Once I was startled at hearing a well-dressed, I may say a gentlemanly-looking man, seated in a gig with a fine horse stopping by the road, say, as I passed with my wife—
“Dikk adovo gorgio adoi!” (Look at that Gentile, of no-gypsy!)
Not being accustomed to hear myself called a gorgio, I glanced up at him angrily, when he, perceiving that I understood
him and was of the mysterious brotherhood, smiled, and touched his hat to me. One touch of nature makes the whole world grin.
But the drollest proposal ever made to me in serious earnest came from that indomitable incarnate old gypssissimus Tsingarorum, Matthew Cooper, who proposed that I should buy a donkey. He knew where to get one for a pound, but £2 10s. would buy a “stunner.” He would borrow a small cart and a tent, and brown my face and hands so that I would be dark enough, and then on the drum—“over the hills.” As for all the expenses of the journey, I need not spend anything, for he could provide a neat nut-brown maid, who would not only do all our cooking, but earn money enough by fortune-telling to support us all. I would be expected, however, to greatly aid by my superior knowledge of ladies and gentlemen; and so all would go merrily on, with unlimited bread and cheese, bacon and ale, and tobacco—into the blue away!
I regret to say that Matthew expected to inherit the donkey.
About this time, as all my friends went hunting once or twice a week, I determined to do the same. Now, as I had never been a good rider, and had anything but an English seat in the saddle, I went to a riding-school and underwent a thorough course both on the pig-skin and bare-backed. My teacher, Mr. Goodchild, said eventually of me that I was the only person whom he had ever known who had at my time of life learned to ride well. But to do this I gave my whole mind and soul to it; and Goodchild’s standard, and still more that of his riding-master, who had been a captain in a cavalry regiment, was very high. I used to feel quite as if I were a boy again, and one under pretty severe discipline at that, when the Captain was drilling me. For his life he could not treat his pupils otherwise than as recruits. “Sit up straighter, sir! Do you call that sitting up? That’s not the way to hold your arms! Knees in!
Why, sir, when I was learning to ride I was made to put shillings between my knees and the side, and if I dropped one I forfeited it!”
Then in due time came the meets, and the fox and hare hunting, during which I found my way, I believe, into every village or nook for twenty miles round. By this time I had forgotten all my troubles, mental or physical, and after riding six or seven hours in a soft fog, would come home the picture of health.
I remember that one very cold morning I was riding alone to the meet on a monstrous high black horse which Goodchild had bought specially for me, when I met two gypsy women, full blood, selling wares, among them woollen mittens—just what I wanted, for my hands were almost frozen in Paris kids. The women did not know me, but I knew them by description, and great was the amazement of one when I addressed her by name and in Romany.