Essays in Criticism

Newlyn, Lucy.
Hazlitt and Edward Thomas on Walking
Essays in Criticism - Volume 56, Number 2, April 2006, pp. 163-187

Oxford University Press

Lucy Newlyn - Hazlitt and Edward Thomas on Walking - Essays in Criticism 56:2 Essays in Criticism 56.2 (2006) 163-187 Hazlitt and Edward Thomas on Walking Lucy Newlyn St Edmund Hall, Oxford Edward Thomas never wrote an essay on walking-sticks, though he might well have done, in the style of the Romantic familiar essayists he loved; it is a favourite topic of his. 'That two men possess walking-sticks of the same kind is not nearly so important as that one twirls and flourishes it, while the other regularly swings it once every four steps' he writes, in Walter Pater - adding, with a characteristic touch of Elian facetiousness, 'unless, of course, the observer is a manufacturer, or retailer, or connoisseur, of walking-sticks'. For the full literary implications of his remark, he trusts to the reader's memory of the looping signature left by Corporal Trim's walking-stick on a famous page in Tristram Shandy, more eloquent than 'a thousand of my father's most subtle syllogisms'. Pausing in his pilgrimage along the Icknield Way to grumble about a stick which has grown uncomfortable in his hand, Thomas weighs up the merits and defects of this six-year-long companion. Despite its having no handle to speak of, Thomas decides that he will put up with its faults, because it is 'so nicely balanced and being oak so likely to last a lifetime'. On the whole, its plainness and strength make it preferable to other, grander alternatives: perhaps a really long staff...