The Heart of Nature Part 13

On the first expedition to Mount Everest it may be only possible to send a photographer. But this will be a pioneering expedition to open the way, at least, for the painter. And then we may have Mount Everest pictured in all her varied and ever-varying moods, as I have, from a distance, seen her for three most treasured months. Now serene and majestic; now in a tumult of fury. Now rooted solid on earth; now hung high in the azure. Now hard and material; now ethereal as spirit. Now stern and austere--cold, and white, and grey; now warm and radiant and of every most delicate hue. Now in one aspect, now in its precisely opposite, but always sublime and compelling; always pure and unspotted; and always pointing us starward.

These are the pictures--either by painter or by poet--that we want.

And they can only be painted by one who has himself gone in among the mountains, confronted them squarely, braced himself against them, faced and overcome them--realised their greatness, realised also that great as they are he is greater still.

And this that we want of the greatest natural feature of the Earth is only typical of what this Society should require in regard to all Earth's other features in order to make our Geography complete. As men have pictured the loveliness of England, the fairness of France, the brilliance of Greece, so we want them to picture the s.p.a.ciousness of Arabia, the luxuriance of Brazil, and the sublimity of the Himalaya. For not till that has been done will our Geography be complete. But when that has been accomplished and the quest for Beauty is being pushed to the remotest lands and Earth's farthest corners, even the British schoolboy will love his Geography, and our science will have won its final triumph. At nothing less, then, than the heart of the boy should our Society deign to aim.

AN ADDRESS TO THE UNION SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, DELIVERED ON MARCH 17, 1921.

You have been good enough to leave to me the choice of subject on which to address you this evening, and I have chosen the subject "Natural Beauty and Geography" because I have the honour to hold at present the position of President of the Royal Geographical Society, and am therefore supposed to know something about Geography, and because a love of Natural Beauty is one of the great pa.s.sions of my life.

I believe the two are inseparably connected with one another, and, briefly, the view I want to put before you is this--.that a description of the Natural Beauty of the Earth should be included in Geography.

By Geography we mean a _description_ of the Earth. And we cannot adequately describe the Earth until we have observed it in all its aspects and really know and understand it. And we cannot really understand the Earth until we have entered into her spirit and feel ourselves in harmony with it. But _when_ our spirit is in harmony with the spirit of the Earth we, in that instant, see the Beauty of the Earth. When we are seeing Beauty in the Earth we are understanding the Earth. In describing the Beauty of the Earth we shall be describing something that we really know about it--something of the real nature of the Earth.

For this reason I maintain that Geography should be taken to include a description of the Natural Beauty of the Earth's features. The description of the Earth is not full and complete, and is lacking in its most important particular, when it excludes a description of Natural Beauty, and only includes scientific details about the size and shape of the earth; its configuration; the composition of the crust; the depth, area, and volume of the ocean; the temperature, degree of moisture and pressure of the atmosphere; the height of the mountains; the length, breadth, volume, course, and catchment area of its rivers; the mineral and vegetable products of various regions; the political areas into which it is divided; the relation of the political and commercial activities of the population to the physical character of the features and to the climate. I, of course, acknowledge the importance of all this geographical knowledge. To the historian and the statesman it is essential that he should know the part which a certain mountain range or river or desert has played in human history. A soldier must know with extreme accuracy the configuration of the country over which his army is operating. An engineer must know the exact level and contour of a region over which he has to lay a railway or construct a ca.n.a.l. A merchant must know whether a country produces cotton, tea, and sugar; or wheat, wool, and meat. For all these and others, each for his own particular purpose, we want the kind of information I have described above--that is, what usually goes under the name of Geography. But the point I wish now to urge is that we shall not have plucked the very flower of geographical knowledge until in addition to all this we have a knowledge of the _Beauty_ of the Earth.

Perhaps you will understand me better if I ill.u.s.trate my point. When a dressmaker has to make a dress for a lady she has to measure her with the minutest accuracy. She must gain a knowledge, by careful measurement, of the exact shape and size of the lady's body, its true contour, and the length and breadth of the limbs--just as an engineer must have accurate knowledge of the Earth's surface. And to the dressmaker _as_ a dressmaker knowledge of the lady's beauty has no value whatever. The lady may have the beauty of form of a Venus, but if the dressmaker has only knowledge of that beauty and has not exact measurements she will never be able to make the dress.

But for humanity at large--and, as far as that goes, for the dressmaker herself when she is free of her dressmaking--knowledge of the lady's beauty is the knowledge that really matters. Whether she is twenty-six inches round the waist or only twenty-five matters comparatively little.

Now the Earth I regard as a lady--as dear Mother-Earth. A real living being--live enough, at any rate, to give birth to mankind, to microscopic animalculae first and through them to man. And no one can look at the features of Mother-Earth without recognising her Beauty. It is there staring us in the face. So I cannot conceive why we geographers should confine ourselves to the dressmaker att.i.tude of mind and describe every other characteristic of the Earth except her Beauty. I should have thought that it was the very first thing with which we should have concerned ourselves--that the first duty of those who profess and call themselves geographers should have been to describe the beauty of their Mother-Earth.

Say a visitor from Mars arrived upon the Earth, he would no doubt report on his return that the mountains here were so many thousands of feet high and the seas so many thousands of feet deep, and the area of the land and sea so many thousand square miles; that the productivity of the land in one quarter had had the effect of attracting a large part of the population to that quarter, and the aridity or cold of another portion had had the effect of preventing human settlement there; and that mountains, seas, or deserts confining certain groups of human beings tightly within given areas had had the effect of compacting them into highly organised political bodies. All this and much more geographical knowledge the Martian would bring back to Mars. But his fellow-Martians would tell him that this was all very interesting, but that what they really wanted to know was what the Earth was _like._ They would ask him if he had not some lantern slides of the Earth, some photographs, something which would convey to them an impression of the real character of the Earth. And then at last he would be driven to describe her Beauty.

In the best words he could find he would express the impression which the Earth had made upon him. If he were a painter and if the Martians possess paint, he would paint pictures to express the feelings which a contemplation of the Earth had aroused in him.

That is, he would show them the Beauty of the Earth in her various aspects. Perhaps he might not be able to see as much Beauty in her as we her children see. We may be too partial and see beauties that a stranger may not perceive. On the other hand, he might see beauties that we through being so accustomed to them have never recognised--as men living always within sight of some superb mountain scarcely appreciate its grandeur. Anyhow, he would describe to the Martians whatever he had seen of the Beauty of the Earth, and then at last they would feel that they were really able to know and understand her.

To descend from these celestial spheres and to examine what actually happens among ourselves when we venture into an unknown portion of this globe and seek to know what is there, a chief ingredient in the lure which draws men on to fill up the blank s.p.a.ces in the map is undoubtedly a love of Natural Beauty; and its Natural Beauty is certainly what above everything else regarding that region remains in their memories after it has been explored. It is not _only_ love of Natural Beauty that draws men on. Love of adventure has much to do with it also. Men feel a fearful joy in pitting themselves against stern natural obstacles and being compelled to exert all their physical energy and endurance, and all their wit and nerve and courage, in order to overcome them. The stiffer the obstacle, the more insistent do they feel the call to measure themselves against it. They thrill to the expectation of having their full capacities and faculties drawn out. By some curious natural instinct they seem driven to put themselves into positions where they are forced to exert themselves to the full stretch of their capabilities. This same instinct tells them that they will be never so happy as when they are making the very utmost of themselves and exercising their whole being at its highest pitch. Antic.i.p.ation of their joy in adventure is therefore no small part of the lure which draws men into the unknown. And with it also is ambition to make a name and achieve fame. Some, too, are drawn on by the hope of wealth through finding gold, diamonds, and so on. But from what I have seen of gold and diamond prospectors on the spot in the act of prospecting, I should say it was quite as much love of adventure as covetousness of wealth that drew them into unknown parts. For experience shows them only too often that it is not the prospector but the company promoter and financier who make the money even when the prospector finds the gold or diamonds. Yet prospectors go forward as cheerfully as ever. They are fascinated by the life of adventure.

All this is true. Men delight in sheer adventure and in testing and sharpening themselves against formidable natural obstacles. Yet we shall find that love of Natural Beauty has an even greater share than love of adventure in enticing them to the unknown. Men picture to themselves beauties of the most wonderful kind which they expect to see--enchanting islands, mysterious forests, majestic rivers, heavenly mountains, delightful lakes. Instinct tells them that they will have the joy which comes from exerting their capacities to the full. But somewhere in the back of their being is, also this expectation of seeing wonders of Natural Beauty, and of seeing _more_ of this Beauty from the very fact that they will be seeing it as a prize truly _won_ and when their faculties are all tuned up to a fine pitch of appreciation.

And when they return from the unknown, when the adventure is over, when they are again relaxed, it will be the Natural Beauty which they have seen that will remain in their memories long after they have forgotten their exertion, long after they have expended any wealth they may have found, long after they have recorded the exact measurements of the various features of the region.

Curiosity to see the Natural Beauty of an unknown region is a princ.i.p.al ingredient in the lure that draws men to it. And Natural Beauty is what, above everything else in regard to the unknown region, stands out in men's memories on their return.

This at any rate is my own experience, and we are perhaps on safer ground when we speak of what we have ourselves experienced than when we speak of what we imagine must be the experiences of others. Though in this case I have good reason to believe that my own experiences are very similar to the experiences of others, and may therefore be taken as typical.

Almost my earliest recollections are of a Somersetshire village set in a lovely valley, fringed with woods and surrounded by hills. Up the hills on the side of the valley on which I lived I used constantly to go. But over the hills on the far side of the river I was never taken.

So I used to picture to myself wonderful woods and rivers, and castles and great cities, and I longed to go there. The lure of Natural Beauty was beginning to make itself felt. As I grew to boyhood I was fortunate enough to be taken to North Wales, Devonshire and Cornwall, and later on to Switzerland and the South of France, and everywhere I saw much Natural Beauty. But, still, that only made me want to see more.

In all these cases, however, I only went where I was taken. I did not go where I chose or with an object of my own. It was not till I was in India and had the first leave from my regiment that I could go where I liked. Now, where I liked was to the Himalaya. And if I look back now and enquire of myself what made me choose the Himalaya, I can say most clearly that it was because I had in my mind a vision of long snowy ranges, and dazzling peaks, and frowning precipices, and rushing torrents, and endless forests. I thought how glorious it would be to be able to wander about at will and see all the magnificent scenery, to feast on the Natural Beauty, and when I came back to be able to tell others of the wonders I had seen.

So I made my first short trip in the Himalaya. But this only served to arouse my curiosity still more. I had seen some great mountains. But they were none of them more than 20,000 feet in height. I wanted to see still higher mountains. I heard, too, that up the valley of the Sutlej were some fearful gorges through which the river forced its way. I wanted to see them too, and see a great river in the very act of forcing its way through the mighty Himalaya. Above all, I wanted to see what lay on the other side of the Himalaya. I wanted to get into Tibet.

That for the time being proved impossible, and my thoughts wandered off to the far eastern part of Asia. I had read a book called "On the Amur," by Atkinson. Not altogether a very veracious book, but a fascinating book for all that. In it were alluring pictures of the broad, placid river. Rich forests came down to the water's edge. And on its surface were depicted delightful rafts and canoes. To glide down such a river, to camp on its banks and plunge into the forests which clothed them, seemed a joy second only to the joy of scrambling about the Himalaya. So with Mr. H. E. M. James--now Sir Evan James--I went to Manchuria, not, indeed, to reach the Amur itself, but to discover the source of its great tributary the Sungari, and to follow it down through the forests and over the plains for several hundred miles.

Now, what I want to impress upon you is that in all these cases it was the Natural Beauty which was the attraction--it was the picture I made to myself of what these countries would be like that drew me on. And I am sure it is with others as it was with me. Natural Beauty is at bottom what incites the traveller.

And, whether I had to go where I was taken or could go where I chose, it was the Natural Beauty that stuck in my memory. And when I returned it was of the Natural Beauty that I wished to tell my friends. And this, again, is the experience of others also. To this day, though I have never since seen them, I remember the beauties of Cader Idris and Dolgelly, Snowdon and Carnarvon, in North Wales, and of the rugged cliffs and long Atlantic waves on the Cornish coast. The Dart, here rippling over boulders and between rocky banks, here in deep, clear salmon pools, here merging into a long inlet of the sea and everywhere framed in wooded hill-sides, I have often again seen. But even if I had not, its beauty would never have departed from my memory. And it is the same with the first view of the Alps from the Jura, the view of Lake Geneva, of the Jungfrau, of the Pyrenees from Pau, and of the valley of the Loire. I have never seen those parts of Switzerland and of France since then, but their beauty remains with me to this day. And it is of their beauty that I have ever afterwards been naturally inclined to speak. When I talk about the Loire I do not tell my friends that it rises in a certain place, is so many miles long, at certain parts has a certain width, depth, and volume, and eventually flows into a certain sea. What I naturally speak about is its beauty, the rich valley through which it flows, the graceful bridges by which it is spanned, the picturesque old towns and romantic castles on the banks. And this is the common habit of mankind. Our friends may bore us--and we may bore our friends --with interminable accounts of the discomfort and inconveniences and the petty little incidents of travel. But when they and we have got through that and settle down to describe the country itself, it is of its beauty that we speak.

Natural Beauty is what attracts us to a country. Its Natural Beauty is the fact about it which remains most persistently in our memory.

And it is about its Natural Beauty that we are most inclined to speak.

Lastly, when we are in distant countries it is of the Natural Beauty that we chiefly think. When our thoughts go back to the home country it is not on its exact measurements and configuration that they dwell, but on its beauty.

From all of which considerations I conclude that any description of the Earth which excludes a description of its Natural Beauty is incomplete. Geography must include a description of Natural Beauty.

And personally I would go so far as to say that the description of Natural Beauty is the most important part of Geography.

Here I must answer an objection which may be raised--namely, that Natural Beauty is the concern of Aesthetics, not of Geography. An objector may freely acknowledge the value and importance of recognising and describing the Natural Beauty of a country, but may contend that this is beyond the province of Geography. It should be left to poets and painters, he might say, and geographers should confine themselves to the more prosaic business of exact measurement, of accurate delineation, of reasoning regarding the relation of the facts to one another, and of explaining the facts.

To such an objector I would reply that Geography is an art as well as a science. And in parenthesis I may say that I doubt whether any science can be complete which has not art behind it. We shall never be able fully to know and understand the Earth or to describe what we see if we use our intellectual and reasoning powers alone. If we are to attain to a complete knowledge of the Earth, and if we are to describe what we learn about it in an adequate manner so that others may partic.i.p.ate in our knowledge, then we must use our hearts as well as our heads. We must be artists as well as meticulous cla.s.sifiers, cataloguers, and reasoners. The Earth is a living being, a throbbing, palpitating, living being--"live" enough to have given birth to the remote ancestors of mankind, and live enough, so some biologists consider, to be continually to this day generating the lowliest forms of organisms. To know and understand a living being, particularly when that living being happens to be his own Mother, man must use his heart as well as his head.

With his head alone the geographer may do a vast amount of most useful and necessary work which will help us to understand the Earth. He may collect and cla.s.sify facts about her and record measurements, and reason about these facts and measurements, but if he is to get the deepest vision of the Earth and learn the profoundest truth about her he must exercise his finest spiritual senses as well. And when he brings those faculties of the soul into play, it will be the Beauty on the face of Mother-Earth that he will see and that will disclose to him her real nature.

And therefore I hold that if it be the function of Geography to know the Earth and to describe the Earth, then the objection that the description of its Natural Beauty is outside the scope of Geography is not a valid objection. The picture and the poem are as legitimate a part of Geography as the map.

Some years ago in lecturing to the Royal Geographical Society I said that the Society ought to have given Wordsworth the Gold Medal. I meant that the poet by his vision had taught us more about the Lake District than any ordinary geographer had been able to see.

With his finer sensibility he had been able to see deeper. He had been able to reveal to us truths about the district which no mere ordnance surveyor was able to disclose. He was a true discoverer--a geographical discoverer--a geographer of the highest type. He had helped us really to know and understand the district.

Be it noted, too, that he did not, as some would think, put into the lakes and hills and valleys something from within himself which was not really in those natural features. The particular beauty that he saw there was there waiting to be revealed. The natural features aroused emotions in his sensitive soul, and his soul being aroused saw the beauty in them. If the district had been of billiard-table flatness, with no lakes, no hills, no valleys, then even he, with all his poetic feeling and imagination, could not have put into the district what it did not possess. The beauty that he saw was really there, only it required a poetic soul to discover and reveal it. The spirit of the poet put itself in touch with the spirit of the district and elicited from the district what was already in it. The spirit of Wordsworth and the spirit of the district acted and reacted upon one another and came into harmony with one another. And as he had the capacity for communicating to others what he himself had seen, we are now able to see in the Lakeland beauties which our forefathers had scarcely known.

This is why I suggest to you that Natural Beauty should be considered as a legitimate part of Geography. And if you will look about you, you will note that Natural Beauty is having an increasing effect upon the movements of men. There is a very definite relationship between the Beauty of the Earth and her human inhabitants. The Poet Laureate builds his house on the top of Boar's Hill not because the soil is specially productive up there so that he may be able to grow food, for the soil is rather poor; not because water is easily available, for it is very difficult to get, as he found when his house took fire; not because of the climate, for the climate is just as good a hundred feet lower down; not because it is easily accessible to Oxford, for a big climb up the hill is entailed every time he returns from that city--not for any of these reasons did he build his house there, but because of the view which he obtains from that spot. It was Natural Beauty which drew, the Poet Laureate to Boar's Hill, as it was Natural Beauty which drew Tennyson to Blackdown to build Aldworth with a view all over the Surrey hills and the Suss.e.x Downs.

It is this same spell of Natural Beauty, too, which is drawing people all over England to build their houses on the most beautiful spots.

Our great country-seats--the pride of England--are usually placed where the natural scenery is finest. Humbler dwellings whenever the owner has the opportunity of making a choice are for a similar reason built wherever a beautiful view, however limited, may be obtained. Whole towns even are built on spots where the surroundings are most beautiful, or, at any rate, if for some other reason they were located where they are they tend to spread in the direction of most beauty. Dartmouth was originally built where it is because that site made an excellent port. But the new town has spread all over the cliffs at the entrance of the harbour wherever a beautiful view may be found. It is the same with Torquay. People originally went there on account of the warm, soft air. But though they can get much the same air in any part of the Torquay area, where they like to build their houses is where they can get the finest views.

On the Continent a similar tendency may be observed. Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo, Biarritz, Montreux, Vevey, were no doubt originally located where they are for other reasons than only the facilities they afford for observing Natural Beauty, but that they have grown to what they are is undoubtedly due to Natural Beauty, and Natural Beauty has given the direction in which they have expanded. It is not by chance that villas and terraces and hotels have been built just on those particular points from which the most beautiful views may be seen.

And how great is the influence of Natural Beauty upon the movements of men may be gathered from the amount of money railway companies and hotels spend in advertising the charms of the particular localities which they serve. Railway-carriages are full of photographs and tourist agencies of pictures of different points in the neighbourhood of the railway or hotel. And we may be certain that business companies would not go to the expense of setting up these photographs and pictures if they did not think that people were influenced by them and would be tempted to travel to the scenes they depict.

The development of char-a-banc tours is another indication of the attraction--and the increasing attraction--of Natural Beauty. Since the War, especially, there has been a remarkable tendency of people of every rank in life to rush off whenever they can get a holiday to the most beautiful parts of these islands--to the moors of Yorkshire and Devonshire, to the Wye, the Dart, and the Severn, to the mountains of Wales, Westmoreland, and Scotland--to wherever Natural Beauty may be found. It is a noteworthy and most refreshing feature in our national life.

Every summer, too, both here and on the Continent, people make their way to the most beautiful parts of Europe--to Switzerland or the Pyrenees, the Vosges or the Rhine. And in the Dominions and America whenever they get their holidays they likewise trek away to mountain, lake, or river, wherever Nature may be enjoyed at her best.

Men may, to carry on the ordinary business of life, be compelled to live in cities and places which are chosen for other reasons than their facilities for observing Natural Beauty. But whenever they can get away from their ordinary duties the tendency of men--and a tendency increasing in strength--is to fly away to the moors and sea-coast and river-sides and wherever else they can see the beauties of the Earth.

Then, again, men are increasingly sensitive about preserving Natural Beauty wherever it is best. It is quite true that men by the building of industrial towns and the erection of hideous factories, mining plant, gasometers, and so on terribly destroy Natural Beauty. But they are at least becoming conscious of their sins in this respect and of what they have lost thereby. They are therefore the more anxious to preserve what remains. And whenever there is an attempt to build on Box Hill, or erect an electric power-station on Dartmoor, a howl of execration is raised. And this howl means that men do value Natural Beauty and mean to preserve it.

Young countries also realise its value. In California the Yosemite Valley is preserved for ever for human enjoyment. And in Canada, Australia, and South Africa national parks are protected against the encroachments of industrial enterprises.

Men not only preserve spots of Natural Beauty; they also seek to improve them. The n.o.bleman of ancient lineage and the new millionaire alike strive to add to the beauty of their estates. The hours they love best are the hours they can devote to opening up vistas, planting beautiful trees or flowering shrubs from distant lands, building up rockeries, forming artificial lakes, laying out lawns, and stocking their gardens with the choicest flowers.

The effect of Natural Beauty upon man and of man upon Natural Beauty is immense. Geographers take note of the effect which the Alps by reason of their height and ruggedness, or the Rhine by reason of its length, breadth, and depth, have upon the activities of men--upon their history, politics, and economic life. My contention is that equally should geographers note the effect which these same natural features of the Earth by reason of their _beauty_ have upon men's activities and movements.

And when Natural Beauty is fully recognised as within the province of Geography, we shall be taught to pay to it the attention it deserves--taught to look for it, taught how to observe it, taught how to describe it, taught where are the regions of special beauty and wherein their beauty lies, and lastly taught where in an ordinary district Beauty may be found, for even in the flattest, dreariest region _some_ beauty at some time of day or at some season may be discovered. We shall, in short, be taught to cultivate the sense for Natural Beauty, and how to put in fitting words a description of the beauty we see. Our geography textbooks, besides all the mathematical, physical, political, and commercial geography they contain, will tell us something of the Natural Beauty of the countries they set themselves to describe. And geographers when they set themselves to describe a new region will not think it necessary to confine themselves within the old limits, but will do what the ordinary man instinctively does--describe its beauties.

Our methods of describing countries will thus radically change. A few years ago Colonel Tanner of the Survey of India read to the Royal Geographical Society a paper ent.i.tled "Our Present Knowledge of the Himalaya." In that paper he gave an account of the height of the peaks, the trend of the mountain ranges, the course of the rivers, and a deal of other very valuable geographical information. But in only one single line did he make any remark about the natural beauty of that wonderful region. Yet this omission was not due to any lack of appreciation by Colonel Tanner of Himalayan beauty, for he himself had painted the finest pictures of the Himalaya which have yet been produced. He made no mention of it because he thought that to describe the natural beauty of the Himalaya was to stray beyond the bounds of Geography.

Such a grievous misconception of the true scope of Geography will, I trust, be removed in future. And when it no longer exists Geography will require for its pursuit the exercise of the finest faculties of the soul as well as the strictest qualities of the intellect.

It will call forth capacity for the closest and most accurate observation and the highest powers of description. To us adventure-loving and Nature-loving Englishmen it should of all subjects be the most popular.