Euan Lawson
The Gentle Art of Tramping by Stephen Graham
It may be approaching the centenary since its publication but this small hardback book from 1926 is a treat. One shouldn’t place aesthetics over content when it comes to a book but Bloomsbury have got the package just right. The woodcut style cover and the heft of the hardback amplify the wonderfully rebellious nature of the content. It is, quietly, subversive and if you are ever struck with a smouldering desire to get outdoors then Graham will rekindle your fire.
Here are selected quotes from The Gentle Art of Tramping°:
“The tramp is a friend of society; he is a seeker, he pays his way if he can. One includes in the category ‘tramp’ all true Bohemians, pilgrims, explorers afoot, walking tourists and the like. Tramping is a way of approach, to Nature, to your fellow man, to a nation, to a foreign nation, to beauty, to life itself. And it is an art, because you do not get into the spirit of it directly — you leave your back door and make for the distant hill. There is much to learn, there are illusions to be overcome. There are prejudices and habits to be shaken off.”
“From day to day you keep your log, your daybook of the soul, and you may think at first that is a mere record of travel and facts; but something else will be entering into it — poetry — the new poetry of your life, and it will be evident to a seeing eye that you are gradually becoming an artist in life.”
“Of all tramping the most delightful is in the mountains; the most trying is along great highways.
“Mountain walking is really much less tiring because: first of all, there is no dust, then there is more contrast and mental distraction, and last, not least, one’s feet hit the earth at varying angles, employing more muscles.”
“The freedom of speech and action and judgement it gives you will breed that boldness of bearing which, after all, is better than mere good manners.”
“The less you carry the more you will see, the less you spend the more your will experience.”
“The best companions are those who make you freest. They teach you the art of life by their readiness to accommodate themselves.”
“For tramping is the grammar of living. Few people learn the grammar — but it is worthwhile.”
On Tthe Trespassers’ Walk: “It takes you the most extraordinary way, and shows what an enormous amount of the face of the earth is kept away from the feet of ordinary humanity by the fact of ‘private property.’
“The world is large enough, or is only too small, as takes your fancy or speaks your experience. But blue sky by day and fretted vault of heaven by night gives you the foil of the infinite, making your petty exploit a brave adventure.”
“Life is a like a road; you hurry, and the end of it is grave.”
“Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son and Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day are of little value to us. We will not read in our baths, nor memorise French verbs while we fry. Or we will, if we like, but not upon the compulsion of filling time.”
“Tramping is straying from the obvious. Even the crookedest road is sometimes too straight. You learn that it is artificial, that originally it was not made for mere tramping. Roads were made for armies and then for slaves and labourers, and for ‘transport’. Few have been made for pleasure.
“After a long tramp it is nice to see a book which has been clothed with pencillings. It records in a way the spiritual life of the adventure, and will recall it to you when in later years you turn over the page again.”
“It is well to take a book that you do not quite understand, one that you have nibbled at but have found difficult.”
“So also man’s life. We think of it in length of years. But that in a way is an error. Life is not length of time, but breadth of human experience.”
“Self-expression is life.”
“A thought recorded, one that is your own, written down the day when it occurred, is a mental snapshot, and is at least as valuable at the photographs you may take on your journey.”
“Yesterday’s thought is worth considering again, if only as the stepping-stone of your dead self.”
“The personal diary, however, that daybook of the soul, is not meant for other gaze.”
“It is in description tht the keeper of a diary becomes artist. All description is art, and in describing an event, an action or a being, you enter to some extent into the joy of art.”
“You are more than the mere secretary of life, patiently taking down from dictation, more than life’s mere scribe; you become its singer, the expressor of the glory of it.”
“No farmer objects to your walking alongside his corn fields or across his pastures. It is people who enclose but do not farm who have most prejudice against strangers.”
“It will soon strike you when tramping that the word infinite does not always mean the same: there are grades in infinity and measures of the immeasurable.”