Tremendous Trifles

The End of the World

For some time I had been wandering in quiet streets in the curious

town of Besan**, 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 caf

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 c**k 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 Besan***"

Only as the stars came out among those immortal hills I wept

for Walham Green.