76
PARTISAN REVIEW
force my deportation from tight little Albion, so that the Duke of Kent
could be married in thirteen unhindered minutes.
All the way across we sailed under a hot sun over a sea placid as a
mill pond. It was so easy to look out to the scalloped rim at the horizon
and imagine that it was a line of low lying hills. The modern steamer
insulates the passenger, encompasses h1m with the security and luxury of
a modern hotel, prevents his coming face to face with the world outside.
From Ambrose Light clear across to the Cornish coast the gulls and sea
swallows followed the ship; and there was nothing new. I had k:nown
all this, known more; learned it all in the movies since childhood. Even
an airplane could give me nothing really new.
Finally we passed Bishop's Light, sticking out like a sore thumb
above the Scilly Islands, and we were in England. That last night, steam–
ing up the South coast, most of the English passengers got drunk:; they
seemed to be wanting to run away, displeased at seeing England again.
As soon as it was light enough to. see I dressed and came out on deck.
I wanted to see the chalk cliffs at Dover, sec the port where the English
soldiers had embarked, that Germans had sown with mines. Twenty
six miles across the Channel was France and beyond that stretched the
continent. I seemed to sense it all, the Romans, the conquering Normans,
and then twenty years ago the hundred of thousands of young English
men who had crossed the Channel to .muck:, terror and death. The wind
came down from the North Sea and all Europe's history seemed to swirl
about my head. The ghosts of a thousand years swept over the water.
I was alone on deck. Later some Americans came up to join me. The
English slept soundly below. They seemed not too eager about returning
home.
After ten days of sea and sky, though the sea is calm, one looks with
wondrous newborn eyes again on the life men have made for themselves.
As
the ship moved cautiously up the Thames to London I stayed on deck
and watched the barges go by. The English passengers were still drinking
at the bar. The barges were small little tubs with large russet brown
sails, cosy and warm. There were other barges more like the ones we
see on American rivers. There was always a man walking across the
stern, pushing the arm of a long thin oar before him. There, on both
sides of the river, was the land I had come three thousand miles to see.
A man can become so deluded by names; one has only to say "Thames,"
and the years, the images, and the desires telescope into a sharp longing
pain. Actually the Thames shore under London is a lot like the Jersey
swamplands, a sordid and depressing industrial landscape.
We entered the locks that were to lift us to the basin where the
ship docked. Across a bridge, a red bus rolled by. There was a
lar~e
