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CONNECTIONS
Each signature may be linked to the others by up to 53 thematic connections. Some are common to many signatures; others highlight unusual, yet notable, associations and interests. Friendships are not represented because so many signers were friends. Go to "The Bohemians" to view and interact with all 53 connections.
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THE DOOR
Tramping—walking for the sake of walking itself, over vast distances—had been a popular activity in the nineteenth century, and by the 1920s, it was a familiar enough term for bookshop customer Harry Kemp to take it on as part of his identity; calling himself the “Tramp Poet,” he sought to distinguish himself from the ossifying conventions of middle-class America. Tramping was to many of its practitioners a spiritual occupation as much as anything else. The joys of wandering in the open air are described by many of those who inscribed the bookshop’s door; even the shop’s owner, Frank Shay, decided to take his bookshop on the road in the summers rather than remain trapped behind a counter in the city. Further parallels may be found in the shop customers who took to the sea, sometimes in “tramp steamers,” merchant ships that went from port to port seeking cargo, rather than following a set route or schedule.
One of Vernon Hill's original artworks for Stephen Graham's illustrated Tramping with a Poet in the Rockies (1922)
Graham’s [link: sig] memoir tells the story of summer trip with Vachel Lindsay through Glacier National Park. In the book’s introduction, Graham writes that the two men “discussed emblems and emblematic art and hieroglyphics as we tramped together. The emblems in this book are an attempt to express that side of our mutual experience.”