Sometimes it’s hard to know what to make of a book. And reading Stephen Graham’s The Gentle Art of Tramping, in which he advises the would-be “tramp” (or long-distance walker, as we’d now describe it) on how to go about their business certainly gave me pause for thought.Don’t get me wrong. On balance I think I liked it. But the truth is that some book are timeless and some books can become dated, and this is definitely one of the latter. So how do you judge it? As a historical piece, a window into a mindset of the time between the wars? (It was first published in, I think, 1926.) Or with a modern eye, a social conscience that can’t help twitching at some of the post-Imperial, overly-class conscious observations?
Graham makes a clear distinction between types of tramp — there are those like him, middle-class and seeking to escape the rat race, and there are the good-for-nothing hobos who can’t be trusted. (When the former helps himself to an apple from your orchard, by the way, it’s scrounging; when the latter does it it’s theft.) This is the problem I had — that a number of his attitudes and observation made me cringe, as if I’m listening to that old uncle complaining about the old days and how much better they were.
On reflection, though, I’ll judge it for its original intention. It captures a desire for freedom and communing with nature. It’s shaded with the echoes of the First World War, its end less than a decade old, and the restlessness of the new world comes through. It’s very readable and Graham’s whimsical humour appeals as he offers advice on what to take, where to walk and how to avoid getting into trouble in the less salubrious parts of the world.
As a book it describes a wider restlessness, a frustration in which one was “identified by one’s salary or by one’s golf handicap”. For all its occasional crassness (to modern readers at least) I enjoyed it.
Thanks to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
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