CAUTIONARY PILGRIM:
WALKING BACKWARDS WITH BELLOC
This is an entrancing book, in the literal sense of the word. Nick Flint introduces us to his three ‘imaginary companions’ – though they soon become completely real to the reader – as they journey through Sussex, telling tales, reciting songs, drinking ales and unearthing forgotten mysteries. I’m not a believer, but I found the stories of saints and medieval histories and the secret places of the landscape absolutely gripping. The book has an extraordinary atmosphere; when you finish the walk you will be disappointed it hasn’t been longer. So, like me, you will just start again.
John Bird
Satirist and Comedian from television’s Bremner, Bird and Fortune
A work of engaging wit and style peppered with delightful anecdotes and asides into the history and folklore of Sussex. Nick’s love of Sussex – and Sussex ale – shines through, and with the help of amusing illustrations and a cast of delightfully eccentric characters he perfectly captures the atmosphere and enigmatic beauty of the Sussex countryside – Belloc would be proud.
Christopher Winn
Author of the I Never Knew That... series of books, now a television series.
This is a lovely book, soaked in the lore and animated by the Spirit of Belloc’s celebrated work ‘The Four Men’. Nick Flint and his companions retrace Belloc’s steps across Sussex, following his path back to its beginning, but this is no mere ‘In the steps of...’ travelogue. Rather than simply repeating a journey and commenting on changes between then and now, the formula of many such works, Flint has made a new work, which like Belloc’s, teases us with incipient allegories, with suggestions and mysteries as to who he and his companions really are, but all lightened and brightened with quirky, irreverent, and yet spiritually strengthening humour. A very good read.
Malcolm Guite
Author of Faith Hope and Poetry, and Sounding the Seasons
Cautionary Pilgrim is the story of Nick Flint’s journey through the highways and byways of Sussex, in the company of three larger-than-life companions, as they reflect on their ‘Sussex patrimony’. Not only is this an affectionate travelogue, punctuated with delightful drawings by the author, it is peppered with unexpected spiritual insights, drawn from the legends of numerous Sussex saints. Nick Flint tells us that the mud through which he trudges ‘knows its own and will always gently, lovingly tug us back.’ This enjoyable book may well have the same effect.
Nicholas Frayling
Dean Emeritus of Chichester Cathedral
CAUTIONARY PILGRIM
WALKING BACKWARDS WITH BELLOC
WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY
NICK FLINT
Published by Country Books/Ashridge Press
Courtyard Cottage, Little Longstone, Bakewell, Derbyshire DE45 1NN
Tel: 01629 640670
e-mail: [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-906789-93-0 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-906789-98-5 (eBook)
© 2014 Nick Flint
The rights of Nick Flint as author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1993.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any way or form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author and publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eBook conversion by Vivlia Limited
DEDICATION
WORDS
To Sarah and Catherine,
my constant source of inspiration and support.
PICTURES
To the memory of my father Ken Flint
who first encouraged me to draw.
I have included one of his drawings on page 63.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Those who walked part of the way with me; Pam and Graham. My imaginary companions are composite characters which reflect aspects of my own personality.
The stories and thoughts which have found their way into this book have their sources in countless conversations with friends over the years and Cautionary Pilgrim is a testimony to friends and family who in one way or another have contributed to the process. In particular it was at the suggestion of Charlie Goring that I used the White Lion pub sign in Lewes as the inspiration for the story of Walter.
Thanks are due for practical help in arranging the walk: to Pam Waugh, Anita Greenwood, Graham Whiting, the Chemin Neuf Community at Storrington, Mother Cynthia and the sisters of the Society of St Margaret at Uckfield. I would also like to thank Gill and Alan Radley, Jim Hanson, Jo Unwin, Gerard from the Belloc Blog, John Dewdney, Annette Lloyd Thomas author of the website johnmadjackfuller.homestead.com, Dick Richardson for relating the radio interview of John Julius Norwich for someone overcome by the weight of Belloc’s cloak. I value the wisdom of another ‘Four Men’: Christopher Winn, John Bird, Malcolm Guite and Dean Nicholas Frayling.
My wife Sarah has supported me in numerous practical ways and shown great patience as this project has unfolded.
I have often felt that the late Peggy O’Byrne has been cheering me on and record my sadness that she did not live to read the book, but my gratitude for our shared love of the county which is home to both of us. This is not a book about Belloc. I have not read extensively enough of his prolific output to offer that nor do I feel the need to place him in a mould of my own making. Nor is this a book on Sussex although it could not be set anywhere else. It is specifically not a book of Sussex saints yet I’m as surprised as anyone how often they seem to pop up in these pages.
My father had ended his journey and mine was about to begin. This journey had been passed to me as a gift in the form of a much thumbed volume just as his own father some sixty years before had given the very same book to him.
Who can possibly say how many paths cross and how often, sometimes without obvious consequence, other times with significant effect at the time or interpreted as such much later on. Just a few days after the death of my great grandfather in a Sussex Workhouse, another man, twenty five miles away, was at the start of his own special pilgrimage. It was late October 1902, that man was Hilaire Belloc and the walk he was about to undertake is immortalized in the extraordinary book – an early edition of which I was now holding in my hand; my grandfather’s copy. I had long dreamed of making this journey and now the time had come.
I was standing, not as I’d once imagined I might be on the anniversary of the start of the actual walk, on the spot where it began, but instead where the book’s journey ended, where Belloc had bid his walking companions and the reader goodbye. My father had just died and