1/6/2024 0 Comments The four men a farrago![]() 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. 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. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
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