70th Anniversary of the Death of the Super-Tramp, WH Davies

Fri, 24 Sep 10 11:48:00

Sunday 26 September will be the 70th anniversary of the death of W H Davies (1871-1940), the “tramp poet” from Newport, Gwent, and the author of one of the most well-loved poems in the English language. To commemorate the writer’s death, the National Library of Wales has put online a catalogue of it’s substantial collection of archives relating to W H Davies.

W H Davies’s most well-known poem is ‘Leisure’ which was given added publicity by its use in a Centre Parcs advert. Millions of people will be familiar with the couplet:

“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”

A manuscript copy of this poem, dated 8 May 1914, was bought by the Library to add to its already impressive collection of W H Davies manuscripts.

The Library also holds some 30 other manuscript poems by W H Davies, some of which are unpublished e.g. ‘A Boy’s Sorrow’ a poem relating to the death of a neighbour.

At the age of 22, William Henry Davies obtained a passage for New York, arriving in the United States with only a few dollars in his pockets. He thereafter began the career, which he described in his Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) - tramping thousands of miles across America, most often begging but also undertaking casual work and riding illicitly on freight trains. En route to the gold-diggings at the Klondike, Davies fell under a moving train, severing his right foot; his right leg was subsequently amputated below the knee.

The Library’s W H Davies collection includes manuscripts, press cuttings and  photographs. Among his poems are; a volume containing autograph fair copies, c. 1916, of 15 poems by W H Davies, some of them apparently unpublished, submitted to James Guthrie (1874-1952) for publication by the Pear Tree Press as a collection entitled Quiet Streams; 10 holograph poems, c.1913-1918, namely ‘Heaven’, ‘The Mind’s Liberty’, ‘The Signs’, ‘The Moon’, ‘Rich Days’, ‘On the Mountain’, ‘The One Singer’, ‘A Strange Meeting’, ‘To My Thoughts’, and ‘Till I Went Out’; with also one other manuscript poem entitled, ‘The Dumb World’.

 

The collection also includes 58 letters, 1905-1938, from the poet to various correspondents including the poets and critics Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong ('John Gawsworth'), John Freeman, Harold Monro and Edward Thomas. The letters are mainly concerned with Davies's own work and its publication.

 

‘The couplet from W H Davies’s poem, ‘Leisure’ and his book The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp has kept the writer from Newport, Gwent, alive in our memory and heart for 70 years following his death. The National Library of Wales is very proud to commemorate his life by making a catalogue of his collections available online. This will make it easier for enthusiasts to find what the W H Davies archives the Library holds,’ said Andrew Green, Librarian of The National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.

 

For further information on manuscripts and letters by W H Davies held at the Library, see our new webpage on W H Davies.

 

Or contact Siôn Jobbins, NLW Press Office: 01970 632 902  post@llgc.org.uk