A Tramp\'s Sketches by Stephen Graham
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Stephen Graham >> A Tramp\'s Sketches
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14 [Illustration: NIGHT OVER THE BLACK SEA]
A TRAMP'S SKETCHES
BY
STEPHEN GRAHAM
1913
TO
"THE CELESTIALS"
PREFACE
This book was written chiefly whilst tramping along the Caucasian and
Crimean shores of the Black Sea, and on a pilgrimage with Russian
peasants to Jerusalem. Most of it was written in the open air, sitting
on logs in the pine forests or on bridges over mountain streams, by
the side of my morning fire or on the sea sand after the morning dip.
It is not so much a book about Russia as about the tramp. It is the
life of the wanderer and seeker, the walking hermit, the rebel
against modern conditions and commercialism who has gone out into the
wilderness.
I have tramped alone over the battlefields of the Crimea, visited the
cemetery where lie so many British dead, wandered along the Black Sea
shores a thousand miles to New Athos monastery and Batum, have been
with seven thousand peasant pilgrims to Jerusalem, and lived their
life in the hospitable Greek monasteries and in the great Russian
hostelry at the Holy City, have bathed with them in Jordan where all
were dressed in their death-shrouds, and have slept with them a whole
night in the Sepulchre.
One cannot make such a journey without great experiences both
spiritual and material. On every hand new significances are revealed,
both of Russian life and of life itself.
It is with life itself that this volume is concerned. It is personal
and friendly, and on that account craves indulgence. Here are the
songs and sighs of the wanderer, many lyrical pages, and the very
minimum of scientific and topographical matter. It is all written
spontaneously and without study, and as such goes forth--all that a
seeker could put down of his visions, or could tell of what he sought.
There will follow, if it is given to the author both to write and to
publish, a full story of the places he visited along the Black Sea
shore, and of the life of the pilgrims on the way to the shrine of the
Sepulchre and at the shrine itself. It will be a continuation of the
work begun in _Undiscovered Russia_.
Several of these sketches appeared in the _St. James's Gazette_, two
in _Country Life_, and one in _Collier's_ of New York, being sent out
to these papers from the places where they were written. The author
thanks the Editors for permission to republish, and for their courtesy
in dealing with MSS.
STEPHEN GRAHAM.
CONTENTS
I
1. FAREWELL TO THE TOWN
2. NIGHTS OUT ON A PERFECT VAGABONDAGE
3. THE LORD'S PRAYER
4. DAYS
5. THE QUESTION OK THE SCEPTIC
6. A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOR EVER
7. A STILL-CREATION-DAY
8. SUNSET FROM THE GATE OF BAIDARI
9. THE MEANING OF THE SEA
II
1. HOSPITALITY
2. THE RICH MAN AND THE POOR MAN
3. A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT
4. SOCRATES OF ZUGDIDA
5. "HAVE YOU A LIGHT HAND?"
6. ST. SPIRIDON OF TREMIFOND
7. AT A FAIR.
8. A TURKISH COFFEE-HOUSE
9. AT A GREAT MONASTERY
III
1. THE BOY WHO NEVER GROWS OLD
2. ZENOBIA
3. THE LITTLE DEAD CHILD
4. HOW THE OLD PILGRIM REACHED BETHLEHEM
IV
THE WANDERER'S STORY
(I.) MY COMPANION. (II.) HOW HE FOUND HIMSELF
IN A COACH. (III.) IRRECONCILABLES.
(IV.) THE TOWNSMAN. (V.) HIS CONVERSION.
V
THE UNCONQUERABLE HOPE
VI
THE PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM
VII
THE MESSAGE FROM THE HERMIT
* * * * *
FRONTISPIECE
NIGHT OVER THE BLACK SEA
I
I
FAREWELL TO THE TOWN
The town is one large house of which all the little houses are rooms.
The streets are the stairs. Those who live always in the town are
never out of doors even if they do take the air in the streets.
When I came into the town I found that in my soul were reflected its
blank walls, its interminable stairways, and the shadows of hurrying
traffic.
A thousand sights and impressions, unbidden, unwelcome, flooded
through the eye-gate of my soul, and a thousand harsh sounds and
noises came to me through my ears and echoed within me. I became aware
of confused influences of all kinds striving to find some habitation
in the temple of my being.
What had been my delight in the country, my receptivity and
hospitality of consciousness, became in the town my misery and my
despair.
For imagine! Within my own calm mirror a beautiful world had seen
itself rebuilded. Mountains and valleys lay within me, robed in sunny
and cloudy days or marching in the majesty of storm. I had inbreathed
their mystery and outbreathed it again as my own. I had gazed at the
wide foaming seas till they had gazed into me, and all their waves
waved their proud crests within me. Beauteous plains had tempted,
mysterious dark forests lured me, and I had loved them and given them
habitation in my being. My soul had been wedded to the great strong
sun and it had slumbered under the watchful stars.
The silence of vast lonely places was preserved in my breast. Or
against the background of that silence resounded in my being the roar
of the billows of the ocean. Great winds roared about my mountains, or
the whispering snow hurried over them as over tents. In my valleys I
heard the sound of rivulets; in my forests the birds. Choirs of birds
sang within my breast. I had been a playfellow with God. God had
played with me as with a child.
Bound by so intimate a tie, how terrible to have been betrayed to a
town!
For now, fain would the evil city reflect itself in my calm soul, its
commerce take up a place within the temple of my being. I had left
God's handiwork and come to the man-made town. I had left the
inexplicable and come to the realm of the explained. In the holy
temple were arcades of shops; through its precincts hurried the trams;
the pictures of trade were displayed; men were building hoardings in
my soul and posting notices of idol-worship, and hurrying throngs were
reading books of the rites of idolatry. Instead of the mighty anthem
of the ocean I heard the roar of traffic. Where had been mysterious
forests now stood dark chimneys, and the songs of birds were exchanged
for the shrill whistle of trains.
And my being began to express itself to itself in terms of commerce.
"Oh God," I cried in my sorrow, "who did play with me among the
mountains, refurnish my soul! Purge Thy Temple as Thou didst in
Jerusalem of old time, when Thou didst overset the tables of the
money-changers."
Then the spirit drove me into the wilderness to my mountains and
valleys, by the side of the great sea and by the haunted forests. Once
more the vast dome of heaven became the roof of my house, and within
the house was rebuilded that which my soul called beautiful. There I
refound my God, and my being re-expressed itself to itself in terms of
eternal Mysteries. I vowed I should never again belong to the town.
As upon a spring day the face of heaven is hid and a storm descends,
winds ruffle the bosom of a pure lake, the flowers droop, wet, the
birds cease singing, and rain rushes over all, and then anon the face
of heaven clears, the sun shines forth, the flowers look up in tears,
the birds sing again, and the pure lake reflects once more the pure
depth of the sky, so now my glad soul, which had lost its sun, found
it again and remembered its birds and its flowers.
II
NIGHTS OUT ON A PERFECT VAGABONDAGE
I
I have been a whole season in the wilds, tramping or idling on the
Black Sea shore, living for whole days together on wild fruit,
sleeping for the most part under the stars, bathing every morning and
evening in the clear warm sea. It is difficult to tell the riches of
the life I have had, the significance of the experience. I have felt
pulse in my veins wild blood which my instincts had forgotten in the
town. I have felt myself come back to Nature.
During the first month after my departure from the town I slept but
thrice under man's roof. I slept all alone, on the hillside, in the
maize-fields, in the forest, in old deserted houses, in caves, ruins,
like a wild animal gone far afield in search of prey. I never knew in
advance where I should make my night couch; for I was Nature's guest
and my hostess kept her little secrets. Each night a new secret was
opened, and in the secret lay some pleasant mystery. Some of the
mysteries I guessed--there are many guesses in these pages--some I
only tried to guess, and others I could only wonder over. All manner
of mysterious things happen to us in sleep; the sick man is made well,
the desperate hopeful, the dull man happy. These things happen in
houses which are barred and shuttered and bolted. The power of the
Night penetrates even into the luxurious apartments of kings, even
into the cellars of the slums. But if it is potent in these, how much
more is it potent in its free unrestricted domain, the open country.
He who sleeps under the stars is bathed in the elemental forces which
in houses only creep to us through keyholes. I may say from experience
that he who has slept out of doors every day for a month, nay even for
a week, is at the end of that time a new man. He has entered into new
relationship with the world in which he lives, and has allowed the
gentle creative hands of Nature to re-shape his soul.
The first of my nights after leaving the town was spent on a shaggy
grass patch on a cliff, under three old twisted yew trees. Underfoot
was an abundance of wild lavender and the air was laden with the
scent. I am now at New Athos monastery, ten miles from Sukhum, and am
writing this in the cell that the hospitable monks have given me. My
last night was in a deep cavern at the base of a high rock on a desert
shore.
The first night was warm and gentle, though it was followed by several
that were stormy. Wrapped in my rug I felt not a shiver of cold, even
at dawn. As I lay at my ease, I looked out over the far southern sea
sinking to sleep in the dusk. The glistening and sparkling of the
water passed away--the sea became a great bale of grey--blue silk,
soft, smooth, dreamy, like the garment of a sorceress queen.
I slipped into sleep and slipped out again as easily as one goes from
one room to another, sometimes sleeping one hour or half an hour at
a time, or more often one moment asleep, one moment awake, like the
movement of a boat on the waves.
Once when I wakened, I started at an unforeseen phenomenon. The moon
in her youth was riding over the sea as bright as it is possible to
be, and down below her she wrote upon the waves and expressed herself
in new variety, a long splash of lemon-coloured light over the placid
ocean, a dream picture, something of magic.
It was a marvellous sight, something of that which is indicated in
pictures, but which one cannot recognise as belonging to the world
of truth--something impressionistic. To waken to see something so
beautiful is to waken for the first time, it is verily to be in part
born; for therein the soul becomes aware of something it had not
previously imagined: looking into the mirror of Nature, it sees itself
anew.
Where my sleeping-place would be had been a secret, and this was the
mystery in it, the further secret. I was definitely aware even on my
first night out that I had entered a new world.
To sleep, to wake and find the moon still dreaming, to see the moon's
dream in the water, to sleep again and wake, so--till the dawn. Such
was my night under the old yews, the first spent with these southern
stars on a long vagabondage.
II
How different was last night, how full of weariness after heavy
tramping through leagues of loose stones. I had been tramping from
desolate Cape Pitsoonda over miles and miles of sea holly and scrub
through a district where were no people. I had been living on
crab-apples and sugar the whole day, for I could get no provisions.
It is a comic diet. I should have liked to climb up inland to find
a resting-place and seek out houses, but I was committed to the
seashore, for the cliffs were sheer, and where the rivers made what
might have been a passage, the forest tangles were so barbed that they
would tear the clothes off one's back. In many places the sea washed
the cliffs and I had to undress in order to get past. It was with
resignation that I gave up my day's tramping and sought refuge for the
night in a deep and shapely cavern.
There was plenty of dry clean sand on the floor, and there was a
natural rock pillow. I spread out my blanket and lay at length,
looking out to the sea. I lay so near the waves that at high tide I
could have touched the foam with my staff. I watched the sun go down
and felt pleased that I had given up my quest of houses and food until
the morrow. As I lay so leisurely watching the sun, it occurred to me
that there was no reason why man should not give up quests when he
wanted to--he was not fixed in a definite course like the sun.
Sunset was beautiful, and dark-winged gulls continually alighted on
the glowing waves, alighted and swam and flew again till the night.
Then the moon lightened up the sea with silver, and all night long the
waves rolled and rolled again, and broke and splashed and lapped. The
deep cavern was filled with singing sounds that at first frightened
me, but at last lulled me to sleep as if a nurse had sung them.
III
Between these two beds what a glorious Night picture-book, a book
telling almost entirely of the doings of the moon. I remember how I
slept once under a wild walnut-tree. In front of me rose to heaven
forested hills, and the night clothed them in majesty. Presently the
moon came gently from her apartments and put out a slender hand,
grasped the tree-tops, and pulled herself up over the world. She
showed herself to me in all her glory, and then in a minute was gone
again; for she entered into a many-windowed cloud castle and roamed
from room to room. As she passed from window to window I knew by the
light where she was. A calm night. The moon went right across the sky
and returned to her home. Rain came before the dawn, and then mists
crept down over the forests and hid them from my view. Cold, cold! The
mountains were hidden by a cloud. Loose stones rolled down a cliff
continually and a wind sighed. I snuggled myself into my blanket and
waited for an hour. Then the sun gained possession of the sky.
I went down to the river, gathered sticks--they were very damp--and
made a fire. Once the fire began to burn it soon increased in size,
for I had gathered a great pile of little twigs and they soon dried
and burned. Then in their burning they dried bigger twigs, sticks,
cudgels, logs. I boiled my kettle and made tea.
Whilst I bathed in the river the sun gave a vision of his splendour: a
thousand mists trembled at his gaze. An hour later it was a very hot
day, and the village folk coming out of their houses could scarcely
have dreamed how reluctantly the night had retired at the dawn--with
what cold and damp the morning had begun.
IV
Another night, just after moonrise, a wind arose and drove in front
of it the whole night long a great thunderstorm, with lightnings and
rollings and grumblings and mutterings, but never a spot of rain. At
dawn, when I looked out to sea, I saw the whole dreadful array of the
storm standing to leeward like ships that had passed in the night, and
as though baulked in pursuit the roll of the thunder came across the
sky sullenly, though with a note of defeat.
The nights were often cold and wet, and it became necessary for me to
make my couch under bridges or in caves or holes of the earth. On the
skirts of the tobacco plantations and in the swampy malarial region
where the ground never gets dry I slept beside bonfires. I learned of
the natives to safeguard against fever by placing withered leaves on
bark or wilted bracken leaves between myself and the ground. At a
little settlement called Olginka I slept on an accumulation of logs
outside the village church. On this occasion I wrapped myself up in
all the clothes I possessed, and so saved myself from the damp. Next
morning, however, my blanket was so wet with dew that I could wring
it, though I had felt warm all night. I had always to guard against
the possibility of rain, and I generally made my couch in pleasant
proximity to some place of shelter--a bridge, a cave, or a house; and
more than once I had to abandon my grass bed in the very depth of the
night, and take up the alternative one in shelter.
V
A tremendous thunderstorm took place about a fortnight after I left
home. I had built a stick fire and was making tea for myself at the
end of a long cloudless summer day, and taking no care, when suddenly
I looked up to the sky and saw the evening turning swiftly to night
before my eyes. The sun was not due to set, but the western horizon
seemed as it were to have risen and gone forth to meet it. A great
black bank of cloud had come up out of the west and hidden away the
sun before his time.
I hastened to put my tea things into my pack and take to the road, for
it was necessary to find a convenient night place. In a quarter of an
hour it was night. At regular intervals all along the road were the
brightly lit lamps of glow-worms; they looked like miniature street
lights, the fitting illumination of a road mostly occupied by
hedgehogs.
I found a dry resting-place under a tree and laid myself out to sleep,
watching the moon who had just risen perfectly, out of the East; but
I had hardly settled myself when I was surprised by a gleam of
lightning. Turning to the west, I saw the vast array of cloud that had
overtaken the sun, coming forward into the night--eclipsing the sky.
A storm? Would it reach me? My wishes prompted comforting answers and
I lay and stared at the sky, trying to find reassurance. I did not
feel inclined to stir, but the clouds came on ominously. I marked out
a bourne across the wide sky and resolved that if the shadow crept
past certain bright planets in the north, south, and centre, I would
take it as a sign, repack my wraps, and seek shelter in a farm-house.
But the clouds came on and on. Slowly but surely the great army
advanced and the lightnings became more frequent. My sky-line was
passed. I rose sorrowfully, put all my things in the knapsack, and
took the road once again.
The lightning rushed past on the road and, blazing over the forests,
lit up the wide night all around. Overhead the sky was cut across: in
the east was a perfectly clear sky except at the horizon where the
moon seemed to have left behind fiery vapours; in the west and
overhead lay the dense black mass of the storm cloud. The clouds came
forward in regular array like an army. Nothing could hold them back;
they came on--appallingly. And the moon looked at the steady advance
and her light gleamed upon the front ranks as if she were lighting
them with many lanterns.
I had lain down to sleep quite sober-hearted, but now as the
lightnings played around I began to feel as excited as if I were in
a theatre--my blood burned. I had tired feet, but I forgot them. I
walked swiftly. I felt ready to run, to dance. Very strangely there
was at the same time a presentiment that I might be struck by
lightning. But all Nature was madly excited with me and also shared my
presentiment of destruction. We lived together like the victim and the
accomplices in a Dionysian sacrifice and orgy.
And the clouds kept on gaining! Far away I heard the storm wind and
the clamour of the sea. The thunder moaned and sobbed. I hurried along
the deserted road and asked my heart for a village, a house, a church,
a cave, anything to shield from the oncoming drench.
Spying a light far away on a hill, I left the road and plunged towards
it. I went over many maize-fields, by narrow paths through the
tall waving grain, the lightning playing like firelight among the
sheath-like leaves. I crossed a wide tobacco plantation and approached
the light on the hill, by a long, heavily-rutted cart-track. This led
right up to the doors of a farmhouse. Big surly dogs came rushing out
at me, but I clumped them off with my stick, and having much doubt in
my mind as to the sort of reception I should get, I knocked at the
windows and doors. I expected to be met by a man with a gun, for the
dogs had made such a rumpus that any one might have been alarmed.
The door was opened by a tall Russian peasant.
"May I spend the night here?" I asked.
The man smiled and put out his arms as if to embrace me.
"Yes, of course. Why ask? Come inside," he replied.
"I thought of sleeping in the open air," I added, "but the storm
coming up I saw I should be drenched."
"Why sleep outside when man is ready to receive you?" said the
peasant. "It is unkind to pass our houses by. Why do you deny your
brothers so? You said you slept in the fields, eh? That is bad. You
shouldn't. The earth here is full of evil, and the malaria comes up
with the dampness. Your bones grow brittle and break, or they go all
soft, you shrivel up and become white, or swellings come out on you
and you get bigger and bigger until you die. No, no! God be thanked
you came to me."
He asked me would I sleep in the house or on the maize straw. His sons
slept on the maize; it was covered, and so, sheltered from the rain.
I could sleep in the house if I liked, but it was more comfortable on
the straw. His three sons slept there, but as it was a festival they
had not come home yet.
I agreed to the straw. My host led me to a sort of large open barn, a
barn without walls, a seven-feet depth of hay and straw surmounted by
a high roof on poles.
"If you feel cold, or if the rain comes in, just burrow down under the
straw," said the peasant. "Very glad I am that you have come to me,
that you have done me the honour. Much better to ask hospitality than
to sleep out."
I quite agreed it was much better to sleep with man on such a night.
The lightnings were now all about--never leaving a second's pure
darkness. The thunder grew more powerful and rolled forward from three
sides.
My host stood by me after I had lain down, a whole hour. He was most
hilarious, having partaken plentifully of festival fare. He warned me
repeatedly against sleeping on the ground, and advised me to find bark
or withered branches to lie upon if I would not seek shelter with man.
The increasing storm did not seem to impress him in the slightest. He
was all agog to tell me his family history and to compare the state of
agriculture in England with that in Russia. Only when his sons came
home and the heavy rain spots had begun to shower down upon him did he
finally shake my hand, wish me well, cross himself, and stump off back
to the house.
Three tall young men scrambled over me into the straw and buried
themselves: two laughed and talked, the other was silent and
frightened. There was no sleep. The thunder grew louder and louder,
and the lightning rushed over our faces like the sudden glare of a
searchlight. All four of us put our faces to the straw to shut out
the light, and we tried to sleep. But we knew that the tempest at its
worst had yet to break. Suddenly came a sharp premonitory crash just
above us, near, astonishing. One of the young men, who had just dozed
off, woke up and scratched his head, saying--
"The little bear has got into the maize. Eh, brothers, this is going
to be a big piece of work."
Then a great wind broke out of the sky and tore through the forests
like armies of wild beasts. The trees within our view bent down as
if they would break in two; the moon above them was overswept by the
cloud. When the moon's light had gone the night became darker and the
lightning brighter. The framework of our shelter rocked to and fro in
the gale and we felt as if upon the sea; the straw and the hay jumped
up as if alive, and great lumps of thatch were rent out of the roof,
showing the sky and letting in the rain. I looked for the ruin of our
shelter.
But the hurricane passed on. The rain came in its place. The great
forty-day flood re-accomplished itself in an hour. We heard the beat
of the rain on the earth: in ten minutes it was the hiss of the rain
on the flooded meadows. By the sulphurous illuminations we saw almost
continuously the close-packed, drenching rain.... The wet came in.
We burrowed deep down into the straw and slept like some new sort of
animal.
VI
On other nights heavy rain came on unexpectedly, and I discovered how
pleasant a bed may be made just under the framework of a bridge. The
bridge is a favourite resort of the Russian tramp and pilgrim, and I
have often come across their comfortable hay or bracken beds there.
Indeed I seldom go across a bridge at night without thinking there may
be some such as myself beneath it.
When the weather is wet it is much more profitable to sleep in a
village--there is hospitality there, and the peasant wife gives you
hot soup and dries your clothes. But often villages are far apart, and
when you are tramping through the forest there may be twenty miles
without a human shelter. I remember I found empty houses, and though I
used them they were most fearsome. I had more thrills in them than in
the most lonely resting-places in the open. Some distance from Gagri
I found an old ruined dwelling, floorless, almost roofless, but still
affording shelter. I had many misgivings as I lay there. Was the house
haunted? Was it some one else's shelter? Had some family lived there
and all died out? You may imagine the questions that assailed me, once
I had lain down. But whether evil was connected with the house or
no, it was innocuous for me. Nothing happened; only the moon looked
through the open doorway; winds wandered among the broken rafters, and
far away owls shrieked.
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