Journeys To Bagdad

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Title:     Journeys To Bagdad
Author: Charles S. Brooks [More Titles by Brooks]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[The end]
Charles S. Brooks's essay: Journeys To Bagdad

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