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 snob, 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-fashioned to dedicate his ale-shop to Pigen Wassail 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 shilling. 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-class. 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 fête 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 assembled 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 deguisé, 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 táderin, or drawing the eye of the purchaser, a game not unknown to Gorgios. I have heard of a German yahūd in Philadelphia, whose little boy Moses would shoot from the door
with a pop-gun or squirt at passers-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 charáckter, 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 institution which proclaimed by a monstrous sign and by an excessive eruption of advertisement 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.