Going For a Walk

THANKSGIVING DAY WALK
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

My Father's Parents in 1969
Willard Samson Carriker (1898 - 1974)
Melvina Adeline Beavers Carriker (1901 - 1981)

Grandpa Carriker's notations on the back of each photo.
Notice that Grandma is holding Timmy (her little Chihuahua)

2023 ~ 52 Years Later

Ellie & Aidan
on this year's rendition
of the traditional walk!

Happy Times! Of course literature abounds with beautiful descriptions of autumnal holiday walks, joyful, mellow, and long - remembered. However, I want to take a different direction this year -- a road perhaps less traveled -- and look at some unsuccessful literary walking experiences, starting with the utterly gloomy opening line of Jane Eyre:

"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day . . .
the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds
so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that
futher out-door exercise was now out of the question."
~ Charlotte Bronte ~
Well, no one can help the weather. But even under perfect conditions--

"There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow. He listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction . . . ."

--the walk can still take a bad turn, as happens in Ray Bradbury's story "The Pedestrian," written in 1951 -- 72 years ago, set in 2053 -- 30 years from now!

The main character, Leonard Mead, loves nothing more than to go out for a walk, stepping "into that silence that was the city at eight o'clock of a misty evening in November; peering "down long moonlit avenues of sidewalk" and walking "for hours and miles." Even though the sidewalks are slowly disappearing due to overgrowth and lack of maintenance, he still makes his way, breathing deep, examining a random leaf, and whispering quietly as he passes the dark houses of his neighbors: "Hello, in there." Unfortunately for Leonard, taking a walk has become a suspect activity, and one night he is apprehended and taken into custody by the police, who cannot understand why he is not safely indoors watching television.

Police: What are you doing out?
Leonard: Walking.
Police: Walking!
Leonard: Just walking.
Police: Walking where? For what?
Leonard: Walking for air. Walking to see.
Police: Have you done this often?
Leonard: Every night for years.

Found in the collection Twice 22
(pp 16 - 20)

With no further explanation or justification, Leonard is taken "To the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies." Poor Leonard. He is aware that "In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not one in all that time." But he never realized that it would be held against him. Sadly, in the mid - 21st Century, going out for a walk in the fresh air is deemed "regressive" and perceived as a threat to the normality of the neighborhood.

Apparently, the same suspicion of pedestrians holds true in Canada as well as the United States. In Alice Munro's short story "Simon's Luck" (written in 1978, around 25 years after Bradbury's "Pedestrian"), Rose looks forward to a slower pace and a change of scenery in her life, but her expectations are soon thwarted:

"'Country life,' she said. 'I came here with some ideas about how I would live. I thought I would go for long walks on the deserted country roads. And the first time I did, I heard a car coming tearing along on the gravel behind me. I got well off. Then I heard shots. I was terrfied. I hid in the bushes and a car came roaring past, weaving all over the road -- and they were shooting out of the windows. I cut back through the fields and told the woman at the store I thought we should call the police. She said oh, yes weekends the boys get a case of beer in the card they go out shooting groundhogs. Then she said, what were you doing up that road anyway? I could see she thought going for walks by yourself was a lot more suspicious than shooting groudhogs. There were lots of things like that.'"

Found in the collection Who Do You Think You Are?
(pp 201 - 02, emphasis added)

Contrary to Rose's pastoral vision, sometimes it is safer to take a walk in the city, though -- as Leonard learns -- not always. In the quest for pedestrian - friendliness, the walker must always be wary -- of rules and restrictions, of cars and all manner of anything mechanized, of impatience and intolerance. It should be so easy, to open your door and set out unimpeded by equipment, with the exception of a walking stick, should you so desire. You should not have to drive somewhere to go for a walk, but, alas, that is so often the best way. Despite the various hurdles and speed bumps tossed across the path, we must remain inspired (particularly here in Virginia!) by the words of the late, great (and yes, admittedly flawed) Thomas Jefferson:

"Walking is the best possible exercise.
Habituate yourself to walk very far."
I think it's safe to say that solitary walkers -- Leonard Mead, Rose, Thomas Jefferson -- take to the pavement in search of inner peace and quiet, some time out in the world while simultaneously alone inside their heads. I thought about their troubles as pedestrians when reading Steve Almond's commentary on the "inner life":

"To focus on the inner life today -- to read books, to think deeply, to imagine with no ulterior agenda, to reflect on painful or confusing experiences [to take a walk!] -- is to defy the clamoring edicts of our age, the buy messages, the ingrained habits of passive consumption and complaint. It is not yet a crime, merely an arcane and isolating practice."

Steve Almond From his essay:
William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life
[Recommended by Ned; see also Stoner; and Victoria]

Walk while you may! Walk very far!
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, December 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Persimmons"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST ~ More Alice Munro
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

A Soldier of the Legion

IN HONOR OF VETERANS DAY
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Conquest of Algeria, 1830
by Jean Bainville

The French conquest of Algeria took place between 1830 and 1903.
The painting above depicts a battle at the onset;
the poem below, first published in 1867,
describes a battle from half-way through:

Bingen on the Rhine

A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers —
There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed away,
And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say.
The dying soldier faltered, as he took that comrade’s hand,
And he said: “I never more shall see my own, my native land;
Take a message and a token to some distant friends of mine,
For I was born at Bingen — at Bingen on the Rhine!

“Tell my brothers and companions, when they meet and crowd around
To hear my mournful story, in the pleasant vineyard ground,
That we fought the battle bravely — and, when the day was done,
Full many a corse lay ghastly pale, beneath the setting sun.
And ’midst the dead and dying were some grown old in wars,—
The death-wound on their gallant breasts, the last of many scars;
But some were young,— and suddenly beheld life’s morn decline,—
And one had come from Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine!

“Tell my mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age,
And I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage;
For my father was a soldier, and, even as a child,
My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild;
I let them take whate’er they would—but kept my father’s sword;
And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard,
And with boyish love I hung it where the bright light used to shine,
On the cottage wall at Bingen — calm Bingen on the Rhine!

“Tell my sister not to weep for me, and sob with drooping head,
When the troops are marching home again, with glad and gallant tread;
But to look upon them proudly, with a calm and steadfast eye,
For her brother was a soldier, too — and not afraid to die.
And, if a comrade seek her love, I ask her, in my name,
To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame;
And to hang the old sword in its place (my father’s sword and mine),
For the honour of old Bingen — dear Bingen on the Rhine!

“There’s another — not a sister, — in the happy days gone by,
You’d have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye:
Too innocent for coquetry! too fond for idle scorning; —
Oh friend! I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes heaviest mourning!
Tell her, the last night of my life (for, ere this moon be risen,
My body will be out of pain — my soul be out of prison),
I dreamed I stood with her, and saw the yellow sunlight shine
On the vine-clad hills of Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine!

“I saw the blue Rhine sweep along—I heard, or seemed to hear,
The German songs we used to sing, in chorus sweet and clear;
And down the pleasant river, and up the slanting hill,
That echoing chorus sounded, through the evening calm and still;
And her glad blue eyes were on me, as we passed with friendly talk,
Down many a path beloved of yore, and well-remembered walk;
And her little hand lay lightly, confidingly in mine …
But we’ll meet no more at Bingen — loved Bingen on the Rhine!”

His voice grew faint and hoarser,— his grasp was childish weak,—
His eyes put on a dying look,— he sighed and ceased to speak:
His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled!
The soldier of the Legion, in a foreign land was dead!
And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down
On the red sand of the battle-field, with bloody corpses strown;
Yea, calmly on that dreadful scene her pale light seemed to shine,
As it shone on distant Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine!

By Caroline Sheridan Norton (1808–1877)

According to American author Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900) and Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 – 1942), this poem almost immediately upon publication -- and for years afterward -- became a hugely popular choice for grade school memorization and declamation. Both authors recall hearing "Bingen on the Rhine" recited by dozens of their peers and repeated so often that the narrative began to bore its audience and nearly lost its tragic impact.

Montgomery's heroine, Anne Shirley (of Green Gables!) declares:

"I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of poetry off by heart—‘The Battle of Hohenlinden’ and ‘Edinburgh after Flodden,’ and ‘Bingen of the Rhine,’ and most of the ‘Lady of the Lake’ and most of ‘The Seasons’ by James Thompson. Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a piece in the Fifth Reader —‘The Downfall of Poland’— that is just full of thrills. Of course, I wasn’t in the Fifth Reader — I was only in the Fourth — but the big girls used to lend me theirs to read. . . . When Gilbert Blythe recited “Bingen on the Rhine” Anne picked up Rhoda Murray’s library book and read it until he had finished . . . ."

From Anne of Green Gables, Chapters 5 & 19

Montgomery wrote Anne of Green Gables in 1908 but set the story about thirty years ealier. In keeping with the novel's timeline, Gilbert is reciting the poem "Bingen on the Rhine" in 1877, a decade after its initial publication.

Stephen Crane wrote and published "The Open Boat" in 1897. He was twenty - six at the time, thinking back to the days when he -- like Gilbert and Anne -- had memorized "Bingen on the Rhine" in school:

"To chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered the correspondent's head. He had even forgotten that he had forgotten this verse, but it suddenly was in his mind.

'A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand
And he said: I shall never see my own, my native land.'

"In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with the fact that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had never regarded the fact as important. Myriads of his school-fellows had informed him of the soldier's plight, but the dinning had naturally ended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than breaking of a pencil's point.

"Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was no longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet, meanwhile drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it was an actuality --stern, mournful, and fine.

The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with his feet out straight and still. While his pale left hand was upon his chest in an attempt to thwart the going of his life, the blood came between his fingers. In the far Algerian distance, a city of low square forms was set against a sky that was faint with the last sunset hues. The correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of the slow and slower movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and perfectly impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the Legion who lay dying in Algiers."

From "The Open Boat"

When I was a student, in the 20th Century, Caroline Norton was no longer required reading, but Stephen Crane was, and that is how I learned of Norton's poem, not in grade school, but in a graduate seminar on "Style & Audience Interaction." We were given an assignment, by Professor Herman Wilson, to compare Crane's original 1897 New York Press account of surviving a tragic shipwreck with his subsequent literary narrative, "The Open Boat." And -- it goes without saying! -- we were compelled to look up every literary allusions along the way! From that day until now, I have always thought that one of the most memorable lines in all of American fiction is Crane's admission that up until his own near - death experience, the fate of the soldier in Algiers "was less to him than breaking of a pencil's point."

As Gerry so rightly observed, we cannot move on from "Bingen on the Rhine" without also paying our respects to Thomas Hardy's misplaced hero, Drummer Hodge, whose fate was similar to that of the Soldier of the Legion, not in Algiers but in South Africa. The theme is sadly similar -- a young man far from home, unknowing, unknown and unmourned. Hardy's poem was first published as "The Dead Drummer" in November 1899, shortly after the outbreak of the Second Boer War:

Drummer Hodge

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined — just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
Young Hodge the drummer never knew —
Fresh from his Wessex home —
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow up some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)

An English Drummer Boy (1902)
by George W. Joy (1844 - 1925)

May they rest in peace,
both Drummer Hodge and The Soldier of the Legion

"Let us remember . . . all those who have served
upon another shore and in a greater light,
that multitude which no one can number . . . ”
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, November 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "RIP Drummer Hodge"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com