The Gypsies Part 9

The walk from Oatlands Park Hotel to Cobham is beautiful with memorials of Older England. Even on the grounds there is a quaint brick gateway, which is the only relic of a palace which preceded the present pile. The grandfather was indeed a stately edifice, built by Henry VIII., improved and magnified, according to his lights, by Inigo Jones, and then destroyed during the civil war. The river is here very beautiful, and the view was once painted by Turner. It abounds in "short windings and reaches." Here it is, indeed, the Olerifera Thamesis, as it was called by Guillaume le Breton in his "Phillipeis," in the days of Richard the Lion Heart. Here the eyots and banks still recall Norman days, for they are "wild and were;" and there is even yet a wary otter or two, known to the gypsies and fishermen, which may be seen of moonlight nights plunging or swimming silently in the haunted water.

Now we pa.s.s Walton Church, and look in, that my friend may see the ma.s.sy Norman pillars and arches, the fine painted gla.s.s, and the bra.s.ses. One of these represents John Selwyn, who was keeper of the royal park of Oatlands in 1587. Tradition, still current in the village, says that Selwyn was a man of wondrous strength and of rare skill in horsemans.h.i.+p.

Once, when Queen Elizabeth was present at a stag hunt, he leaped from his horse upon the back of the stag, while both were running at full speed, kept his seat gracefully, guided the animal towards the queen, and stabbed him so deftly that he fell dead at her majesty's feet. It was daintily done, and doubtless Queen Bess, who loved a proper man, was well pleased. The bra.s.s plate represents Selwyn as riding on the stag, and there is in the village a shop where the neat old dame who presides, or her daughter, will sell you for a penny a picture of the plate, and tell you the story into the bargain. In it the valiant ranger sits on the stag, which he is stabbing through the neck with his _couteau de cha.s.se_, looking meanwhile as solemn as if he were sitting in a pew and listening to _De profundis_. He who is great in one respect seldom fails in some other, and there is in the church another and a larger bra.s.s, from which it appears that Selwyn not only had a wife, but also eleven children, who are depicted in successive grandeur or gradation. There are monuments by Roubiliac and Chantrey in the church, and on the left side of the altar lies buried William Lilly, the great astrologer, the Sidrophel of Butler's "Hudibras." And look into the chancel. There is a tablet to his memory, which was put up by Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, who has left it in print that this "fair black marble stone" cost him 6 pounds 4_s_. 6_d_. When I was a youth, and used to pore in the old Franklin Library of Philadelphia over Lilly, I never thought that his grave would be so near my home. But a far greater literary favorite of mine lies buried in the church-yard without. This is Dr. Maginn, the author of "Father Tom and the Pope," and many another racy, subtle jest. A fellow of infinite humor,--the truest disciple of Rabelais,--and here he lies without a monument!

Summon the s.e.xton, and let us ask him to show us the scold's, or gossip's, bridle. This is a rare curiosity, which is kept in the vestry.

It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred years ago there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted with gab and so loaded and primed with the devil's own gunpowder, that all moral suasion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old Reisersberg wrote, that _fatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere sulphure_ ('t is all nonsense to try to quench fire with brimstone). For such diavolas they had made--what the s.e.xton is just going to show you--a muzzle of thin iron bars, which pa.s.s around the head and are padlocked behind. In front a flat piece of iron enters the mouth and keeps down the tongue. On it is the date 1633, and certain lines, no longer legible:--

"Chester presents Walton with a bridle, To curb women's tongues that talk too idle."

A sad story, if we only knew it all! What tradition tells is that long ago there was a Master Chester, who lost a fine estate through the idle, malicious clack of a gossiping, lying woman. "What is good for a bootless bene?" What he did was to endow the church with this admirable piece of head-gear. And when any woman in the parish was unanimously adjudged to be deserving of the honor, the bridle was put on her head and tongue, and she was led about town by the beadle as an example to all the scolding sisterhood. Truly, if it could only be applied to the women and men who repeat gossip, rumors reports, _on dits_, small slanders, proved or unproved, to all gobe-mouches, club-gabblers, tea-talkers and tattlers, chatterers, church-twaddlers, wonderers if-it-be-true-what-they-say; in fine, to the entire sister and brother hood of tongue-waggers, I for one would subscribe my mite to have one kept in every church in the world, to be zealously applied to their vile jaws. For verily the mere Social Evil is an angel of light on this earth as regards doing evil, compared to the Sociable Evil,--and thus endeth the first lesson.

We leave the church, so full of friendly memories. In this one building alone there are twenty things known to me from a boy. For from boyhood I have held in my memory those lines by Queen Elizabeth which she uttered here, and have read Lilly and Ashmole and Maginn; and this is only one corner in merrie England! Am I a stranger here? There is a father-land of the soul, which has no limits to him who, far sweeping on the wings of song and history, goes forth over many lands.

We have but a little farther to go on our way before we come to the quaint old manor-house which was of old the home of President Bradshaw, the grim old Puritan. There is an old sailor in the village, who owns a tavern, and he says, and the policeman agrees with him, that it was in this house that the death-warrant of King Charles the First was signed.

Also, that there is a subterranean pa.s.sage which leads from it to the Thames, which was in some way connected with battle, murder, plots, Puritans, sudden death, and politics; though how this was is more than legend can clearly explain. Whether his sacred majesty was led to execution through this cavity, or whether Charles the Second had it for one of his numerous hiding-places, or returned through it with Nell Gwynn from his exile, are other obscure points debated among the villagers.

The truth is that the whole country about Walton is subterrened with strange and winding ways, leading no one knows whither, dug in the days of the monks or knights, from one long-vanished monastery or castle to the other. There is the opening to one of these hard by the hotel, but there was never any gold found in it that ever I heard of. And all the land is full of legend, and ghosts glide o' nights along the alleys, and there is an infallible fairy well at hand, named the Nun, and within a short walk stands the tremendous Crouch oak, which was known of Saxon days. Whoever gives but a little of its bark to a lady will win her love. It takes its name from _croix_ (a cross), according to Mr. Kemble, {134} and it is twenty-four feet in girth. Its first branch, which is forty-eight feet long, shoots out horizontally, and is almost as large as the trunk. Under this tree Wickliffe preached, and Queen Elizabeth dined.

It has been well said by Irving that the English, from the great prevalence of rural habits throughout every cla.s.s of society, have been extremely fond of those festivals and holidays which agreeably interrupt the stillness of country life. True, the days have gone when burlesque pageant and splendid procession made even villages magnificent. Harp and tabor and viol are no longer heard in every inn when people would be merry, and men have forgotten how to give themselves up to headlong roaring revelry. The last of this tremendous frolicking in Europe died out with the last yearly _kermess_ in Amsterdam, and it was indeed wonderful to see with what utter _abandon_ the usually stolid Dutch flung themselves into a rus.h.i.+ng tide of frantic gayety. Here and there in England a spark of the old fire, lit in mediaeval times, still flickers, or perhaps flames, as at Dorking in the annual foot-ball play, which is carried on with such vigor that two or three thousand people run wild in it, while all the windows and street lamps are carefully screened for protection. But notwithstanding the gradually advancing republicanism of the age, which is dressing all men alike, bodily and mentally, the rollicking democracy of these old-fas.h.i.+oned festivals, in which the peasant bonneted the peer without ceremony, and rustic maids ran races _en chemise_ for a pound of tea, is entirely too leveling for culture.

There are still, however, numbers of village fairs, quietly conducted, in which there is much that is pleasant and picturesque, and this at Cobham was as pretty a bit of its kind as I ever saw. These are old-fas.h.i.+oned and gay in their little retired nooks, and there the plain people show themselves as they really are. The better cla.s.s of the neighborhood, having no sympathy with such sports or scenes, do not visit village fairs. It is, indeed, a most exceptional thing to see any man who is a "gentleman," according to the society standard, in any fair except Mayfair in London.

Cobham is well built for dramatic display. Its White Lion Inn is of the old coaching days, and the lion on its front is a very impressive monster, one of the few relics of the days when signs were signs in spirit and in truth. In this respect the tavern keeper of to-day is a poor sn.o.b, that he thinks a sign painted or carven is degenerate and low, and therefore announces, in a line of letters, that his establishment is the Pig and Whistle, just as his remote predecessor thought it was low, or slow, or old-fas.h.i.+oned to dedicate his ale-shop to Pigen Wa.s.sail or Hail to the Virgin, and so changed it to a more genteel and secular form.

In the public place were rows of booths arranged in streets forming _imperium in imperio_, a town within a town. There was of course the traditional gilt gingerbread, and the cheering but not inebriating ginger-beer, dear to the youthful palate, and not less loved by the tired pedestrian, when, mixed half and half with ale, it foams before him as _shandy gaff_. There, too, were the stands, presided over by jaunty, saucy girls, who would load a rifle for you and give you a prize or a certain number of shots for a s.h.i.+lling. You may be a good shot, but the better you shoot the less likely will you be to hit the bull's-eye with the rifle which that black-eyed Egyptian minx gives you; for it is artfully curved and false-sighted, and the rifle was made only to rifle your pocket, and the damsel to sell you with her smiles, and the doll is stuffed with sawdust, and life is not worth living for, and Miching Mallocko says it,--albeit I believe he lives at times as if there might be moments when it was forgot.

And we had not been long on the ground before we were addressed furtively and gravely by a man whom it required a second glance to recognize as Samuel Petulengro, so artfully was he disguised as a simple-seeming agriculturalist of the better lower-cla.s.s. But that there remained in Sam's black eyes that glint of the Romany which nothing could disguise, one would have longed to buy a horse of him. And in the same quiet way there came, one by one, out of the crowd, six others, all speaking in subdued voices, like conspirators, and in Romany, as if it were a sin.

And all were dressed rustically, and the same with intent to deceive, and all had the solemn air of very small farmers, who must sell that horse at any sacrifice. But when I saw Sam's horses I marked that his disguise of himself was nothing to the wondrous skill with which he had converted his five-pound screws into something comparatively elegant. They had been curried, clipped, singed, and beautified to the last resource, and the manner in which the finest straw had been braided into mane and tail was a miracle of art. This was _jour de fete_ for Sam and his _diddikai_, or half-blood pals; his foot was on his native heath in the horse-fair, where all inside the ring knew the gypsy, and it was with pride that he invited us to drink ale, and once in the bar-room, where all a.s.sembled were jockeys and sharps, conversed loudly in Romany, in order to exhibit himself and us to admiring friends. A Romany rye, on such occasions, is to a Sam Petulengro what a scion of royalty is to minor aristocracy when it can lure him into its nets. To watch one of these small horse-dealers at a fair, and to observe the manner in which he conducts his bargains, is very curious. He lounges about all day, apparently doing nothing; he is the only idler around. Once in a while somebody approaches him and mutters something, to which he gives a brief reply. Then he goes to a tap-room or stable-yard, and is merged in a mob of his mates. But all the while he is doing sharp clicks of business. There is somebody talking to another party about _that horse_; somebody telling a farmer that he knows a young man as has got a likely 'oss at 'arf price, the larst of a lot which he wants to clear out, and it may be 'ad, but if the young man sees 'im [the farmer] he may put it on 'eavy.

Then the agent calls in one of the disguised Romanys to testify to the good qualities of the horse. They look at it, but the third _deguise_, who has it in charge, avers that it has just been sold to a gentleman.

But they have another. By this time the farmer wishes he had bought the horse. When any coin slips from between our fingers, and rolls down through a grating into the sewer, we are always sure that it was a sovereign, and not a half-penny. Yes, and the fish which drops back from the line into the river is always the biggest take--or mistake--of the day. And this horse was a bargain, and the three in disguise say so, and wish they had a hundred like it. But there comes a Voice from the depths, a casual remark, offering to bet that 'ere gent won't close on that hoss. "Bet yer ten bob he will." "Done." "How do yer know he don't take the hoss?" "He carn't; he's too heavy loaded with Bill's mare. Says he'll sell it for a pound better." The farmer begins to see his way. He is shrewd; it may be that he sees through all this myth of "the gentleman." But his attention has been attracted to the horse.

Perhaps he pays a little more, or "the pound better;" in greater probability he gets Sam's horse for the original price. There are many ways among gypsies of making such bargains, but the motive power of them all is _taderin_, or drawing the eye of the purchaser, a game not unknown to Gorgios. I have heard of a German _yahud_ in Philadelphia, whose little boy Moses would shoot from the door with a pop-gun or squirt at pa.s.sers-by, or abuse them vilely, and then run into the shop for shelter.

They of course pursued him and complained to the parent, who immediately whipped his son, to the great solace of the afflicted ones. And then the afflicted seldom failed to buy something in that shop, and the corrected son received ten per cent. of the profit. The attention of the public had been drawn.

As we went about looking at people and pastimes, a Romany, I think one of the Ayres, said to me,--

"See the two policemen? They're following you two gentlemen. They saw you pallin' with Bowers. That Bowers is the biggest blackguard on the roads between London and Windsor. I don't want to hurt his charackter, but it's no bad talkin' nor _dusherin_ of him to say that no decent Romanys care to go with him. Good at a mill? Yes, he's that. A reg'lar _wastimengro_, I call him. And that's why it is."

Now there was in the fair a vast inst.i.tution which proclaimed by a monstrous sign and by an excessive eruption of advertis.e.m.e.nt that it was THE SENSATION OF THE AGE. This was a giant hand-organ in connection with a forty-bicycle merry-go-round, all propelled by steam. And as we walked about the fair, the two rural policemen, who had nothing better to do, shadowed or followed us, their bucolic features expressing the intensest suspicion allied to the extremest stupidity; when suddenly the Sensation of the Age struck up the Gendarme's chorus, "We'll run 'em in," from Genevieve de Brabant, and the arrangement was complete. Of all airs ever composed this was the most appropriate to the occasion, and therefore it played itself. The whole formed quite a little opera-bouffe, gypsies not being wanting. And as we came round, in our promenade, the pretty girl, with her rifle in hand, implored us to take a shot, and the walk wound up by her finally letting fly herself and ringing the bell.

That pretty girl might or might not have a touch of Romany blood in her veins, but it is worth noting that among all these show-men and show-women, acrobats, exhibitors of giants, purse-droppers, gingerbread-wheel gamblers, s.h.i.+lling knife-throwers, pitch-in-his-mouths, Punches, Cheap-Jacks, thimble-rigs, and patterers of every kind there is always a leaven and a suspicion of gypsiness. If there be not descent, there is affinity by marriage, familiarity, knowledge of words and ways, sweethearting and trafficking, so that they know the children of the Rom as the house-world does not know them, and they in some sort belong together. It is a muddle, perhaps, and a puzzle; I doubt if anybody quite understands it. No novelist, no writer whatever, has as yet _clearly_ explained the curious fact that our entire nomadic population, excepting tramps, is not, as we thought in our childhood, composed of English people like ourselves. It is leavened with direct Indian blood; it has, more or less modified, a peculiar _morale_. It was old before the Saxon heptarchy.

I was very much impressed at this fair with the extensive and unsuspected amount of Romany existent in our rural population. We had to be satisfied, as we came late into the tavern for lunch, with cold boiled beef and carrots, of which I did not complain, as cold carrots are much nicer than warm, a fact too little understood in cookery. There were many men in the common room, mostly well dressed, and decent even if doubtful looking. I observed that several used Romany words in casual conversation. I came to the conclusion at last that all who were present knew something of it. The greatly reprobated Bowers was not himself a gypsy, but he had a gypsy wife. He lived in a cottage not far from Walton, and made baskets, while his wife roamed far and near, selling them; and I have more than once stopped and sent for a pot of ale, and shared it with Bill, listening meantime to his memories of the road as he caned chairs or "basketed." I think his reputation came rather from a certain Bohemian disregard of _convenances_ and of appearances than from any deeply-seated sinfulness. For there are Bohemians even among gypsies; everything in this life being relative and socially-contractive.

When I came to know the disreputable William well, I found in him the principles of Panurge, deeply identified with the _morale_ of Falstaff; a wondrous fund of unbundled humor, which expressed itself more by tones than words; a wisdom based on the practices of the prize-ring; and a perfectly sympathetic admiration of my researches into Romany. One day, at Kingston Fair, as I wished to depart, I asked Bill the way to the station. "I will go with you and show you," he said. But knowing that he had business in the fair I declined his escort. He looked at me as if hurt.

"_Does tute pen mandy'd ch.o.r.e tute_?" (Do you think I would rob _you_ or pick your pockets?) For he believed I was afraid of it. I knew Bill better. I knew that he was perfectly aware that I was about the only man in England who had a good opinion of him in any way, or knew what good there was in him. When a _femme incomprise_, a woman not as yet found out, discovers at last the man who is so much a master of the art of flattery as to satisfy somewhat her inordinate vanity, she is generally grateful enough to him who has thus gratified her desires to refrain from speaking ill of him, and abuse those who do, especially the latter. In like manner, Bill Bowers, who was every whit as interesting as any _femme incomprise_ in Belgravia, or even Russell Square, believing that I had a little better opinion of him than anybody else, would not only have refrained from robbing me, but have proceeded to lam with his fists anybody else who would have done so,--the latter proceeding being, from his point of view, only a light, cheerful, healthy, and invigorating exercise, so that, as he said, and as I believe truthfully, "I'd rather be walloped than not fight." Even as my friend H. had rather lose than not play "farrer."

This was a very pretty little country fair at Cobham; pleasant and purely English. It was very picturesque, with its flags, banners, gayly bedecked booths, and mammoth placards, there being, as usual, no lack of color or objects. I wonder that Mr. Frith, who has given with such idiomatic genius the humors of the Derby, has never painted an old-fas.h.i.+oned rural fair like this. In a few years the last of them will have been closed, and the last gypsy will be there to look on.

There was a pleasant sight in the afternoon, when all at once, as it seemed to me, there came hundreds of pretty, rosy-cheeked children into the fair. There were twice as many of them as of grown people. I think that, the schools being over for the day, they had been sent a-fairing for a treat. They swarmed in like small bee-angels, just escaped from some upset celestial hive; they crowded around the booths, buying little toys, chattering, bargaining, and laughing, when my eye caught theirs, as though to be noticed was the very best joke in the whole world. They soon found out the Sensation of the Age, and the mammoth steam bicycle was forthwith crowded with the happy little creatures, raptured in all the glory of a ride. The cars looked like baskets full of roses. It was delightful to see them: at first like grave and stolid little Anglo-Saxons, occupied seriously with the new Sensation; then here and there beaming with thawing jollity; then smiling like sudden sun-gleams; and then laughing, until all were in one grand chorus, as the speed became greater, and the organ roared out its notes as rapidly as a runaway musical locomotive, and the steam-engine puffed in time, until a high-pressure scream told that the penn'orth of fun was up.

As we went home in the twilight, and looked back at the trees and roofs of the village, in dark silhouette against the gold-bronze sky, and heard from afar and fitfully the music of the Great Sensation mingled with the beat of a drum and the shouts of the crowd, rising and falling with the wind, I felt a little sad, that the age, in its advancing refinement, is setting itself against these old-fas.h.i.+oned merry-makings, and shrinking like a weakling from all out-of-doors festivals, on the plea of their being disorderly, but in reality because they are believed to be vulgar.

They come down to us from rough old days; but they are relics of a time when life, if rough, was at least kind and hearty. We admire that life on the stage, we ape it in novels, we affect admiration and appreciation of its rich picturesqueness and vigorous originality, and we lie in so doing; for there is not an aesthetic prig in London who could have lived an hour in it. Truly, I should like to know what Francois Villon and Chaucer would have thought of some of their modern adorers, or what the lioness Fair-sinners of the olden time would have had to say to the nervous weaklings who try to play the genial blackguard in their praise!

It is to me the best joke of the age that those who now set themselves up for priests of the old faith are the men, of all others, whom the old G.o.ds would have kicked, _c.u.m magna injuria_, out of the temple. When I sit by Bill Bowers, as he baskets, and hear the bees buzz about his marigolds, or in Plato Buckland's van, or with a few hearty and true men of London town of whom I wot, _then_ I know that the old spirit liveth in its ashes; but there is little of it, I trow, among its penny prig-trumpeters.

IV. THE MIXED FORTUNES.

"Thus spoke the king to the great Master: 'Thou didst bless and ban the people; thou didst give benison and curse, luck and sorrow, to the evil or the good.'

"And the Master said, 'It may be so.'

"And the king continued, 'There came two men, and one was good and the other bad. And one thou didst bless, thinking he was good; but he was wicked. And the other thou didst curse, and thought him bad; but he was good.'

"The Master said, 'And what came of it?'

"The king answered, 'All evil came upon the good man, and all happiness to the bad.'

"And the Master said, 'I write letters, but I am not the messenger; I hunt the deer, but I am not the cook; I plant the vine, but I do not pour the wine to the guests; I ordain war, yet do not fight; I send s.h.i.+ps forth on the sea, but do not sail them. There is many a slip between cup and lip, as the chief of the rebel spirits said when he was thrown out of heaven, and I am not greater nor wiser than he was before he fell. Hast thou any more questions, O son?'

"And the king went his way."

One afternoon I was walking with three ladies. One was married, one was a young widow, and one, no longer very young, had not as yet husbanded her resources. And as we went by the Thames, conversation turned upon many things, and among them the mystery of the future and mediums; and the widow at last said she would like to have her fortune told.

"You need not go far to have it done," I said. "There is a gypsy camp not a mile away, and in it one of the cleverest fortune-tellers in England."

"I am almost afraid to go," said the maiden lady. "It seems to me to be really wrong to try to look into the awful secrets of futurity. One can never be certain as to what a gypsy may not know. It's all very well, I dare say, to declare it's all rubbish, but then you know you never can tell what may be in a rubbish-heap, and they may be predicting true things all the time while they think they're humbugging you. And they do often foretell the most wonderful things; I know they do. My aunt was told that she would marry a man who would cause her trouble, and, sure enough, she did; and it was such a shame, she was such a sweet-tempered, timid woman, and he spent half her immense fortune. Now wasn't that wonderful?"

It would be a curious matter for those who like studying statistics and chance to find out what proportion in England of sweet-tempered, timid women of the medium-middle cla.s.s, in newly-sprouted families, with immense fortunes, do _not_ marry men who only want their money. Such heiresses are the natural food of the n.o.ble shark and the swell sucker, and even a gypsy knows it, and can read them at a glance. I explained this to the lady; but she knew what she knew, and would not know otherwise.

So we came along the rippling river, watching the darting swallows and light water-gnats, as the sun sank afar into the tawny, golden west, and Night, in ever-nearing circles, wove her shades around us. We saw the little tents, like bee-hives,--one, indeed, not larger than the hive in which Tyll Eulenspiegel slept his famous nap, and in which he was carried away by the thieves who mistook him for honey and found him vinegar. And the outposts, or advanced pickets of small, brown, black-eyed elves, were tumbling about as usual, and shouted their glad greeting; for it was only the day before that I had come down with two dozen oranges, which by chance proved to be just one apiece for all to eat except for little Synfie Cooper, who saved hers up for her father when he should return.

I had just an instant in which to give the gypsy sorceress a "straight tip," and this I did, saying in Romany that one of the ladies was married and one a widow. I was indeed quite sure that she must know the married lady as such, since she had lived near at hand, within a mile, for months. And so, with all due solemnity, the sorceress went to her work.

"You will come first, my lady, if you please," she said to the married dame, and led her into a hedge-corner, so as to be remote from public view, while we waited by the camp.

The hand was inspected, and properly crossed with a s.h.i.+lling, and the seeress began her prediction.

"It's a beautiful hand, my lady, and there's luck in it. The line o'

life runs lovely and clear, just like a smooth river from sea to sea, and that means you'll never be in danger before you die, nor troubled with much ill. And it's written that you'll have another husband very soon."

"But I don't want another," said the lady.

"Ah, my dear lady, so you'll say till you get him, but when he comes you'll be glad enough; so do you just get the first one out of your head as soon as you can, for the next will be the better one. And you'll cross the sea and travel in a foreign land, and remember what I told you to the end of your life days."

Then the widow had her turn.

"This is a lucky hand, and little need you had to have your fortune told.

You've been well married once, and once is enough when it's all you need.