My Country Lane and My Critics

The Weekly Machen

As the title suggests, the following article is a response from Arthur Machen to some criticism he received due to a previous story. Unfortunately, that original column, “A Country Lane in August,” (8/22/1916) has so far avoided my grasp. However, Machen provides plenty of context. It is likely that he was inspired to pen his thoughts on the sad shape of a country lane in Pembrokeshire, Wales after returning from holiday. He often spent time in this region, which helped inspire The Great Return, The Terror and Out of the Earth. The argument Machen makes is beautifully articulated through his grand style.

The following article is not listed in the bibliography by Goldstone and Sweetser.

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My Country Lane and My Critics
by
Arthur Machen
August 31, 1916

About a week ago I wrote in The Evening News concerning the honour and dishonour of country lanes and by-roads; more especially as to the evil fortune that had befallen a certain special and very choice lane in the county of Pembroke, far in West Wales.

I spoke of hot August days, of a sun flaming in a vault of luminous blue, and of that which an honest man expects when he turns into a byroad in the heat of summer weather—a winding way to suit his mood of careless leisure, trees arching overhead to shut out the midday fires, deep banks, a multitude of hedgerow ferns and flowers, the trickling of cold water, welling from the heart of the rock; rich, delicious greenery, everywhere a world of delight for humble hearts.

Then I told of what I found in fact, since the “march of mind” (in Peacock’s phrase) had invaded the roads of the West Country. Every corner had been planed away, the intercurving trees had been cut down, the banks had been so handled that the line had become as like as possible to a railway cutting, all wild growth and greenery had been abolished: one more road to paradise had been closed.

Well, a great many kind people wrote to say that they cordially agreed with me; that they too had observed the marks of this great movement for making pleasant things unpleasant, for substituting dust and glare and grit for shade and coolness and greenness, for destroying all cold wells and places of refreshment everywhere, usually on some shabby utilitarian pretext.

But a friend informs me that there has been at least one voice of protest. He met a man who spoke of the “Country Lane” article, and said to him:—

“What does the fellow want? What does he think a road is for? Does he think that it ought to be a sort of puzzle, full of turnings that lead to nowhere, and sharp corners to kill motors? I think a road ought to be well made, and straight, and level, like the French roads.”

Now this good man, so far as I know, was an excellent Englishman and an unexceptionable patriot; but, for all that, he was speaking on the Prussian side of the great quarrel that is now dividing the earth. The world is now fighting out the cause of the broad road and the winding lane, and I am glad that we are on the right aide. Logically, a road is merely a way of getting from some one place to some other place as quickly as possible. I admit it. But, logically, a house is not a home; it is merely a device to shelter one from the weather. Logically, one would not ask one’s friends to eat and drink with one in goodly fellowship, since a meal is merely an occasion of supplying proteids and carbohydrates to the system. Logically, one would not shake hands, since the custom is meaningless; logically lovers would not kiss, since kissing is not merely meaningless but dangerous; logically one would not look at pictures, or read tales about people who never existed, or listen to Bach; and so forth, and so forth.

But then, carrying out the system thoroughly to its bitter end, we must ask ourselves what are we, logically, to do? We are to go as quickly and as easily as possible from A to B. That is clear. But what are we to do when we get to B? Earn our living? That means the gaining of enough money to buy a sufficiency of proteids and carbohydrates to sustain our systems. And then? Really there seems nothing more. We are to keep alive for the sake of keeping alive. Not that we may be able to drink (occasionally) certain choicer growths of Burgundy, since Gradgrind, who destroyed the old winding, greeny lane, assures us that the merest drop of alcohol is poison. Not that we may eat grouse in their season, since Gradgrind, like Bumble, is assured that from Meat all evils spring. Not that we may be able to enjoy pictures or music, not because there is a noble cathedral at B. If you destroy the humbler beautiful forms that flourish in every hedgerow, if you scourge out the ivy, and destroy the briony, and grub up angelica, and throw the crimson geranium leaf to the rubbish heap, and abolish utterly the perfume of meadowsweet; with what face can you pretend to be interested in the great mystery of Gothic; which is but the hedgerow and the wood and the form of the wayside flower in stone, made enduring by the presence of a great mystery? The cathedral is merely the humble exalted, the perishable made unchanging, the mortal putting on immortality; if you agree with Gradgrind, who ruined the dear, green lane, you can have no part in it.

So it seems to me that if we are to go logically; then, logically, we go to nothing in particular. Our journey by the most level, ordered, unadventurous highway becomes as purposeless as the laziest wandering along the wandering, shady lane. With this difference: that the latter progress is pleasant and delightful, while the former is disagreeable and detestable.

For the sake of keeping alive, to lose all that makes life worth living; so goes the old Latin tag, which seems to me one of the wise sayings of the world. I take the lane in Pembroke for a symbol of this wisdom; I think we are fighting for this wisdom, if we did but know it. We are fighting against the system which would rule the world, literally and metaphorically, in level, rectangular lines; which would crush the wild rose because it is non-productive, and regard the golden glories of the marsh with horror as a symptom of bad drainage. This system of thought is the Prussia within every man against which we are really fighting; it is the enemy which must be destroyed if life is to keep its savour, its sweetness, its significance.

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