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DUNCAN MINSHULL – Introduction – S oon into Sauntering comes Mr Hackman, mov- ing sketchily across a single page. Little is known of him, where he is heading for, or if he is open to foreign experiences circa the 1790s; and he makes only a sole utterance ‘I never look up’. At anything, it seems, for several years, whilst walking the length and breadth of Europe. But his words work in one way – they serve as a prompt, to select accounts of the ‘Continent’ being traversed by figures quite unlike this one. The pedestrian writers ahead do look up, and do look down, for on foot we connect with the world. The world comes our way. And our senses sharpen: the sights, the sounds, and the aromas; everything heightened, everything felt. So when Petrarch the poet climbs Mount Ventoux in Southern France (and pens the first pedestrian piece in 1350), it is the views that keep him going rather than any notions of glory or moral rectitude. He becomes elated by what’s close at hand and what’s seen from afar – ‘under our eyes flowed the Rhone’. Then Lyons is outlined . . . the bay of ­Marseilles . . . the shores of Aigues-Morte . . . Western Europe begins to unfold. Isn’t this landmass embedded in all our minds? xiv
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To be climbed: the famous mountain ranges, like spines. To be trailed: the rivers, lakes and deltas, like arteries. Fields and forests shall be crossed. City pavements trod. And drawing closer, a multitude of buildings and boulevards, parks and people, get the steady gaze, giving rise to joy, curiosity, and bemusement – as if all the responses can be trotted out with ease! Mr Hackman fails to look up, nor does he reveal his travelling credentials. Grand Tourer or itinerant ex-soldier? Lost explorer or ex-pat author? A few of the latter wander through Sauntering; usually ­British or American, they want to walk their versions of Abroad into existence, regale us with responses aesthetic and soulful – their lives of leisure and privilege prevail. Still, I like Edith Wharton’s recall of exotic Sicily (brushing against plant-life ‘dripping’ and ‘glaucus’) and her idea that stepping forward triggers a mental leap backwards, near Syracuse. And it’s fun following the Chevalier de Latocnaye in Ireland, a French dandy sporting an ‘umbrella stick’, who tells a story at every turn of the road. One of the best describes the lost palace of Dondorlas with its fantastical ‘flying dishes’. Wharton and the Chevalier walk well, lots of leisure seekers do not. They over-praise the picturesque and often compare European life with their lives at home. Windy, knickerbockered men of Empire typify the trend, including William xv

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DUNCAN MINSHULL

– Introduction –

S oon into Sauntering comes Mr Hackman, mov- ing sketchily across a single page. Little is known of him, where he is heading for, or if he is open to foreign experiences circa the 1790s; and he makes only a sole utterance ‘I never look up’. At anything, it seems, for several years, whilst walking the length and breadth of Europe. But his words work in one way – they serve as a prompt, to select accounts of the ‘Continent’ being traversed by figures quite unlike this one. The pedestrian writers ahead do look up, and do look down, for on foot we connect with the world. The world comes our way. And our senses sharpen: the sights, the sounds, and the aromas; everything heightened, everything felt. So when Petrarch the poet climbs Mount Ventoux in Southern France (and pens the first pedestrian piece in 1350), it is the views that keep him going rather than any notions of glory or moral rectitude. He becomes elated by what’s close at hand and what’s seen from afar – ‘under our eyes flowed the Rhone’. Then Lyons is outlined . . . the bay of ­Marseilles . . . the shores of Aigues-Morte . . . Western Europe begins to unfold.

Isn’t this landmass embedded in all our minds?

xiv

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