“That young woman,” remarked the tinker, with the same immovable countenance, “is my wife. And I’ve come down here, by app’intment, to meet some Romany pals.”
And having politely accepted his sixpence, the griddler went his way, tinkling his bell, along the road. He did not disturb himself that his first speeches did not agree with his last; he was not in the habit of being disturbed about anything, and he knew that no one ever learned Romany without learning with it not to be astonished at any little inconsistencies. Serene
and polished as a piece of tin in the sunshine, he would not stoop to be put out by trifles. He was a typical tinker. He knew that the world had made up proverbs expressing the utmost indifference either for a tinker’s blessing or a tinker’s curse, and he retaliated by not caring a curse whether the world blessed or banned him. In all ages and in all lands the tinker has always been the type of this droning indifference, which goes through life bagpiping its single melody, or whistling, like the serene Marquis de Crabs, “Toujours Santerre.”
“Es ist und bleibt das alte Lied
Von dem versoff’nen Pfannenschmied,
Und wer’s nicht weiter singen kann,
Der fang’s von Vorne wieder an.”’T will ever be the same old song
Of tipsy tinkers all day long,
And he who cannot sing it more
May sing it over, as before.
I should have liked to know John Bunyan. As a half-blood gypsy tinker he must have been self-contained and pleasant. He had his wits about him, too, in a very Romanly way. When confined in prison he made a flute or pipe out of the leg of his three legged-stool, and would play on it to pass time. When the jailer entered to stop the noise, John replaced the leg in the stool, and sat on it looking innocent as only a gypsy tinker could,—calm as a summer morning. I commend the subject for a picture. Very recently, that is, in the beginning of 1881, a man of the same tinkering kind, and possibly of the same blood as Honest John, confined in the prison of Moyamensing, Philadelphia, did nearly the same thing, only that instead of making his stool leg into a musical
pipe he converted it into a pipe for tobacco. But when the watchman, led by the smell, entered his cell, there was no pipe to be found; only a deeply injured man complaining that “somebody, had been smokin’ outside, and it had blowed into his cell through the door-winder from the corridore, and p’isoned the atmosphere. And he didn’t like it.” And thus history repeats itself. ’T is all very well for the sticklers for Wesleyan gentility to deny that John Bunyan was a gypsy, but he who in his life cannot read Romany between the lines knows not the jib nor the cut thereof. Tough was J. B., “and de-vil-ish sly,” and altogether a much better man than many suppose him to have been.
The tinker lived with his wife in a “tramps’ lodging-house” in the town. To those Americans who know such places by the abominable dens which are occasionally reported by American grand juries, the term will suggest something much worse than it is. In England the average tramp’s lodging is cleaner, better regulated, and more orderly than many Western “hotels.” The police look closely after it, and do not allow more than a certain number in a room. They see that it is frequently cleaned, and that clean sheets are frequently put on the beds. One or two hand-organs in the hall, with a tinker’s barrow or wheel, proclaimed the character of the lodgers, and in the sitting-room there were to be found, of an evening, gypsies, laborers with their families seeking work or itinerant musicians. I can recall a powerful and tall young man, with a badly expressive face, one-legged, and well dressed as a sailor. He was a beggar, who measured the good or evil of all mankind by what they gave him. He was very bitter as to
the bad. Yet this house was in its way upper class. It was not a den of despair, dirt, and misery, and even the Italians who came there were obliged to be decent and clean. It would not have been appropriate to have written for them on the door, “Voi che intrate lasciate ogni speranza.” (He who enters here leaves soap behind.) The most painful fact which struck me, in my many visits, was the intelligence and decency of some of the boarders. There was more than one who conversed in a manner which indicated an excellent early education; more than one who read the newspaper aloud and commented on it to the company, as any gentleman might have done. Indeed, the painful part of life as shown among these poor people was the manifest fact that so many of them had come down from a higher position, or were qualified for it. And this is characteristic of such places. In his “London Labour and the London Poor,” vol. i. p. 217, Mahew tells of a low lodging-house “in which there were at one time five university men, three surgeons, and several sorts of broken-down clerks.” The majority of these cases are the result of parents having risen from poverty and raised their families to “gentility.” The sons are deprived by their bringing up of the vulgar pluck and coarse energy by which the father rose, and yet are expected to make their way in the world, with nothing but a so-called “education,” which is too often less a help than a hindrance. In the race of life no man is so heavily handicapped as a young “gentleman.” The humblest and raggedest of all the inmates of this house were two men who got their living by shelkin gallopas (or selling ferns), as it is called in the Shelta, or tinker’s and tramp’s slang. One of these, whom I
have described in another chapter as teaching me this dialect, could conjugate a French verb; we thought he had studied law. The other was a poor old fellow called Krooty, who could give the Latin names for all the plants which he gathered and sold, and who would repeat poetry very appropriately, proving sufficiently that he had read it. Both the fern-sellers spoke better English than divers Lord Mayors and Knights to whom I have listened, for they neither omitted h like the lowly, nor r like the lofty ones of London.
The tinker’s wife was afflicted with a nervous disorder, which caused her great suffering, and made it almost impossible for her to sell goods, or contribute anything to the joint support. Her husband always treated her with the greatest kindness; I have seldom seen an instance in which a man was more indulgent and gentle. He made no display whatever of his feelings; it was only little by little that I found out what a heart this imperturbable rough of the road possessed. Now the Palmer, who was always engaged in some wild act of unconscious benevolence, bought for her some medicine, and gave her an order on the first physician in the town for proper advice; the result being a decided amelioration of her health. And I never knew any human being to be more sincerely grateful than the tinker was for this kindness. Ascertaining that I had tools for wood-carving, he insisted on presenting me with crocus powder, “to put an edge on.” He had a remarkably fine whetstone, “the best in England; it was worth half a sovereign,” and this he often and vainly begged me to accept. And he had a peculiar little trick of relieving his kindly feelings. Whenever we dropped in of an