The herald., 1893-01-27
LITERARY TRAMPS.
AUTHORS WHO ARE NOTED IN HIS
TORY AS PEDESTRIANS.

Homer Was Among the First of Whom
We Have Any Record-In the Middle
Ages the Singers of Ballads Moved from
Place to Place on Foot.
The literary tramp is no new thing.
Thousands of years ago blind one sang OF
the beauty of Helen and the valor Of
Achilles. Nearer our own days palmers,
with scrip and scallop shell, told tales for
bread as they tramped toward the Holy
Land or home from 1t. Troubadours sang
as they strolled from castle to castle and
became the fathers Of literature Then
literature ceased to go on foot. When it
could not ride, as Chaucer did, it staid at
home. Bad roads, sparse habitations, above
all, the growth of cities, did away with lit
erary vagabondage. Literature almost
forgot nature in time and the tramp took
to garrets rather than to highways and
wrote idylls in bed to keep warm. Only
within the last hundred years has litera-
ture again found feet, and the pleasant
spectacle of its makers tramping alone or
in couples again becomes prominent.
Almost the first of literary tramps, if
indeed they come within the description at
all, were Shelley and Mary Goodwin They
have left little trace of their adventures
yet that they could walk, or thought they
could, is evident in their plan to go on
foot from Paris to Lausanne. We catch q
heeting glimpse Of them trudging with
Jane Clairmont through the dust and
grumbling bitterly at the evil fare and
housing Of vagabondage, the two women
riding by turns on their only donkey till
sprained ankle promoted Shelley himself
to ride, and they had to buy "a chariot"
The poorest of tramps they must have
been, for not love Of nature but scarcity OF
gold put them on their feet. What the
natives of the country thought of them no
man can say, for the girls trudged in black
silk gowns and were Of the hated nation.
Doubtless also they trudged along in the
kid slippers and silk stockings and the
corded and iron busked stays that were of
that day. No wonder the poet got
''sprainl'
A stouter if less romantic pair of pedes-
trians were James and Harriet Martineau,
who in 1922 made a tour on foot together in
Scotland, walking 500 miles in month.
Miss Martineau was always a capital
walker while she had health, and Words
worth accused her of walking the legs
off" of half the gentlemen of Ambleside
For all that she was the most unimagina.
tive OF women. She had manly stride"
and never nymph or pixie, elf or dryad
lured her to follow streams or to dream
beneath rustling foliage. Herbert Brown.
ing and Sarianna were another brother
and sister who covered miles upon miles
together The popularity Of their Journeys
lies in the fact that they did not begin
them till both were middle aged They
formed their mpanionship after Mrs
Rrowning's death, with whose feeble steps
neither. of them had ever kept pace.
Browning speaks of seventeen mile walks
with Sarianna, and records nine miles
accomplished in less than two hours,
which certainly required more than tile
usual "manly stride" from his companion.
The Wordsworths, brother and sister,
were splendid examples of literary tramp
ing. Mrs. Wordsworth told Harriet Mar
tineau that William and Dorothy some
times walked forty miles day. Tours on
foot were large part Of their experience
together. The first thing they did after
their reunion in 1894 was to start off upon
a little stroll, of which Dorothy wrote Il
walked with my brother from Kendall to
Grasmere, eighteen miles, and afterward
to Keswick fifteen miles, through the
most delightful country that even was
pCCA. IL LNoNSblpSAt ItOtt baty SLdTtcu
upon n pedestrian tour with Coleridge
along the seacoast.
A little later in the same month the
three set out at 4:S0 of dark and cloudy
afternoon, walking eight miles for start,
while the two poets laid the plan of bal.
lad, with the sale OF which they hoped to
pay the expenses of the excursion. The
methods of tho two did not run easily 90
gether, and 1.-THE Ancient Mariner" was
soon given over entirely to Coleridge
Dorothy did not walk in black silk gown.
Doubts are reasonable if even she ever had
one. Her usual walking costume was ''lit-
tie jacket and brown dress' Coleridge we
may imagine in the same raiment in which
he afterward travelled with the two in
Scotland-the soiled nankeen trousers, the
blue coat with brass buttons, in which he
mounted a Unitarian pulpit and preached
a candidate sermon. Wordsworth doubt.
less also wore his usual suit of dingy
brown, with a tapping, broad brimmed
straw hat to protect his weak eyes.
They were not three graces, this distin-
guished trio of trampsl Wordsworth was
not handsome man; not even an impress
i've man. In spite of the fact that the
brother and sister walked, according to De
Quincey's calculation, between ITO, 600 and
10000 miles, his legs were the worst part
of him, and the total effect of his narrow
person was even more uncomely in move
ment than in repose. His walk was roll
and a lunge, with eyes fixed on the ground
"Mumbly on his legs" the neighbors de-
scribed him. Once Dorothy, walking far
ther behind him than usual and thus get
ting better view, was heard to exclaifn
discontentedly several times, "Can that be
William?" Dorothy herself was short and
slight, with such gypsy tan as is rarely
seen upon an English face. Her eyes were
not sost nor were they fierce or bold, but
they were wild and startling and hurried
in their motion, like those of some wild
wood creature. -MacmiIan's Magazine.