Wanderers and Pilgrims

Wanderers and Pilgrims

"Wanderers and Pilgrims" opens with a visionary allegory that sets the interpretive key for the whole work: the narrator beholds a vast tract of country, upland and lowland, hill and plain, across which flows one unceasing tide of human life, moving from bright hills at the start to dark mountains at the end. This is Elizabeth Rundle Charles's figure for humanity's passage through the world, rendered as a landscape animated by ceaseless, almost migratory motion. The vision unfolds in three movements. On the wooded hills at the outset, joyous bands linger among flowery banks and golden fields, weaving fairy gardens and leafy tents, singing and dancing—yet never for long. An inward, unaccountable restlessness drives them onward before they can settle, and when questioned, they identify themselves simply as "a race of Wanderers," compelled toward a plain whose purpose they cannot name. In the plain, amid more substantial houses, cities, homesteads, cornfields, and vineyards, the same compulsion recurs: comfort and settlement are offered, and refused by necessity rather than choice, for still "it is the doom of our race" to move on. Finally the Wanderers, now sorrowful, footsore, and reluctant, reach the dark mountains, beyond which lies only the unknown "Great Sea." They face this final ascent in bitter tears, admitting they know neither how they will cross nor what awaits them, bound only by the fatalism of their self-description: a doomed race that may not stay. Against this current of aimless humanity, the narrator distinguishes a second company: the Pilgrims. Unlike the Wanderers, who are driven by blind impulse and look backward with regret, the Pilgrims move with freedom and conscious purpose, rarely glancing behind except toward the dark mountains that mark the boundary of the visible world. Asked why they hasten on, they answer that they will not linger; asked their destination, they answer joyfully, "Home—to a Holy City which is our Home." Though no barrier separates their path from the Wanderers'—any Wanderer might join it at any point—the Pilgrims know their way by two distinguishing marks: the indelible footprints of "One who trod it once," and the certainty of the goal toward which the path tends. Above the dark mountains where this path terminates, the narrator sees a rainbow-like bridge, and beyond it a shining city of pearl, opal, ruby, and gold, glimpsed as in a sunset cloud. The Pilgrim band moves toward it chanting that the doom of their race has been reversed for them: not Wanderers but Pilgrims, they do not cling to the world's resting-places, since this is not their true rest, but press onward and upward to the City that is Home. This opening allegory functions as the governing image for the book: the same essential journey—the same hills, plain, and dark mountains, the same universal human restlessness—is shared by all, but its meaning is transformed by whether it is undergone as aimless Wandering or purposeful Pilgrimage. The distinction Charles draws is not one of different roads but of different orientations toward the identical road: possession of a guide (the footprints of Christ) and a destination (the Holy City) converts compulsion into vocation, and transforms what would otherwise be a tragic, doom-laden transience into a hopeful advance toward a promised Home. Characteristic of Charles's devotional and allegorical fiction—best known through her "Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family"—the passage uses a dreamlike landscape vision, in the tradition of Bunyan's pilgrim allegory, to frame human life itself as a choice between two ways of experiencing the same inevitable passage from birth to death: restless, sorrowful wandering without meaning, or purposeful pilgrimage sustained by faith, companionship, and hope of arrival.

By Elizabeth Rundle Charles · First published 1861 · Genre: Christian Allegory, Religious Fiction, Philosophical Fiction · 1,039 words

First lines

A LARGE tract of country lay spread before me; upland and lowland, hill / and plain. The whole land seemed stirring with perpetual movement, all / in one direction; -from the bright hills at its commencement, to the / dark mountains at the end. Earth and sky seemed moving, as when an / enormous flight of migratory birds is passing by, but earth and sky / were really stationary. This movement was one constant tide of human / life, ceaselessly streaming across the land.

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Wanderers and Pilgrims is listed on Textopian as a short story by Elizabeth Rundle Charles, dated 1861 CE.

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historical fiction · religious themes · spiritual journey · character study · moral lessons · Victorian literature · coming-of-age · family relationships · period drama · adventure · personal transformation · faith and doubt

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