What is Wanderlust?
N I was asked to make this travel talk, 1 fell to wondering about the essential ingredients for that heady spell called wanderlust. I tried to ¢hink out what it was that made one desire so
ardently to suffer the discomforts, the expense, the inconvenience of travel. And it seemed to me that we very often deceive ourselves and our friends in this matter. We say we have always longed to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, but what we really long to see is a French potter hurtling our suitcases about the wharf at Calais. We
talk of Versailles but we think of a chair on the boulevards. We grow solemn about the outline of Table Mountain from the harbour, or about the thousand valleys beyond Durban; but are enchanted. by the small coloured boy who grimaces on the wharf, and the Kaffir stevedore who wears a bowler hat decorated with a pair of Edwardian stays, with the laces tied under his sweating chin.
It is not so much the sight of Colombo from the sea that enthralls us, as the sudden jabber of native voices just outside our cabin. Perhaps it is arrogant in me to suppose that all travellers respond, secretly, more to these smaller impressions than to the grand_ set pieces; but with me, at least, it is so; and, if I may, I should like to give myself the fun of recalling some of them.-(Ngaio Marsh, " Remembered Trifles," 3YA, June 20.)
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Bibliographic details
New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 54, 5 July 1940, Page 8
Word Count
250What is Wanderlust? New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 54, 5 July 1940, Page 8
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