The Right Place by CE Montague (1924)

Though this book is subtitled 'A Book of Pleasures' to me it is more of a meditation on place. These fourteen essays, called chapters, speak of location from many angles: where you are on the surface of the planet architecturally, culturally, or naturally; that last group covering landforms and geology and what they cause in human terms. Montague's style is cool and poetic, sculpturally and referentially rich without too much in the way of emotion. I'm guessing this is because of his earning a good part of his spurs on war reporting, where an objective head would seem to be critical: emotion, if one let it out, would explode in such circumstances. Early on, his focus is the central muscle-knot of Europe, the Alps. Britain is seen in contrast to this, occasionally coming into focus. As the book progresses Britain becomes the main concern. His point of view is loosely conservative, in the sense of his seeing value in clean air, work, a good life, some aspects of the country house system, but not at all in dilettantism, modern education, the 'silly' upper class - one gets the sense that he was a man of decided opinions which had thorough grounding in his mind in a sense of the value of effort and connectedness to nature and her rhythms. Any sort of 'superstructural' or 'fatty layer' stuff, whether it be left or right wing, was unnecessary nonsense! Thus useful country squires were OK, their hard-working tenants were OK, jibbering society types were not, as was not anyone who didn't contribute in a 'worthwhile' manner. He had the same sort of ideas when it came to writers, reading between the lines: there were those who were essential, and those who were dribblers. His enthusiasm for the wide sweep of the landscape is inspiring. He describes a Britain which was a lot cleaner and less stultifyingly and dangerously urbanised than the one of today, imagining bicycle journeys through it to sense the lie of the land for example, with gentle runs into towns that would be death-defying today. It leaves one with the usual sense of something lost. His meditations on architecture know nothing of post-war concrete gloom, either. But as a poetic, strong-toned, cool-brained examination of the landmass of Europe and Britain from a nature's-eye view, as well as an early twentieth-century human's-eye view, capturing that moment, it is deeply enjoyable.