Possibly my favorite book of all time

I was introduced to Chesterton, Belloc and Ronald Knox by a freshman English teacher (why yes, he was Catholic). The only fiction in the bunch, as I recall, were some wonderful detective stories by Chesterton and Knox. In fact Msgr. Knox, the first Catholic chaplain at Oxford for four hundred years, supported the University Catholic Chaplaincy by writing a mystery novel each year over the long vacation.

All this merely leads up to saying that this book reads like fiction, and along the way contains nuggets of political philosophy, European history and culture, musings on tradition and some frank sentimentality from an author who was at his best when expressing his outraged longing for a world which was gone but whose return he demanded.

And Belloc is a realist. I thought, in my mushy-headed state at age twenty, that this was to be a beautiful metaphorical musing on Belloc's conversion to Catholicism. Ha. Belloc was a cradle Catholic. This was, as the title would imply to a solid realist, an account of a journey on foot from Provence to Rome.

The ending, simultaneously pious and irreverent, jocular and serious, learned and silly, is pretty typical of the whole book. And Belloc is good enough at it that forty years later I can quote it from memory:

O ye patron saints and angels
That protect the four Evangels
And ye prophets vel majores
Vel incerti vel minores,
Virgines et confessores
Chief of whose peculiar glories
Est in aula regis stare
Atque clamare et conclamare,
Clamantes cum clamoribus Pro nobis peccatoribus.

I've never read a book like this. Travelogue, history, rabbit holes, pilgrimage, musings on religion and modernity (but not overdone), experiences of real people and hospitality.

On a whim, Belloc decides to walk from Toul, France, to Rome (approx 760 miles), in a straight line. He vows to only travel by foot, succumbing to the temptation to be carried by wheels on a few humorous occasions. He relies upon the hospitality of strangers and innkeepers, seeming always to have a bottle of wine at hand and just enough sustenance to get to the next waypoint. Along the journey, Belloc offers some histories on European peoples, the Romans, etc., but his commentaries on just ordinary people and the landscape are more charming. I felt like I wanted to walk with him but not disturb his running internal dialogue. At just the right moments, he interjects exchanges between the "Auctor" (himself) and the "Lector" (also himself) to tell a rabbit-hole story or poke fun at himself.

Though called "The Path to Rome," his writing is never proselytizing or stuffy. His pilgrimage is borne out of an abrupt spiritual ache, but he never imposes that his journey is somehow morally superior. It's done in true poverty of spirit and for the spirit of adventure.
I read this book in preparation for Fr. John Nepil's "To Heights and Unto Depths". I'd also like to read Guardini's "Letters from Lake Como" as a kind of "trilogy."

My favorite passage below about the majesty of mountains:

So little are we, we men: so much are we immersed in our muddy and immediate interests that we think, by numbers and recitals, to comprehend distance or time, or any of our limiting infinities. Here were these magnificent creatures of God, I mean the Alps, which now for the first time I saw from the height of the Jura; and because they were fifty or sixty miles away, and because they were a mile or two high, they were become something different from us others, and could strike one motionless with the awe of supernatural things. Up there in the sky, to which only clouds belong and birds and the last trembling colours of pure light, they stood fast and hard; not moving as do the things of the sky. They were as distant as the little upper clouds of summer, as fine and tenuous; but in their reflection and in their quality as it were of weapons (like spears and shields of an unknown array) they occupied the sky with a sublime invasion: and the things proper to the sky were forgotten by me in their presence as I gazed. To what emotion shall I compare this astonishment? So, in first love one finds that this can belong to me. Their sharp steadfastness and their clean uplifted lines compelled my THE ALPS, THEIR PICTURE adoration. Up there, the sky above and below them, part of the sky, but part of us, the great peaks made communion between that homing creeping part of me which loves vineyards and dances and a slow movement among pastures, and that other part which is only properly at home in Heaven. I say that this kind of description is useless, and that it is better to address prayers to such things than to attempt to interpret them for others. These, the great Alps, seen thus, link one in some way to one's immortality. Nor is it possible to convey, or even to suggest, those few fifty miles, and those few thousand feet; there is something more. Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of height and of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny. For I know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man. Since I could now see such a wonder and it could work such things in my mind, therefore, some day I should be part of it. That is what I felt. This it is also which leads some men to climb mountain-tops, but not me, for I am afraid of slipping down.

Another great quote on mountains:

The mountains from their heights reveal to us two truths. They suddenly make us feel our insignificance, and at the same time they free the immortal Mind, and let it feel its greatness, and they release it from the earth.

A fun vignette of St. Michael conversing with God. An annoyed St. Michael is reminding God about Earth and human beings. The most sensible thing, of anything else we could possibly do, is worship. Again, Belloc has a clever, beautiful, non-imposing way to frame it:

'I really beg your pardon,' said the Padre Eterno, when he saw the importance attached to these little creatures. 'I am sure they are worthy of the very fullest attention, and' (he added, for he was sorry to have offended) 'how sensible they seem, Michael! There they go, buying and selling, and sailing, driving, and wiving, and riding, and dancing, and singing, and the rest of it; indeed, they are most practical, business-like, and satisfactory little beings. But I notice one odd thing. Here and there are some not doing as the rest, or attending to their business, but throwing themselves into all manner of attitudes, making the most extraordinary sounds, and clothing themselves in the quaintest of garments. What is the meaning of that?' 'Sire!' cried St Michael, in a voice that shook the architraves of heaven, 'they are worshipping You!' 'Oh! they are worshipping me! Well, that is the most sensible thing I have heard of them yet, and I altogether commend them. Continuez,' said the Padre Eterno, 'continuez!' And since then all has been well with the world; at least where Us continuent.

Listened to this book through Hoopla.

I can't help agreeing with Lector, the imaginary reader in the work, who says, "Why on earth did you write this book?" I apologize, Hilaire Belloc, but I really did not enjoy this. I know that Path to Rome is generally considered as Belloc's greatest work (even by Belloc himself), so I must assume that I'm missing something. If someone who loves this book could explain to me why I should give this book a re-read, that would be much appreciated.