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.
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.”
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.
In the centre of this large, deathly room there was a kind of long, low, tumble-down table propped up with bricks, old tressels, and stones. The top was sickly, dirty, loose, and uneven. Round the room there were scores of men, women, and children, blackened with dirt, grease, and grime, who had never been washed since they were ushered into the world, sitting and squatting upon the floor. Their language was that of thieving, robbing, cheating, lying, &c.; and their spare time—at least some of them—while the cooking was going on, was passed with the devil’s cards. For a few minutes all was as silent as death, and then the old “hag” placed upon the table the pot which had been hanging over the fire, after which she handed to each of us in the room an old broken mug, and told us to help ourselves to what was in the pot. At this a general rush took place; swearing and fighting was about to begin in earnest, with the probability of it ending in murder without the outside world knowing of it. I was about to begin my sickening share when I said to the lot of them, “Now, chaps, women, and children, in my country it is usual for us to say ‘grace’ before meat and thanks after it on occasions like this, and, if you don’t mind, I’ll follow out the practice now.” Several of the poor little lost creatures cried out, “That’s capital! if it’s anything nice we shall like it. We’ve not had anything we like for a long time.” I told them to be quiet, and then proceeded with, “Be pleased, O Lord, to grant us—” “Stop! stop!” cried out the old “hag.” “What did you say? ‘O Lord?’ What do you mean? What is it? who is it? and where does He come from? We’ve never heard the name before.” I said, “Let me finish, and then I will tell you afterwards.” I began again to say grace, and proceeded as follows: “Be pleased, O Lord, to grant us Thy blessing with this food, for Jesus—” They now all jumped upon their feet, and an old, grey-headed man, the picture of a Cabul murderer, with Satan in his face and the devil in his eyes, along with the wretched, ragged, lost, and emaciated little creatures, cried out, “Who is Jesus? We have never heard of Him before. Does He live in a big house? and has He plenty of rabbits, hares, game, and fowls in His plantations? because we should like to know.” I told them, in a way that excited their curiosity, as to who God was, and also as to who Jesus was. They set to their midnight supper like a lot of pigs. I took a little, but was far from enjoying it. When they had finished their supper they put their mugs upon the floor, and the bones they gave to a number of bony, hungry-looking dogs, a kind of cross between bulldogs, bloodhounds, and greyhounds, which were ready for any kind of work between the death of a keeper and a young rabbit. They reminded me very much of the big, hungry wretch of a dog in Landseer’s “Jack in Office”—
“His lean dog scanned him by the three-legged stool.”
Harris.
The conversation after supper took place in a language which they thought I could not understand, as to what was to be done on the morrow. I was mute now for a time. The children were to look after and bring home all the eggs, chickens, and fowls they could lay their hands upon. The men were to bring in larger game; and the women were to hunt up the servant girls. Each one had their work allotted them. As a kind of relief, and in broken English, in which they thought I would gladly join them, a number of the elder ones related how many times they had been “nabbed” and sent to “quod.” Some of them related that they had been in the “stone jug” three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and up to a score times; yea, even with glee some of the children gave me an account of the things they had stolen as they had passed from door to door on their thieving rambles. Now was the opportunity, I thought, during a lull in the conversation, to change the subject, and began to relate some of the beautiful things I had seen and lovely countries I had passed through; the loving smiles, gentle looks, and kind actions I had been brought in contact with; the many real, good-hearted friends I had; the many lovely flowers, delightful walks, and pleasant companions there were ready to join the travellers travelling in my country; water was rippling, birds were singing, sun was shining, and a land flowing with milk and honey in view, with long life into the bargain. As I recited these things to them they all—poor things!—stared with open mouths as they had never stared before. They now drew close to me. Although the odour was anything but agreeable, I kept on relating to them the blessings and advantages of my country, till they one and all cried out, with bated breath, “How far is it to your country, governor? Will it be the same for us if we go?” I said, “Yes, my good friends, it will be so for you and more. Will you go?” They now cried out, “We will go; but we shall have to trust you to get us out of this place.” “All right,” I said; “I will try to find a way out of this miserable hole somehow or other for you.”
I began to puzzle my brains as to how their deliverance was to be accomplished. For some little time I pondered the matter over, when it occurred to me that at the bottom end of the dismal room I had noticed a place upon the wall which looked like a door that had been plastered over in somebody’s time by pieces of old rags and paper.
I drew near to it, and scanned it over more closely. After feeling round the edges of it for a few minutes, one of the oldest and most wretched-looking gipsies spoke out in hasty tones, and with an amount of warmth that led me to hesitate for a moment to hear what further he had to say. He stopped short. So I said, “Well, Righteous Palmer, what is there behind this opening if I should proceed to find out?” “Oh, a lot, I’m told by those who know. Our place is bad enough, as our old witch knows, and you know, sir; but nothing like what there is behind that there ‘opening,’” pointing with his finger, “and if I was you, my dear good gentleman, I would not stir a peg to see any further. We should not like to see any harm come to you. If it had been anybody else we should not have minded a bit; we would as soon given him a chuck to Nick as look at him, and been glad o’ the job, and ground his bones to powder, and played at football with his skull.” I said, “Well now, Palmer, if you do not mind, we will see.”
“If you do,” said Palmer, “and get into any trouble, or into a place out of which you cannot get back, you must not blame us.” “Will you do what you can to help me?” I said. “Oh yes, we will do what we can for you in any way.” “All right,” I said. I now took out my pocket knife and began to cut and pull some of the paper and old rags off what now was appearing to be a door. The old witches, “hags,” and grey-bearded, bloated, and thin, wretched-looking men, and swarms, almost, of poor emaciated children, eagerly closed round me to see what it would end in. The stinking fire was stirred up to cause fresh light; and in the meantime I kept cutting away, which was no light task, for there were many old knots and rusty nails to be faced. Some of the poor children cried out, “By Jove, it is a door! Wonder where it leads to?” “All right,” I said, “wait and we will see.” And I worked, tugged, and toiled, sometimes in the midst of breathless silence, and at others in a gipsy noise loud enough to drown my own voice and noise of my tinkering. At last the door seemed to be pretty loose. Nervousness and fear seemed to creep over me more than ever as I neared the end. Questions kept popping up in my mind, “Where will it lead to? If it did not lead to an opening and daylight,” I said to myself more than once, “I am a done man.” “Lord help me,” I said, as I put my hand to the door to push it or pull it one way or the other. At last I pulled it open. There was the faintest light to be seen from somewhere, but I could not tell where. All the gipsies came nearer to me, and I said to one of the strongest of them, “Hold my hand, for I do not know where it will lead to. It will either be to my ruin or your happiness.” “We will hold you,” cried one and all; “you shan’t fall at any rate.” “Thank the Lord for this,” I said, and with much trembling I took the first step, not knowing whether it was to be downhill or uphill. In putting my feet out I felt my toe go against something hard. I kicked again and again, and found it to be a stone step. I then put my foot upon it. The gipsies were still at my coat tail. I then put both feet upon it, and felt at the walls, which seemed to widen out. A little more light was manifest, but still I could not tell where it came from. I kept groping and feeling my way step after step. More light of a yellowish tint, not of the cold moonlight hues, was now becoming more visible. The gipsies, especially the children, began to get eager to see the end of it. First one and then another of them said more than once, “The light seems nice; I wonder where it comes from?” The old gipsies were, with this light, made to look most horrible, and slunk back, but the children stuck to me. A great wide passage was now manifest; and altogether an uphill work was becoming more pleasant and cheerful. The gipsy children seemed to be round me by hundreds, and for the life of me I could not tell where they came from. A more miserable lot could not be imagined. Some of the children cried out, “Governor, it seems a long way to the top; how far is it?” Another twenty steps brought us to the top in full face to the rising sun; singing birds filling the air with their chanting; lovely flowers and beautiful mansions, blossoming trees rich with bud, blossom, and fragrance; groves, parks, and long walks without end. The deer were bounding, cattle grazing, and the big lambs were calling out for their mothers. In the long winding distance, at the top of a hill, stood a golden city, whose mansions and palaces were built of large blocks of precious stones, with an arch spanning over the whole composed of a succession of rainbows, with rays of glory indescribable, anxiously forcing their way to add lustre to the scene through the occasional openings to be seen in the illuminated arch. My heart was so overjoyed at having arrived at the top, and seeing vast crowds of little gipsy children brought out of darkness, I began to sing out lustily, with tears in my eyes—
“There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar.
For the Father waits over the way,
To prepare us a dwelling-place there.”
Ami as if by magic, the children sang touchingly the chorus, in which I joined—
“In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.”
The singing of this tune woke me up, and for the life of me I could not tell where I was, or whether I was in the body or out of it. This matter was soon settled by the “boots” knocking at my door, telling me that it was a quarter-past five o’clock. I partook of a hasty breakfast, and by six o’clock, with the musical bells chiming round me, I was among the gipsies in the fair, some of whom were settling down to their quarters, others were grumbling, and in not a few instances rows were brewing, owing to the space allotted to them not being up to their anticipation. On my way from my lodging to the town I passed a number of most wretched spectacles drawn by donkeys and ponies, fit for the knacker’s yard.
Upon a tumble-down donkey-cart covered over with sticks and old sheeting, drawn by a donkey dressed in harness not worth sixpence, which was tied together with string and pieces of rope, there were women and six poor half-dressed, half-starved, dirty, ragged children. The sight was most pitiable. The little dirty faces, with matted hair, peering through an opening in the rotten calico canvas, reminded me of a nest of young rabbits, rather than human beings with immortal souls, endowed with reason, thought, and intellect, and in the image of God, peeping out of their hole among the dead grass. Oh! what a contrast, I thought, to the architectural grandeur and beauty of the mansions on either hand as they passed through the streets. Why and wherefore is the cause? But I must not stop now to inquire. This problem I must work out later on.
The toll clerk with an amount of tact managed to squeeze the two hundred and twenty vans and shows into the square, keeping fairly the worst kinds in the background, and the best-looking with their faces towards “Lunnun.” “I have,” said the clerk, “much to do to get them all placed. After I have done all I can, I cannot keep them from rows and quarrels. Sometimes it is worse than what you see now. There are many more vans than there are in the fair this morning.” I said to him, “How many do you think there are here this morning?” “Well, sir, there are considerably over two hundred. I counted early yesterday afternoon in one string between here and Somers Town, a hundred and seventy-two vans, and others have been coming since.” At this juncture he spied a gipsy with his van and establishment taking up their abode in the churchyard under the tall trees. He said, “I must be off to stop them.” I followed him to see how the bronzed old gipsy would take to his veto. Fortunately he took to the dismissal with good grace, and more than once said, “Thank you, my good gentleman.” This is one of the characteristics of the old romantic gipsies, when they want anything by favour; seeing that it is not in their power to get it either by craft or bounce, they can ask with much grace, and in this way they often succeed. After the toll clerk was gone I had a chat with the gipsy—who, to his credit, had good cattle between the shafts of his vans. He said that he had at home—but did not say where his home was—eleven grey horses, out of his stock of thirteen. I took his statement with a pinch of salt, and moved off, leaving him to mumble over a joke I left behind, while he changed his quarters.
Not far from this scene there stood at a van door a tall, bony, dirty-looking man, in an almost nude state, and a lot of dirty, ragged children, and the “old woman” washing, hard and fast, some dirty linen in a tin bucket. It struck me that in this case, as with others, dispatch was the soul of business, and I loitered about to see what “shifts” this gipsy family would adopt. Scrub, rub, and a dash into the hot water went the dirty linen. After two or three good rubs and tussels with the linen in the bucket, she pulled it out and wrung it as if she was “screwing its neck off.” When this was over she gave it a good shake, and handed it to her “old man” without drying. The “old man” retired for a few minutes, and then he appeared with a dirty white shirt on his back, sticking more closely to his body than would have been agreeable to most people. Fortunately the warm sun was shining, and by exposing it to the sun’s rays during his pacing backwards and forwards in the square for an hour, he presented a better spectacle. At night upon the stage, with his painted face and coloured pantaloons, his grimy, smoke-coloured shirt passed off fairly well. I could see that the poor children, who stood round the door with matted hair, were to have the same measure dealt out to them that was dealt out to the “old man.” I am not at all surprised to find that diseases of various kinds should be creeping among our present-day gipsies, the bulk of whom wash and dry their linen on their limbs and bodies as above. Among the old gipsies rheumatic diseases were not known, but it is not so now; and it cannot be wondered at when we take into account that men, women, and children cause their bodies to do in wet weather what the “clothes horse” should do, and in fine weather what the “clothes line” should do. Such is “gipsy life” in this nineteenth century, in this our enlightened England.
One of the horses belonging to one of the gipsy vans had had nearly enough of it; and for the life of him the gipsy could not get the poor old horse to stir a peg, except to kick, and this it could do as well, if not better, than a “four-year-old.” I expected every minute to see the van over on its side, and the woman and children sprawling in the road. Fortunately, a few fellow-gipsy brothers put their shoulders to the wheel, and wheeled it off to right quarters.
In other vans “rock” and “toffy” making was going on with vengeance. I’ll take one case to show the kind of process carried out, and what town’s children and others have to swallow during feasts, mops, and fair time.
Surrounded by several vans and carts there was a fire in an old bucket, round which stood men, women, and a lot of poor little gipsy roadside Arabs. Presently into the pot over the fire—a large old kettle—a gipsy woman puts a lot of the commonest dirty-looking sugar, and some butter, or “butterine,” and when it has begun to boil, one of the children stirs it with a dirty stick for a time. After the boiling process is over, it is taken out and handed to the man or woman, as the case may be, to be “pulled” or twisted into the long walking-stick shape you see on some of the low, dirty gingerbread stalls attending fairs. A light-coloured “rock,” or “toffy,” is made by adding lighter-coloured sugar and flour.
The light-coloured “rock” and the dark-coloured “rock” are then mixed and twisted together, forming what is called the “scrodled rock.” The mixing process gives the hands of the mixers a clean appearance inside, contrasting strongly with the back of the hands, which at times, with this class of folks, resemble very much in colour the backs of tortoises or toads. George Herbert, in the “Fuller Worthies” Library, might almost have seen and tasted some such like, when he wrote—
“A sweetmeat of hell’s table, not of earth.”
A few yards from this manufacturing process there were man, woman, and two little children “as clean as pinks,” and a boy, who was scrubbing himself, head and shoulders, down to the waist, till he was “all of a white lather.” This case, and the few others I saw of a similar nature, were the “new comers on the road.” I expect to hear of their rising as a cow’s tail grows.
A laughable incident occurred while I was standing by watching the boy scrub at his head as if he meant to fetch the hair up by “the roots.” From beneath one of the vans a big black dog sallied forth down the fair with a piece of white paper in its mouth, carefully wrapped up, and much resembling a parcel of sandwiches. No sooner was the dog in the fair than some of the gipsies were after it, crying out, “Stop it! Stop it!” At first the dog would not listen; ultimately it stopped. The gipsies came up to the frightened animal. Everybody expected the dog had run away with something valuable in the shape of eatables, if nothing else. One big gipsy cried out to the dog, “Down with it! Down with it!” The dog did as it was told. This was no sooner done than the gipsy picked up the paper, and began to carefully unwrap it, when, to the horror of the gipsy and a few others who had taken part in the chase, and roars of laughter of onlookers, it turned out to be a paper containing a few bloaters’ heads and other unpalatable trifles. The parcel was dropped much quicker than it was picked up. Another laugh burst forth. The huntsmen pinched their noses and slunk away. One said, “I thought he had got somebody’s grub.”
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.”
After the performance “Boscoe” came off the stage and invited me to go into the “show,” which invitation I accepted, and was led in by the side door. I witnessed “Boscoe’s” tricks, such as eating fire, making leaden bullets, putting a red-hot poker down his throat, and drawing a red-hot bar across his tongue, and the bending of red-hot iron bars with his feet. “There are dodges in every trade, except rag-gathering,” said the old rag-woman the other day, as she sat by the side of the brook, wetting her rags before she sold them. The acrobat performances of a poor boy about twelve were cruel in the extreme. After one of his movements I could see that the poor thin-faced lad was suffering intense pain by his twinging and limpy walk. This poor specimen of humanity could not read or write a sentence. To bend, twist, twirl, and contort the limbs and bones of a poor child to bring smiles upon the faces of fools—for they are no better who witness such exhibitions—is hellish, and money gotten in this way provides those engaged in it with “workhouse” and “spittles” uniform. Other performances, such as a pony telling fortunes, &c., brought the entertainment to a close. On coming away old “Boscoe” came off the stage to shake hands with me among the crowd, which circumstance seemed to puzzle some of the bystanders.
I had a turn round with the gingerbread and toy stall-keepers, and I was not long among them before I found out two old “backsliders,” one of whom was from Northampton, and until two years ago was a “member of a class.” Now, with her son, she was tramping the country, and attending fairs and races in the daytime, and sleeping under their stall at night! A chat with her about old times, and the “blessed seasons” she once had, and the peace of mind she once enjoyed, brought scalding tears to her eyes, as copiously as if I had been talking to her of the death of a darling rosy-checked, curly-headed little boy, whose little wax taper flickered out as its soul was being wafted to Paradise in the midst of a convoy of angels. The good woman with quivering lips said, “Do you remember giving me, sir, at Long Buckby, a little book and a picture card?” I said, “Yes.” “Well, I sent them to my son, who is a soldier in South Africa, and they pleased him very much.” I could see that I could press the subject a little nearer home, and I said to her, “How do you get on with this kind of life? How do you manage to say your prayers at night?” “Well,” she said, “this kind of life is not the right thing, and I am not what I ought to be; but somehow or other I say my prayers at night, and feel safer after it. I hope to give up travelling and settle down again.” While moistened sorrow was reddening her eyes, I said in substance if not in words—
“’Tis a star about to drop
From thine eye, its sphere;
The sun will stoop to take it up.”
With a deep, deep-drawn sigh she bade me good-night several times over, and the curtain dropped.
I now came upon a man and woman sitting at a weighing machine. (I might state that I was weighed at two different weighing machines in the fair. Nabob Brown’s machine put me down at eleven stone ten pounds, and F—’s machine showed that I weighed twelve stone and eleven pounds.) Both looked above the ordinary kind of gipsies. The clean, good-looking woman was nursing a baby, and trying the weight of “ladies and gentlemen,” and the man was “ringing” his cheap fashionable sticks off to those who would try “three throws a penny.”
This couple, I soon found out, were Primitive Methodist “backsliders.” Their names were F— although they were known among the travellers as W—. His father was one of the oldest local preachers in the Brinklow district. He had worked hard in the cause of the Great Master, and had succeeded in raising a “Band of Hope,” two hundred members strong, in one of the London districts; but in the fulness of his heart, and in what turned out to be an evil moment for him, he admitted another “brother” as a co-secretary, who, instead of helping my friend the gipsy in the good work, supplanted him, and “collared” the tea-cake, at which the committee winked. This worked up the tender feelings of my gipsy friend to such a pitch that he withdrew from the society he had raised, and took the downhill turning, and in this course both he and his wife are, at the time of writing this, gipsying the country. Richard Crashaw says—
“These are the knotty riddles
Whose dark doubts
Entangle his lost thoughts
Fast getting out.”
I asked my friend F— a few questions about the gipsies he had been mixed up with. Among other questions was the following. “Now, Mr. F—, how many gipsies and travellers have you known, during your travels, to attend a place of worship on Sundays?” “Well, sir,” said Mr. F—, “you ask me a straightforward question and I will give you a straightforward answer. I do not remember ever having seen one.” I said, “This state of things is truly awful.” “Yes,” he said; “it is no more awful than true. I’m getting tired of it, and I think I shall settle down this next winter.”
A long conversation with them both brought out tears, downcast looks, and sighs, which contrasted somewhat strangely with the yelling “fools,” “clowns,” and simpletons in the fair. I gave them and their children some books, pictures, &c., and they in return gave me a walking stick as a “keepsake,” which I shall preserve; and after shaking hands several times over, I toddled off into the fair, to wander among the vans with my “keepsake” stick in my hand, gently tapping the gipsy children as they turned up their smiling faces.
It was now about eleven o’clock, the buzz and din of fools, wise men and simple, was getting gradually less. The echo was getting fainter and fainter. The crowd was thinning. Policemen seemed to be numerous; the gipsies dogs were sneaking from under the vans, and prowling after bones and thrown-out trifles. The swearing of drunken gipsies was heard more distinctly than ever. The gipsy women—some of whom had “had a little too much”—were loud in their oaths and hard words. In many instances blows threatened to be the outcome. Children were screaming, and big sons and daughters were quarrelling.
Half-past eleven arrived, and the inmates of the two hundred and twenty vans and shows, numbering about a thousand men, women, and children, were bedding themselves down in their, in many instances, wretched abodes. As I wandered among them at midnight hour I felt a cold chill of horror creeping over me, and nightly dewdrops of sorrow forcing their way down my face. To witness the sight I saw was enough to cause the blood to freeze in any man’s veins. One of the most hellish sights upon earth is a dirty, drunken, swearing woman putting her children to bed upon rags undressed and unwashed, and with a flickering candle dying in the socket. Fathers and mothers, sons and daughters all lying mixed together, numbering on an average four, six, eight, ten, and twelve men, women, and children, of all ages and sizes, in the space of a covered waggon, is what ought never to be allowed in any civilized country, much less Christian England, which spends millions in trying to convert the Indian, civilize the savage, transform the Chinaman, Christianize the African, and in preparing the world for the millennium which is to follow the redeeming efforts of Christ’s followers. Oh! haste happy day, when John’s vision shall dawn upon us with all its never-ending transcendent splendour, tenderness, and heavenly reality. 161
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.”
Not half a dozen of this thousand human beings would be offering up an evening prayer other than that of hell. The backsliding woman from Northampton and her son had crept for the night under their stall. Of course she had said her prayers, as she had told me, according to her wont, by the side of their stall, or may be after she had drawn their tent covering round them for the night; at any rate I left them to have one other peep at my friends the gipsies F— before wending my way to my lodgings. On arriving at the van I saw a flickering light in the windows. The top window was nearly shut. The woman had had a little too much, but not sufficient to drive her wild or out of her senses. The husband had been “cross” with her. They had finished their midnight meal. The poor little children were almost “dead sleepy,” and for a minute or two all was quiet, and then I heard the backsliding mother teaching the poor sleepy children as they knelt down in the van to repeat,
“Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,
Bless Thy little lamb to-night,
Through the darkness be Thou near me,
Keep me safe till morning light.
“Let my sins be all forgiven.
Bless the friends I love so well,
Take me when I die to heaven,
Happy there with Thee to dwell.
For Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.”
They now fastened their van top door down and bade me good-night. Their dog had snoozled under their home on wheels. Fogs and chills were creeping round. The policeman’s tramp was to be heard, and with death-like silence reigning I crept between the cold sheets to toss and tumble about till the bright morning sun appeared, to fasten upon my heart the sights of the previous day at the Oxford St. Giles’s fair, not to be removed till eternity dawns upon my soul with heaven in full view. To, as Marianne Farningham says in The Christian World—
“A land where noises of the earth
For evermore shall cease,
Where the weary ones are resting
In the calm of perfect peace.”