Along the Road: Notes and Essays of a Tourist PDF
Preview Along the Road: Notes and Essays of a Tourist
ALONG THE ROAD by ALDOUS HUXLEY By ALDOUS HUXLEY J.Vo'vcls Cr!O:\!E "i'EllOW A:-TIC HAY THOSE BAIUtES' LEAVES * POf~T COL"~'TER POIST BR.A\.E !-i'EW WORLD EYELESS IS GAZA AFTER MA:-iY A SUM~!ER Tl~IE ~l<'ST HAVE A STO? S/:ort Stories UMBO* ~IORTAL COILS LITTLE MEXlCA.'i TWO OR TiiREE GR.'i.CES BRIEF CA...,DLES Biography , GREY EMI1""ENCE Essays and Belles Lettru ON THE MARGIN* ALO:SG TiiE ROAD PROPER STt."DIES DO WHAT YOU WILL MUSIC AT NIGHT & \"ULGARITY IN UTERATURE TEXTS A:-iD PRETEXTS (Anthology) THE OLIVE TREE* E:-.os A...,D MEANS (An Enquiry into the Nature of Ideals) * THE ART OF SEEING TiiE PERE!'.'NIAL PHILOSOPHY SCIENCE, LIBERTY A."lo"D PEACE Travel JESTING PILATE (Illustrated) * BEYO:-1D THE MEXIQt/E BAY (Illustrated) Poetry and Drama ~"ERSES AND A COMEDY* (including early poems, Leda, The Cicadas and The World of Light, a Comedy) * Issued in this Collected Edition 2 ALDOUS HUXLEY .A.long the F\.oaci <....__.J Notes and Essays of a Tourist 1948 Chatto & Windus LONDON PUBLISHED BY Chatto & Windus L0:-00::-l. * Oxford University Press TORO:-.TO A;:plications regarding translation rights in any v:ork by Aldous Huxley should he addressed to Chatto & Windus, 40 William IV Street, London, W.C. 2 ----~=----- ,/4 ~e,?7 ----~-------·· No F S" FIRST PL'BLISHED 1925 FIRST ISSUED IN THIS COLLECTED EDITION 1948 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS un PA RT I TRAVEL IN GENERAL Why not Stay at Home ? p. 3 Wander-'Birds 15 'Ihe Traveller's-Eye //iew 25 Guide-'Books 37 Spectacles 49 The Country 54 'Books for the Journey 64 PAR.T 11 PLACES Montesenario 75 Patinir's River 81 Portoferraio 84 'Ihe Palio at,$iSQ,a 88 Views of Holland 104 Sabhioneta II6 PART III WORK'S OF ART CSreughel 133 Rimini and Alberti 153 Conxolus 166 The 'Best Picture 177 The Pierian Spring 190 vu ALOl\'G THE RO:\D PART IV BY THE WAY A Xight at Pietramala JVr;rk and Leisure Popular Jl1usic 'The .J1ystery of the 'Theatre viii Part I TRAVEL IN GENERAL WHY NOT STAY AT HOME? SoME people travel on busin_ess, some in search of health. But it is neither the sickly nor the " men of affairs who fill the Grand Hotels. and the pockets of their proprietors. It is those who travel ' for pleasure,' as the phrase goes. What Epicurus, who never travelled except when he was banished, sought in his own gar den, our tourists seek abroad. And do they find their happiness? Those who frequent the places where they resort must often find this question, with. a tentative answer in the negative, fairly forced upon them. For tourists are, in the main, a very gloomy-looking tribe. I have seen much brighter faces at a funeral than in the Piazza of St. Mark's. Only when they ~n band together and pretend, for a brief, precarious hour, that they are at home, do the majority of tourists look really happy. One wonders why they come abroad. The fact is that very few travellers really like travelling. If they go to the trouble and expense of travelling, it is not so much from curiosity, for fun, or because they like ~o see things beauti ful and strange, as out of a kind of snobbery. People travel for the same reason as they coll~ 3 ALONG THE ROAD works of art: because the best people do it. To have been to certain spots on the earth's surface is socially correct; and having been there, one is superior to those who have not. Moreover, travelling gives one something to talk about when one gets home. The subjects of conversation are not so numerous that one can neglect an oppor tunity of adding to one's store. To justify this snobbery, a series of myths has gradually been elaborated. The places which it is socially smart to have visited are aureoled with glamour, till they are made to appear, for those who have not been there, like so many fabled Babylons or Bagdads. Those who have travelled have a personal interest in cultivating and disseminating these fables. For if Paris and Monte Carlo are really so marvellous as it is generally supposed, by the inhabitants of Bradford or Milwaukee, ofTomsk and Bergen, that they are--why, then, the merit of the travellers who have actually visited these places is the greii:ter, and their superiority over the stay-at-homes the more enormous. It is for this reason (and be cause they pay the hotel proprietors and ·the steamship companies) that the fables are studi ously kept alive. Few things are more pathetic than the ·spec- 4 WHY NOT STAY AT HOME? tacle of inexperienced travellers, brought up on these myths, desperately doing their best to make external reality square with fable. It is for the sake of the myths and, less consciously, in the name of snobbery that they left their homes ; to admit disappointment in the reality would be to admit thei'i· own foolishness in having believed the fables and would detract from their merit in having undertaken the pilgrimage. Out of the hundreds of thousands of Anglo-Saxons who frequent the night-clubs and dancing-saloons of Paris, there are a good many, no doubt, who genuinely like that sort of thing. But there are also very many who do not. In their hearts, secretly, they are bored and a little iiisgusted. But they have been brought up to beHeve in a fabulous 'Gay Paree,' where everything is de liriously exciting and where alone it is possible to see what is technically known as Life. Con scientiously, therefore, they strive, when they come to Paris, to be gay. Night after night the dance halls and the bordellos are thronged by serious young compatriots of Emerson and Matthew Arnold, earnestly engaged in trying to see life, neither very steadily nor whole, through the ever-thickening mists of Heidsieck and Roederer. 5
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