Walking Across London: “Cela vaut le Détour”
Halle, why are you walking across London?
At the start of the summer, I made a “Summer Bucket List Bingo Board.” I was a bit tipsy on celebratory “housewarming” champagne, and I audaciously marked my board with the tile: “Walk across London,” snuggled next to other logistically challenging tasks, like “Water Ski,” “Climb a Mountain” and “Drink Champagne on a Yacht.” I live in London, for god’s sake! Oh, and one more: “Listen to 100 Records.” (We’ll return to that later). I placed it on my wall, and there, the board hung all summer, taunting me.
“There, the board hung all summer, taunting me.”
Recently, I was at a charity shop when I came across a book: “25 Walks by London Writers.” I perused the inside, inspired by the styles of the walks within. If I could do these walks, I would have “walked across London” in spirit!! Thus begins an ambitious new series for my London Letters: Walking Across London.
This Friday, I found myself with an unusual boon—a completely free day, dropped on my doorstep as if from a stork, mouth spilling over with blessings. I planned to meet up with a friend to film in Hampstead Heath in the evening, so I picked the walk closest to the Heath: “A Digression with Mr. Coleridge” by writer Richard Holmes, British author and biographer of major French & British figures, including the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, our subject on today’s walk. I snaked beneath the city on the Central and then Northern Line, minding the gap as I hopped off at Archway Station and ascended into London.
Cela Vaut Le Detour: Digressions with Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The walk, 24th on the list, was designed to take you past various spots important to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and honor his “varied gait,” (William Hazlitt used to say the poet “could never walk in a straight line). In his honor, the walk purposefully evokes a discursive and wandering journey. Richard Holmes references the old Michelin Guide phrase: “cela vaut le détour,” or “it’s worth the detour” in setting up the meandering tour of Highgate Hill.
“Cela Vaut Le Détour” seemed like an apt slogan for my time in London in general: a strange diversion from the path I was on, which garnered more than one question from my friends and family about my sanity. Yet, I’ve found that my time here has, in fact, been well worth the detour.
The Artful Architecture of Highgate Hill
Holmes guides me up Highgate Hill, past a cat statue dedicated to the thrice mayor of London, Duke Whittington, and the Holborn Union Building, with its black storm drains snaking up to geometric balconies strewn with brown ivy, webbed like the netting that catches acrobats when they tumble from tightropes and trapezes.
All around me, the city streams with the 4 o’clock Friday crowd: academics and hospital workers, school children with necks craned towards their smartphones, and a man with his small dachshund hobbling on its body hung far too close to the concrete. My thighs begin to burn from the exertion, but I focus on the task at hand: How did this hill look when Samuel Taylor Coleridge climbed it in the 1800s? I imagine it free from the parked cars and Lime Bikes, the various litter and plastics sinking into the soil on the side of the street. Sometimes, despite its unforgivable faults, it’s hard not to romanticize the past.
I pass an academy with bricks of mottled yellow and red. Concrete bows perch above the circular windows like Christmas wreaths hung on expectant doors while pigeons roost in the smoke stacks and magpies clop through the gutters. The orange bricks in the upper artifice, which form the date “1880”, tell me this academy would have just missed Coleridge.
The red brick houses lining the street seem ancient, some with dates inscribed as early as 1887. I resolve to learn more about architecture — is this Victorian? Whatever the period, they’re stunning: dormer windows set against steep, sloping roofs, fleur de lis imposing a prominence on the skyline, clay tiles with geometric patterns reminiscent of Moroccan architecture, stained glass windows, and manicured allotments with vivid flowers, a pre-cursor to the bright, colorful doors you would knock upon. One home is nearly consumed by the ivy proliferating across the second story, jutting out in every direction like an insect’s antennae.
The Park Like a Georges Seurat Painting
I continue my stroll until The Lauderdale House appears on my left. I recognize the name from the guidebook, but, at this point, I’ve forgotten the historical significance. I peruse the bulletin board for clues, finding a raffle flyer for tickets to the Play That Goes Wrong or Six the Musical. Tempted, I try the front door, buzzing until I’m met by a confused doorman who seems baffled by my request for a raffle ticket. I slink around the back, thinking perhaps I can find more clues there, to find a small gravel pathway open into an oasis of a garden.
The garden is handsome, but it's the park that extends behind it in nearly every direction that steals my breath. It’s the kind of park you imagine would be overrun with people in every direction. However, they only dot the landscape, even more reserved than the famous Georges Seurat painting, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.”
It’s the kind of park you imagine would be overrun with people in every direction. However, they only dot the landscape…
I gaze up at a gargantuan holm oak, whose lackadaisical canopy drapes itself across the sky like a set of tired lovers. On the way out, I see a Sycamore stiff and stretching upright. I like that the trees are labeled here — I never know the names of trees, so I’ve taken to using my iPhone to identify them, but I much prefer the botanical signs posted throughout the garden. I make a mental note to come back here on a lazy day to lounge, read, and learn the names of more trees.
Where Coleridge “came for tea, and stayed on 18 years”
I forge upwards again, back on my path after this diversion. Cresting the hill, London feels like a different city, just as Richard Holmes said it might. The Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle described Coleridge atop the world here:
“Coleridge sat on the brow of High Gate Hill in those years looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a safe, escaped the inanity of life’s battle. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon.” -Thomas Carlyle
I pass a beautiful bookstore, which is closed due to the hour. I briefly curse myself for starting the walk so late, but truthfully, I cannot be angry with the sun’s angle and the soft light that washes over the early evening. I turn onto South Grove into a quiet, covered neighborhood. I’m enjoying the peaceful solitude so much that I almost miss Moreton House, Coleridge’s respite, where he came to break his opium habit. It is said that “Coleridge came for tea and stayed on for 18 years.” Dr. Gillman, the owner of the house, let him lodge here and helped him to slowly break his opium habit, enjoying his company, the feverish but scintillating quality of his wandering conversations, and the increased business he brought. As repayment, Coleridge was able to break his crippling opium addiction. Cela vaut le détour indeed.
As repayment, Coleridge was able to break his crippling opium addiction. Cela vaut le détour indeed.
Just past the house, St. Michael’s Church stretches into the skyline, its gold-embossed teal clock ticking, just as it must have when Coleridge lived down the street at Moreton. Now, it contains his tombstone, inscribed with the words:
Stop, Christian passer-by!—Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seemed he.
O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.;
That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death!
Mercy for praise—to be forgiven for fame
He asked, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same!
A Secret Hollow by the Heath
Turning once more onto North Grove, I am now in what feels like a completely secret hollow: a small road with trees arching over it, private property signs dotting million-dollar houses, and trees bursting with spiky fruit. My feet crunch over the pebbles as I pass the house Dr. Gillman and Coleridge moved into once Moreton felt too small.
Turning down Fitzroy Park, maneuvering past a metal gate, I watch as two skateboarders bomb the steep hill. I descend further into the sanctuary smack dab in the middle of one of the most happening parts of London. The ivy on the sides of the walk reminds me of Georgia, and I picture myself sitting on a small fortune, buying a home nestled into this quiet drive. I imagine myself rich and famous, hiding out in a house in Fitzroy Park with my manicured hydrangea bushes and electric vehicle. But enough fortunetelling. Is this walk today through the trees not enough fortune for one girl? (Makes me think of my friend Katie’s brilliant song Little Fortune).
But enough fortunetelling. Is this walk today through the trees not enough fortune for one girl?
I come to a Lodge (which looks straight out of a fairytale), turn past the London Bowling Club (fascinating), and walk through a small gate, dropping directly into a forgotten corner of Hampstead Heath.
A Forgotten Pocket of Hampstead Heath
Unlike the packed portions of Hampstead Heath I’ve traipsed through before on weekends and mornings, I had this section of the Heath almost entirely to myself. It felt like a prank: someone must be coming to tell me that, no, I can’t just enjoy this little corner of London all to myself. The insects buzzed, and the sun hung low in the sky while I gazed over tall grasses and branching paths, wondering which to take.
I checked the map again for my endpoint: an ironwork gazebo near Kenwood House where Coleridge would sit and enjoy the view of the city. I’m running up against the clock. My friend is meeting me in 20 minutes, and I must travel to the opposite side of this massive park (790 acres in total). But the book had gotten me this far, and I want to see my détour through to the end.
I pass a small stream, and suddenly there are tens of people milling about: men throwing grungy tennis balls for their furry friends, couples walking hand in hand, and commuters shouldering backpacks, all ambling through the high grass. Time is ticking now, and I’m feverishly consulting Google Maps and the guidebook, trying to triangulate the gazebo's position. I circle outside the park, back inside, and through a blocked road to discover, with bubbling frustration, that the gazebo is inaccessible: private property signs bar my continuation.
Time is ticking now, and I’m feverishly consulting Google Maps and the guidebook, trying to triangulate the gazebo's position.
Well, the guidebook was published in 2011. Just as I give up on finding it, my gaze travels upward, and Quelle surprise! In all of my fumbling about for the gazebo, I’d overlooked the remarkable view sitting just past my eye line: there, London rises in all its glory – a panoramic feast for the eyes of Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the London Eye, the BT Telecom Tower, and more, rising defiantly from the smoke-tumult. Well, that’s the thing about digressions. You often don’t end up exactly where you meant to, but the view is fabulous all the same.
Cela vaut le détour, indeed.
Love,
Halle