Bart Kennedy - A Tramps Philosophy

A Tramps Philosophy

Bart Kennedy

A Tramps Philosophy

THE REDISCOVERED CLASSIC OF

Sagacious Twaddle, and Occasional Insight by One with Erudition and Experience in Peregrination

INTRODUCTION BY IAN CUTLER

A Tramps Philosophy: The Rediscovered Classic of Sagacious Twaddle, and Occasional Insight by One with Erudition and Experience in Peregrination

Copyright 2020 Feral House

All Rights Reserved

Feral House

1240 W Sims Way #124

Port Townsend WA 98368

Designed by Unflown | Jacob Covey

EPUB ISBN 9781627311038

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Tramp climbing on railroad car, date unknown
BAIN NEWS SERVICE PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

A hobo jungle along riverfront. Saint Louis, Missouri, 1936
FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

Contents

Tramps fighting between railroad cars, date unknown
BAIN NEWS SERVICE PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

INTRODUCTION BY IAN CUTLER

D ESPITE PROLIFIC ADVENTURES ON LAND and sea, the publication of twenty-two books, journal articles and his own weekly magazine, Bart Kennedy (18611930) is almost completely unknown today. Whos Who Online describes him as having picked up education in knocking about the world [and that he] drifted into writing. His New York Times obituary referred to him as the tramp novelist pioneer of the staccato method of short story writing, and The (UK) Times obituary characterized his works as written with vigor, but in a curious jerky style. Never has there been a better time to resurrect A Tramps Philosophy, the first reprinting in over one hundred years, to a new generation, never more addicted to the unnatural world and at a complete loss how to commune with the natural world. The wisdom and humor of this book remain as fresh and relevant today as they must have done at the turn of the previous century, and all the more in need of urgent attention.

A Tramps Philosophy is more than a treatise on tramping as a philosophy; it is a comprehensive demolition of human civilization in the style of Nietzschewith whom Kennedy was undoubtedly acquaintedbut also the ancient Cynics who drew on lower animals to highlight human stupidity.

And as with Nietzsche, Kennedy applied the term cynicism in both its popular negative form as well as in its positive role of denouncing human dogma and stupidity: It is good to be cynical. It means that the scales have fallen from your eyes. Like Nietzsche, Kennedy both disconnects himself from and associates himself with the masses, using multiple ironies and the form of the diatribealbeit often softened with mock deference. Kennedy reflects on his ironic and satirical writing style in the final passage of A Tramps Philosophy when he says: I often say hard things against the world, but even I must admit that it has a sense of humor. Its humor is a humor that has a bite in it, but better this humor than none at all.

Bart Kennedy was born in Leeds of Irish parents, Patrick (a shoemaker) and Catherine. He worked from the age of six in Manchester factories, with no education and nearly illiterate. At around the age of twenty, Kennedy arrived in Liverpool with one shilling in his pocket and began his career as a tramp. He dreamed of sailing ships since he was young, but this was his first sight of them. You felt that they had come from places a long way off and that they were going to places a long way off. About them was something magical, fine, and strange.

Kennedy was something of a fighter, employing his pugilistic skills at times to subsist as well as survive. His first fight out of England was a few days into the voyage. Incapacitated by seasickness but forced to work his shifts, the regular crew acted brutally towards him, having to take on his share of the work until he became skilled. On one occasion, he fell, and one of the sailors started kicking him. He could hardly stand up at the time but looked the man steadily in the eye and warned him that he shouldnt hit a sick man and that this sick man would get well. Kennedy did get well, crediting the thoughts of getting even with his tormentor as aiding his recovery. Picking his moment when the sleeping quarters were full of sailors, Kennedy got even with his tormentor. He then turned to face the rest of the crew and said quietly, Ill fight the best man in this watch. There was no response, neither was he bothered for the rest of the trip.

On his arrival in Philadelphia, despite not having a penny in his pocket, Kennedy walked the streets in a state of elation at the prospect of having a whole new world before him. He eventually found himself in the city of Baltimore, where he worked on an oyster boat in the Chesapeake Bay. More fights and near-death experiences followed, including being washed overboard from the schooner in a hurricane and having his yawl surrounded by ice in the Chesapeake Bay. Having grown tired of dredging and concluding that the work was degrading and not fit for a dog, Kennedy resolved to become a tramp. It was after meeting up with an educated, older tramp, Billy, that his real education began. Kennedys began with a grimy, dog-eared ten-cent dictionary he carried in his pocket, which, with Billys help, he learned to pronounce big words with the correct pronunciation.

Numerous exploits are described by Kennedy in his autobiographical works and all kinds of grueling labor he was forced to take to survive on the way, including an entire chapter in A Man Adrift titled Shovelling which Kennedy describes as the most trying and monotonous kind of work there is. As with most of the other tramp writers, Kennedy also spent several spells in prisons on trumped-up vagrancy charges, even though these were often happier times than those spent laboring. In a New Orleans jail, he describes times in good company, with abundant food, and musical entertainment. But there were grim times also, including torture. Kennedy describes the way in which society inside jail mirrored that of the outside world. And it was attending services in a prison chapelnot for religious reasons but as a respite from the otherwise harsher regimethat Kennedy started formulating his philosophy of Jesus, whom he maintains was also a tramp and a criminal while the real criminals in society got off scot-free.

Kennedy would return to sailoring on Lake Ontario and tramping around Toronto before deciding to make the three-thousand-mile trip to the Rockies equipped with a pair of blankets, a drinking cup, biscuits, bacon, coffee, sugar, a .44 caliber revolver with fifty cartridges and a broad sheath knife to protect himself against Indians and wild animals. It was on this trip that Kennedy formulated his philosophy on the so-called beauty of nature: working hard in the middle of incredible mountain scenery for months had knocked the poetry out of it. Neither will fine scenery impress a man when hes hungry, alone, tired, and wondering if hell get out of it alive. The desolation of being alone in the Rockies affected Kennedy to the point where he describes wrestling with the notion of taking his own life. Several times he put the muzzle of his revolver to his head, but it was while in this most desperate of states that he experienced an epiphany that would sustain him for the rest of his life. It wasnt fear; it wasnt remorse. I just wanted to live; just wanted to live for no particular reason.