Book Review : The Autobiography of a Super Tramp

Book Review : The Autobiography of a Super Tramp


Summary :

This book is the autobiography of W. H. Davies, from his childhood to the beginning of its career as a writer.

After the death of his parents when he was very young, W. H. Davies was adopted by his grandparents. Though being a good student and showing an intelligence that made the adults expecting great things of him in the future (notably due to his orator’s talent), he organizes a robber band with some of his comrades. But one day, a member of the band is caught red handed. That ended the band and his school days, as his grandparents didn’t allow him to go out anymore after that incident. Then he follows an apprenticeship that bores him, and a few months after ending it, he decides to go to the United States.

At first fascinated  by the atmosphere and the kindness of the people, he finds himself without any resources after a few weeks. Fortunately, he meets Brum, a tramp, who teaches him the art of tramping :  he shows him where and how to beg, how to sleep and how to travel from city to city. After this meeting, he meets other beggars with who he lives, alternating between begging, working and false promises of coming back, while still dreaming of a normal life in a little house. But after five years of a life as a beggar, he is fed up with his actual life and manages to go back to England. There, he receives the inheritance of one of his aunt deceased during his travel across the United States. At first promising himself to go live a normal life, he finally gives up to the temptation of going to the Canadian Klondyke after seeing that an article in a newspaper talking about the gold that can be collected over there.

Unfortunately, he cuts his own feet when trying to jump on a train driving.  Due to this accident, he is compelled to undergo an chirurgical operation that led to the amputation of its leg. Then he returns in England.

After his failures with the tramp life he tries to start a career of writer. He goes to London to do so. After a few failures and some come-backs to the tramp life, he manages to publish a novel thanks to the help of the proprietary of the lodge house where he lives and the unexpected help of some critics.


Opinion :

I chose this book because it reminds me of the surname that Christopher MacCandless chose when making a new ID document on the Mexican border. The way Davies travels through the United States also makes me think that the idea of travelling by train that Christopher MacCandless has is owing to him having read this book.

As far as my opinion on this book is concerned, I think that the book in itself, though being quite unstructured as the author tells the reader his own personnal story, is quite interesting, as it is a testimony of his time.
We can see how the beggars lived at his time in the United States, what kind of strategies they used to earn money : the simple begging in the streets, begging from door to door, selling things like laces for much more than their real price, singing in the streets before the houses  so that the inhabitants would throw some shillings. We also see what were the dangers of travelling by train for the tramps. We also see the life in the lodge houses.

Another interesting thing is the vision that the author has of the beggars : he asserts that the more the beggar was rich in his former life, the less likely he will be clean in his life as a beggar.


I also learnt that it was quite easy to find a job at this time, as few qualifications were required.

We can also see that explicit racism was allowed in the texts, as the author, though not being direct, is obviously racist : during the chapter where he talks about black people, he only talks about the injustices he saw commited by black people.

Finally, The author also denounces the corruption of some systems. In the United States, both of the judge and the marshall gets a reward for each person arresteed and condemned to prison. As a consequence, quite a strange system was set up : beggars that want to sleep in a warm place during winter tells the marshall tha they want to do so, they decide of the fault for which they are condemned and the time they stay in prison and even gets some money from the marshall as both this last and the judge will get some from the state for the imprisonment of the beggar. Also, he never managed to get the help of the Charity Organisation, whereas he knew someone that lived in the same lodge house and that managed to get their financial help thanks to a fiction he invented when he had to talk about his life, and that wasted all the money that he was given by the organisation to drunk himself.



Vocabulary :

to be caught red handed : être pris  la main dans le sac

a tramp : un vagabond

a bumper : un pare-choc

a wrinkle : une ride

to scull : faire avancer à la rame

to reckon : estimer

elapse : s’écouler

abstemiously : frugalement

to covet : convoiter