An Occasional Hobo

robert ito

an occasional hobo

josiah flynt willard’s journey from tramp to America’s Leading Expert on Hoboland to Enemy of the Tramps

Discussed: Riding the Rails, Excessive Use of Stimulants, Harry Houdini’s Childhood Home, Doting Mothers, Unceasing Cussedness, Remorse Best Not Described, Pocketfuls of Doughnuts, Drubbings and Other Hardships, Wayward Boys, Swampy Things, Tolstoy’s Tobacco Addiction, Hapless Persecution, Riffraff, Circus Men, The Sensation of Being Vainly Hunted, Tamerlane’s Tomb, Shudderful Joy

n 1900, Josiah Flynt Willard, than a tramp? As it turns out, they’re not writer, amateur sociologist, all that different from the rest of us. When and sometime hobo, published young, they like “dime novels and sto- Notes of an Itinerant Policeman. ries of adventure”; later, they graduate to In the book, he describes the pulps, for their “spicy articles and glaring Ioften-unsavory world of fin de siècle pictures.” Detective stories are popular, as American tramps: their begging strate- are the works of Charles Dickens, Victor gies, their caste systems and codes, their hot tempers and Hugo, and William Thackeray, even if, as one tramp tells underdeveloped intellects, their reasons for becoming Willard, Vanity Fair could have been much improved had tramps in the first place (number one: liquor). One of the it been “choked off in the middle.” book’s more compelling chapters is entitled What Tramps One author these wandering readers might not have Read. This is one facet of tramp life one might not im- cared for, however, was Willard himself. At nineteen, the mediately think of, but its inclusion in the book makes Illinois native embarked on an eight-month tramp through a lot of sense. Because, really, who has more time to read several states, riding the rails, begging for meals and clothes,

Willard in his “Garb of The Road” in St. Petersburg, ca. 1895 Image from Willard’s My Life, 1908 learning the hobo’s arcane language. notably, a near-insatiable “go-fever” eyes, a shift in speech so that the lis- Over the next decade, Willard en- that called to him throughout tener “could scarce understand one tered college, left college, tramped his relatively short lifetime. “For word in five,” Willard, the acclaimed through Germany, Italy, and Russia, nearly forty years,” Willard wrote, author, became “Cigarette,” Amer- met Ibsen and Tolstoy, then tramped “I chased the Beyond—that misty ican hobo. Following his death, some more. Under the pen name and slippery sorceress, ever beck- colleagues wondered whether the “Josiah Flynt,” Willard wrote stories oning onward to the wanderer, yet man had “gone native,” or simply lost of his adventures for magazines and never satisfying, never showing her- himself in his adopted role. None of journals of the day. By the time self in her true deceitful colors, until his friends, however, commented Willard published his first book, after long years of acquaintance.” about his transformation from friend Tramping with Tramps, in 1899, he It was this ambivalence toward of the tramps, and a tramp himself, was the country’s foremost authority tramping that brought Willard to to one who had few moral qualms on the subject. Van Wyck Brooks, lead the most peculiar of double about hunting them. Pulitzer Prize–winning author of lives. At twenty-eight, after years The Flowering of New England, called spent riding the rails, Willard be- illard was born in 1869 him the Audubon of the tramp came a railroad “bull,” spying on and in Appleton, Wisconsin, world. Jack London dedicated his ratting out his former colleagues as W the childhood home own tramp diary, The Road, to Wil- a patrolman and detective. When he of Harry Houdini and site of the lard, describing him as “the real wasn’t pursuing them, Willard wrote state’s first telephone. His father, Oli- thing, blowed in the glass.”1 about them, denouncing them in ver Willard, was editor in chief of a In his works, Willard neither ro- newspapers and journals as the bas- daily newspaper; his mother, Mary manticized tramp life nor defended est of men. “At the bottom of their Bannister Willard, was the daughter it. If, as Todd DePastino noted in hearts,” he wrote, “they know that of a divinity professor and a devout Citizen Hobo: How a Century of theirs is a low world, boasting noth- Methodist. Willard was small for his Homelessness Shaped America, “Wil- ing that can compare with the one age, with delicate features and a mop lard challenged the middle class’s which they criticize and carp at.” He of thick brown hair. In a photo taken conventional wisdom about tramps, called for restrictions on their travel, when he was thirteen, the boy ap- overturning fearsome stereotypes and more brutal jail sentences for pears no more than nine or ten. His that had been born during the cri- the lawbreakers among them. All the mother doted on him, and he on her. sis years of the 1870s,” it was hardly while, he befriended them, supped “When after supper mother had set- intentional. For Willard, these men with them. In at least one instance, a tled herself in one of the large chairs and boys were lost souls: too lazy fellow tramp saved his life. near the stove, I would climb into to work, too cowardly to steal, When Willard died in a Chicago her lap and say: ‘Hug me, mother, addicted to tramping in the same hotel room at thirty-seven— I need it,’” he wrote. “Probably no desperate manner that others be- “condemned to an early death by lad ever needed mothering more came hooked on alcohol and an excessive use of stimulants,” one than I did.” tobacco. Willard was a lot like them, friend wrote—a flurry of post- At the age of four or five, Wil- as one might expect, and shared mortems followed. Friends and lard was beaten by his nurse “for many of their shortcomings, most peers remarked on Willard’s uncanny some slight offense.” The boy fled ability to transform himself from the his home and attacker, eventu- man they thought they knew into ally ending up on the village’s main 1 London was likely being facetious here, but someone, something, unrecogniz- street. “No child ever had a greater his dedication reveals his acknowledgment of Willard’s status as the “authentic” hobo of his day, able. With but a change in his gait measure of unalloyed joy in his soul even if that status was, to London, unearned. and the way he moved his hands and than I did when I dashed down

4 that village lane,” he recalled, “and out any warning in the dead of guages. An essay contest, one of the no later escapade has ever brought night.” Forced stays in a small town biggest events of the school year, be- me quite the same fine shade of sat- in western Nebraska—“A good came an obsession for Willard, who isfaction.” It was Willard’s earliest roughing-it may bring him to his spent every spare hour “religiously memory, and his account of it is like senses,” advised a family friend— devoted to that wonderful essay.” that of a junkie after his first and best and at an Illinois boarding house On the night of the contest, the trio fix, the high forever chased after but did little good. “When I think of of competitors faced the judges. By never attained. Before long, a police my almost unceasing cussedness Willard’s account, his essay was the officer found the boy and took him throughout [my mother’s] struggle,” finest, his friends assuring him that he to the local prison, which doubled as he wrote, “a remorse comes over had won “hands down” over his two the town’s fire station. Willard’s con- me which is best not described.” outmatched foes. He finished third. finement was an easy one, much of Not all of Willard’s cussedness Inconsolable, Willard holed himself it spent eating candy in the station’s came on the road. “Indeed, I recall up in his room. The president of the engine room. “Nevertheless, it was a most cruel thing I did to a little college came one day to cheer him imprisonment of a kind,” he wrote baby girl, living near our old brown up, but to no avail. Willard left school of the ordeal, “and I knew it.” house,” he wrote. The girl was the the following day, never to return. In 1877, Willard’s father died. baby sister of a friend, two or three The ensuing years were unre- Willard, who was eight at the time, years old, “a chubby little creature markable ones. On a whim, Willard remembered little about his father with fat, red cheeks, and large blue stole a horse and buggy “standing beyond an incident in which he eyes like saucers.” When no one idle in one of the thoroughfares” loudly cursed his displeasure after was looking, Willard would steal of Buffalo, New York, for reasons sitting on a brood of newborn into the girl’s room and pinch her “I cannot say, even now.” After sell- kittens. Willard’s mother and grand- cheeks, hard, over and over again, ing them to a friend, he stole another. mother took on the task of raising until she wailed out in pain. “As The constables soon arrested him, him. The following year, Willard was I look back over the disgraceful af- and Willard was sentenced to a year smoking, cussing, lying, and “pilfer- fair now, it seems to me one of the in reform school. After a matter of ing,” causing such a stir in town that insanest things I ever did.” months, he and three of his school- neighbors warned their children to In 1884, Willard’s mother and sis- mates made their escapes. A local steer clear of the troublesome boy. ters left for Europe. The boy was sent farmer and his wife clothed and A friendship with a much larger to a small Illinois college, where he sheltered Willard and filled his pock- schoolmate earned Willard a rep- excelled in history and modern lan- ets with sandwiches and doughnuts. utation as a scrapper. He was not. The next day, Willard made his way One friend described him as “a little, to West Virginia and freedom. He thin, white, shriveled creature,” and was eighteen. “I realized, after a fash- his tenuous status as a fighter rested ion,” Willard wrote, looking back largely on his bullying of his tough- on those times, “that my youth was looking pal. “I was continually on considered pretty much a fiasco.” the watch not to risk my reputation Thus began Willard’s eight- in any fair struggle,” he wrote. month tramp, a journey that would Willard ran away often, despite form the basis of many of his later repeated whippings and entreaties writings and cement his reputa- from his mother and grandmother. tion as America’s leading expert on “The longing to go,” he wrote, Hoboland. It was 1888, a time when “would come upon me with- the railroads were crawling with all

5 manner of vagabonds. Construction accustomed himself to the society of soned, and, besides, his mother lived of rail lines had exploded during the every variety of his fellow-creatures, in Germany, so he would have a Civil War, and the recent Depres- without a murmur or regret.” place to stay. After working his way sion of 1873–1879—the real Great When the need arose, he fought, across the Atlantic as a coal passer4 Depression, as it is now sometimes although he had neither the skills on a steamship, Willard made his called—sent an army of out-of- nor the heart for it. “I had more than way to Berlin. His mother wel- work men and boys onto the tens once to rescue him,” remembered comed him, fed him, bought him of thousands of miles of track criss- Alfred Hodder,3 who was coauthor, a new suit and hat. Willard slept a crossing the country. Willard was with Willard, of The Powers That Prey great deal and put on some of the like many of them: young, restless, (1900), about graft in New York pounds he had lost aboard ship. His prone to crime. Other aspects of his City. “He had the height and body mother’s library provided him with situation, however—his schooling, of a slim boy of fourteen, but just reading materials aplenty: David his privileged upbringing, his access to see what the beast would do he Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and to money should things become would have teased my lord the el- Researches in South Africa, John Stuart dire—set him worlds apart. ephant, and he took a drubbing as Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. Willard’s tramp began hum- naturally as any other hardship.” “I frequently caught myself looking bly enough, at a cluster of coke By the end of his eight-month about the library,” he wrote, “with its ovens in Pennsylvania. “My boots sojourn, Willard was a changed pleasant appointments, and wonder- had been exchanged for shoes, the man. “It had steeled my muscles,” ing whether my wanderings were old cap had given way to a better he wrote, “tightened up my nerve, not, after all, simply a nightmare.” one, and the ragged coat had been and jostled my self-reliance into a In 1890, Willard entered Berlin patched,” he wrote.2 “In this fash- thoroughly working condition.” University, where he began a PhD ion I climbed to the top of the When asked, years later, if the ex- in political economy. At that time, all ovens and said ‘Hello!’ to some men perience might be beneficial for that was required of foreign students who were cooking their coffee in other wayward boys, Willard had no was twenty marks for the matricula- a tomato-can over one of the oven concrete answer—it depends on the tion fees; “nothing was asked about openings.” The tramps offered Wil- boy, he said. The Road had taught your former studies or academic lard coffee, bread, and meat, and him “many desirable truths,” but he training.” After two years, the Road taught him how to fashion a make- warned others from it, except as a beckoned once again. Willard trav- shift bed out of planks. Over the means of revealing how much bet- eled to London, where he met next few months, he learned hobo ter the “main Road” could be. It Arthur Symons, a British writer etiquette (when to speak, and, more was “not to be recommended,” he and critic. The two became friends. important, when not to); how to get wrote. “It is a backwater section of On one occasion, Symons told a decent night’s rest in boxcars and our civilization; it is full of malaria Willard that he had just received fif- haystacks; where to locate the “fat- and other swampy things.” teen pounds for a magazine article, tenin’ up places” where hobos could which seemed a princely sum for get a square meal. He begged and xhausted, underweight, and something as easy as writing. Willard stole, got shot at by an angry con- “tired of simply drifting,” rushed a tramping story to a Brit- ductor, fell off a train and lived. “He E Willard looked eastward, ish magazine, and it was accepted. A went through every sort of priva- to Europe. Things couldn’t be any new life opened up for Willard, one tion,” a friend wrote, “endured dirt, worse there than here, Willard rea-

4 According to Willard, the job consisted pri- 2 Why Willard felt the need to dress up for his 3 Like Willard, Hodder wrote under a pseudo- marily of shoveling and hauling large amounts of first day as a hobo goes unexplained. nym: Francis Walton. coal and hot ash.

6 in which tramps begat stories, stories that he would like to see “how his hortly after his return to begat articles, and articles begat men ‘worked,’” and the chief was the United States in 1898, cash—cash which was then used to happy to oblige. “In a way, it was S Willard received a letter fund the next tramp. Willard began got up for my benefit, I fear,” wrote from famed railroad executive L. F. recounting his experiences in the Willard, “and I was later very sorry Loree6 asking to meet with him “on pages of the Atlantic Monthly, Cen- about it all.” As Willard looked on, a matter of business.” “The thing tury Magazine, and Harper’s. a small army of detectives and pa- I had in mind to do, and have tried Over the next six years, Willard trolmen laid siege to a “suspicious” to do,” Loree told Willard, “was to took frequent breaks from school to lodging house. Poor souls staggered clear the property intrusted to my travel to England, Switzerland, Italy, out of their bunks clad only in rags; hands of that riffraff population and Russia. Tramps, he called these youngsters “quaked with fear” at which has been infesting American trips, but they were nothing like the surprise late-night raid. One old railroads for so many years.” Loree the ones of his childhood. Thanks man mistook Willard for an officer had a proposition for Willard. As to his mother’s money and con- and showed him “a greasy scrap of an employee of the railroad com- nections and the learned friends he paper”—his passport. “There was pany, Willard would return to his made through Symons, they were an appealing look in his faded, an- old tramping ways, traveling under- largely pleasant things: A climb cient eyes,” Willard wrote, “like that cover and informing on his fellow through the Swiss Alps.5 A four- in those of a mongrel who would tramps. In addition, he would spy month stay in Venice, then on to fain beg your mercy.” on the railroad boss’s own detec- Rome and Naples. A trip to Russia In one night, Willard had gone tives to ferret out just why they had to chat with Tolstoy, who discussed from sometime tramp to—what? been making such a hash of the job the Bible (he liked the parables) and Hapless persecutor? Innocent ob- themselves. Loree was asking Wil- his former addiction to tobacco. A server? There are any number of lard to be a rat, two times. Willard’s brief, largely uninteresting audience ways that Willard could salve his response: What’s a job like this pay? with Ibsen in Munich, who asked conscience about the ordeal. The The offer was a fulfillment of a Willard about his family, his travels, raid would likely have taken place weird, long-standing dream. “For a his opinion of Germany. Free rail- eventually, he could tell himself, number of years it had been a wish road passes appeared, as if delivered with or without his prompting. But of mine to have an experience as by fairies; introductions and meals when Willard got the call to go, he a police officer, to come in con- arrived from sources unknown. neither complained nor balked. tact with tramps and criminals, as Willard would chat up the local He went along, then got paid for a representative of the law,” Willard tramps on occasion, or not. Tramp- writing about it. The experience wrote. “Not that I bore these peo- ing became more of a diversion, disturbed Willard, but not overly ple any personal grudge, or desired something to do to find material much. “The scene told the sad, to carry out any pet policy in deal- for his next story, rather than the sad truth about Russia,” he wrote, ing with them; but I had learned addiction it had once been. cryptically. Two years later, Willard to know them pretty intimately as In 1896, Willard took part in himself would be a railroad bull, companions in lodging houses and a police raid on Dom Viazewsky, a rousting folks on his own, mak- at camp-fire, and had observed them slum in St. Petersburg. Earlier, he ing his once-fellow tramps “quake rather carefully as prisoners in jails, had told a local chief of detectives with fear.” Was this raid, this elab- and I was anxious to supplement my orate show, arranged for Willard’s edification, the turning point that 5 To prepare for the trip, Willard consulted the 6 Among his many other positions, Loree was sections on Switzerland in Mark Twain’s A set him on his path as enemy of president of the B & O Railroad, of Monopoly- Tramp Abroad. the tramps? board fame.

7 knowledge of them with an inquiry to ride, what they felt about the ef- “I heard all the hard things that can in regard to the impression they ficacy of Loree’s police force. On possibly be said about any one. make on the man whose business one occasion, Willard fingered a ca- “This experience and my par- it is to keep an official watch over reer pickpocket, who gave him “the ticipation in it may not seem so them while they are in the open.” worst scolding I have ever had in my very creditable to one who had Tramp, journalist, bull: for Wil- life”; on another, he was saved from himself been a tramp,” he added. lard, these had become mere roles a gang of toughs by “George the “But what did I learn about those to further his research and writing. Fourth,” a razor-wielding hobo who negroes? They had been employees The railroad gig had the added unwittingly befriended him. All the of a circus, had got drunk and into benefit of respectability, something while, Loree’s other officers won- a row, and had left their positions Willard, oddly enough, had craved dered about the tiny snooping man as circus men. So far as I have been from his earliest days. As a boy, he among them, the one with the eager able to make out, they had no right had harbored vague dreams of go- curiosity and full-ride pass. to have a free ride anywhere.” ing off somewhere, anywhere, and One month into his tour, Willard offers little explanation making a name for himself, be- on a freight train traveling west for this or other equally “uncred- coming “well-to-do and respected,” of Mansfield, Ohio, Willard re- itable” actions in Notes of an Itiner- then returning to his former friends vealed just how far his loyalties ant Policeman or in My Life, his post- as some sort of conquering hero. had shifted away from his former humously published autobiography. Despite his many adventures over- colleagues. “I saw three tramping There was, of course, the money: ten seas, Willard felt he had squandered negroes on this train,” he wrote. bucks a day to do what he had spent his youth in Europe. He bemoaned “I saw them get on the train… and much of his life doing for free, plus the “lackadaisical” habits he had ac- went after them, car after car full the additional money he got for writ- quired there, and envied the jump of coal, until I reached the biggest ing about it. And it’s not as if these that his peers in America had got- of the three.” After snatching the were good people, Willard could tell ten on him. Here was a chance, he man’s hat, he ordered all three to himself; these were tramps, after all. thought, to catch up. jump off the train. “Cap,” the larg- Even when he was one of them, he Europe, time, and drink, how- est man said, “the train is going a felt that life on the Road was wrong, ever, had softened him for the job. little hard.” After some consider- a waste, degraded and degrading. After a month of tramp life, Willard ation, Willard told the men that Moral considerations aside, Wil- begged off, insisting the job would they could all get off at the next lard also simply loved the excite- go smoother if he could simply ride stop—then telegraphed ahead so ment of police work. Once, while the trains like any other passenger. that an officer would be waiting walking with a friend in New York, After much discussion with Loree, a there to arrest them. At the sta- he wondered aloud, What would pass was issued, “good on any mov- tion, Willard continued to vex the it be like to chase a man? “I know able thing that [Loree] had on his three, stopping them from hopping what it is like to be chased,” he property.” Over the next several another train, threatening to shoot said, “but to chase a man would be months, Willard worked as an un- them with the gun he didn’t have. a new sensation.” A week later, he dercover operative and a patrolman, “The negroes wanted to fight me,” had been appointed a private de- visiting jails, prisons, and work- he wrote. The three were given tective. Bannister Merwin, Willard’s houses, interviewing conductors and thirty-day sentences, and Willard— cousin, recalled times when Willard tramps. Frequent reports were made for no apparent reason other than would pretend that strangers were to Loree about tramp movements pure vindictiveness—rode along pursuing him, just so “that he might and activities: where they were steal- with them to the local workhouse. enjoy to the full the sensation of ing coal, what lines they were afraid “During that ride,” he wrote, being vainly hunted.” As an under-

8 cover lawman, Willard could savor to the muscular, vibrant prose of Johnson in his rooms at Gray’s Inn;8 the thrills of playing a hobo with- fellow tramp Jack London, Wil- as a sick animal goes off into a lonely out the shame of actually being lard’s writing comes off as fussy, corner in the woods to die in.” one. One of his prized possessions preachy. Symons wrote a short re- In the last chapter of his autobi- was a discharge certificate from his membrance about the man’s life ography, Willard offers a rare expla- days working with U.S. marshals and final days, but the memorial, if nation of why he tramped. For much in Oklahoma. “He was very proud it can be called such, feels more like of his life, Willard had described the of the certificate,” wrote Merwin, he was gutting the man than pay- lure of the Road as a troublesome, “and took much pleasure in showing tribute to him. Here was a man, worrisome addiction, something to ing it to his friends.” Symons noted, who had met Tolstoy be struggled against. Here, finally, the In eight years, from 1899 to and Ibsen, traveled the world, seen author considers another possibility. 1907, Willard published five books Tamerlane’s tomb, yet cared little for Maybe tramping was fun, he posits, and scores of magazine articles. Few art or books or beauty. He was fond because hanging out with losers and besides his autobiography follow of family and friends, but could do lowlifes makes a man feel so much any sort of chronological pat- without them, and often did. better about himself. Besides the vi- tern, jumping here and there in In January of 1907, Willard, carious pleasure of consorting with time, interweaving anecdotes and thirty-seven, contracted pneumonia. notorious characters and experienc- commentary. While reading a story A heavy smoker from the age of nine, ing, at a safe distance, their wild adven- about a particular hobo that Willard he had spent much of his adult life tures, one can bask in the knowledge knew—Old Boston Mary, say, or consuming prodigious amounts of that one’s own life is nowhere near as Illinois Blackie—one will often alcohol and narcotics; that, coupled wretched as theirs. As much as Wil- come to the jarring realization that with a life spent on the Road, ulti- lard may have tramped, he was never, Willard was writing all of this while mately laid him low. He spoke often in his mind, a true tramp, and just be- he was a reporter or a detective, about his impending death and of ing around them gave him a thrill of not, as one first assumes, a fellow what others might say about him af- superiority that came none too of- tramp. In many cases, it’s impossible ter he passed, but not of an afterlife. ten in his brief life. “Haven’t you, to determine just what Willard was “So-and-so will speak a good word when a youngster, thrust your toes doing, what role he was playing, as for me, I know!” he told friends. out under the blankets on a winter’s the story unfolds. Willard was in Chicago when morning for the express purpose of he fell ill, working on a story about accentuating the comfort of the bed oday, Willard is all but for- pool gambling for Cosmopolitan. He when you drew them back again?” gotten. Though he was hid out in his small hotel room, told he wrote. “I guess you have. And so, often dubbed the first his friends to keep his mother away I think, respectable people like to em- T 7 muckraker, other, less conflicted so that she wouldn’t see him suffer, phasize their respectability by bring- individuals, ones who hadn’t ratted and refused medical treatment un- ing it into close, if temporary, con- out their colleagues and blown til he had become completely inca- tact with its antithesis. A shudderful their money and health on booze pacitated. At seven p.m. on January joy results, no small part of which and cocaine, soon overtook him. 20, Willard died. “For three years,” arises from the conviction that we Few read him nowadays; next wrote Symons, “he was rarely sober, are not like unto the other men.” O and drink killed him. At the end he shut himself away in his room 8 Ernest Dowson, English poet, died of alcohol- 7 Historian Louis Filler devoted two chapters of at the hotel in Chicago, as Dowson ism at thirty-two; Lionel Johnson, British poet his 1939 book, The Muckrakers, to Willard, titled and critic, died at thirty-five after falling in the Cigarette, and, appropriately enough, The First shut himself away in his lodgings in street—his own alcoholism had rendered his Muckraker. Featherstone Buildings, and Lionel skull “thin as paper.”