Part 11

The old china was fetched up for me, which, Mrs. Smith said, was over a hundred years old. A good cup of tea was poured out, the thin bread and butter cut and laid upon a clean cloth, and I was just about to sit upon an old piece of dirty flannel that lay upon the grass—for the grass was at this time getting a little damp—when the good woman cried out, loud enough to shake one’s nerves, “My dear good gentleman, you must not sit down upon that.” “No, no,” Smith, the ungracious-nosed gipsy cried out in a voice as loud as his wife’s. “If you do you’ll get more than you bargained for. It’s all alive, don’t you see it?” Mrs. Smith saw that I was anxious to change quarters to the other side of the tent, and apologized for the filthy rag being there, by saying that “one of the children from one of the other vans had brought it, and had not taken it back again.” We were now seated, and I was enjoying my tea as well as I could—they said that “they hoped that I should look upon the tea as a fairing,” and as such I looked upon it and enjoyed it, for I was both hungry and thirsty—when a Northampton baker appeared upon the scene vending his bread. A little pleasantry was exchanged between the bread-seller, the gipsies, and myself about the size of the loaves, the dearness of the bread, and what was put into the flour before baking to make the loaves white, large, and showy. The conversation turned upon potatoes and alum, and the gipsy Smith discussed the quantity of potato and alum there was in the bread the baker had sold to them. This nettled the baker, and he said, “Bread mixed with potatoes and alum was good enough for pigs, but it—” The gipsy would not let him finish his sentence, but instantly sprang to his feet, and ran at the baker, and struck him on the breast with his tightened fist, calling out, “Do you mean to say that bread mixed with potatoes is good enough for pigs, and do you call us pigs? You reckon us as pigs, do you? You shall remember this or I am not Righteous Gipsy Smith.” And just as he was running at the half-frightened baker again Mrs. Smith stepped between them. An altercation took place, one of the most disgusting and sickening I ever knew. The baker’s wife now came up, and for a few minutes there was such a storm over the pot as I had never seen in my life. It bid fair to become a general _melée_. I was called in to decide who was in the wrong. This was no little difficulty, as the gipsy was excited by beer, and the baker by rage and fear. The end of it was I calmed them both down. The baker and his wife sped their way to Northampton, and the gipsy to the back of his van, to vent his bile and calm his passion, after which we sat down to finish our tea. This being over, and calm, peace, and quietness reigning, I gave the children some coppers and shook hands warmly with the gipsies, and thanked them, and then turned to another phase of gipsy life.

I began to think that it was quite time to look after my lodging for the night, and wended my way to Boughton village, some half-mile or more away. This was a work of no light undertaking. I first tried to find a clean bed in a quiet cottage, which, after tramping about from house to house, knocking, inquiring, had to be given up as impossible. The poor folks eyed me over from head to foot with wondering curiosity. They seemed to be puzzled as to my movements, and as to whether they should reckon me as a gentleman, or a bailiff, who had secreted in my pockets either a county-court summons or an execution. I next tried the “publicans and sinners.” At first they hesitated about giving me an answer; especially the innkeeper at the “Griffin.” They seemed to wonder whether I was or was not a parson, spying out the land. The landlady at the “Red Lion” was holding out encouragement, until the landlord, who might be made of vinegar and crabs, appeared upon the scene, calling out gruffly, “No, we can’t do wi anybodys;” and out I went, expecting to have a stone for my pillow under some wall or hedge-bottom upon the green. Fortunately I called at a cottage on the roadside, about a hundred and fifty yards from the green, to see if they could oblige me with a bed. After a minute’s hesitation, the good woman, who seemed to have a large heart and a good-natured face, said, “Yes, you look to be a gentleman, and we will try to accommodate you. Come in and make yourself at home. Will you have some tea?”

After a rest for a few minutes, and as the shades of evening were gathering round, I strolled upon the “green” and found Bacchus was on his throne with Atè, Discordia, Momus, and Mars as his attendants. Concordia, Harpocrates, and Pudicitia had not been upon the “green,” or, if so, they had been only for a very short time. Broken glasses, empty beer barrels, corks, pieces of paper, and stools upside down were to be seen on every hand. The perfume of burning paraffin, aroma of the beer barrel, and stench of the brandy bottle met me at every turn as I wended my way among the wicked, silly, larking, and foolish. Here and there could be seen girls scarcely in their teens, with the arms of half-drunk “chaps” round their waists—upon the table before them were “jugs of beer”—and opening their mouths wide as if they would be delighted at any one looking down their throats as they bawled out most disgusting songs. In one of the booths between forty and fifty boys and girls were larking together in a manner that made one shudder to think of the results. Some of them were threatening vengeance to their “Bills,” “Jacks,” or “Toms,” if they said a word to them when they got home.

One of the women struck up, as if she was determined to contribute her share to the debauch, in squeaking tones resembling that of a cracked tin whistle—

“We won’t go home till morning, Till daylight does appear.”

A little ahead a rustle, commotion, and hubbub was going on; of course I must join in the crush. I could not get very near. When I inquired what was the matter, I was coolly told that “it was only a man and woman fight.” Thanks to the excellent body of policemen at hand, it was soon stopped. Another “turn” in the distance was taking place. A gipsy—a big, cowardly, hulking fellow—and an Englishman had long had a grudge against each other. The Englishman could not get the cowardly gipsy to “fight it out.” At last the Englishman offered the gipsy half a crown and a gallon of beer to let him have one “round” with him. The gipsy consented to this condition. The money was paid and the beer drunk, after which the gipsy wanted to back out of the bargain. Before the big gipsy would at the last minute undertake to fight the little Englishman, the gipsy stipulated that there was to be “no hitting upon the noses.” The Englishman did not like this shuffling, but he agreed to it, and they stripped for the encounter. For a few minutes they sparred about until the gipsy saw his opportunity to hit the Englishman full tilt upon his nose, which he did with a tremendous force sufficient to break it. When the gipsy was asked why he did it, he said, “I could not help it, my hand slipped.” A little farther on still, I came upon a policeman rolling an empty beer barrel from the policemen’s tent towards the beer stores.

[Picture: The “sweets” and “sours” of Gipsy modern life]

During the day I did not observe one “blue ribbon” policeman upon the grounds—nor, in fact, did I see one upon the course. No doubt there were many good and true men and women upon the “green” who had gone there purposely to sell their wares. Would to God that there had been more of them, and then there would have been less rows, and less cause for such a body of policemen. The pure gipsy rows—_i.e._, a number of gipsies joining in a general _melée_ of an “up-and-down fight,” paying off old scores—were less this year than they have been known for a long time. Several times a row was imminent, but with a little tact and the common sense of the women—aye, and of the men too—it was averted. I observed a little more sulkiness than usual on the part of a few of the gipsies, but with a little pleasantry this passed off.

I retired from the hubbub for a few minutes, to stand against one of the huge trees growing upon the edge of the “green,” and while there I heard some gipsies chuckling over the “gingered” and “screwed” horses and ponies they had sold during the fair, and arranging which of their party should hunt the customer out the next day, to buy back for a five-pound note their palmed-off “broken-winded” and “roaring old screws” which they had sold for seventeen pound or twenty pound during the fair. A fine-looking broken-winded horse, “roarer” or “cribber,” with the mark intact, is almost a fortune for a gipsy. During two or three years “while he will go,” the “screw” is sold and bought in again scores of times. Many of the horse-dealing gipsies are dressed nowadays as farmers, and by these means they more readily palm off their “screws” upon young beginning town or street hawkers, carriers, and higglers.

Living in some of the vans of gipsies there were man, woman, and, in some instances, seven or eight sons and daughters of all ages. In other vans and tents there was a mixture of men, women, and children, not of the same blood relationship; and the same may be said of some of the travelling gingerbread hawkers.

Those of the hawkers who were rich enough to own a van slept in it “higgledy-piggledy,” “pell-mell,” and “all of a heap.” Those who had not vans, the men, women, and “chaps” slept upon the ground, under the stall boards, in a manner which would be a disgrace to South African civilization and Zulu morals.

In the midst of waning twilight and the gathering of sheets and rents, some of the gipsy women were preparing for their last meal before shutting the van doors and drawing to their tent curtains. Scores of poor little lost, dirty, ignorant, neglected, and almost naked, gipsy children gathered round me for “coppers” and “sweets.” After digging deep into my pocket for all I could find, and distributing them among the children, I bade the gipsy parents “good-night” and a “good-bye,” and then turned to have a chat and a “good-night” with George Bagworth, the steam-horse driver, and his wife, the “popgun” firer. George was dressed in his best large Scotch plaid suit from head to foot. His “hurdy-gurdy steam organ,” and “flying horses,” had winged married and single, men, women, and children, round and round, exhibiting their thick and thin legs, not modestly for the riders, but successfully for George and his sharp, good-looking, business wife. George was in good humour with himself and everybody else. He entered freely into conversation about his troubles and trials in former years, and of his successes, position, and future views.

He is very good to poor cocoa-nut gamblers. It often happens that some of the poor unfortunate fraternity arrive upon the “course,” “green,” or “fair” without a “tanner.” A wink of his wife’s eye prompts George to advance them sufficient money to give them a start. This—for there is honour among thieves—is paid back at the close of the fair, with many thanks. George pointed out to me again with pride the vans he had made, and with little greater pride to his artistic painting of the heathen gods and goddesses, which were the mainstays of his whirligig establishment.

George’s wife hung down her head at the non-success of her “popgun” galleries. “But it is no use ‘frettin’ and cryin’ over spilt milk,’” she said, while preparing their supper tea. “You’ll join us, won’t you, sir? you shall be made right welcome, and have the best we’ve got.” They fetched out their best antique china cup and saucer, and we three sat down to a box table with cloth cover to enjoy the twilight meal, with the twinkling stars overhead, and the gipsies’ lurcher dogs prowling about the tents and vans, snuffling and smelling after the odds and ends and other trifles. Speaking within compass, I should think there would not be fewer than thirty lurchers skulking under the stalls as eagerly as if after hares and rabbits. Of course George Bagworth’s joined in the scent and sniffle. “Mine host” was a poacher bred and born—at least he had a spell of it in his younger days among the woods, parks, spinnies, and plantations joining Leicestershire and Staffordshire coalfields. The twinkling star repast was finished; hubbub, din, screeching, yelling, fighting, singing, shouting, swearing, blaspheming, and loud oaths were dying out. Pluto seemed to be getting tired of his feast; Somnus was observed stealthily wending his way among Bacchus’s wounded followers, and the vast herds and tribes of poor, neglected, uneducated, and lost little children living in sin, pestilential, and vitiated atmosphere with dark—very dark—and black future before them, which the rising of a morning’s sun could not dispel.

As I wended my way to my lodgings I could not help thinking of Sennacherib’s army besieging Jerusalem with no Hezekiah to deliver.

I had now found my way to my lodgings. Round the family table in the cottage there were Mr. and Mrs. Gayton, “mine host and hostess,” and one or two friends. While the conversation was going on a party of drunken fellows were bawling out down the road some kind of song, which I could not comprehend. Mr. Gayton’s sister said it was a song she knew well; and with a little persuasion—notwithstanding Mrs. Gayton’s twitching, nervous manner and disinclination to hear it—the good woman struck up in a sweet but rather shrill voice, and in somewhat affecting tremulous tone, the song, as follows:

“Little empty cradle, treasured so with care, Tho’ thy precious burden now has fled, How we miss the locks of curly golden hair, Peeping from the tiny snow-white bed. When the dimpled cheeks and pretty laughing eyes, From the rumpled pillows shone, Then I gazed with gladness, now I looked with sighs, Empty is the cradle—baby’s gone.

“Baby left her cradle for the golden shore, O’er the silvery waters she has flown, Gone to join the angels, peaceful evermore, Empty is the cradle—baby’s gone.”

After the first verse was ended I noticed again a little subdued and stifled sobbing, and the mistress of the house wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron.

I could see that there was some cause for the tear-fetching tenderness and sympathy that was manifested, and I gently asked for information, and was told by the good people that during the last month two of the youngest babies had been sent for to live in the angel-world where no tears are seen and sighing heard. A melting, sorrowful sadness seemed to creep over me as I looked round the room. A parent cannot describe the feelings, and no one but a parent can feel them.

The cradle was empty in the corner; the lovely little birds had flown to sing in a lovelier clime. The tender-hearted mother gave way to a woman’s dewy feelings while another verse was sung, in which I could not help joining, owing to having passed through similar circumstances. I had lost more than one little tender lamb, and could enter feelingly into the motherly woman’s misfortunes. I said the children were not lost but gone before, where there are neither tears nor the pinchings of poverty. In the midst of the solemn scene I wended my way upstairs to my humble cot; my softened feelings, wet eyes, and scalding tears prevented me worshipping Morpheus till just as the candle was flickering out in the socket.

I then dropped into a dozing sleep to awake at opening day, after which I bade my friends the gipsies good-bye, and left “the mother bending o’er her beauty buds.”

Rambles among the Gipsies at St. Giles’ Fair, Oxford.

ON Saturday, September 4th, 1882, I found myself travelling southward by the aid of a carrier’s waggon and first, second, and third class railway carriages, surrounded by gentlemen, clergymen, tradesmen, farmers, cattle-dealers, labourers, soldiers, snobs, fops, and scamps, and ladies fat and thin, pretty, plain, reserved, lovable, and smiling; and as we neared London the sleeping, yawning, gaping, and slow movements seemed to be giving way to activity, bustle, restlessness, and anxious looks. Stopping, banging, and dashing, and on we sped. In the train I had a pleasant chat with the Rev. Mr. Gibbotson, vicar of Braunston, who related to me some of his experiences with canal-boat children and the gipsies. In one instance a gipsy charged him three shillings and sixpence for grinding his nail scissors; and in another instance a sharp, clever boat boy of twelve had passed the sixth standard, and was in a fair way of becoming a pupil teacher, but in six months spent among the canal children in floating up and down the country, he had learnt some of their wicked and bad habits, which had ruined his career. After changing carriages, I saw at one of the North London stations a woman, who must have imagined that she was in the country, creeping out of one of the compartments with her sweet-looking child of some four or five summers at snail speed, and as if changing would have done to-morrow. She quietly found her way to the carriage door and opened it very gently, and was about to step leisurely upon the platform when the train began to move off. Her eyes were now opened, and with a wild stare she tumbled the child upon the platform, and then in getting out herself she fell upon the footboard. Fortunately for herself and the child, the guard was close by at the time, and with the quickness of lightning he seized the child with one hand and its mother with the other and pulled them upon the platform, the child upon its face and the mother upon her back, and saved their lives in less time than I could twinkle my eye. The child cried, the mother screamed, and the last I saw of them, as we were rounding the curve, was that a porter was picking up the child, and the bewildered mother was gathering herself together as well as she could.

[Picture: “On the road” to Oxford Fair]

On my way I called at a large block of new mansions in course of erection, and which my son had in hand, and found a joke very nearly carried into tragical and awful effect. The “lift” was not working well, and a gentleman not of a classical or ministerial kind, rather than use his legs in going up the ordinary stairs, preferred using the temporary goods hoist, and said to one of the men as he was jumping into the cage against the wish of friends, “Jump in, and if we must go to hell, we may as well go together.” They had no sooner landed at the top of the building and just cleared the cage, than it dropped to the bottom of the building with terrific force, carrying destruction with it. One minute longer and they would both have been in eternity.

Having fairly landed in London, I made my way to the Religious Tract Society, and the Wesleyan Sunday-school Union, for some pictures, and books, and magazines for the gipsy children, which were gladly given to me, and with my bundles, bags, &c., I turned into my lodging in Museum Street well tired. Overnight I inquired of my host if I could get a ’bus or a cab that would take me to Paddington by nine o’clock on Sunday morning. At this question he shook his head and said, “The ’busses will not be running so early as eight o’clock, and the cabs, what few you will meet, will be on their way home; therefore you will have a difficulty in getting your packages to the station. And if you order one overnight it is ten to one if they will come.” From this answer I could see that my only course was to be up early enough to lug them to the station myself. Six o’clock on Sunday morning found me getting a cup of cold tea and a sandwich for my breakfast, after which I started down Oxford Street with my four parcels, weighing about three-quarters of a hundredweight. No ’busses were to be seen. Here and there were tired, straggling cabmen wending their way home. As I hailed them they shook their heads and on they went. I managed to carry my load about two hundred yards, and then turned off the street to rest, and to leave the few stragglers moving about Oxford Street wondering as to my movements. Not far from Tottenham Court Road I turned off the main street a few yards, and stood with my back to the solitary passers-by, putting a few notes into my pocket-book, when I was startled and somewhat surprised to find two tall young men at my elbow, and without a word one of them deposited upon the Religious Tract Society’s parcel a small book, entitled “A Cure for the Incurable,” which I picked up and read as follows:

“During the journey we were joined by a young man and woman, the latter evidently labouring under some distressing bodily infirmity. The young man took advantage of the vacated scats to place his afflicted companion in a recumbent position, carefully covering her feet with a shawl. I gently alluded to her appearing unwell. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ she replied, ‘I am just dismissed from St. Thomas’s Hospital as _incurable_.’ The tone of her voice, and the tear which trickled down her pale cheek, instantly awakened my sympathy. Her four children, one a baby, and her dear husband, she said, made it ‘hard to die;’ but she believed God would care for the motherless ones, and cheer the lonely widower. ‘The doctors,’ she added, ‘say I may live some months, but that cure is impossible. So I thought I would rather be in my own cottage, where I could look at my children, and see the flowers outside my door, and have fresh air, than remain in the hospital; though I had everything of the best there, and great kindness shown me. But, ma’am, home is home; and my husband knows how to nurse me better than any one else. I know that I shall not live long; but I shall die at home, and God will comfort my dear husband, and will go through the dark valley with me.’ This brief interview was deeply touching to me, and my tears flowed with theirs.”