The Royal Road to Romance

       A few weeks ago, I finished reading The Royal Road to Romance, by Richard Halliburton. It is really a pity that most people have never even heard of Richard Halliburton, because he really was an amazing explorer and author! Halliburton was born to a well-off family who had high hopes of his education and future job, but Halliburton thought otherwise. After graduating college, he realized that what he really wanted was to "Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you. Be afraid of nothing. There is such a little time that your youth will last- such a little time." (Oscar Wilde) Halliburton, so tired of a boring an uneventful life, was ready to find his joy in exploration and adventure. In fact, the dedication to Halliburton's book reads:

To

Irvine Oty Hockday

John Henry Leh

Edward Lawrence Keyes

James Penfield Seiberling

Whose sanity, consistency and respectability as

Princeton roommates drove me to this book.

       So, Richard collected all his personal belongings and began to explore the world. For many years, Richard traveled the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and everywhere in between! He wrote numerous books, including The Book of Marvels, The Glorious Adventure, The Flying Carpet, and The Royal Road to Romance. In the year of 1939, Richard set out on his final adventure. One clear morning, he attempted to sail a Chinese junk that he had crafted in China with a small crew. The junk took off, but it never came back. Halliburton died in a fierce sea storm, unprotected against the fury of the ocean. The story of his death (remarkably similar to Amelia Earhart's) is incredibly sad. America not only lost a great explorer when he died, but an amazing author, who has forever changed the world of geography. Halliburton writes with a touch that is not common in geography books. His books are full of life and pictures drawn with words. Even though they are educational, they are also immensely enjoyable. That, I  believe, is Richard's legacy: descriptive, beautiful books that are informative and interesting. His books are not only works of geography, but works of literature.

       I have written a creative, first-person summary of Richard Halliburton's The Royal Road to Romance as a small tribute to the amazing work that he has contributed to the world of literature and geography. You can access it here: file:///C:/Users/antca/Documents/School/Year%209%20School/Term%202/A%20First-Person%20Summary%20of%20Richard%20Halliburton%E2%80%99s%20The%20Royal%20Road%20to%20Romance,%20Chapters%207-37.pdf

As always, here are a few of my favorite quotes from The Royal Road to Romance:

“Let those who wish have their respectability- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous, and the romantic."

"[On the Matterhorn] There is not a mountain left in all Switzerland that has not been scaled, so that the joy of being the first to stand upon some formidable peak which only the eagles knew before has passed forever. But there is almost as much joy in being the tenth or the hundredth. Familiarity can never breed contempt for such vast and beautiful peaks and valleys as these. The rivers bound over the rocks with just the same abandon now as a thousand years ago. The wine-like air from the snow and pines in not less exhilarating. The charm of the Alps will never die; for where else may one find nature as spectacular, yet as serene, as in these her favorite mountains?

It is charm below the snow line; it is fierce joy above, fierce joy to stand at dawn on the supremacy of some soaring crag and see the amber clearness of the jagged horizon grow in intensity, to scale such peaks as the Matterhorn, surrounded by a sea of mountains, with nothing to indicate that you are in the heart of civilized Europe rather than some Greenland waste. One finds a stimulation here unknown elsewhere- a feeling of having attained unto another, higher life, unto another world, a world made not of land and sea, but of crystal air, and sky, and snow, and space. It all sent a surge through our hearts."