On Nothing and Kindred Subjects | Page 6

GETTING RESPECTED IN INNS AND HOTELS
To begin at the beginning is, next to ending at the end, the whole art of
writing; as for the middle you may fill it in with any rubble that you
choose. But the beginning and the end, like the strong stone outer walls
of mediaeval buildings, contain and define the whole.
And there is more than this: since writing is a human and a living art,
the beginning being the motive and the end the object of the work, each
inspires it; each runs through organically, and the two between them
give life to what you do.
So I will begin at the beginning and I will lay down this first principle,
that religion and the full meaning of things has nowhere more
disappeared from the modern world than in the department of Guide
Books.
For a Guide Book will tell you always what are the principal and most
vulgar sights of a town; what mountains are most difficult to climb, and,

invariably, the exact distances between one place and another. But
these things do not serve the End of Man. The end of man is Happiness,
and how much happier are you with such a knowledge? Now there are
some Guide Books which do make little excursions now and then into
the important things, which tell you (for instance) what kind of cooking
you will find in what places, what kind of wine in countries where this
beverage is publicly known, and even a few, more daring than the rest,
will give a hint or two upon hiring mules, and upon the way that a
bargain should be conducted, or how to fight.
But with all this even the best of them do not go to the moral heart of
the matter. They do not give you a hint or an idea of that which is
surely the basis of all happiness in travel. I mean, the art of gaining
respect in the places where you stay. Unless that respect is paid you
you are more miserable by far than if you had stayed at home, and I
would ask anyone who reads this whether he can remember one single
journey of his which was not marred by the evident contempt which the
servants and the owners of taverns showed for him wherever he went?
It is therefore of the first importance, much more important than any
question of price or distance, to know something of this art; it is not
difficult to learn, moreover it is so little exploited that if you will but
learn it you will have a sense of privilege and of upstanding among
your fellows worth all the holidays which were ever taken in the world.
Of this Respect which we seek, out of so many human pleasures, a
facile, and a very false, interpretation is that it is the privilege of the
rich, and I even knew one poor fellow who forged a cheque and went to
gaol in his desire to impress the host of the "Spotted Dog," near
Barnard Castle. It was an error in him, as it is in all who so imagine.
The rich in their degree fall under this contempt as heavily as any, and
there is no wealth that can purchase the true awe which it should be
your aim to receive from waiters, serving-wenches, boot-blacks, and
publicans.
I knew a man once who set out walking from Oxford to
Stow-in-the-Wold, from Stow-in-the-Wold to Cheltenham, from
Cheltenham to Ledbury, from Ledbury to Hereford, from Hereford to
New Rhayader (where the Cobbler lives), and from New Rhayader to
the end of the world which lies a little west and north of that place, and
all the way he slept rough under hedges and in stacks, or by day in open

fields, so terrified was he at the thought of the contempt that awaited
him should he pay for a bed. And I knew another man who walked
from York to Thirsk, and from Thirsk to Darlington, and from
Darlington to Durham, and so on up to the border and over it, and all
the way he pretended to be extremely poor so that he might be certain
the contempt he received was due to nothing of his own, but to his
clothes only: but this was an indifferent way of escaping, for it got him
into many fights with miners, and he was arrested by the police in
Lanchester; and at Jedburgh, where his money did really fail him, he
had to walk all through the night, finding that no one would take in
such a tatterdemalion. The thing could be done much more cheaply
than that, and much more respectably, and you can acquire with but
little practice one of many ways