'The End of the World'
For some time I had been wandering in quiet streets in the curious town of Besancon, which stands like a sort of peninsular 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 scalers 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 French man, 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
hours 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 the 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 and 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 end 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 Besancon.”
Only as the stars came out among those immortal hills, I wept for Walham Green.
G.K.Chesterton
