In the Preface of A Naturalist’s
Rambles on the Devonshire Coast, the Victorian Natural Historian Philip
Henry Gosse wrote: 1
..I have not made a book of
systematic zoology; nor a book of mere
zoology of any sort. I venture to ask your companionship, courteous reader, in
my Rambles over field and down in the fresh dewy morning; I ask you to listen
with me to the carol of the lark, and the hum of the wild bee; I ask you to
stand with me at the edge of the precipice and mark the glories of the setting
sun; to watch with me the mantling tide as it rolls inward, and roars among the
hollow caves; I ask you to share with me the delightful emotions which the
contemplation of unbounded beauty and beneficence ever calls up in the
cultivated mind.
This is typical both of Henry Gosse’s writing style and his
approach to Natural History. In A Naturalist’s
Rambles on the Devonshire Coast he gives detailed descriptions of many
marine organisms, but always in the wider context of habitat
and environment.
One of the pleasures of studying Natural History is that it
allows us to appreciate the huge variety of living things at scales from the microscopic
to that of landscapes. Although one cannot see the creatures in a pond, one
knows the types that are likely to live there, their habits and biology. Added
to that is an understanding of how the pond ecosystem functions, with the energy from organic matter passing through micro-organisms, to plants and animals of all
sizes. In the same way, background knowledge enhances one’s appreciation of coasts,
woods, hedgerows or any other natural features of the landscape, whether one is
observing on foot or using some form of transport.
I have always enjoyed travelling by train and my journeys
are rarely spent reading or chatting, although the former was my chosen
approach during years of commuting to work in London. For me, railway journeys
have always been an opportunity to gaze out of the carriage window and observe the
countryside we passed through. I’ve always found that the best view is provided
when travelling First Class and that, perhaps, results from well-placed seats
and large windows that give a wide field of vision. To make it affordable,
travelling First Class now requires advance booking and
gone are the days when trains were made up of miscellaneous carriages some of
which had First Class compartments labelled as being available for the use of
Second Class passengers (see the sticker below). It was always worth scanning
along the carriages of those trains to see if one’s luck was in.
Henry Gosse preferred to travel First Class on trains 2
and, in his time, during the expansion of the railways, this would have been an
expensive option. It is not recorded whether he used to gaze from the window,
but I’m sure that he did, especially as he was naturally shy, although his occasional
outbursts of religious evangelism also had the unintentional effect of buying
the silence of other passengers. As the brilliant biographer Ann Thwaite wrote
of a journey he made with his son, Edmund: 2
They travelled first class, as Henry
always did. At Newton Abbot a young woman joined them and a label on her
luggage announced her to be ‘Miss Christabel Coleridge’. Edmund was consumed
with curiosity, wondering if ‘she was of the poet’s family’. No one spoke a
word and she got out at Exeter,
where her place was taken by an elderly gentleman. The two men started talking
and the boy found himself listening to the sort of conversation he had heard so
many times as a small boy travelling with his mother. Now his feelings were
different. Without much preliminary, Henry Gosse ‘advanced the Cross of Christ.
He eagerly enquired whether our new acquaintance had found peace on the bosom
of his Saviour’. The answer was curt. The elderly gentleman withdrew to his
corner of the carriage, buried himself in a book and took no further notice of
them.
It is not surprising that there was no communication with
‘Miss Coleridge’ on this journey, as the railway line between Newton Abbot and
Exeter passes right along the coast and then up the muddy Exe estuary and it is
a brilliant stretch for a Natural Historian to make observations of wildlife. Trains
in Gosse’s time moved more slowly than those of today, but their sudden and
noisy appearance was sure to disturb many birds and other animals and that made
them easier to see.
As a boy, I used to enjoy travelling on the branch lines of
Devonshire using Holiday Runabout tickets that allowed unlimited travel for a
week on all lines within a defined area. As I lived by the sea, I headed for
the country and also stopped off to look at some of the small towns and
villages that I had not visited previously. Trains on branch lines moved at a
gentle pace and one thus felt more integrated with the landscape and the “rural
idyll”. There was always much to see on these train journeys, but this pleasure
cannot be enjoyed nearly as much today, for most of the lines are now closed,
although some track beds remain as cycle tracks. I empathise with the
sentiments made by John Betjeman in a BBC Radio broadcast of 10th March 1940, a
time when the peaceful country railways must have seemed havens from bad news: 3
Roads are determined by
boundaries of estates and by villages and other roads; they are shut in by
hedges, peppered with new villas, garish with tin signs, noisy with roadhouses.
A town spreads out along its roads for miles, leaving the country in the fields
at the back that you don’t see.. ..railways are built regardless of natural
boundaries and from the height of an embankment we can see the country undisturbed,
as one who walks along an open footpath through a field.. ..Railways were built
to look from and look at. They still provide those pleasures for the eye.. ..I
advise slow trains on branch lines, half-empty trains that go though meadows in
the evening and stop at each once oil-lit halt. Time and war slip away and you
are lost in the heart of England.
I know what he means and I’m grateful to have had what are
now nostalgic memories of branch line travel in the 1960s. My interest in
Natural History enhanced those trips, just as it does when enjoying modern
train travel. In the most pleasant sense, there is no escape from having a knowledge
of Nature.
2 Ann
Thwaite (1984) Edmund Gosse: A Literary
Landscape. London, Secker and Warburg
3 John Betjeman (2006) Trains and Buttered Toast. London,
John Murray.
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