English Journeys The Clouded Mirror

by L.T.C. Rolt

A beautiful evocation of the peaceful life on the English waterways.

Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

128 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 1, 2009

About the author

Lionel Thomas Caswall Rolt (usually abbreviated to Tom Rolt or L.T.C. Rolt) was a prolific English writer and the biographer of major civil engineering figures including Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Telford. He is also regarded as one of the pioneers of the leisure cruising industry on Britain's inland waterways, and as an enthusiast for both vintage cars and heritage railways.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Quentin Crisp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will start by pasting here my in-progress report from after reading the first essay:

"The first, eponymous, essay of the three essays in this book, relates to the country around the Welsh border - particularly to the Black Mountains - and to two very similar and interesting writers who lived one on either side of these mountains. Those writers are Henry Vaughan and Thomas Traherne. Arthur Machen is also mentioned, and the author of this volume was, with Robert Aickman, co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association.

"This book was a serendipitous find for me. I had heard of the author through an interview with contemporary author P.F. Jeffery, and then, about a week ago, discovered this volume on the shelves of my favourite bookshop, which is now, sadly, closing down"

The second essay, 'Kilvert's Country', in some ways recapitulates the first. Arthur Machen is mentioned again. Henry Vaughan is mentioned again, and so is Thomas Traherne. It also deals with the same geographical area. But the emphasis now is more on diarist Francis Kilvert (another local to the area), and Rolt's own childhood in the country common to all these.

The third and longest essay, 'Canal Crusade', breaks this pattern, describing part of the author's mission to rehabilitate the waterways of Britain in the post-war period, and especially a trip made by canal in the attempt to "pilot Cressy [his canal boat] over Telford's great aqueduct across the Vale of Llangollen at Pont Cysyllte". The point being, in this case, that this section of the country's waterways was long disused, and, in fact, there was no "statutory right of navigation" for its use at that time, meaning Rolt was navigating that section of the waterways at his own risk.

As a narrative, it is not high on suspense, but I won't tell you how it ends.

I am aware of two (seemingly quite opposite) uses for the word "discursive" in relation to essays. A quick search online gives the following:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/def...

"1. Digressing from subject to subject".

Which has a subset of:

"1.1. (Of a style of speech or writing) fluent and expansive".

And then there is:

"3. Philosophy, archaic Proceeding by argument or reasoning rather than by intuition."

So, these essays are discursive in the sense given by 1 and 1.1 above, not by 3.

I might be straining things somewhat by saying this is a form of essay especially popular in Japanese literature, where is is called "zuihitsu" or "following the brush". (This could also be translated as 'writing whatever comes into your head', though it is not quite stream-of-consciousness.)

Here is a typical passage from this book:

"We spent the next night at the head of Baddiley top lock, and at 6 p.m. on the evening of the day following we moored in Nantwich Basin where we were able to relieve Mrs Livock of her car load of fuel and ballast. We celebrated victory that night with a protracted and memorable dinner as the 'Crown Hotel' in Nantwich. Everyone was in high good humour, for there is nothing to equal the power of an episode of this kind as a generator of friendship and fellow-feeling."

Is there value or pleasure in reading of other people's pleasure outside of the framework of some kind of Freytag's pyramid lending dramatic significance?

I would suggest that, yes, there is some. I would also say that this is comparable to reading descriptions of landscape. In some ways, reading about landscape can be more satisfying than actually being there and seeing it (though I would say that the former is contingent upon experiences of the latter). In Greek theatre there is a catharsis of fear, pity and other 'negative' emotions, but can there also be a kind of catharsis of pleasant emotions? I would suggest that words are capable of just such a catharsis, giving us a sense of consummating an experience.

Here is a line about landscape, from the first essay:

"It was a world full of colour and of fragrance, of sheltered, drowsy warmth, of the hum of insects and the bleat of distant sheep and of the sound of rushing water where the Honddu fell from leaf-dappled sunlight into cool shade."

See how the last clause, from "fell" completes the aesthetic effect. Being at such a scene, we might be tantalised by the ephemerality of our experience. A description of the scene in words gives the sense that we have somehow bottled the infinite.

Returning to Japan, there is a word in current usage there, 'iyashi-kei', which is applied to anything meant to soothe and relax. The concept is described here, at TV Tropes:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...

"Nothing really happens, but in a really good way."

If there is a British equivalent of this then it must be something like the slightly fusty summer-hols memoir, the country diary, or the inconsequential travelogue. This strain of literature, in fact, is much more prominent in the Japanese tradition - diary and notebook from the likes of Sei Shonagon, travelogue from Basho, and so on.

The British version differs from the Japanese, I would suggest, in the train-spotterish love of technical details and obscure nooks of local history, of poring over musty old maritime ledgers and rolling up one's sleeves (mentally or literally) to engage in a work of hydraulic engineering.

Ultimately, this is light reading, but pleasant, and not without its memorable passages. There is an interesting mixture of the mystical, the pastoral and, in the form of details concerning railways and waterways, the technical.

This is a book for people who think obscure place names are, in themselves, poetry - Cusop Dingle, Grindley Brook, Gayton Arm End - and all the quotidian picnic of incident and object that occupy such places in very particular times that will never return.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up from a charity shop, I'm not exactly sure why, but it interested me.

The first half of the book goes over many parts of the countryside where the author grew up, whilst also explaining a lot of background information and history that I found really interesting.

The second part, detailing the author's canal boat trip, was also interesting, but didn't catch my attention nearly as much, with less focus on description and more focus on a summary of the journey.

[Ian Hampton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The piece on the Cressy was particularly interesting

[Chi -Yan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short, sweet and decent for purposes of escapism.