The Burton Way

Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022.

 

Almost as soon as my brother awoke from his afternoon nap -- if he'd had one; even the neighbors would pray he'd have one -- I was waiting for Dad to come home. I'd sit on the chair in the bay window and hold vigil, staring along the rough, pot-holed road that was The Terrace. I'd see the bus hove into view and slow down opposite Pete Eldridge's garage -- which had once been stabling for the Duke of Kent pub -- and then I'd be up and out the door, running along the street and into my father's arms. As soon as he'd had a cup of tea, we would be walking across the fields with the dog, come rain or shine, snow or hail, daylight or darkness. Walking across the fields at dusk in winter was my favorite time. There was something mystical about it, feeling the frost crunch under my feet. There was always something to see, always something he'd show me, kneeling at my side and raising his paint-stained hands -- those knobby, flat-thumbed worker's hands -- and pointing so I knew where to focus my gaze, perhaps to see a rabbit, or a fox. And there was also the long slide down the Burton Way to dread. 

I'm always curious about how places come to have names, often linking people to something that happened long ago. We'd walk down the footpath at the side of the house, then along the track to Five Acres, the big field before we reached Robin's Wood. We'd pass the stinky place where overflow sewage from septic systems came out -- our community would not have a main sewer line until I was seventeen years of age. At the far end of the field was a stile and from the stile there were two paths -- one to the left, a steep descent, and one to the right, which was more of a meander through the woods. My father always liked to take the path to the left; it was probably because hardly anyone ever went that way and my father liked to assert his independence by taking the path less traveled. I think choosing the trail with a challenging gradient was a variant on pitching his tent on the wrong side in Germany -- he did things his own way. But so steep was the path, I always fell down, often ending up caught in brambles. The first time I tumbled, my father said, "Oh, you've gone for a burton there, my girl!"

Going for a burton? If you search online, "Going for a burton" originated with the RAF and meant you were going to die, or you'd had an accident. Interesting. And here's why it's interesting -- the locution was common in South East London, and there is a belief that it originated to describe the effects of Burton Ales. So, if you fall down, you've "Gone for a burton." My father would never have used any phrase that might link his child to a sad demise, and given that he'd used the term since boyhood I can only think that the internet is wrong in this case, though I can believe RAF pilots would co-opt the phrase "Going for a burton" to describe a fall from the skies following an altercation with a Luftwaffe Messerschmitt.

That aside, from the time of my first fall, I always asked Dad, "Are we going the burton way this time?" So that path became the Burton Way. Years later I was walking near the old house, long after my parents have moved away, and I heard some children shouting to each other, "Let's go down the Burton Way!" I smiled and watched as they ran off, gamboling down the track, past clean sweet-smelling woodland where the sewage used to come out, and on towards Five Acres and Robin's Wood. 

(Jacqueline Winspear, This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir (2020), pp. 104-106. Jacqueline's parents were a fiery working-class couple who abandoned London after WWII for a semi-vagrant life in rural Kent.)

Some sort of Russula. Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022.

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... I remember that, in the course of our conversations during these walks, on several occasions she surprised me a great deal. The first time was when she said to me: "If you were not too hungry and if it was not so late, by taking that road to the left and then turning to the right, in less than a quarter of an hour we should be at Guermantes." It was as though she had said to me: "Turn to the left, then bear right, and you will touch the intangible, you will reach the inaccessibly remote tracts of which one never knows anything on this earth except the direction, except" (what I thought long ago to be all that I could ever know of Guermantes, and perhaps in a sense I had not been mistaken) "the 'way.'" One of my other surprises was that of seeing the "source of the Vivonne," which I imagined as something as extra-terrestrial as the Gates of Hell, and which was merely a sort of rectangular basin in which bubbles rose to the surface. And the third occasion was when Gilberte said to me: "If you like, we might after all go out one afternoon and then we can go to Guermantes, taking the road by Méséglise, which is the nicest way," a sentence which upset all the ideas of my childhood by informing me that the two "ways" were not as irreconcilable as I had supposed ...

(Marcel Proust, Time Regained (translation by Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright), p. 3.)

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Sweet Chestnut trees (Castanea sativa). Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022.

Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.

(Jeremiah 6:16)

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

(Matthew 7:13-14)

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Now, did you ever think, or do you believe, that the fact of a course of conduct, or of an opinion, being the conduct or the opinion of a majority, is pro tanto against it? 'What everybody says must be true,' says the old proverb, and I do not dispute it. What most people say is, I think, most often false. And that is true about conduct, as well as about opinion. It is very unsafe to take the general sense of a community for your direction. It is unsafe in regard to matters of opinion, it is even more unsafe in regard to matters of conduct. That there are many on a road is no sign that the road is a right one; but it is rather an argument the other way; looking at the gregariousness of human nature, and how much people like to save themselves the trouble of thinking and decision, and to run in ruts ...

(from Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910), "The Two Paths", exposition of Matthew 7: 13-14. Source: https://biblehub.com/library/maclaren/expositions_of_holy_scripture_a/the_two_paths.htm .)

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Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) or something of that sort. Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022.

A week after the holidays began, my father was summoned to the office of the General Manager of Schools. There he was informed that he was being transferred to Ho, as headmaster of the Catholic school there. Teachers employed by the Mission had absolutely no voice in the decision as to where they would be posted. They would be sent anywhere in the diocese, and transferred at a moment's notice. This has always led to a lot of dissatisfaction, and been the cause of hardship and separation. Teachers were also transferred to other schools in the diocese as a punishment for reasons no made known to them. My father had only been headmaster of the Tegbi school for a couple of years, his family settled there, and his wife's trade was flourishing. It would mean a lot of inconvenience and financial loss to go. He was not pleased.

But the general manager was tactful and explained the position carefully.

"We are very pleased with your work here," he told Nani. "We see that you understand how to rule with a firm hand; we see that you give as much thought to the training of your children's characters, as you do to teaching them the three Rs. Your own little boy, now, we see how firmly you have set his feet upon the narrow path. You are the sort of man we need in Ho. There is a new school. It has only been opened a year. And now the headmaster, a really excellent man, has suddenly died -- God rest his soul. What shall we do if we cannot find another strong man to take his place? The school is in a town where superstition and witchcraft abound. We may lose many young souls, my dear headmaster, if you let us down."

The Reverend Manager paused. His words sank in. My father's resentment and annoyance died down, and was replaced by pride and enthusiasm. 

"I shall not let you down," he answered. "When shall I go?"

(from Francis Selormey (1927 - 1983), The Narrow Path: An African Childhood (1966), Chapter 6.  Semi-autobiographical novel of Kofi's childhood on the coast of Ghana, and his relationship with his stern, righteous father.)

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Dried up plants of Wood Dock (Rumex sanguineus). Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022. 

"O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires.

"And see ye not that braid braid road,
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path of wickedness,
Tho some call it the road to heaven.

"And see not ye that bonny road,
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.

[Source .]

(from the ballad "Thomas the Rhymer" as it appears in Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (2nd edn, 1803). In some other versions the lilies really are on the heavenly path, e.g. the fragmentary Child 37B:

‘It’s dont ye see yon broad broad way,
  That leadeth down by yon skerry fell?
  It’s ill’s the man that dothe thereon gang,
  For it leadeth him straight to the gates o hell.
 
‘It’s dont ye see yon narrow way,
  That leadeth down by yon lillie lea?
  It’s weel’s the man that doth therein gang,
  For it leads him straight to the heaven hie.’

[Source .]

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The choice of paths is a natural image for life choices, especially moral ones. It expresses a belief in the importance of the choice before us, and in the conviction that once we take a certain path it rapidly becomes impossible to change our minds. (A conviction that may be false, as Marcel discovers.) 

And in fact while the preachers appeal to our sense of other people's courses being grimly determined (especially the mindless majority on its broad way), they also seem to assert that our own moment of choice still lies before us and is still amenable to exhortation. Now, as in childhood, we are still standing where the paths diverge, and we can still make a different choice.

But not all choices are moral or apparently of mortal importance. Winspear, like Proust before her and like so many children, sees meaning in the seemingly unimportant leisure choice of which walk to do today. Every way has its different character, and the more times we take it or think about a particular path, the more distinct its character becomes. It is a choice that doesn't seem to lead to consequences: the daily walk is pre-eminently not about achieving a target or performing a task; for some it might the only part of the day that's entirely free of that burden. One might see a hare or a planet, but that's as may be, it is not one's rightful expectation and it is not the point of the walk. Instead there's a relaxation of utilitarian and moral pressure, but this relaxation, far from eliminating meaningfulness, actually seems to endow it. For, in hindsight and even in shadowy foresight, the familiar ways of our youth did carry meanings, though we can never fully read them. Without our knowledge the choice of paths, like the flap of a butterfly's wing, was giving shape to our individual experience, it made us who we have become. 

Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022.