Journeys to Bagdad
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Charles S. Brooks >> Journeys to Bagdad
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Transcriber's note:
Words or phrases in italics are enclosed by underscores.
An underscore is also used in the chapter "Through the
Scuttle with the Tinman" in the equation
a=(Dx/2T)f(a, b c T_3)
to indicate that the "3" is a subscript.
JOURNEYS TO BAGDAD
by
CHARLES S. BROOKS
Illustrated with Original Wood-Cuts by Allen Lewis
[Illustration]
Yale University Press
New Haven Connecticut
M D CCCC XV
Copyright, 1915, by
Yale University Press
First printed November, 1915, 1000 copies
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The Yale University Press makes grateful acknowledgment to the
Editors of the _Yale Review_ and of the _New Republic_ for
permission to include in the present work essays of which they were
the original publishers.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Journeys to Bagdad
II. The Worst Edition of Shakespeare
III. The Decline of Night-Caps
IV. Maps and Rabbit-Holes
V. Tunes for Spring
VI. Respectfully Submitted--To a Mournful Air
VII. The Chilly Presence of Hard-headed Persons
VIII. Hoopskirts and Other Lively Matter
IX. On Traveling
X. Through the Scuttle with the Tinman
JOURNEYS TO BAGDAD
[Illustration]
JOURNEYS TO BAGDAD
Are you of that elect who, at certain seasons of the year--perhaps in
March when there is timid promise of the spring or in the days of October
when there are winds across the earth and gorgeous panic of fallen
leaves--are you of that elect who, on such occasion or any occasion else,
feel stirrings in you to be quit of whatever prosy work is yours, to throw
down your book or ledger, or your measuring tape--if such device marks
your service--and to go forth into the world?
I do count myself of this elect. And I will name such stimuli as most set
these stirrings in me. And first of all there is a smell compounded out of
hemp and tar that works pleasantly to my undoing. Now it happens that
there is in this city, down by the river where it flows black with city
stain as though the toes of commerce had been washed therein, a certain
ship chandlery. It is filthy coming on the place, for there is reek from
the river and staleness from the shops--ancient whiffs no wise enfeebled
by their longevity, Nestors of their race with span of seventy lusty
summers. But these smells do not prevail within the chandlery. At first
you see nothing but rope. Besides clothesline and other such familiar and
domestic twistings, there are great cordages scarce kinsmen to them, which
will later put to sea and will whistle with shrill enjoyment at their
release. There are such hooks, swivels, blocks and tackles, such confusion
of ships' devices as would be enough for the building of a sea tale. It
may be fancied that here is Treasure Island itself, shuffled and laid
apart in bits like a puzzle-picture. (For genius, maybe, is but a
nimbleness of collocation of such hitherto unconsidered trifles.) Then you
will go aloft where sails are made, with sailormen squatting about,
bronzed fellows, rheumatic, all with pipes. And through all this shop is
the smell of hemp and tar.
In finer matters I have no nose. It is ridiculous, really, that this very
messenger and forerunner of myself, this trumpeter of my coming, this
bi-nasal fellow in the crow's-nest, should be so deficient. If smells were
bears, how often I would be bit! My nose may serve by way of ornament or
for the sniffing of the heavier odors, yet will fail in the nice detection
of the fainter waftings and olfactory ticklings. Yet how will it dilate on
the Odyssean smell of hemp and tar! And I have no explanation of this, for
I am no sailor. Indeed, at sea I am misery itself whenever perchance "the
ship goes _wop_ (with a wiggle between)." Such wistful glances have I cast
upon the wide freedom of the decks when I leave them on the perilous
adventure of dinner! So this relish of hemp and tar must be a legacy from
a far-off time--a dim atavism, to put it as hard as possible--for I seem
to remember being told that my ancestors were once engaged in buccaneering
or other valiant livelihood.
But here is a peculiar thing. The chandlery gives me no desire to run away
to sea. Rather, the smell of the place urges me indeterminately,
diffusedly, to truantry. It offers me no particular chart. It but cuts my
moorings for whatever winds are blowing. If there be blood of a pirate in
me, it is a shame what faded juice it is. It would flow pink on the
sticking. In mean contrast to skulls, bowie-knives and other red villainy,
my thoughts will be set toward the mild truantry of trudging for an
afternoon in the country. Or it is likely that I'll carry stones for the
castle that I have been this long time building. Were the trick of prosody
in me, I would hew a poem on the spot. Such is my anemia. And yet there is
a touch of valiancy, too, as from the days when my sainted ancestors
sailed with their glass beads from Bristol harbor; the desire of visiting
the sunset, of sailing down on the far side of the last horizon where the
world itself falls off and there is sky with swirl of stars beyond.
[Illustration]
In the spring of each year everyone should go to Bagdad--not particularly
to Bagdad, for I shall not dictate in matter of detail--but to any such
town that may happen to be so remote that you are not sure when you look
it up whether it is on page 47 which is Asia, or on page 53 which is
Persia. But Bagdad will serve: For surely, Reader, you have not forgotten
that it was in Bagdad in the surprising reign of Haroun-al-Raschid that
Sinbad the Sailor lived! Nor can it have escaped you that scarce a mule's
back distance--such was the method of computation in those golden
days--lived that prince of medieval plain-clothes men, Ali Baba!
Historically, Bagdad lies in that tract of earth where purple darkens into
night. Geographically, it lies obliquely downward, and is, I compute,
considerably off the southeast corner of my basement. It is such distant
proximity, doubtless, that renders my basement--and particularly its
woodpile, which lies obscurely beyond the laundry--such a shadowy, grim
and altogether mysterious place. If there be any part of the house,
including certain dark corners of the attic, that is fearfully
Mesopotamian after nightfall, it is that woodpile. Even when I sit above,
secure with lights, if by chance I hear tappings from below--such noises
are common on a windy night--I know that it is the African Magician
pounding for the genie, the sound echoing through the hollow earth. It is
matter of doubt whether the iron bars so usual on basement windows serve
chiefly to keep burglars out, or whether their greater service is not
their defense of western Christianity against the invasion from the East
which, except for these bars, would enter here as by a postern. At a
hazard, my suspicion would fall on the iron doors that open inwards in the
base of chimneys. We have been fondly credulous that there is nothing but
ash inside and mere siftings from the fire above; and when, on an
occasion, we reach in with a trowel for a scoop of this wood-ash for our
roses, we laugh at ourselves for our scare of being nabbed. But some day
if by way of experiment you will thrust your head within--it's a small
hole and you will be besmirched beyond anything but a Saturday's
reckoning--you will see that the pit goes off in darkness--_downward_. It
was but the other evening as we were seated about the fire that there came
upward from the basement a gibbering squeak. Then the woodpile fell over,
for so we judged the clatter. Is it fantastic to think that some dark and
muffled Persian, after his dingy tunneling from the banks of the Tigris,
had climbed the pile of wood for a breath of night at the window and, his
foot slipping, the pile fell over? Plainly, we heard him scuttling back to
the ash-pit.
Be these things as they may, when you have arrived in Bagdad--and it is
best that you travel over land and sea--if you be serious in your zest,
you will not be satisfied, but will journey a thousand miles more at the
very least, in whatever direction is steepest. And you will turn the
flanks of seven mountains, with seven villainous peaks thereon. For the
very number of them will put a spell on you. And you will cross running
water, that you leave no scent for the world behind. Such journey would be
the soul of truantry and you should set out upon the road every spring
when the wind comes warm.
Now the medieval pilgrimage in its day, as you very well know, was a most
popular institution. And the reasons are as plentiful as blackberries. But
in the first place and foremost, it came always in the spring. It was like
a tonic, iron for the blood. There were many men who were not a bit pious,
who, on the first warm day when customers were scarce, yawned themselves
into a prodigious holiness. Who, indeed, would resign himself to changing
moneys or selling doves upon the Temple steps when such appeal was in the
air? What cobbler even, bent upon his leather, whose soul would not mount
upon such a summons? Who was it preached the first crusade? There was no
marvel in the business. Did he come down our street now that April's here,
he would win recruits from every house. I myself would care little whether
he were Christian or Mohammedan if only the shrine lay over-seas and deep
within the twistings of the mountains.
[Illustration]
If, however, your truantry is domestic, and the scope of the seven seas
with glimpse of Bagdad is too broad for your desire, then your yearning
may direct itself to the spaces just outside your own town. If such myopic
truantry is in you, there is much to be said for going afoot. In these
days when motors are as plentiful as mortgages this may appear but
discontented destitution, the cry of sour grapes. And yet much of the
adventuring of life has been gained afoot. But walking now has fallen on
evil days. It needs but an enlistment of words to show its decadence.
Tramp is such a word. Time was when it signified a straight back and
muscular calves and an appetite, and at nightfall, maybe, pleasant gossip
at the hearth on the affairs of distant villages. There was rhythm in the
sound. But now it means a loafer, a shuffler, a wilted rascal. It is
patched, dingy, out-at-elbows. Take the word vagabond! It ought to be of
innocent repute, for it is built solely from stuff that means to wander,
and wandering since the days of Moses has been practiced by the most
respectable persons. Yet Noah Webster, a most disinterested old gentleman,
makes it clear that a vagabond is a vicious scamp who deserves no better
than the lockup. Doubtless Webster, if at home, would loose his dog did
such a one appear. A wayfarer, also, in former times was but a goer of
ways, a man afoot, whether on pilgrimage or itinerant with his wares and
cart and bell. Does the word not recall the poetry of the older road, the
jogging horse, the bush of the tavern, the crowd about the peddler's pack,
the musician piping to the open window, or the shrine in the hollow? Or
maybe it summons to you a decked and painted Cambyses bellowing his wrath
to an inn-yard.
[Illustration]
One would think that the inventor of these scandals was a crutched and
limping fellow, who being himself stunted and dwarfed below the waist was
trying to sneer into disuse all walking the world over, or one who was
paunched by fat living beyond carrying power, larding the lean earth,
fearing lest he sweat himself to death, some Falstaff who unbuttons him
after supper and sleeps on benches after noon. Rather these words should
connote the strong, the self-reliant, the youthful. He is a tramp, we
should say, who relies most on his own legs and resources, who least
cushions himself daintily against jar in his neighbor's tonneau, whose eye
shines out seldomest from the curb for a lift. The wayfarer must go forth
in the open air. He must seek hilltop and wind. He must gather the dust of
counties. His prospects must be of broad fields and the smoking chimneys
of supper.
But the goer afoot must not be conceived as primarily an engine of muscle.
He is the best walker who keeps most widely awake in his five senses. Some
men might as well walk through a railway tunnel. They are so concerned
with the getting there that a black night hangs over them. They plunge
forward with their heads down as though they came of an antique race of
road builders. Should there be mileposts they are busied with them only,
and they will draw dials from their pokes to time themselves. I fell into
this iniquity on a walk in Wales from Bala to Dolgelley. Although I set
out leisurely enough, with an eye for the lake and hills, before many
hours had elapsed I had acquired the milepost habit and walked as if for a
wager. I covered the last twenty miles in less than five hours, and when
the brown stone village came in sight and I had thumped down the last hill
and over the peaked bridge, I was a dilapidated and foot-sore vagrant and
nothing more. To this day Wales for me is the land where one's feet have
the ugly habit of foregathering in the end of the shoes.
Worse still than the athletic walker is he who takes Dame Care out for a
stroll. He forever runs his machinery, plans his business ventures and
introduces his warehouse to the countryside.
Nor must walking be conceived as merely a means of resting. One should set
out refreshed and for this reason morning is the best time. Yours must be
an exultant mood. "Full many a glorious morning have I seen flatter the
mountain-tops with sovereign eye." Your brain is off at a speed that was
impossible in your lack-luster days. You have a flow of thoughts instead
of the miserable trickle that ordinarily serves your business purposes and
keeps you from under the trolley cars.
But all truantry is not in the open air. I know a man who while it is yet
winter will get out his rods and fit them together as he sits before the
fire. Then he will swing his arm forward from the elbow. The table has
become his covert and the rug beyond is his pool. And sometimes even when
the rod is not in his hand he will make the motion forward from the elbow
and will drop his thumb. It will show that he has jumped the seasons and
that he stands to his knees in an August stream.
It was but yesterday on my return from work that I witnessed a sight that
moved me pleasantly to thoughts of truantry. Now, in all points a grocer's
wagon is staid and respectable. Indeed, in its adherence to the business
of the hour we might use it as a pattern. For six days in the week it
concerns itself solely with its errands of mercy--such "whoas" and running
up the kitchen steps with baskets of potatoes--such poundings on the
door--such golden wealth of melons as it dispenses. Though there may be a
kind of gayety in this, yet I'll hazard that in the whole range of
quadricycle life no vehicle is more free from any taint of riotous
conduct. Mark how it keeps its Sabbath in the shed! Yet here was this
sturdy Puritan tied by a rope to a motor-car and fairly bounding down the
street. It was a worse breach than when Noah was drunk within his tent.
Was it an instance of falling into bad company? It was Nym, you remember,
who set Master Slender on to drinking. "And I be drunk again," quoth he,
"I'll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken
knaves." Or rather did not every separate squeak of the grocer's wagon cry
out a truant disposition? After years of repression here was its chance at
last. And with what a joyous rollic, with what a lively clatter, with what
a hilarious reeling, as though in gay defiance of the law of gravity, was
it using its liberty! Had it been a hearse in a runaway, the comedy would
not have been better. If I had been younger I would have pelted after and
climbed in over the tailboard to share the reckless pitch of its
enfranchisement.
Then there is a truantry that I mention with hesitation, for it comes
close to the heart of my desire, and in such matter particularly I would
not wish to appear a fool to my fellows. The child has this truantry when
he plays at Indian, for he fashions the universe to his desires. But some
men too can lift themselves, though theirs is an intellectual bootstrap,
into a life that moves above these denser airs. Theirs is an intensity
that goes deeper than daydreaming, although it admits distant kinship.
Through what twilight and shadows do such men climb until night and
star-dust are about them! Theirs is the dizzy exaltation of him who mounts
above the world. Alas, in me is no such unfathomable mystery. I but trick
myself. Yet I have my moments. These stones that I carry on the mountain,
what of them? On what windy ridge do I build my castle? It is shrill and
bleak, they say, on the topmost peaks of the Delectable Mountains, so
lower down I have reared its walls. There is no storm in these upland
valleys and the sun sits pleasantly on their southern slopes. But even if
there be unfolded no broad prospect from the devil to the sunrise, there
are pleasant cottages in sight and the smoke of many suppers curling up.
If you happened to have been a freshman at Yale some eighteen years ago
and were at all addicted to canoeing on Lake Whitney, and if, moreover, on
coming off the lake there burned in you a thirst for ginger-beer--as is
common in the gullet of a freshman--doubtless you have gone from the
boathouse to a certain little white building across the road to gratify
your hot desires. When you opened the door, your contemptible person--I
speak with the vocabulary of a sophomore--is proclaimed to all within by
the jangling of a bell. After due interval wherein you busy yourself in an
inspection of the cakes and buns that beam upon you from a show-case--your
nose meanwhile being pressed close against the glass for any slight
blemish that might deflect your decision (for a currant in the dough often
raises an unsavory suspicion and you'll squint to make the matter
sure)--there will appear through a back door a little old man to minister
unto you. You will give no great time to the naming of your drink--for the
fires are hot in you--but will take your bottle to a table. The braver
spirits among you will scorn glasses as effeminate and will gulp the
liquor straight from the bottle with what wickedest bravado you can
muster.
Now it is likely that you have done this with a swagger and have called
your servitor "old top" or other playful name. Mark your mistake! You were
in the presence, if you but knew it, of a real author, not a tyro fumbling
for self-expression, but a man with thirty serials to his credit. Shall I
name the periodical? It was the _Golden Hours_, I think. Ginger-beer and
jangling bells were but a fringe upon his darker purpose. His desk was
somewhere in the back of the house, and there he would rise to all the
fury of a South-Sea wreck--for his genius lay in the broader effects. Even
while we simpletons jested feebly and practiced drinking with the open
throat--which we esteemed would be of service when we had progressed to
the heavier art of drinking real beer--even as we munched upon his ginger
cakes, he had left us and was exterminating an army corps in the back
room. He was a little man, pale and stooped, but with a genius for
truantry--a pilgrim of the Bagdad road.
But we move on too high a plane. Most of us are admitted into truantry by
the accidents, merely, of our senses. By way of instance, the sniff of a
rotten apple will set a man off as on seven-league boots to the valleys of
his childhood. The dry rustling of November leaves re-lights the fires of
youth. It was only this afternoon that so slight a circumstance as a ray
of light flashing in my eye provided me an agreeable and unexpected
truantry. It sent me climbing the mountains of the North and in no less
company than that of Brunhilda and a troop of Valkyrs.
It is likely enough that none of you have heard of Long Street. As far as
I am aware it is not known to general fame. It is typically a back street
of the business of a city, that is, the ventages of its buildings are
darkened most often by packing cases and bales. Behind these ventages are
metal shoots. To one uninitiated in the ways of commerce it would appear
that these openings were patterned for the multiform enactment of an Amy
Robsart tragedy, with such devilish deceit are the shoots laid up against
the openings. First the teamster teeters and cajoles the box to the edge
of the dray, then, with a sudden push, he throws it off down the shoot,
from which it disappears with a booming sound. As I recall it was by some
such treachery that Amy Robsart met her death. Be that as it may, all day
long great drays go by with Earls of Leicester on their lofty seats,
prevailing on their horses with stout, Elizabethan language. If there
comes a tangle in the traffic it is then especially that you will hear a
largeness of speech as of spacious and heroic days.
During the meaner hours of daylight it is my privilege to occupy a desk
and chair at a window that overlooks this street. Of the details of my
activity I shall make no mention, such level being far below the flight of
these enfranchised hours of night wherein I write. But in the pauses of
this activity I see below me wagon loads of nails go by and wagon loads of
hammers hard after, to get a crack at them. Then there will be a truck of
saws, as though the planking of the world yearned toward amputation. Or
maybe, at a guess, ten thousand rat-traps will move on down the street.
It's sure they take us for Hamelin Town, and are eager to lay their
ambushment. There is something rather stirring in such prodigious
marshaling, but I hear you ask what this has to do with truantry.
It was near quitting time yesterday that a dray was discharging cases down
a shoot. These cases were secured with metal reinforcement, and this metal
being rubbed bright happened to catch a ray of the sun at such an angle
that it was reflected in my eye. This flash, which was like lightning in
its intensity, together with the roar of the falling case, transported
me--it's monstrous what jumps we take when the fit is on us--to the slopes
of dim mountains in the night, to the heights above Valhalla with the
flash of Valkyrs descending. And the booming of the case upon the
slide--God pity me--was the music. It was thus that I was sent aloft upon
the mountains of the North, into the glare of lightning, with the cry of
Valkyrs above the storm....
But presently there was a voice from the street. "It's the last case
to-night, Sam, you lunk-head. It's quitting time."
The light fades on Long Street. The drays have gone home. The Earls of
Leicester drowse in their own kitchens, or spread whole slices of bread on
their broad, aristocratic palms. Somewhere in the dimmest recesses of
those cluttered buildings ten thousand rat-traps await expectant the
oncoming of the rats. And in your own basement--the shadows having
prospered in the twilight--it is sure (by the beard of the prophet, it is
sure) that the ash-pit door is again ajar and that a pair of eyes gleam
upon you from the darkness. If, on the instant, you will crouch behind the
laundry tubs and will hold your breath--as though a doctor's thermometer
were in your mouth, you with a cold in the head--it's likely that you will
see a Persian climb from the pit, shake the ashes off him, and make for
the vantage of the woodpile, where--the window being barred--he will sigh
his soul for the freedom of the night.
[Illustration]
THE WORST EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE
[Illustration]
THE WORST EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE
Reader, if by fortunate chance you have a son of tender years--the age is
best from the sixth to the eleventh summer--or in lieu of a son, a nephew,
only a few years in pants--mere shoots of nether garments not yet
descending to the knees--doubtless, if such fortunate chance be yours, you
went on one or more occasions last summer to a circus.
If the true holiday spirit be in you--and you be of other sort, I'll not
chronicle you--you will have come early to the scene for a just
examination of what mysteries and excitements are set forth in the
side-shows. Now if you be a man of humane reasoning, you will stand
lightly on your legs, alert to be pulled this way or that as the nepotic
wish shall direct, whether it be to the fat woman's booth or to the
platform where the thin man sits with legs entwined behind his neck, in
delightful promise of what joy awaits you when you have dropped your
nickel in the box and gone inside. To draw your steps, it is the showman's
privilege to make what blare he please upon the sidewalk; to puff his
cheeks with robustious announcement.
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