Part 14

I now came upon Mr. Bachelor Nabob Brown, a chimney-sweeping gipsy—and a most curious stick he was—in charge of a weighing machine and a few other trifles. He was just turning out of his bed, which had been in his cart, covered with a yellow sheet. Nine o’clock was the time he had promised overnight to be ready for a stroll. He got up, gave himself a rub, yawn, and a stretch, and set to work lighting his fire in the usual gipsying drawing-room fireplace among the other gipsies. Of course washing was out of the question. He boiled his water, stewed his tea, frizzled his bloater, and then set to work upon his breakfast with a strong smell of paraffin oil pervading the whole of the contents of his “larder.” Nabob Brown combed his hair with his fingers, threw on his patched and ragged old pilot Chesterfield, and off we started for a tramp to the outskirts of Oxford. We had not gone far before he began to apologize for not being dressed as a gentleman, and said, “You don’t mind, sir, do you, at me walking along with you in this cut and figure?” I said, “Oh no, I do not mind in the least. Very few know me personally in Oxford, but it would make no difference to me if they did. If it would help on the cause of the gipsy children, I would as soon have my dinner with a gipsy as with a prince.” “All right, my friend,” said Mr. Nabob Brown; “I’m glad to hear you say that. I know who I am talking to.” In going along I said to Nabob, “I should like to know a little about your family.” “All right,” he said; “that’s just what I wanted. Let me tell you, sir, that the ‘Browns’ are amongst the best families in the land. In our family are dukes, lords, M.P.’s, and squires without end, and never a one has done anything wrong. They are all high-class and first-rate folks. In everything that is good a ‘Brown’ starts it. I feel proud that my name is ‘Brown.’” I said, “I thought Smith was not a bad name.” “They are nothing like the ‘Browns,’” said Nabob. “Smiths stand second, Browns stand first. I shall come in for a fortune one of these days before long, and I shall not forget you. Will you give me your address?” I said, “Yes, with pleasure; I shall be glad to have the prospect of a fortune again for my children’s sake.” “All right, give me your card.” I handed him my card, and the poor “cracked” fellow wrapped it up and put it into his pocket.

Mr. Nabob Brown stopped, rubbed and scratched in the street, and commenced again as follows:

“I am one of fifteen children, and the only one living, thank God. My father was George Brown, who served thirty-five years in the Fifty-second Light Infantry. He was present at the battles of Waterloo, Salamanca, and Badajoz; after which he was pensioned off. He spent three years in Chelsea Hospital, and was then taken to the soldiers’ madhouse at Norwich, and there he died. People say that I am getting like him, but they are fools and don’t know what they are talking about. I’m as sensible as any man in the country—don’t you think so?” I told him I did “not like answering questions of that kind without longer experience.” “My father was of a drunken family, and it was in one of his drunken fits when he tumbled me downstairs and put out one of the joints of my backbone.” We now came to a dead stand opposite one of the colleges and near to some large houses. People big and little, gentle and simple, were passing to and fro. He now turned his back towards me and bent his bead low to the wall. He then turned up the tail ends of his old coat, exhibiting his under ragged garments, and took hold of my hand and poked my finger into a small dent in the slight bend upon his back. Of course I consented. He next took off his old hat and poked my finger into a hole upon his head. All the time his tongue was going at the rate of “nineteen to the dozen.” Mr. Nabob’s arms began to swing backwards and forwards, and he shouted out, “I live by excitement; without it I should die.” Children began to stare and gather round us, but before doing so I said, “I suppose you cannot stand drink?” “Oh dear no! I have been teetotal these twenty-five years, on and off, and am religions in my heart, but I doesn’t always show it. I goes to church sometimes. I’m a Church of England man; but then you know, sir, we in our profession cannot do without telling lies sometimes. I’m giving up all bad things, women and everything else. If it was not for being religious at my heart I should have been dead long ago.” He now began to “dance and caper about the road.” Fortunately we were close to the grounds round Christ Church College, and very few saw his megrims.

We had now arrived opposite a small conservatory with some beautiful flowers in view. The pretty flowers sent Mr. Bachelor Nabob Brown off at a tangent. “Oh!” said Mr. Brown, “I love flowers. It is delightful to be among flowers. I could die among flowers. I’m a first-rate gardener.” The names he gave to some of the commoner sorts of flowers he saw were anything but Latin or English. The small rivulet, green meadows, tall trees, pleasant walks, with the burning sun shining overhead, seemed to have excited Mr. Nabob’s dormant artistic qualities, and he commenced to give me specimens of his musical abilities. After he had done he said, “I never had any regular training, or I should have been one of the ‘stars;’ as it is I can play the fiddle, concertina, piano—in fact, I should not be stuck fast at anything. I consider myself to be a regular musician, and no mistake. Oh, my back and my head, sir. Let us sit down for a chat under one of these trees.” “All right,” I said, “I am quite ready.” Several gentlemen and ladies paced backwards and forwards, no doubt wondering who we were or what our movements meant. Maybe, for aught I know, that some of them thought that we had dynamite designs upon Christ Church College; or that we were “two poor wandering lunatics.” Mr. Nabob Brown next poured forth his other qualifications—adaptability and practice in photography, jewelling, shop-keeping, selling tobacco, sweets, and fruits. His recital of these things brought him upon his feet again; and he shouted out with his arm aloft, “Would you believe me, sir? I lost over a hundred pounds in ‘dissolving views.’” I told him jokingly that I was not surprised at it. “There were so many wicked men in the world who have not brains and force of character sufficient to carry them through the difficulties of life, and therefore their only course was to get upon somebody’s back and allow themselves to be carried to a safe place. I have seen many men of this class in my time.” “Right you are, sir. That is just how I have been served through life. I have not only had my brains run away with, but my coat off my back; aye, and one time a big black dog ran away with a piece of my leg. Oh! oh!” shouted Brown, with a twinged face, “gipsies are terrible devils. We are a bad lot, but I don’t like to tell everybody, nor do I like to say all I know, or they would be down upon me at the next fair, and I should have no peace in my life; I might as well be hung. Give it the policemen; I don’t like them chaps, they are no good to anybody. Blow me!” Nabob cried out as we came to a sudden stop on the road, “I left my old umbrella in my cart when we started, and I’ll bet a farthing it will be gone when we get back; let’s be off.” So we began to trot off together, leaving the austere, grim walls of Christ’s College to stand the rude and rugged storms of centuries from without, and the assaults of dogmas, creeds, divinity, law, philosophy, moral force, and logic from within. On our way he told me of the tricks practised by the stall-keeping gamblers upon their wheels of fortune, and the hoodwinking process the policemen undergo at fair times.

We had now arrived at the post office, and Brown said, “Just one word before we part,” and I chimed in, “Perhaps never to see each other again.” “I say, sir, I quite agree with you that all our travelling children should receive a free education as you propose, and the publicans should be made to pay for it. Good-bye, sir, and God bless you,” and away he popped out of sight into the post office, and I sauntered into the fair.

In charge of a gambling cocoa-nut concern I noticed a gipsy named I—, with his hand tied up, which he said was brought about by blood-poisoning. In the van were two brothers and one sister. Connected with this family there were seventeen brothers and sisters, together with father and mother, making a total of nineteen human beings. And only one out of the whole could read and write, and this one, to his everlasting credit, had early in life given up gipsying and put himself out as an apprentice to engineering, and during his apprenticeship he had, unaided by any teacher except his workmates, taught himself to read and write. All honour to such men, be they gipsies, canal boatmen, or brickmakers. As I noticed his good brother, who had run over to the fair for a day to assist his lame brother and their sister, I could not help seeing the vast contrast between the two men. Self-help and education had raised one from a gipsy tramp to the position of an engineer at a salary of thirty-five shillings per week, with his nights to himself.

I next turned again to my friend George Smith, the gipsy, who, with his wife and six children, were attending to their cocoa-nut concern. George Smith was just having his lunch, to which he invited me. Of course I joined him, notwithstanding the crush of the fair. Smith did not know of more than one gipsy among all their relations who could read and write.

Early in the morning I paid a visit to one of the vans, and there saw a woman and her six little girls, and one little boy about three years old, in a most wretched, dirty condition. They were thin, and some of their young faces looked prematurely old. She knew me, and the poor slave of a mother seemed ashamed of their condition. I gave them a lot of pictures, cards, &c., and left them to make their way. It was heartrending to see the poor pretty children scan the pictures, anxious to know what they were about, but unable to tell a letter. Despair seemed to come over their faces, as they turned them over and over and from side to side. Later on in the afternoon I again paid a visit to them. Of course in the morning I was behind the scenes; but in the afternoon more phases appeared; they were in “public.” In the van was wretchedness and misery, and all the other evils attending such a course of life; but on the “boards” they were fairies, dressed in lively pretty colours, dancing, skipping, and riding about, not from love, but from pressure and force. You could see as the six pretty children danced about that their smiles were forced. I saw them about six months since, and I now noticed a marked haggard change in their features. The husband had the “light end of the stick.” He fared well, and did well, and worked but little. I could hear the chaps round me say of the mother, as she moved to and fro upon the platform, or outdoor stage, and whose fanciful dresses were none too long, that it was her “legs” that drew the crowds round their establishment. Others said she was “well limbed.” She certainly was more presentable in the evening than in the morning. In my opinion it was the little girls who were the mainstay of the concern.

I could not help noticing the vast number of clergymen moving about. The prettily dressed, and not bad-looking woman had charms for some of them—old and young. She had a good head of black hair, as most gipsies have. Probably her witching eyes and tresses tickled the fancies of the clerical onlookers. One grave-looking clergyman walked up the fair very sedately, not seeming to notice such nonsense, but I could see him glancing out of the corner of his eye at the woman and her children as they danced about. It may be that he was there for the same purpose as I was, viz., to see both sides of gipsying, the evil and the good. If such was the case, I am sure that he found it like the Irishman found his wife, nearly “all bad and no good.”

In the fair, and with smiling looks, pleasant tongue, and busy hand, was Mr. Wheelhouse, the Oxford city missionary, trying to sell his heavenly books. A few came and looked, and turned away, notwithstanding the low prices at which he offered his soul-saving wares. Trash! bosh! Dash and a splash into the Oxford English gipsying was what the crowd wanted, and some of them had it to their heart’s content, with shadows of the morrow’s sorrows hanging over them as they dived deep into sin. Occasionally the missionary would have a customer, which caused him to smile like a full-blown rose.

The good old man, as he gave me a parting grip, said, “God bless you in your noble work. I’ve long wanted to see you. God bless you, good-bye,” and he gave me an extra squeeze, and I then jostled into the crowd.

I noticed three or four of the most respectable gipsy-looking men soliciting subscriptions. It could not be for taxes, I thought, for gipsies never pay taxes—at least those who do not hawk and don’t live in houses. I inquired what their loss was, and I was told that a young woman, one of the mainstays of one of the establishments in the fair, had been burnt to death the previous week in one of the vans. The organ, van, and contents had gone to the winds, and the poor woman’s charred black remains consigned to the cold, cold sod, and tears and black crape left to tell the tale. How she came to her untimely end was not fairly cleared up at the inquest. When the great book is opened it will be made clear. I gave them some silver, and when they asked in what name it was to be entered, of course I told them, and they opened their eyes with wondrous curiosity and amazement. I shook hands with them, and for some minutes I was lost in the crowd. I suppose they had been told by wicked outsiders that I had nothing but hard words for the gipsies and travellers.

A big, idle, hulking-looking fellow of a gipsy now “boned” me. He wanted me to lend him a shilling—as he said—for his wife and children. I tackled him. I asked him what he was doing in the fair. He said he was a collier out of work. I asked him to let me look at his hands. After shuffling about a little he let me look at his hands. I could see plainly that he was not a collier. I said, “You have not had a ‘coal-pick’ in your hands to work with it in your life.” At this he seemed to get into a rage. I said, “The marks you show me have been done upon the ‘wheel of fortune’ in the ‘stone jug.’” This he did not deny. When I asked him about the prices colliers have per ton for getting coal he was nonplussed. I said, “Now, before I give you anything, I want to see your wife and four children,” and away we started to find them, on their way to Banbury. I turned back; but still the fellow was boring me to lend him a shilling, and he vowed and vowed that he would repay me the amount. At this juncture he bolted into a stationer’s shop for a piece of paper, upon which he wanted me to write my address, so that he might send me the shilling back. I followed him into the shop, and quite a scene ensued. The gipsy tramp could neither beg a piece nor buy it. At last, after ten minutes’ wrangling over a piece of paper, the shopman gave him an old envelope, and we came out of the shop. Nothing would serve his purpose but that I was to write my address. So to please, and to get rid of the ignorant, idle, dirty scamp, I wrote upon the recently begged old envelope, “Jupiter Terrace, Moonlight Street, Starland.” The fellow wrapped it up very carefully, and put it into his pocket, and I then gave him sixpence and left him, telling him that he was to send the amount in postage stamps, as I could not get post-office orders cashed at the address I had given him. I expect the sixpence and the gipsy tramp are on the wing still.

In the fair there were over fifteen gambling tables—_i.e._ tables upon which there were all kinds of gipsy nick-nacks and fairy trifles, some of which were sold and others gambled for. On the table there was a large painted wheel, something like a clock-face or compass, with a swinging finger or hand. Round the outer edge of the wheel stood a lot of things, chiefly ornamental children’s toys in fern cases, fancy boxes, and other ornaments. Those who wanted to “try their luck” had to put down a penny opposite the thing they fancied. When several had done this, and the pennies were studded about the wheel, then swing went the finger round and round till it stopped—seldom where the pennies were. The finger seemed to either just go past the mark or to stop short of it. All blanks and no prizes seemed to be the order of the day. I saw one lady dressed in silk, with a lot of young women, girls, and boys round her, gamble several shillings away on the “wheel of fortune.” It was a most pitiable sight to see the vast numbers of well-dressed young persons and children receiving their first lessons in gambling, in the shadows of churches and colleges. I was told, by those who knew, that the “wheels of fortune” and “shows” made more money than all the other things in the fair put together. It was a sunny fair for the gambling stall-keepers, but not for the patron saint under whose auspices it was held. I rather fancy the saints of bygone days, to whom the colleges and churches were dedicated, would look down upon the assembly with abashed countenances at the work of sin going on under the shadow of the Oxford sacred precincts, and, it would seem, had retired in favour of Discordia, Momus, Mars, et Pluto. The big and little gamblers could win when the proprietors thought well to allow the smiles of fortune to descend upon them. Fortune’s smiles consisted in the pressing of the stall-keeper’s thigh against a stud, that operated underneath the top of the table against the swivel upon which the finger or hand was placed, and he could stop it whenever he liked. After many blanks he would let one of his fools occasionally win, just to encourage others.

I was put up to this move by one of the gipsies, but with strict injunctions that I was not to let the “cat”—_i.e._, my informant—“out of the bag.” When I told my friend the gipsy that gambling of this kind was against the law, “Yes,” he said, “and the ‘bobbies’ are down upon us in some places for it; and they would no doubt have been so here, but they have been ‘squared.’” When he talked about “squaring,” I thought I would “try” him and “prove” him, but found him to be blank. I found out that this “squaring” process consisted in blinding the policemen with “silver-dust.” The fact is this kind of gambling is growing to an alarming extent in the country under the policemen’s noses, and this they know right well, and take no steps to stop it. Of course the Oxford police as a body of men could not be held accountable for the dereliction of duty by a few of them. As a whole they are a fine lot of village soldiers.

I next turned my step towards one of the shows. There was upon the platform, or stage, a sharp little fiery woman beating the drum—which sounded like a kitchen table—and bawling out till she was hoarse, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to see the best show in the fair, now is your time; they are just going to begin. Come up quick, and take your places,” and she banged again at the old drum as if she was going to knock the bottom out. Beside the sharp, ready-tongued woman stood “Boscoe,” dressed, daubed, and painted like a Red Indian, whose rough visage and broken nose had the appearance of having been in many a “fisticuffing” encounter. Although he was daubed over, I recognized him as one with whom I had had a long chat on Sunday afternoon, and who pleasantly received some of my books for his children. Boscoe noticed me in the crowd, and gave me a few of his sly winks while the megrims were going on. Close to “Boscoe” stood a tall, wretched, half-starved, red-faced looking man, the picture of a beer-barrel in his face, with red-herring tendencies from the shoulders downwards. On the ground there were his wretched, lantern-jawed wife and their six ragged children. Their home was a donkey cart covered over with rags, and a bed of rags was what those eight human beings had to lie upon, and I could have said with Burns—

“Oh, drooping wretch, oppressed with misery!”

and as she stood cowering and trembling I could have said with Crashaw, “Oh, woman!—

“‘Upwards thou dost weep; Heaven’s bosom drinks the gentle stream.’”

I should like to have whispered in her ear, “Weep on, poor woman, weep on. Weep on, poor children, weep on. Your tears will bring down the mighty arm of the Great Living Father, which shall deliver you from this wretched tramping life of misery and degradation. Look up! look up! His hand draweth nigh. The Friend of the children hears the children’s cries, and woe be to the nation or people who step in to prevent the gipsy children receiving the embraces of a loving heavenly Father.”