Every day the wealthier nations are pulling down one or another in their capitals and their great towns: they do not know why they do it; neither do I.
It ought to be enough, surely, to drive the great broad ways which commerce needs and which are the life-channels of a modern city, without destroying all the history and all the humanity in between: the islands of the past. For, note you, the Crooked Streets are packed with human experience and reflect in a lively manner all the chances and misfortunes and expectations and domesticity and wonderment of men. One marks a boundary, another the kennel2 of an ancient stream, a third the track some[Pg 154] animal took to cross a field hundreds upon hundreds of years ago; another is the line of an old defence, another shows where a rich man's garden stopped long before the first ancestor one's family can trace was born; a garden now all houses, and its owner who took delight in it turned to be a printed name.
Leave men alone in their cities, pester3 them not with the futilities of great governments, nor with the fads4 of too powerful men, and they will build you Crooked Streets of their very nature as moles6 throw up the little mounds7 or bees construct their combs. There is no ancient city but glories, or has gloried, in a whole foison and multitude of Crooked Streets. There is none, however wasted and swept by power which, if you leave it alone to natural things, will not breed Crooked Streets in less than a hundred years and keep them for a thousand more.
I know a dead city called Timgad, which the sand or the barbarians8 of the Atlas9 overwhelmed fourteen centuries ago. It lies between[Pg 155] the desert and the Algerian fields, high up upon a mountain-side. Its columns stand. Even its fountains are apparent, though their waterways are choked. It has a great forum10 or market-place, all flagged and even, and the ruined walls of its houses mark its emplacement on every side. All its streets are straight, set out with a line, and by this you may judge how a Roman town lay when the last order of Rome sank into darkness.
Well, take any other town which has not thus been mummified and preserved but has lived through the intervening time, and you will find that man, active, curious, intense, in all the fruitful centuries of Christian11 time has endowed them with Crooked Streets, which kind of streets are the most native to Christian men. So it is with Arles, so it is with Nîmes, so it is with old Rome itself, and so it is with the City of London, on which by a special Providence12 the curse of the Straight Street has never fallen, so that it is to this day a labyrinth13 of little lanes. It was intended after the Great Fire to[Pg 156] set it all out in order with "piazzas14" and boulevards and the rest—but the English temper was too strong for any such nonsense, and the streets and the courts took to the natural lines which suit us best.
The Renaissance15 indeed everywhere began this plague of vistas16 and of avenues. It was determined17 three centuries ago to rebuild Paris as regular as a chessboard, and nothing but money saved the town—or rather the lack of money. You may to this day see in a square called the "Place des Vosges" what was intended. But when they had driven their Straight Street two hundred yards or so the exchequer18 ran dry, and thus was old Paris saved. But in the last seventy years they have hurt it badly again. I have no quarrel with what is regal and magnificent, with splendid ways of a hundred feet or more, with great avenues and lines of palaces; but why should they pull down my nest beyond the river—Straw Street and Rat Street and all those winding19 belts round the little Church of St.[Pg 157] Julien the Poor, where they say that Dante studied and where Danton in the madness of his grief dug up his dead love from the earth on his returning from the wars.
Crooked Streets will never tire a man, and each will have its character, and each will have a soul of its own. To proceed from one to another is like travelling in a multitude or mixing with a number of friends. In a town of Crooked Streets it is natural that one should be the Moneylenders' Street and another that of the Burglars, and a third that of the Politicians, and so forth20 through all the trades and professions.
Then also, how much better are not the beauties of a town seen from Crooked Streets! Consider those old Dutch towns where you suddenly come round a corner upon great stretches of salt water, or those towns of Central France which from one street and then another show you the Gothic in a hundred ways.
It is as it should be when you have the back of Chartres Cathedral towering up above you[Pg 158] from between and above two houses gabled and almost meeting. It is what the builders meant when one comes out from such fissures21 into the great Place, the parvis of the cathedral, like a sailor from a river into the sea. Not that certain buildings were not made particularly for wide approaches and splendid roads, but that these, when they are the rule, sterilize22 and kill a town. Napoleon was wise enough when he designed that there should lead all up beyond the Tiber to St. Peter's a vast imperial way. But the modern nondescript horde23, which has made Rome its prey24, is very ill advised to drive those new Straight Streets foolishly, emptily, with mean façades of plaster and great gaps that will not fill.
You will have noted25 in your travels how the Crooked Streets gather names to themselves which are as individual as they, and which are bound up with them as our names are with all our own human reality and humour. Thus I bear in mind certain streets of the town where I served as a soldier. There was the Street of[Pg 159] the Three Little Heaps of Wheat, the Street of the Trumpeting26 Moor27, the Street of the False Heart, and an exceedingly pleasant street called "Who Grumbles28 at It?" and another short one called "The Street of the Devil in His Haste," and many others.
From time to time those modern town councillors from whom Heaven has wisely withdrawn29 all immoderate sums of money, and who therefore have not the power to take away my Crooked Streets and put Straight ones in their places, change old names to new ones. Every such change indicates some snobbery30 of the time: some little battle exaggerated to be a great thing; some public fellow or other, in Parliament or what not; some fad5 of the learned or of the important in their day.
Once I remember seeing in an obscure corner a twist of dear old houses built before George III was king, and on the corner of this row was painted "Kipling Street: late Nelson Street."
Upon another occasion I went to a little[Pg 160] Norman market town up among the hills, where one of the smaller squares was called "The Place of the Three Mad Nuns," and when I got there after so many years and was beginning to renew my youth I was struck all of a heap to see a great enamelled blue and white affair upon the walls. They had renamed the triangle. They had called it "The Place Victor Hugo"!
However, all you who love Crooked Streets, I bid you lift up your hearts. There is no power on earth that can make man build Straight Streets for long. It is a bad thing, as a general rule, to prophesy31 good or to make men feel comfortable with the vision of a pleasant future; but in this case I am right enough. The Crooked Streets will certainly return.
Let me boldly borrow a quotation32 which I never saw until the other day, and that in another man's work, but which, having once seen it, I shall retain all the days of my life.
"Oh, passi graviora, dabit Deus his quoque[Pg 161] finem," or words to that effect. I can never be sure of a quotation, still less of scansion, and anyhow, as I am deliberately33 stealing it from another man, if I have changed it so much the better.
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1
crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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2
kennel
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| n.狗舍，狗窝 | |
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pester
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| v.纠缠，强求 | |
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fads
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| n.一时的流行，一时的风尚( fad的名词复数 ) | |
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fad
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| n.时尚；一时流行的狂热；一时的爱好 | |
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6
moles
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| 防波堤( mole的名词复数 )； 鼹鼠； 痣； 间谍 | |
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7
mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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8
barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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9
atlas
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| n.地图册，图表集 | |
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forum
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| n.论坛，讨论会 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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13
labyrinth
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| n.迷宫；难解的事物；迷路 | |
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14
piazzas
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| n.广场，市场( piazza的名词复数 ) | |
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15
renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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16
vistas
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| 长条形景色( vista的名词复数 )； 回顾； 展望； （未来可能发生的）一系列情景 | |
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17
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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exchequer
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| n.财政部；国库 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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fissures
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| n.狭长裂缝或裂隙( fissure的名词复数 )；裂伤；分歧；分裂v.裂开( fissure的第三人称单数 ) | |
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22
sterilize
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| vt.使不结果实；使绝育；使无效；杀菌，消毒 | |
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horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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24
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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26
trumpeting
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| 大声说出或宣告（trumpet的现在分词形式） | |
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moor
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| n.荒野，沼泽；vt.(使)停泊；vi.停泊 | |
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28
grumbles
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| 抱怨( grumble的第三人称单数 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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29
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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30
snobbery
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| n. 充绅士气派, 俗不可耐的性格 | |
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31
prophesy
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| v.预言；预示 | |
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32
quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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33
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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