William Henry Davies (3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940) was a Welsh poet and writer, who spent much of his life as a tramp or hobo in the United Kingdom and the United States, yet became one of the most popular poets of his time. His themes included observations on life's hardships, the ways the human condition is reflected in nature, his tramping adventures and the characters he met. His work has been classed to as Georgian, though it is not typical of that class of work in theme or style.
Life and career
Early life
The son of an iron moulder, Davies was born at 6 Portland Street in the Pillgwenlly district of Newport, Monmouthshire, a busy port. He had an older brother, Francis Gomer Boase, who was considered "slow." In 1874 a sister, Matilda, was born.
In November 1874, William was aged three when his father died. The next year his mother, Mary Anne Davies, remarried as Mrs Joseph Hill. She agreed that care of the three children should pass to their paternal grandparents, Francis and Lydia Davies, who ran the nearby Church House Inn at 14 Portland Street. His grandfather Francis Boase Davies, originally from Cornwall, had been a sea captain. Davies was related to the British actor Sir Henry Irving, known as Cousin Brodribb to the family. He later recalled his grandmother speaking of Irving as "the cousin who brought disgrace on us." According to a neighbour's memories, she wore "pretty little caps, with bebe ribbon, tiny roses and puce trimmings." Osbert Sitwell, introducing the 1943 Collected Poems of W. H. Davies, recalled Davies telling him that along with his grandparents and himself, his home held "an imbecile brother, a sister... a maidservant, a dog, a cat, a parrot, a dove and a canary bird." Sitwell also recounts how Davies's grandmother, a Baptist, was "of a more austere and religious turn of mind than her husband."
In 1879 the family moved to Raglan Street, Newport, then to Upper Lewis Street, where William attended Temple School. In 1883 he moved to Alexandra Road School and the following year was arrested, as one of five schoolmates charged with stealing handbags. He was given twelve strokes of the birch. In 1885 Davies wrote his first poem entitled "Death."
In Poet's Pilgrimage (1918), Davies recalls that at the age of 14 he was left with orders to sit with his dying grandfather. He missed the final moments of his grandfather's death as he was too engrossed in reading "a very interesting book of wild adventure."
Delinquent to "supertramp" After school, Davies worked as an ironmonger. In November 1886 his grandmother signed Davies up for a five-year apprenticeship to a local picture-frame maker. Davies never enjoyed the craft. He left Newport, took casual work and began his travels. The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) covers his American life in 1893–1899, including adventures and characters from his travels as a drifter. During the period, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean at least seven times on cattle ships. He travelled through many states doing seasonal work.
Davies took advantage of the corrupt system of "boodle" to pass the winter in Michigan by agreeing to be locked in a series of jails. Here with his fellow tramps Davies enjoyed relative comfort in "card-playing, singing, smoking, reading, relating experiences, and occasionally taking exercise or going out for a walk." At one point on his way to Memphis, Tennessee, he lay alone in a swamp for three days and nights suffering from malaria.
