Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.
“THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SUPER-TRAMP” by W.H.Davies (written in 1907; first published in 1908) - and sundry other prose works by the same author.
There are some books that live an odd sort of afterlife. They were once huge bestsellers and admired even by some of the literati. They were praised for their style. They might have been set as texts suitable for schoolchildren. Then their time passed, they were no longer mentioned in manuals of literature, and they entered their afterlife. They became “cult” books, still in print, still admired by some readers, but no longer regarded as serious literature. All these things are true of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by the Welshman W.H. (William Henry) Davies (1871-1940) which, for reasons I’ll make clear later, would certainly not now be set as a text for schoolchildren. The internet tells me that The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp is still in print, but not as frequently as it once was. I have a very battered copy of the book, dated 1928, which tells me that it had been reprinted at least 23 times since it first appeared in 1908.
Some background: Davies used to be a well-known, but minor, Georgian poet, best remembered for his simple jingle called “Leisure” (“What I this life so full of care, We have no time to stand and stare” etc.). He’s still anthologised occasionally but, as I found when I tried to read more of his poetry, he has dated badly. He wrote some few effective poems but his childish simplicity and forced prettiness soon pall and degenerate into doggerel. He really does belong to the very junior classes of school. Before he got going as a published poet (he had had one slim volume published at his own expense), Davies had lived a vagrant life and washed up in a dosshouse in London’s East End where he wrote his memoirs of being a tramp. In the 1890s, when he was in his twenties, he had been a hobo in America and England. Knowing nothing of the publishing world, he sent a copy of his manuscript to a famous writer to see if he would help him get it published. This was George Bernard Shaw, who was impressed by the book’s clear and uncluttered prose style, its apparent candour and the tramp’s nose-thumbing at respectable society. GBS agreed to write a preface, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp was published and it was an instant hit. Edwardian and Georgian readers saw it as a great lark, a delightful excursion into bohemia.
Shaw was right to praise the clarity of the prose, but an alert modern reader quickly understands that under his account of a lively life on the road, Davies is in fact masking, euphemising or minimising many sordid things.
As a young man Davies left Wales after getting involved in boozing and petty theft. He scarpered from his small town and took a ship (cheapest ticket) from Liverpool to the USA. He fell in with a bum called Brum who taught him how to ride the rails (even if guards with billy-clubs were ready to knock bums off speeding trains) and how to panhandle most efficiently. He fell in with other hoboes like Baldy and Australian Red.
In Michigan and other states, they taught him the art of getting arrested for petty misdemeanours so that they could be safely locked up in jail for the winter and get food and a bed for free. Apparently some small-town judges were perfectly aware of how the bums managed this, but they’d worked out a corrupt scheme to make the temporary incarceration of hoboes pay. (All this reminds me of O.Henry’s contemporaneous short story “The Cop and the Anthem” about a hobo trying to get locked up for the winter.)
Occasionally Davies and his chums had to do honest work, like picking berries in harvest time. He joined a gang digging a canal near Chicago. He went down South in a houseboat and spent some time working on the levees of the Mississippi, but he had a bout of malaria. For a while he begged on the streets of Memphis, Tennessee. But it is clear that as soon as he had much money in his pocket, he would go on titanic benders, get smashed and return to panhandling. Sea-ports were especially the places for easy pickings and a big piss-up, and Davies headed for Baltimore.
Some of the most vivid chapters in the book concern the time he spent working, with fellow vagrants, on cattleboats sailing between Baltimore and Liverpool. He records the rough treatment that was given to the cattle, the way they were tethered in small pens, their bellowing, and the fact that sheep (kept on a different open deck) were often washed overboard in heavy seas. But – his euphemising kicking in – he nowhere mentions what must have been the stench. Interestingly, in Liverpool the crude and underpaid American cattlemen and hoboes were appalled at how much poorer their British counterparts were.
After five years of bumming in America, Davies went back briefly to his Welsh home to see his aged mother who (he says) had clairvoyant powers and foresaw his unannounced visit. He returned to North America, still drinking heavily, and thought he’d try his luck in the gold-rush then going on in the Klondike. But his luck ran out when he was crossing Canada. He tried to jump on a moving train, fell, and had his right foot sliced off by the wheels. He had to have the whole leg amputated.
So he returned to Britain, slowed down, but still being a tramp. As often as not, though, he now depended on going from door to door in England as a pedlar, selling essentially worthless goods. He at least implies that his injury enabled him to win some pity when he begged. The chapters set in England are neither as raucous nor as eventful as those set in America. Davies was twice arrested unjustly in cases of mistaken identity, when he was taken to be a notorious thief who was doing the rounds. He does report how, when he was in London, he sometimes tried to sleep standing up, when he had nowhere to doss, as police always hustled on tramps who lay down and slept in public places. (This system is also described in Jack London’s account of London’s lower depths, The People of the Abyss). A number of times Davies expresses contempt for Salvation Army shelters and their brisk ways with vagrants when they dish out charity. He also locks horns with a charity organization which won’t give him a hand-out. (I wonder how much GBS warmed to this as he had already written a critique of the Salvation Army in his play Major Barbara. ) There are some colourful and some unsavoury characters whom he meets in doss-houses and shelters, such as the fraudster who tricks people out of their money by claiming he has an inheritance coming his way. There are also notes on the varieties of tramp –there are “gridlers” who deliberately sing loudly and badly in the hope that people will pay them to go away, and there are “downrighters” who are unashamed about begging without doing anything else. The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp fades out on Davies beginning his literary career and taking his first stab at settled respectability.
While much of this may sound like a rough-house, unbuttoned, frank account of a life, there is something that stands as a barrier between the text and a reader over a century later. Davies’ language is always restrained and polite. Of course four-letter-words and basic Anglo-Saxon-isms couldn’t be printed in 1908, so we can’t blame Davies for being euphemistic. Even so, when his fellow bums and hoboes are given dialogue that sounds just like the way the author himself writes, we sense that something is not quite right. It’s not as if Davies wouldn’t have known how to swear a blue streak. He confesses that, when he was put under chloroform as his leg was being amputated “I have a faint recollection of struggling with all my might against its effects, previous to losing consciousness; but I was greatly surprised on being afterwards told that I had, when in that condition, used more foul language in ten minutes delirium than had probably been used in twenty-four hours by the whole population of Canada.” (Chapter 20) Later he tells us of his own linguistic fastidiousness when he describes a doss-house acquaintance thus: “I have become accustomed to foul language from one man to another, but his bold way of directly addressing his blasphemy to his Maker, stiffened the laughter on my lips, and shocked me, in spite of an indifferent faith.” (Chapter 25) Then there are those moments when he appears to write a very softened version of what hard men actually said. Here is the
supposedly strong language used by a labourer who can’t get any sleep in a noisy dosshouse: “Give over, will yer: when are you coves going to sleep? I ain’t done any labour for three weeks, and now as I’ve got a chance at four in the mornin’, blow me if I ain’t robbed of my slumber. Take care I don’t set about you at once, yer blooming lot of bleeders. “ (Chapter 21). “Give over”? “Coves”? “Blow me”? “Yer blooming lot of bleeders”? My guess is the the annoyed labourer is more likely to have said “Shut up you ********. F**k me you ******ng ****ers. I’ll **** you if you don’t shut up.”
And, apart from its antiquity, what of the parts that would now have The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp banished from the classroom? Again, we can’t blame Davies himself for the attitudes and assumptions of his own age. Even so, the memoir’s casual racism is hard to ignore. Reporting negatively on a fellow hobo who has been stingy and greedy, Davies declares “Scotty, to our unfeigned disgust, acted the Jew in this matter of trade…” (Chapter 14). Later, travelling in steerage, he notes
“the disgusting, filthy habits of the great majority, who were a low class of Jews and peasantry from the interior of Russia… haters of soap and water [who] jabber and wildly gesticulate…” (Chapter 18).
This is mild, however, in comparison with his attitude towards blacks in America. South of the Mason-Dixon line, he gives a very ambiguous account of the lynching of a black man which he watched as if it were almost a public entertainment. He adds “Many a sheriff, I believe, has surrendered his prison keys to the lynchers and the lawless mobs, forgetting his duty in disgust at the exhibition of fear in one for whom he is responsible. And many a sheriff would lay down his life to protect a criminal who with cool nerve faces his cell, callous and indifferent” (Chapter 8). After travelling down some of the Mississippi looking for work, he stops at a camp on the banks where there are both black and white casual labourers. This is how he describes what is clearly a race riot: “Unfortunately the ill feeling which invariably exists between these two colours, came to a climax on the first day of our arrival. The negroes, insulting and arrogant, through their superiority of numbers, became at last unbearable. On which the white men, having that truer courage that scorned to count their own strength, assembled together, and after a few moments’ consultation, resolved to take advantage of the first provocation.” Eventually the “black murderers” are chased away. (Chapter 14). Later, when he sees a black man dragged from a jail, quivering with fear and begging for mercy, Davies says it aroused him “more with disgust than pity”(Chapter 15)
Finally, there is something that is not mentioned in The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp but which I think is now a glaring absence. Again, of course, it is something that could not be published in 1908. Every historical account I have read of American tramps, bums, hoboes and vagrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries tells me that their world was a very homosocial world – a world of men only. And much of this homosocial world was also casually homosexual. Put simply, older hoboes would often entice younger men to come along with them by promising the easy life with no hard work, but with a sexual relationship in mind. Probably the best-known American song about hoboes is “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”, which was first sung in the 1890s. Over the years it was bowdlerised (as in Burl Ives’ famous – and very enjoyable – 1950s version) and finally demoted to being a children’s song with completely sanitised lyrics. In the kiddie version even the “cigarette trees” became “lollipop trees”. But the original version was the frank lament of a young hobo who has been led astray by an older man who promised him the fantastic pleasures of the Big Rock Candy Mountains. It includes the chorus
“I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore
And I'll be damned if I hike any more
To be buggered sore like a hobo's whore
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.”
In his introduction to The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, George Bernard Shaw says “As to the sort of immorality that is most dreaded by schoolmistresses and duennas, there is not a word in the book to suggest that tramps even know what it means.” This seems a polite way of saying that there is no hint of sexual activity in the book. To his credit, Davies does show that the tramps and hoboes are not necessarily a merry band having only innocent adventures. There is no honour among thieves, and the bums he describes often steal from one another and cheat one another. He also recounts sheer criminality, with a gang of hoboes near Chicago waylaying and murdering employed labourers for the pay they might be carrying. I am also not suggesting that Davies himself necessarily had sexual exploits of any variety – though it is tempting to wonder what a wandering young man in his twenties might have been up to. Even so, in the early 21st century, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp seems like a book designed for an earlier, and perhaps more innocent, readership than now exists. Heigh-ho for the open road and let’s not emphasise the sordid realities too much.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Just to show you how much I care for you, dear readers, I did something that very, very few people ever do. I read other prose works by W.H.Davies to make sure I wasn’t underestimating the man. Perhaps other accounts he wrote of his rambles would be more forthcoming and more attuned to modern sensibilities. Years ago, I used to be a regular visitor to second-hand bookshops, and I bought odds and ends in the hope of one day getting around to reading them. I am now at the age when I am slowly emptying my shelves of books I know I will either never read, or will never read again. Among books so purchased were three obscure works by W.H.Davies, which I’ve only recently got around to reading. Here’s my report on them.
Despite its twee title, Davies’ A Poet’s Pilgrimage, published in 1918, has a certain, limited amount of charm. It is Davies’ account of spending a month or so tramping around Wales and a small part of the west of England before catching the train back to London. Here, given that he always has money in his pocket and is already a minor celebrity, he is not so much a tramp as a tourist on foot, attempting to keep up his image as a gentleman of the road. It is all very self-conscious. He is at his best when he is away from the cities (Swansea, Cardiff). He says many negative things about the dirty Welsh children in the cities and how Welsh workmen are overpaid anyway and how sheep near coal-mining towns are covered in soot. He prefers enjoying country pubs where, apparently, Welshmen all spontaneously burst into song and there are always colourful characters. He likes quaint inns, well-built country houses and picturesque hills. In short, he peddles the picture-postcard image of the country. He resents these new-fangled motor-cycles and motor-cars that are ruining the pastoral peace. As in The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, many of the conversations he records as if verbatim sound suspiciously formal and bowdlerised. By the time we are given the lengthy confessions of wandering eccentrics it is hard to see them as anything more than fiction. There are a handful of anecdotes worth remembering – the old sea-dog from the days of sail who rails against steamships; the tramp who is obsessed with hunting for fleas; the accordionist who has delusions about being a virtuoso. But the good anecdotes are few and far between. A Poet’s Pilgrimage is a bland exercise in trying to maintain a reputation.
Later Days, first published in 1925, is even worse, being little more than self-puffery. Each chapter begins with a piece of sheer doggerel. Davies is always ready to invite praise while pretending to denigrate his own work (“If my poems are remembered” etc. etc.) He tells a few inconsequential anecdotes he left out of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, relates a tale of walking from London to Bristol, complains about eccentric and annoying neighbours in London during the Great War, and tells us hastily that he has recently got married. But Later Days swiftly sinks into a series of name-dropping anecdotes about the literary and artistic celebrities of his day whom he has met. So on come pallid tales of meeting Edward Thomas, Walter de la Mare, Edward Garnett, W.H.Hudson, Hilaire Belloc, Joseph Conrad, GBS, Alice Meynell, Rupert Brooke, Ralph Hodgson [and his dog], the political and social grandees Lady Cunard and ex-prime minister Balfour, and the artists and sculptors Sickert, Epstein, Rotherstein and Augustus John. Only one tale he tells of these people has any punch – and it is a rather snarky put-down aimed at him by Max Beerbohm. So little does Davies say about any of these people one is left with the distinct impression that they all really saw him as a “character” to be humoured rather than as an intellectual equal – a colourful old former tramp who could be painted or sculpted. (And, says one source, despite his limited literary achievement, he was one of the most painted and sculpted figures of his day). Later Days is a really vacuous piece of work.
When I began reading The Adventures of Johnny Walker, Tramp, first published in 1926, I thought that at last W. H. Davies was going to indulge in frankness. The very first chapter has him entering a brothel in America. But he quickly tells us that he was there by accident, not knowing what the establishment really was, and having only been told that it was the best place to get soup for free. And that is all he says about it. This book is a re-hash of left-over bits and pieces. Davies’ preface tells us that he simply put together and re-wrote what could be salvaged from two earlier books that had not found an audience. The title apparently comes from an English tramp’s joke that he was an employee of “Johnny Walker, the road surveyor.” Included are improbable tales about American hoboes admiring the greater begging skills of Cockney tramps; the boldness of American tramps in approching the homes of the rich to beg; and the way real tramps look down on “stiffs”, meaning part-time tramps who sometimes actually work for a living. Dirty navvies, we are told, are not real tramps. “Narks” are semi-permanent residents of workhouses and doss houses who make life difficult for real tramps. Tramps sometimes play nasty tricks on one other and steal one another’s food when they’re in lodgings, and some tramps practise various frauds, such as pretending to collect money as workers forced out on strike. And that, really, is as much as you will get from this book, where Davies stretches the little he has to say as far as it can possibly be stretched.
Having read these three additional books, all I can see is a man flailing around desperately trying to repeat the success of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, but simply not having enough interesting material to do the trick.
I have saved you the bother of hunting for these forgotten books in second-hand bookshops, or reading them. Shortly I will be throwing them out.
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