You do not need to put on airs, put on side, ape pompous acquaintances, simper, trim, bowdlerize, change clothes according to time of day, polish finger nails and balance cake, give the expected smile after futile remark, avoid contradiction, or read up the secrets of bon ton at night.
As you come along the road at any time of day everything about you says, “Here I am, the tramp; take me as I am or not at all.” The Church covers the friar so that he is immune from pride and taunt, fashion and convention. He cannot be reproached; for his garments are a token that he is bearing the reproach of Christ. And Nature covers the tramp in a similar way. He has the chance to feel and be at home in any place in the world, under any circumstances and with any people. You are never ill-dressed in the King’s uniform; you are never ill-dressed in the tramp’s.
Such stability is great gain, and frees the mind from care and fear of appearances. You can with a gay heart plunge into converse with the heir to the kingdom if he comes your way, and he will almost infallibly say after his long revealing talk with you: “Ah, I wish I were you!” You cause kings to envy you, but even peasants, who can be prouder and stiffer than kings, will feel at home with you. You must also be at home with them. You learn their accent, their special peasant version of life, their stories, their songs. Quite by accident you seem to get inside the real life of a nation and you belong to it for the time. “It is always worth while talking to a clever man,” says a character in Dostoyevsky. It is always worth while talking to a stranger.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE ARTIST’S NOTEBOOK
Holding but lightly to material things,
Happy to stay, yet eager to begone,
He is the poet, though he never writ
A line of metre; he is God’s free man