Joseph Pearce argues that Belloc "knew every inch of the way" and "had evidently walked most of the route at various times, even if he had never walked the whole route at one time." īelloc envisaged calling the book "The County of Sussex". Belloc was also a lover of Sussex songs and wrote lyrics. The book contains various poetry and songs, including the West Sussex Drinking Song. In the Western Christian calendar the period culminates in Hallowe'en or All Hallow's Eve (31 October), All Saints Day or All Hallow's Day (1 November) and All Souls Day (2 November). The story takes place over five continuous days from 29 October 1902, to 2 November. From Robertsbridge the characters walk via various public houses, through Heathfield, Uckfield, Ardingly, Ashurst and Amberley to South Harting. But, then, I'm not from Sussex.The George Inn, Robertsbridge in December 2008, where the four men began their walk across Sussexīeginning on 29 October 1902, the characters set out from The George Inn at Robertsbridge, where Belloc was a regular customer.
It is a novel of its time, certainly - it would be an interesting experiment to write something similar today - but for this reader of the second decade of the twenty-first century, I cannot hand on heart say that Belloc's tale is a riveting good read. Stories and arguments abound between dawn and dusk of each day, or even between dusk and dawn. County places, county people, county traditions, and county lore are all contemplated as the four men journey from east to west. This is all `true', but does that make `The Four Men' a good read? I read it after coming to know the county a little bit more. Wilson says that "Belloc knew he was immortalising a world which was soon to vanish forever destroyed not by accident but by human folly." There are words of occasional wisdom too, as Wilson attests, for instance the Poet asserting that the best thing in the world is a compound of "great wads of unexpected money, new landscapes, and the return of old loves." But what of that cataclysm that Wilson refers to in his introduction? Well, the clue is in the timing: set in 1902, but written in 1911, the novel frames the dramatic introduction of the motor car to the Sussex countryside. The work has the occasional amusing moment, especially when partisan prejudices are involved, such as Belloc assuring his readers that whilst fair Sussex and its folk will not suffer on the Day of Judgement, "a horrible great rain of fire from Heaven" will strike all around, "and very certainly Petersfield and Havant, and there shall be an especial woe for Hayling Island." Much of the book consists of each of the four characters telling tales, or "nothing but interminable stories" as one of them complains. In effect, the book is Belloc's homage to "this Eden which is Sussex still." Over the next few days, Belloc tells the tale of a group of four men who walk from this eastern outpost of Sussex to a western one at Harting on the border with Hampshire. The place? `The George' inn at Robertsbridge on Sussex's border with Kent. The novel is set over five successive days, starting on 29 October 1902, or the evening thereof to be precise.
#THE FOUR MEN A FARRAGO SERIES#
In his introduction, AN Wilson asserts that Belloc is not read today because we cannot bear to contemplate his wisdom, "the wisdom of a man who says `I told you so' after the horse has bolted, and who is not entirely sorry to point out that the stable door, far from being better closed, was warped and torn from its hinges years ago." Rather, Wilson proposes that `The Four Men' "is like a series of happy snapshots taken at random before a cataclysm." Indeed, at the end of the journey described in this book, having left his companions to carry on the way, the main character "recognised that I was (and I confessed) in that attitude of the mind wherein men admit mortality something had already passed from me." Belloc wrote the book in 1911 when he was forty-one and perhaps starting to feel the intimations of mortality.
The novel itself only takes up 162 pages. This is a review of the Oxford University Press's `Twentieth-Century Classics' edition of 1984 with a ten-page introduction by AN Wilson.
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