tramping
tramping
CHAPTER FOUR
CLOTHES
1.Attire
NEEDY knife grinder,” said the poet, “your hat has got a hole in it, and so have your breeches.” That was not necessary. You should carry a housemaid’s tidy, or whatever it may be called, the tiny compendium of needles and thread sometimes offered upon hotel dressing tables, and sew up the holes. I fear the knife grinder’s hat was of felt, a broken billycock hat, but we tramps have nothing to do with felt hats. The bowlers and thederbys and the trilbys are not our style. There was a time when men tramped in shovel hats, and I can see Parson Adams trudging along, his lank locks crowned with this lugubrious headgear. And Abraham Lincoln walked abroad in his rusty topper. But we have changed all that. We tramp in tweed hats or caps or without hats at all. We do not feel superior, but we know we are more comfortable.
Also we no longer wear cravats. In fact, a collar and tie may be secreted in a pocket of the knapsack to be unwillingly put on when it is necessary to visit a post office or a bank, a priest, or the police. But otherwise we go forth with free necks and throats, top button of shirt preferably undone.
And we do not tramp in spats or gaiters, nor in fancy waistcoats. The waistcoat is an article of attire which can be cheerfully eliminated as entirely unwanted. Undervests also are ratherde trop. There are many things a man can shed. I am not qualified to say what a woman can do without, but she needs no hat with feathers, no hatpin. As I think of herin the wilderness it seems to me she can get rid of everything she commonly wears with the exception perhaps of a hair net, and then dress herself afresh in “rational attire.” The green and brown misses in the “lovely garnish of boys” are now so familiar in the United States that it is almost superfluous to describe them. A khaki blouse and knickers, green putties or stockings, and a stout pair of shoes are almost everything; very simple, very practical, and if one must think of looks while on tramp, not unbecoming.
Materials are more important than shapes. A homespun, a tweed, a cord, are better than flannel or serge or shoddy cloth. Tramping is destructive of material; sun, rain, camp-fire sparks, and hot smoke seem to reduce the resistance of cloth very rapidly. After a month, a sort of dry rot will show itself, and as you go through a wood every rotten stick or tiny thorn you happen to touch will tear a tatter in your trousers. It can be annoying and amusing. “When I am tired of looking at the view I look at your trousers,” said Lindsay to me, in the Rockies, he in the virtuoussuperiority of green corduroy; I in old clothes which I thought I might as well wear out on tramp. I certainly wore them out: in fact, we had to turn from the wilds towards civilization, and the poet bought me a ready-to-wear pair of cowboy’s bags.
But workmen’s trousers, suspended by workmen’s braces, are the best. Braces marked “For Policemen and Firemen” are sold in the United States. They are undoubtedly stout and will stand the strain of many jumps. You will have a cosy feeling of nothing defective in your straps, a feeling akin to that of a good conscience—much to be desired.
What remains? A jacket. It may as well be a tweed one with half-a-dozen roomy pockets. I once saw a character reader at a fair who said: “Show me your hat and I will tell you who you are.” He had plenty to guide him. I gave him mine. He said: “You, sir, are a thinker. Your thoughts have been oozing out of your head and have spoilt an excellent lining.” He held my hat up to the crowd. “This is the hat,” said he, “of a man who buys at the best shop, but wears hishat a very long while. He is both proud and economical, and is probably a Scotsman.”
Had I taken off my jacket he could probably have told me a good deal more; made bulgy with books, yet pinched by the clips of fountain pens, ink-stained, wine-stained, sun-bleached and rain-washed, fretted by camp-fire sparks, frayed and yet not torn by envious thorns; the whole well stretched, well slept in, well tramped in. Other parts of one’s attire wear out, come and go, but the jacket remains, granted a good sound indestructible jacket.
Such a jacket is warm wear. No, not in the morning, not for some hours after sunrise; not in the evening, not during the twilight hours. During the heat of the day if you wish you can take it off and, tying it into a neat bundle, fix it to the knapsack. It is pleasant to have the air break fresh on one’s perspiring chest. But the warm jacket is your friend, and after two days’ out of home you understand it. The stout jacket stands by you in the hours when you need support. You soon get used to its weight, and its thicknesshelps to bed the knapsack between the shoulders.
Carlyle wrote a book on clothes, the inwardness of which was that man, the straggling bifurcate animal, discovered in Eden that he was really ugly and a shame to be seen, and he has been trying to hide himself ever since, in fig leaves and phrases, phylacteries and philosophies. That shall provide the tramp’s motto: a fig leaf and a phrase. But, oh, Sartor, oh, Mr. Mallaby-Deeley, a stout fig leaf!
2.Motley
“Invest me in my motley; give me leave to speak my mind.... Motley’s the only wear.”
“Invest me in my motley; give me leave to speak my mind.... Motley’s the only wear.”
The privilege of the Court Fool is that he can tell the plain ordinary truth to the King, even with the executioner standing by, ax in hand, and risk not his head. But he must be wearing his cap and bells. Let him come but dressed as a courtier and make the same painful jest, and the headsman will step forth to relieve him of his poor-quality thinking piece. The Greek who was employed to tellhis Alexander after each glorious triumph that he too must die, must have worn some shred of motley. You cannot say that sort of thing without the dress which liberates. It was the same with Diogenes. He got in so many home truths in an intolerant age because he lived in a tub. That tub was his motley. Our tramps’ gear is ours.
There are clothes which rob you of your liberty, and other clothes which give it you again. In the sinister garb called morning dress you are a close prisoner of civilization; but in the tramp’s morning dress you do not need to “mind your step.” Oh, the difference between one who has worn silk in the Temple and the same man lying in a cave in smoke-scented tweeds. Of course, it takes some time to break him down. He is still wearing a shadow topper and invisible cutaway coat weeks after he has started into the wilds. The same with a lady of fashion; she puts a hat over the glory of her hair to hide the primitive Eve—she will be still thinking of this false headgear long after she has changed into a forest nymph.
Motley has a double advantage not used by Shakespeare in his admirable clownings. It not only perhaps enables a man to jest shrewdly with the prince; it enables a prince, if he will put it on, to talk freely with an ordinary poor man. The cat can look at the King and the King can look at the cat.
Class is the most disgusting institution of civilization, because it puts barriers between man and man. The man from the first-class cabin cannot make himself at home in the steerage. He can have conversations with his fellow man down there, but fellow man will be standing to attention like private in presence of officer, or standing defiant like prisoner in presence of a condemnatory court. It is not the fault of the bottom dog, the proletarian. He scents a manner. Your bearing cannot be adjusted to equality. You are not on the level with him. You cannot rid your voice of its kind note. “Damn it, don’t be kind to me,” say the eyes of the third-class passenger. But you cannot get rid of that absurd, unwanted, kind look—that “tell me, my dear man” expression.
“How are you, aged man,” I said,“And how is it you live?”But his answer trickled through my brainLike water through a sieve.
“How are you, aged man,” I said,“And how is it you live?”But his answer trickled through my brainLike water through a sieve.
“How are you, aged man,” I said,“And how is it you live?”But his answer trickled through my brainLike water through a sieve.
“How are you, aged man,” I said,
“And how is it you live?”
But his answer trickled through my brain
Like water through a sieve.
Yes, whatever he replies will seem a little bit irrelevant, like the answers to the visiting rector going the round of his parish, he having the next drag hunt on his mind.
But in the tramps’ motley you can say what you like, ask what questions you like, free from the taint of class.
It also puts you right with regard to yourself. You see yourself as others see you, and that is a refreshing grace wafted in upon an opinionated mind. The freedom of speech and action and judgment which it gives you will breed that boldness of bearing which, after all, is better than mere good manners. It allows you to walk on your heels as well as on your toes, and to eat without a finicking assortment of forks. It aids your digestion of truth and of food, and aids nutrition as good air does good porridge. All that highfalutin’ advice which Kipling wrote in “If” may be left in its glum red lettering pasted on your bedroomwall, if you will only put on your tramp’s motley.
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The answer to that question is not adequately stated in that “If” of talking to mobs without losing your virtue and to Kings without losing the common touch, or in the “If” of making a heap of all your winnings and staking them in a game of pitch and toss. The answer of the Evangel is Take up the Cross and Follow Me, which may be interpreted indulgently for our purpose here: Take up thy staff and the common burden for thy shoulders, the motley of the pilgrim and the tramp.