It is to be noted that Mr. Davies is no propagandist of the illusions of the middle-class tramp fancier. You never suspect him of having read Lavengro, or got his notions of nomads from Mr. Theodore Watts Dunton. He does not tell you that there is honour among tramps: on the contrary, he makes it clear that only by being too destitute to be worth robbing and murdering can a tramp insure himself against being robbed and murdered by his comrade of the road. The tramp is fastidious and accomplished, audacious and self-possessed; but he is free from divine exploitation: he has no orbit: he has the endless trouble of doing what he likes with himself, and the endless discountenance of being passed by as useless by the Life Force that finds superselfish work for other men. That, I suppose, is why Mr. Davies tramps no more, but writes verses and saves money to print them out of eight shillings a week. And this, too, at a moment when the loss of a limb has placed within his reach such success in begging as he had never before dared to dream of!
Mr. Davies is now a poet of established reputation. He no longer prints his verses and hawks them: he is regularly published and reviewed. Whether he finds the change a lucrative one I venture to doubt. That the verses in The Soul's Destroyer and in his New Poems will live is beyond question; but whether Mr. Davies can live if anything happens to his eight shillings a week (unless he takes to the road again) is another matter. That is perhaps why he has advised himself to write and print his autobiography, and try his luck with it as Man of Letters in a more general sense. Though it is only in verse that he writes exquisitely, yet this book, which is printed as it was written, without any academic corrections from the point of view of the Perfect Commercial Letter Writer, is worth reading by literary experts for its style alone. And since his manner is so quiet, it has been thought well by his friends and his publishers to send a trumpeter before him the more effectually to call attention to him before he begins. I have volunteered for that job for the sake of his poems. Having now done it after my well known manner, I retire and leave the stage to him.
G. B. S.
Ayot St. Lawrence. 1907.
Contents
Preface by G. Bernard Shaw
| CHAPTER | |
| I. Childhood, | [1] |
| II. Youth, | [12] |
| III. Manhood, | [23] |
| IV. Brum, | [32] |
| V. A Tramp's Summer Vacation, | [39] |
| VI. A Night's Ride, | [46] |
| VII. Law in America, | [56] |
| VIII. A Prisoner His Own Judge, | [66] |
| IX. Berry Picking, | [77] |
| X. The Cattleman's Office, | [87] |
| XI. A Strange Cattleman, | [101] |
| XII. Thieves, | [112] |
| XIII.The Canal, | [119] |
| XIV.The House-Boat, | [126] |
| XV. A Lynching, | [138] |
| XVI.The Camp, | [147] |
| XVII.Home, | [157] |
| XVIII.Off Again, | [168] |
| XIX. A Voice in the Dark, | [178] |
| XX.Hospitality, | [192] |
| XXI. London, | [197] |
| XXII.The Ark, | [213] |
| XXIII.Gridling, | [227] |
| XXIV.On the Downright, | [242] |
| XXV. The Farmhouse, | [254] |
| XXVI. Rain and Poverty, | [267] |
| XXVII.False Hopes, | [274] |
| XXVIII.On Tramp Again, | [283] |
| XXIX.A Day's Companion, | [296] |
| XXX. The Fortune, | [303] |
| XXXI. Some Ways of Making a Living, | [310] |
| XXXII. At Last, | [317] |
| XXXIII.Success, | [329] |
| XXXIV.A House to Let, | [338] |
The Autobiography
of a Super-Tramp [ XXII]