Part 19

I found that the man had had a good education at a high-class school, but had taken the “wrong turning,” and now spent part of his time in “scissor-grinding,” singing gipsy “slap-dash songs,” and during the short days of winter “dotted down” gipsy love tales, &c. He had smudged thickly over the soul saving golden letters embedded in his memory in the days of childhood—as all young men and maidens do who take to gipsying—the fifth commandment: “_Honour thy father and thy mother_; _that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee_.” Poor follow! I felt sorry to see his dirty knees through the rents in his breeches. In his childhood he had been taught by his Christian parents to lisp as he knelt with his head bent low against his mother’s knees—

“Teach me to live that I may dread The grave as little as my bed.”

“I lay my body down to sleep, Let angels guard my bed.”

Now he could sing out with his wife’s assistance—more jovially, of course, than Hubert Smith sung it on his tramp to Norway—

“My father’s the king of the gipsies—that’s true, My mother, she learned me some camping to do. With a packet on my back, and they all wish me well, I started up to London, some fortunes for to tell.”

Or more touchingly than Esmeralda sung

“Shul, Shul, gang along with me; Gang along with me, I’ll gang along with you.”

How much better it would have been for this scissor-grinding _posh_ gipsy if he had followed the advice that had been given to him, and endeavoured to lead the poor lost wanderer upon right paths to heaven instead of to hell.

A gipsy’s charges for “grinding” and “setting” a pair of scissors vary from twopence to two shillings and sixpence; all depends upon circumstance and who owns them.

_Posh_ gipsies and others who encourage gipsy wrongdoing know it to be misleading and evilsome; but it does not answer their purpose to speak faithfully and truthfully about gipsy wrong-doing. Gipsy idleness, gipsy frauds, gipsy cruelty, gipsy filth, gipsy lies, gipsy thefts, gipsy cheating, gipsy fornication, and gipsy adultery, are looked upon by all enlightened Englishmen and Christians as sins to be avoided and not to be encouraged. And he who encourages the gipsies in this wrongdoing is an enemy to the State, an enemy to God, an enemy to Christianity, and an enemy to himself, for which he will be made to smart some day. Their ill-gotten coin will burn their pockets and singe the hair of their head with terrible vengeance.

To come again to the things I saw with my eyes shut while lying under the shade.

Among the hundreds of gipsy children in this vast camp who were going to ruin there were a few fast-goers, fools and fops, fraternizing with the “gipsy beauties,” but no hand was put out to help to save the children from woe. The “_gentlemen_” were too busy to soil their hands with the poor-ragged, forlorn, neglected, forgotten, and forsaken gipsy children. They might live like heathen and die like dogs. A thousand things must be attended to, and the souls and bodies of the gipsy children might go to hell for aught they cared.

Occasionally a gipsy child in this camp would begin to sing; but, as Elton Summers in the _Christian World_ Magazine for 1877, says—

“More plaintive and low is its melody, Till, faint with its own sad reverie, It sinks to a whisper and dies.”

As I lay, I noticed a man, apparently about sixty years of age, with grey hair, round features, and a load upon his back, coming through the gate into the meadow. The nimbleness and elasticity of his step had well-nigh gone. His clothes were ragged and worn. He staggered along, and as he began to move among the gipsies they began to add to his load. Sorrow had furrowed his cheeks and a paleness was upon his countenance. Every few minutes he seemed to hesitate and stop, as if going to put his load upon the ground, in order to move more quickly among them, and into a resting tent at the edge of the meadow.

During one of his standstills I heard him with tears in his eyes saying to himself, “Shall I put the load down? Yes, I think I will;” and then he summoned up strength and courage and said, “No! no! I won’t put it down till I’ve either carried it to where I want to carry it or die in the attempt.”

Presently he staggered and fell heavily with his burden upon the sod. He lay for a few minutes without any one noticing him. After he had lain for some time a crowd began to gather round him. Some said, with a chuckle and a grin, “He’s dead, thank God! We’ve done with him, thank God! and hope he has got into a warm place.” Three or four gentlemen pressed through the crowd to look at the old man; and as they were going among the bystanders I heard them say to each other, “If he shows signs of life we will give him a lift, but if he is going to die we will have nothing to do with him. Let those see to him who like, we will leave him to his fate, be it rough or smooth.” Like the priests and Levites of old, they went on the other side.

Among the crowds in the ditches I noticed an old _posh_ gipsy woman from South Carolina Street, with basket in hand picking up wasps, newts, and weasels. One of the gentlemen noticed what she was doing, and questioned her as to her movements and intentions. She replied as follows, “You will see what I am going to do with them when I have gathered my basketful. I hold in my pocket a bottle containing some mixture that when once it is applied to the basket will cause them to buzz, sting, and poison fearfully. For the matter of that a few others will help to do the same thing; and when this is done I am going to empty them upon the poor devil’s head to either poison or sting him to death. Several here tried to do it before, but they were fools and did not go the right way to work.” One gentleman said, “Has the poor fellow ever done you any harm or wronged you in any way?” “Well, I don’t know that he has, but I and a few others want to see the end of him.”

She filled her basket, and applied the mixture to the wasps, newts, and weasels, and just as she was going to empty them upon the head of the poor fellow, about dying, they turned and settled upon her own pate, and away she went out of the crowd, and I have not seen her since. By the side of the poor fellow lay a small bag of seeds which were to grow bread, clothes, and comfort, which a few friends had collected to help the old man on his journey. It was not long by the side of the old pilgrim before up stepped a little dodger who had taken to gipsying, named Philip Lamb, from Russia, who seized the small bag and off he scampered. The last I saw of him was that he was tramping the country with patches upon his breeches.

While this was taking place, three or four other gentlemen—real and not shams—appeared upon the scene. For a few minutes they looked and stared at each other, as if at a loss to know what it all meant, and what the old man had done wrong. “Oh!” said one and another and another, “it will never do to let the poor fellow die in this way;” and they at once set to work to lighten his load, and to give him some nourishment. After treatment of this kind for a little time, he began to come round again, and smiles were to be seen upon his face and the faces of his friends.

Through one of the gates leading into this gipsy encampment I saw running post haste a number of well-dressed young men and women of respectable appearance, who were making their way to three or four men from the Ionian Isles, who had disappointed society and society had disappointed them. One man stood upon a little hillock, piping forth, in slap-dash gipsy songs, backwood novels, boshy stories, and gipsy lore, the beauties, delights, and loveliness of gipsy life in a way that caused a shivering, aching pang to run through my system from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. He continued to tell of the pleasure of white lies, and taking things that were not your own; and also in feeding upon things, whether birds, beasts, fish, or game, that lived in the water that God gave us, or upon the grass that He sent us. “God,” said these gipsy sensualists, “knew nothing of gates, fences, locks, keys, bars, and bolts.” These poor misguided young folks listened with open mouths, and in the end they went into the gipsy tents. They doffed their cloth, put on gipsy garbs, tanned and washed their faces in walnut water, and sallied forth into the crowd cadging and begging, lying and stealing—as only gipsies can.

Among the crowd of gipsies farther away there were two or three real Romanys who had “begun to serve God,” and were distributing tracts among the gipsy children, at which the scissor-grinding _push_ gipsy turned up his nose.

On a little mound stood a little man with a _posh_ gipsy woman by his side, telling those round him that gipsies were angels who had been wafted from India to our midst by the heavenly breezes of the Celestial City, and that their ragged and tattered garments were the robes of Paradise, and whatever they did, however dark and evil, was done under the influences of the good spirit of gipsydom. One little sharp-eyed gipsy fellow, named Deliverance Smith, from Kaulo-gav (Birmingham), called out to the _push_ gipsy, “Sir _posh_ Gorgio, do you mean to say that these old rags I’ve got on have been made and put upon my back by angels; and that when I swears, tells lies, fights, and steals, a good spirit has told me to do so? because if you do, I say it is a lie, and know better than believe your tale.” The _push_ gipsy called the little fellow to him and said in a whisper, “I don’t mean what I say, but I must say something to fill people’s mouths. These girls round me are fond of a ‘lark,’ and I like them. I know nothing about the other gipsies. Keep your mouth shut, and here’s sixpence for you.”

In some of the tents diseased _bálamo-mas_ (pork) was being cooked; in others, _hotchi-witchi_ (hedgehogs), _kané-gros_ (hares), and _bouris_ (snails).

Some of the poor children had never been washed for weeks, except in walnut-water, which, by continual using, gives them the artificial olive hue amateur gipsies admire. Those who are sunfreckled are the hardest to tan. For a time the sunfreckles are seen through the artificial sickly yellow colour on their faces and hands. Some of the children told me that they never undressed. The healthy appearance of former day gipsies is fast passing away, and now, as a rule, they are pale, thin, and sickly-looking. Many of the adults and children were much pitted with the smallpox scars. They wore their clothes till they dropped off.

Outside the encampment stood a number of my friends looking on the scene, a list of whom will be found in my “Canal Adventures by Moonlight” (p. 125), with recent additions since of a number of warm-hearted friends to the cause of the canal and gipsy children.

Some few of the gipsies in this encampment had been married, and that was the only time that they had ever been inside a church; not one gipsy, young or old, had ever been inside a school of any kind. Schoolmasters and ministers were almost unknown to them. They had more acquaintance with policemen and jails than churches and chapels.

Connected with one of the gipsy camps of ragamuffins, I noticed in the distance a tall, thin, unwashed, and emaciated girl of about fourteen winters—it had been nearly all winter with her. The upper part of her thin frame of skin and bones was dressed in a few shreds of rags, and these were not sufficient to cover her bare, dirty bosom, which almost looked the bosom of a skeleton; and on her feet were odd and worn-out, cast-off drawing-room shoes, quite equal to the sad emergency of letting as much mud and water upon her soles as they were to keep the poor lost creature “high and dry” out of the muddy surroundings. She moved among the gipsies with a “trash, trash,” and a most downcast and haggard look of despair upon her face. “Despair” seemed to come with terrible vengeance and prominence out of every word, form, movement, and gesture; except when occasional relapses stole over her, and then the tear-drawing sympathy shone and darted like darts of fire that pierced into the marrow of my soul, bringing the flush and blush to my face, and tears to my eyes, whether I would have them or no. No amount of “screwing up,” or “bottling,” prevented this appearance upon my cheek. The poor girl had fine Grecian features, with long, black, flowing hair, but it was matted together with dirt and filth. With her arms uplifted, and her hands buried scratchingly deep in her hair, she turned to look in the direction where I lay. This was no sooner done than, a flash of hope lighting up her thin face with smiles through her tears, she started to run towards me as fast as she could, calling out, “My father! my father! my father!” Before I had time to turn round she was at my side, and had planted a kiss upon my check. For a moment I was dumbfounded. I said to the lost _posh_ gipsy child, “What is it you want, my dear? I am not your father.” At this reply she looked wild and almost like a maniac, and said, with her face buried in her hands, “I thought you was my father who had come to fetch me out from among the gipsies.” And then she looked again into my face and said, “Arn’t you my father? my father was so much like you. He had white hair like you. Arn’t you my father? I wish I could see my mother. Will she come for me?” I asked her to sit down by my side, and to tell me who she was. She came a little nearer, and began to tell me how it was she came to be among the gipsies. I will give her tale as she related it to me:—

“When I was a little girl about four years old, I remember my mother sending me for some milk to a house near to the old General Baptist Chapel, Church Street, Deptford, {215} and while I was going down the street some dark ragged women—the same you saw me with—asked me to go down to the bottom of the street to look at some fine things, and on the way they gave me a penny and some apples and a little doll. After walking a long way we did not get to the bottom of the street, but we got among a lot of children living under a cart cover by the side of the hedge. They asked me to sit by the fire that was on the ground. I said I wanted to go to my mother. It was getting dark, and I began to cry. They kept saying that they would take me to my mother, and at night they all got into a cart, and said they were taking me home to see my mother, father, brothers, and sisters. We went a long way, and the way they took me was not like Deptford, and I have not seen my mother and father since.” The girl began to cry, and said, “I should like to see father, mother, Polly, and Jim. It is a long time since I saw them. We used to go to school together, Jimmy, Polly, and myself. My father used to take me by the hand to school and chapel on Sundays, and they did sing such nice hymns. I have seen father and mother cry lots of times. Father used to say his prayers every night and morning. They don’t say prayers where I live now. Will you take me to my father and mother? When will you take me? Take me now, and I will give you everything I have in the world. Please don’t go and leave me, and I will give you twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty kisses. I will give you hundreds if you will take me to my mother and father. I hope they are not dead. I hope Polly and Jim are alive. Will you take me, please, sir?”

I told the poor little creature that I could not take her, but that I would send three or four gentlemen for her shortly. At this she began to sob out loudly, “Take me! take me! don’t leave me here!” I directed her to pray to God for deliverance, for there seemed to be none from earth; and with her eyes turned up to heaven she said with Sir John Davis:

“Lord! hear my prayer and listen to my cries, Let not Thy gracious eye my tears despise.”

To which I said, Amen!

Large numbers of them had been in jail. Their short cropped hair and other symptoms told the black tale.

All the vans, tents, &c., were not to be reckoned as teeming with human wretchedness, squalor, dirt, filth, and sin. Some ditch and mossy bank abodes were as clean as the circumstances would admit of, and the tent and van dwellers were healthy-looking, plump, and clean.

A terrible row commenced among the gipsies over a dog, which ended in bloodshed and murder. Right up at the far corner two men were digging a hole about two feet six inches long, and twelve inches wide, and two feet deep. After it was dug a woman stole stealthily along with a heavy parcel in her arms, covered with a cloth, which might or might not have been a dead dog. As the gipsy woman carrying the mysterious bundle approached, one of the men withdrew to act as a kind of spy guard. For a few minutes he looked about, and then called out crouchingly, and in a loud whisper, “The skies are clear.” The woman ran with death in her arms, the devil in her heart, and a hellish glare upon her features, and deposited her load in the cold, cold ground without a tear or a sigh. No mournful _cortége_ or funeral knell told the tale of what was going on. Within three minutes all was levelled up, and the three departed—where I don’t know; at any rate, I have not seen them since.

Immediately after this sad event I saw coming down the by-lane a School Board officer, a sanitary officer, and a Christian minister. I watched with longing eyes to see what they were going to do. They came nearer and nearer, till they arrived at the gate leading into the meadow. For a few minutes they stood at the gate, which was locked. I liked the looks of them. They looked like brothers of mercy. Their countenances were heavenly. I felt that I could have shouted “Glory.” I hastened to unlock the gate, and the brothers of mercy walked in to lift the children upon the path leading to heaven. Just at this juncture a thunderstorm came on, and the dripping from the leaves overhead woke me up. For a few minutes I did not know where I was, whether in the body or out of it. Feeling as Anna Shipton felt when she wrote in the _Sword and Travel_ for 1871:—

“Thou knowest my way—how lone, how dark, how cheerless, If Thy dear hand I fail in all to see; Bright with Thy smile of love my heart is fearless When in my weakness I can lean on Thee.”

I pulled myself together to deal with sad, terribly sad, facts, and continued my walk to Long Buckby, my midday reverie in the land of shadows, lying between dreams and visions, being over. On mounting the hill leading into the town I met with a tall old man dressed in a pauper’s garb, and with a “few slates off.” He said he had lived in a cottage with the windows nailed up for seventy years. I asked him how old he was. He answered, “Over seventy.” He next turned the compliment upon myself, and said, “How old are you?” I said, “Fifty-one.” “Oh,” said the old man, after looking at my once black hair, which my friends tell me is now growing snowy white in the cause of the children, hastened by the bleaching of hard struggles, conflicts, and fightings, “you are older than me; I thought so.” I said “I did not think so.”

There are some quaint, ancient-looking houses in the town, evidently of the time of the Commonwealth. These are built of stone at the bottom, mud in the middle, and brick at the top, and they are thatched with straw and end in smoke. In the centre of this “radical town,” peopled with good-hearted folks, stands a very strong, tall, oak pole, some eighty feet high, with a crown upon the top of it, which pole was taken many years ago out of Earl Spencer’s park at Althorp. It is known by the name of “the coronation pole.” The original “coronation pole” was put up when George III. was crowned, and was cut down in William IV.’s time, owing, as one of the very old townsmen said, “to his turning Conservative.” A man named Hare, whom I had a chat with, helped to saw it down with a “cross-cut” saw. It was sold publicly for two pounds, and the money spent in drink in a public-house opposite. The present pole stands some twenty yards from where the former one stood. The massive crown upon the top of the pole is similar to the one worn by our blessed and noble Queen, and long may it remain.