Part 12

Just as I had finished the hasty glance through the little book, and was preparing for another “move on,” I noticed a tall, emaciated, half-clad young woman approaching me from the opposite side of the street. Such a picture of misery I have rarely seen. She did not seem to have more than one loosely-hung old garment upon her, which, as she walked, revealed the shape of her figure, which did not at all seem a bad one; moral deformities had not as yet, to all appearance, begun to tell heavily upon her frame. On presenting herself to me she said, in tones of despair, “Will you please give me sufficient to buy me a cup of coffee? I want it very bad, I can assure you, sir. Do, dear sir.” Her eyes were red either with drink, tears, or anguish. Poor lost soul! thought I; and on she went to ruin and death.

I started again, and had got nearly to Oxford Circus, and deposited my parcels upon the pavement, and was surveying things over in my mind, when I heard something chirping over my head. I could not tell where the sound came from. It was not crying, nor was it either singing or moaning. My curiosity was set at rest as I lifted up my head to look above. To my surprise, a young woman with lovely face, and head studded with “curling bobs,” was peeping out of one of the top bedroom windows and delightfully engaged in throwing kisses at somebody across the street. “Chirp,” “chirp,” “chirp,” owing to the stillness of the morning, sounded as distinctly as if they were near to me; at any rate the kisses were not for me, and on I trudged. As I passed Holles Street, people, young and old, with books under their arms and in their hands, were going to early Sunday morning prayer-meetings, or other religious services. What a contrast to a gathering of half-drunken hulking youths and men tumbling and quarrelling about Gilbert Street, I thought. After receiving not a few insults, I moved forward by stages till I arrived at the Marble Arch, about eight o’clock, with my face covered with perspiration, and my hands, arms, and shoulders tingling and aching with a kind of deadness and shooting pains. Scavenger carts were moving to and fro, carrying the filth and off-scouring of all nations. A coffee stall seemed to have been doing a good business, if the pell-mell gathering, sauntering array might be taken as a specimen of the quantity and quality of the coffee drinkers, who might be called the loitering customers of the “pub” in search of more substantial beverage than gin and beer. Near Southwick Crescent and Oxford Square I passed another coffee stall, more respectable in appearance than the one at Marble Arch, upon which was painted in large letters, “The Church of England Temperance Society.” I now began to try to make a further move, when a cabman hailed in sight, who looked as if he were going on the stand instead of coming off it. A bargain was struck, and he bowled me off at a rattling pace to the Great Western station, where I arrived about twenty minutes past eight o’clock, stiff and tired about my legs and arms. In pacing backwards and forwards upon the platform, I nudged, accidentally, the elbow of a porter who was taking his “swig” at a passenger’s whiskey bottle. Whether the neck of the bottle tilted against his teeth, or some of its contents went down his bosom instead of his throat, I could not tell. He did not say much about the accident, but his looks were “awful,” and my begging pardon could not turn them into a smile. Another porter said, “They could do without Sunday travelling if it were not for the London beer-drinkers. Shut up beershops and you will gag Sunday trains.”

Some thirty or forty city fishermen, with their rods and tins, were moving backwards and forwards waiting for the train; they were evidently going out for a spree. One round jolly-faced, good-looking porter said to me, “They are going out a-fishing, but it’s not many fish they catch. They catch something they don’t expect sometimes. They are not all fish that comes to their lines. ‘Many of the city fishermen gets a line and a tin, and goes into the country and calls themselves travellers, and turns into the first ‘pub’ they come to and then they booze all God’s day away, and keep us poor chaps at work all Sunday instead of going to church or chapel. Sunday travelling ought to be done away with; at any rate there ought only to be two trains a day each way, out and into London.” A porter then cried out, “Take your places for Slough, Reading, and Oxford.” I obeyed his call, and found myself sitting opposite an old friend, Mr. J. Seaman, from the _Weekly Times_. In the train the brandy bottle was pulled out by a man whose nose apparently had been too prominent upon his pugilistic-looking face at times for somebody’s bruising machine; at any rate there was an indent in it upon which cock robin could have sat very comfortably for an hour piping forth the curses of drink and its consequences, and the blessing of God’s Sabbath as a day of rest for man and beast.

In another corner was a young woman, dispensing liberally port wine to her new and old friends around her, bringing to the faces of some of them the alternate red blush and pale white, indicating that some monster was at work within them, telling them that it was wrongdoing. After a three hours’ pleasant chat on this bright summer’s morning, with my friend, I arrived at Oxford. After partaking of a cold lunch, I made my way with my arms full of pictures, books, and illustrated tracts, to the two hundred vans and covered carts outside Oxford, near Somers Town. By the time I had arrived the rain had begun to come down heavily. In wending my way among the nearly two-mile length of vans, shows, covered carts, and waggons, I found some old faces who gladly welcomed me. The road was little better than a puddle. Thousands of Oxonians were running to and fro, star-gazing, gossiping, laughing, shouting, and making fun on the roadside. With a vast number of them Sunday seemed as on other days. Little stalls of nuts, apples, plums, were on the footpaths. Notwithstanding the pouring rain, the poor little dirty gipsy children clustered round me in the vans and out of them for the pictures, books, &c. Poor lost souls! some of them, old and young, big and little, men and women, might not have been washed for months. Some of the “hobbledehoys, betwixt men and boys,” of Oxford tried to make as big fools of themselves as they could, and kept shouting out, “Now, governor, they will swallow your bag if you will give it ’em.” Some of the town’s children admired my pretty books, and closed upon me for some, which I am sorry to say I had to refuse, as they were for the big and little travellers. In the vans, &c., there would be an average of four children, two men, and two women, and out of this vast mass of travellers there would not be fifty who could read or write. “Of the persons,” says the _Daily Telegraph_, “who were committed to prison last year, 60,840 could neither read nor write. Ignorance and crime go hand in hand together. This is a fact beyond disputation.” In some of the vans I counted eight children, besides the men and women. In one van there was a man with a broken leg. In three other vans there were three men ill. Several of the women had bruises upon their faces, and two had black eyes, and the children were squatting about among the mud in the ditch.

“I was a taper smoking, Lying by the footway, Lease gleam of red away, Smoke my thin flame choking.”

DR. GROSART, _Sunday at Home_.

Under the vans there were over a hundred lurcher dogs, ready for anything, including white-tailed rabbits, “shoshi,” long-legged hares, “kanégro,” and other trifles of this kind, down to a shin-bone of beef hanging loosely in a butcher’s shop—aye, and a piece of a man’s calf if he came too near to them and was not wanted. Gipsies’ dogs are so highly trained that they understand a gipsy’s looks; and I should not be surprised to hear that their dogs can “rocker” Romany. The dogs are perfectly masters of the art of killing hedgehogs, _hotchi-witchi_. Like their masters, they go stealthily to work and never “open.” Gipsy poachers have been known to clear a field of hares and rabbits and “bag their game” while the keepers have been lying in wait for them over the fence.

Among the vans I came across, for the first time, a “George Smith” a gipsy. I have met with any number of “John Smiths,” “Bill Smiths,” “Rily Smiths,” but never a “George Smith.” This led me to have a long chat with him and his wife. They are Oxfordshire gipsies, and from what I learned afterwards they are “tidy sort of folks.” I felt inclined to have a long conversation; in fact, I seemed to feel a greater interest in him on account of his being a “George Smith” gipsy. The good woman and her six children looked almost like pure gipsies, but such was not the fact. They could “rocker” a little only, and got a fair living by gambling in cocoa-nuts and horse-dealing. “George Smith” told me that he never went more than fifty miles from home, and when he bought and sold horses—of a third-rate kind—once he could do so the second time. All horse-dealing gipsies are not of this class. Gipsies often told me that they like to see fresh faces, fresh places, and fresh money. During my conversation with Mrs. Smith, she said formerly she liked hedgehogs; but since she had found out that “they liked beetles and snakes” her “stomach had turned against them.” She went on to say, “I am no doctor, but I am told by those who know, that the yellow fat inside a hedgehog, which you know, sir, is from the poison of snakes and adders; hedgehogs are dead on snakes and adders. Immediately a snake sees a hedgehog it kicks up a terrible row, and tries to scamper off as fast as it can. No more hedgehogs for me while I live; and I am sure our George will not have any.” Not one of this family of Smiths could tell a letter, although they sometimes sent their children to school a short time in the winter; but, as the good woman said, “Lord bless you, my dear gentleman, what bit they learn in the winter is gone again in the summer, and they are no better for it.” I told them my plan for meeting their case, viz., by the registration of their vans and a free education pass book for their children, with which they heartily agreed. I left them several pleasing children’s pictures, cards, &c., with which they were highly delighted, and I then made my way to quell a gipsy row further on, which I found to be, as usual, over the most trivial things. While I was busy among the gipsies I saw two young ladies, I might almost say angels, from Oxford, disregarding the rain, talking and distributing tracts among them. The tracts were not exactly of the right kind; children’s religious pictorial literature is what is the most pleasing, acceptable, and useful. Dry tracts are no better than waste paper; and it is almost a waste of time and money to distribute them. A little further on were three gentlemen from Oxford discoursing to a group of gipsy children, and no doubt they did some good; at least I hope so. If anything, their excellent well-meant remarks were not made sufficiently interesting, or brought down to the gipsy children and adults’ capacities. A wild, dry anecdote, badly told, and without a pleasing and practical application, will not do much good at any time.

In addressing gipsies, and other people of this class, two things are needed to ensure success. There must either be the extreme earnestness or the extreme simplicity, and no man or woman can succeed in winning them over to virtuous paths unless these features are ever brought prominently out. They must either be as Paul preaching to the Athenians, or as Christ upon the Mount discoursing to the multitudes in deeply interesting parables, put with an irresistible force of love and simplicity; or as St. John the divine when surrounded by little children, preaching with but few words, but speaking volumes of love in sympathetic looks, melting tears, and gentle touches, reaching tender and obdurate hearts in a Christ-like fashion, with a power that the devil himself could not withstand. Love, earnestness, and child-like simplicity brought to bear upon any gipsy children who are sharp and clever will produce surprising heavenly results—aye, and from the gipsy men and women too. In the gipsy mine there is room for all workers.

“Working together in the sacred mine, We trace the veins of ore beneath our feet, Till riches unimaginable greet.”

RICHARD WILTON, M.A., _Sunday at Home_, No. 1268.

Instead of working—

“Oft have we lingered in the TENT, The ‘pearl’ unbought, The book unread, the knee unbent The grace unsought. Oft have despondency and shame Our faith assailed, And when we would confess Thy name Our courage failed.”

CANON BATEMAN, _Sunday at Home_, No. 1267.

Among this mile and a half of gipsy vans there were some “nice and clean” travelling homes. In one I found a good woman reading to her children by the evening fire, and the kettle “singing on the hob.” As I paddled and waddled over boot-tops in mud, in the midst of this vast concourse of people young and old, never in my life did I so fully realize the case of the poor man who had fallen among thieves, and the action of the priest and Levite, and also that of the Samaritan. The whole scene depicted in the good old book seemed to come before me as one vast panorama, exhibiting human life under a variety of aspects. On the one hand, drawn along the side of the road in the ditch for more than a mile and a half, there were two hundred vans, carts, and tents, inhabited by a thousand gipsy men, women, and children of all ages, mostly in the deepest depths of wretchedness, ignorance, misery, and dirt—of many of whom it might be said that they were thieves among thieves—had been travelling all Saturday night or on Sunday morning to be at the fair in time for a good place. Gipsies, showpeople, and others of this wandering class travel chiefly on Sundays. Saturday nights and Monday nights are, as a rule, their best nights. Some of them had with their poor bony horses, from “shutting-up time” on Saturday night to Sunday afternoon, travelled over forty miles, and most wretched spectacles they were. On the other hand, and on the footpath, there were thousands of gentle and simple, rich and poor, young and old, saints and sinners, ministers and their flocks, moving to and fro, some of whom sneered at the gipsies, others mocked, laughed, and joked. Some were disgusted, and others looked pensive and sorrowful at the picture of an Oxford Lent carnival being spent in this way on a Christian Sabbath in the centre of Christendom and civilization, with its hundreds of Christian ministers within sight and call, who did not answer to the voice of love or duty. Well might Washbourne cry out—

“Our hearts are broke, our harps unstringèd be, Our only musick’s sighs and groans, Our songs are to the tune of _lachrymose_, We are fretted all to skin and bones.”

DR. GROSART’S “_Fuller Worthies_.”

After I had distributed my books, and wended my way to the end of this long lane of sin and iniquity, I turned to look at the heartrending sight. There were hundreds of gipsy men and women, some few of whom had fallen from the paths of virtue, uprightness, and honesty, and some six hunched to seven hundred poor gipsy children of all ages weltering in the ditch. Not twenty children out of this vast number had been taught at the knee of a kind, gentle, loving mother to lisp in tender, trembling simple tones, to which heaven and the whole angelic host stoop to listen with open ears, for fear one word might be lost—

“Lord Jesus teach a child to pray, Who humbly kneels to Thee, And every night and every day My Friend and Saviour be.

“While here I live, give me Thy grace, And when I’m called to die, Oh, take my soul to see Thy face, And sing Thy praise on high.”

My heart was almost ready to break, and the big teardrop forced its way down my face. Just as I was turning away with a sad and aching heart, a little sharp gipsy girl dark-eyed, of ten summers, clutched hold of my hand and coat. She looked up into my face and said, “Eh, Mr. Smith, don’t you know me? Don’t you remember giving me a little book and a penny when I was very ill in our van upon the Leicester racecourse last year? Mother and doctor said I should die, but you see I’m not dead yet. My name is Smith. There are lots of gipsy Smiths.” Before she had finished her interesting little story a large number of little gipsies had gathered round me, among whom I had to distribute, with care and tact, all the pictures and little books I had left. It was now dark. Fires in old gipsy tin buckets and on the wet ground were to be seen; sticks were crackling; lights shining under the vans and in the small windows and through the crevices and over the top half of their doors; their evening meals sent forth a variety of odours, ranging from snail soup to red herrings, dead pig, and hashed venison. The barking and growling of their lurcher dogs were heard more frequently and savagely. The thousands of dripping star-gazers and sightseers, rough and smooth, drunk and sober, had begun to get pleasingly less; rain was coming down almost in torrents; nevertheless the children felt loath to leave me. To the onlookers I could have said, with George Herbert—

“Rain, do not hurt my flowers, but gently spend Your lovely drops. Press not to smell them here; When they are ripe their odour will ascend, And at your lodging with their thanks appear.”

“_Fuller Worthies_.”

With many caresses, thanks, and good wishes from the children, I groped my way to my lodging with thankfulness, but in a wretched plight, suffering from my lifelong enemy—giddiness. After five minutes’ chat with my round-faced host I mounted, with a hot head, and cold wet feet, “wooden hills,” and amongst the blankets and feathers I snoozed into a fitful sleep, to be startled by wild dreams and nocturnal noises. In one of my strange flights I found myself in a dark and dismal-looking place like a chimney-sweep’s underground soot storehouse. How I got there was a mystery I have never been able to solve. The only things I remember in connection with my visit to this dark abode was, the good spirit led me through alleys, by colleges, churches, chapels, synagogues, and schools of every grade. Marks of civilization were everywhere visible on my path. There were ministers and teachers on every hand. One little narrow backway led me to a small narrow opening down some narrow, rugged steps. As soon as I entered, a small door of the colour of the walls instantly closed upon me as with a spring, and before I had time to look back at the way by which I entered, I was in worse than a Roman or gipsy maze. At first a cold, chilly sensation of fright and terror crept over me. My hair seemed to rear bolt upright in a twinkle; but this soon passed away after realizing the fact that I was among friends. There were no windows except one dismal pane, through which the moonlight gleamed. There were no candles. The grate was made up of bricks and rusty crooked old bars of iron put loosely together without mortar. The fender was of two long shin-bones, and the ends of it two thigh-bones of a man. The fire was crackling with sticks and the bones of rabbits, partridges, pheasants, and fowls. Beetles, cockroaches, toads, and spiders were as thick as they could creep and stick. A dead pig’s skin badly cured, with the bristles sticking on it in patches, was laid upon the broken stones on the floor as a hearth-rug. In a large pot over the fire there were boiling large pieces of diseased pork in a thickish liquid, which was stirred every few minutes by an old “hag” with a ham-bone. The uneven, broken walls of the room were covered with greasy grime and filth, upon which were hung pictures of skeletons, death, coffins, and cross-bones, and most horrible, murderous-looking men and women.