hills above, that told of terrible loyalties
and men always arming in the gate of France; and I heard also,
fainter than these sounds and through them all, the Angelus.

. . . . .

After this coincidence of symbols I had a curious sense of having
left France behind me, or, perhaps, even the civilised world.
And, indeed, there was something in the landscape wild
enough to encourage such a fancy. I have seen perhaps
higher mountains, but I have never seen higher rocks;
I have never seen height so near, so abrupt and sensational,
splinters of rock that stood up like the spires of churches,
cliffs that fell sudden and straight as Satan fell from heaven.
There was also a quality in the ride which was not only astonishing,
but rather bewildering; a quality which many must have noticed
if they have driven or ridden rapidly up mountain roads.
I mean a sense of gigantic gyration, as of the whole
earth turning about one's head. It is quite inadequate
to say that the hills rose and fell like enormous waves.
Rather the hills seemed to turn about me like the enormous sails
of a windmill, a vast wheel of monstrous archangelic wings.
As we drove on and up into the gathering purple of the sunset this
dizziness increased, confounding things above with things below.
Wide walls of wooded rock stood out above my head like a roof.
I stared at them until I fancied that I was staring down at a
wooded plain. Below me steeps of green swept down to the river.
I stared at them until I fancied that they swept up to the sky.
The purple darkened, night drew nearer; it seemed only to cut clearer
the chasms and draw higher the spires of that nightmare landscape.
Above me in the twilight was the huge black hulk of the driver,
and his broad, blank back was as mysterious as the back
of Death in Watts' picture. I felt that I was growing
too fantastic, and I sought to speak of ordinary things.
I called out to the driver in French, "Where are you taking me?"
and it is a literal and solemn fact that he answered me in the same
language without turning around, "To the end of the world."

I did not answer. I let him drag the vehicle up dark,
steep ways, until I saw lights under a low roof of little
trees and two children, one oddly beautiful, playing at ball.
Then we found ourselves filling up the strict main street
of a tiny hamlet, and across the wall of its inn was written
in large letters, LE BOUT DU MONDE--the end of the world.

The driver and I sat down outside that inn without a word, as if all
ceremonies were natural and understood in that ultimate place.
I ordered bread for both of us, and red wine, that was good but
had no name. On the other side of the road was a little plain
church with a cross on top of it and a cock on top of the cross.
This seemed to me a very good end of the world; if the story
of the world ended here it ended well. Then I wondered whether I
myself should really be content to end here, where most certainly
there were the best things of Christendom--a church and children's
games and decent soil and a tavern for men to talk with men.
But as I thought a singular doubt and desire grew slowly in me,
and at last I started up.

"Are you not satisfied?" asked my companion. "No," I said,
"I am not satisfied even at the end of the world."

Then, after a silence, I said, "Because you see there are two
ends of the world. And this is the wrong end of the world;
at least the wrong one for me. This is the French end of the world.
I want the other end of the world. Drive me to the other end
of the world."

"The other end of the world?" he asked. "Where is that?"

"It is in Walham Green," I whispered hoarsely. "You see it
on the London omnibuses. 'World's End and Walham Green.'
Oh, I know how good this is; I love your vineyards and your
free peasantry, but I want the English end of the world.
I love you like a brother, but I want an English cabman,
who will be funny and ask me what his fare 'is.' Your bugles
stir my blood, but I want to see a London policeman.
Take, oh, take me to see a London policeman."

He stood quite dark and still against the end of the sunset,
and I could not tell whether he understood or not. I got back
into his carriage.

"You will understand," I said, "if ever you are an exile even
for pleasure. The child to his mother, the man to his country,
as a countryman of yours once said. But since, perhaps, it is
rather too long a drive to the English end of the world,
we may as well drive back to Besançon."

Only as the stars came out among those immortal hills I wept
for Walham Green.




And here is what Dr. Overkamp and Mr. Overkamp and I found out in our discussion on Monday:

Significant themes:

Patriotism + Love of common things
1. Even in the best place in France, GK wants to go back to England because it is home.
2. The French landscape is portrayed as fantastic and slightly eerie, heightening the sense of familliar national significance that England would have had for him.
3. The familliarity with England is heightened by the things he wants from it: they are all common, even boring things (Dr. Overkamp speculated that Walham Green is a rundown London neighborhood.

Sense of Place
1. Unique description of France: the unusual descriptions of roof tiles and sunset and landscape.