The Scene is laid under the greenwood tree, in the height of an English summer.
The Dingle is a deep, wooded, and consequently somewhat gloomy, hollow in the middle of a very large, desolate field. The shelving sides of the hollow are overgrown with trees and bushes. A belt of sallows crowns the circular edge of the small crater. At the lowest part of the Dingle are discovered a stone and a fire of charcoal, from which spot a winding path ascends to “the plain.” On either side of the fire is a small encampment. One consists of a small pony cart and a small hut-shaped tent, occupied by the word-master. On the other side is erected a kind of tent, consisting of large hoops covered over with tarpaulin, quite impenetrable to rain; hard by stands a small donkey-cart. This is “the tabernacle” of Isopel Berners. A short distance off, near a spring of clear water, is the encampment of the Romany chals and chies—the Petulengres and their small clan.
The Place is about five miles from Willenhall in Staffordshire.
The Time is July 1825.
CHAPTER I—THE SCHOLAR SAYS GOOD-BYE TO THE GYPSY, AND PITCHES HIS TENT IN THE DINGLE.
[In May 1825 our autobiographer, known among the gypsies as the word-master, decided to leave London, and travelled, partly on foot and partly by coach, to Amesbury; and then, after two days at Salisbury, struck northwards. A few days later, in a small beer-house, he met a tinker and his wife; the tinker was greatly depressed, having recently been intimidated by a rival, one Bosville, “the flaming tinman,” and forced by threats to quit the road. The word-master, who meditated passing the summer as an amateur vagrant, and had some £15 or £16 in his pocket, conceived the idea of buying the pony-cart, the implements and the beat of the tinker, one Jack Slingsby, whose face he remembered having seen some ten years before. “I want a home and work,” he said to the tinker. “As for a home, I suppose I can contrive to make a home out of your tent and cart; and as for work, I must learn to be a tinker; it would not be hard for one of my trade to be a tinker: what better can I do?” “What about the naming tinman?” said the tinker. “Oh, don’t be afraid on my account,” said the word-master: “if I were to meet him, I could easily manage him one way or the other: I know all kinds of strange words and names, and, as I told you before, I sometimes hit people when they put me out.”
He accordingly purchases Slingsby’s property, and further invests in a waggoner’s frock. To the pony he gives the name of Ambrol, which signifies in gypsy a pear. He spends a first night under the hedge in a drizzling rain, and then spends two or three days in endeavouring to teach himself the mysteries of his new trade. While living in this solitary way he is detected by Mrs. Herne, an old gypsy woman, “one of the hairy ones,” as she terms herself, who carried “a good deal of devil’s tinder” about with her, and had a bitter grudge against the word-master. She hated him for having wormed himself, as she fancied, into the confidence of the gypsies and learned their language. She regarded him further, as the cause of differences between herself and her sons-in-law—as an apple of discord in the Romany camp. She employed her grandchild, Leonora, to open relations in a friendly way with Lavengro, and then to persuade him to eat of a “drabbed” of poisoned cake. Lavengro was grievously sick, but was saved in the nick of time by the appearance upon the scene of a Welsh preacher, Peter Williams, and his wife—two good souls who wandered over all Wales and the greater part of England, comforting the hearts of the people with their doctrine, and doing all the good they could. They never slept beneath a roof, unless the weather was very severe. The preacher had a heavy burden upon his mind, to wit, “the sin against the Holy Ghost,” committed when he was but a lad. Lavengro journeys for several days with the preacher and his wife, assuring the former that in common with most other boys he himself, when of tender years, had committed twenty such sins and felt no uneasiness about them. The young man’s conversation had the effect of greatly lightening the despair of the old preacher. The latter begged the word-master to accompany him into Wales. On the border, however, Lavengro encountered a gypsy pal of his youthful days, Jasper Petulengro, and turned back with him. Mr. Petulengro informs him of the end of his old enemy, Mrs. Herne. Baffled in her designs against the stranger, the old woman had hanged herself.
“You observe, brother,” said Petulengro, springing from his horse, “there is a point at present between us. There can be no doubt that you are the cause of Mrs. Herne’s death—innocently, you
will say, but still the cause. Now I shouldn’t like it to be known that I went up and down the country with a pal who was the cause of my mother-in-law’s death: that is to say, unless he gave me satisfaction.” So they fell to with their naked fists on a broad strip of grass in the shade under some lofty trees. In half an hour’s time Lavengro’s face was covered with blood, whereupon Mr. Petulengro exclaimed, “Put your hands down, brother: I’m satisfied; blood has been shed, which is all that can be expected for an old woman who carried so much brimstone about with her as Mrs. Herne.”]
So we resumed our route, Mr. Petulengro sitting sideways on his horse, and I driving my little pony-cart; and when we had proceeded about three miles, we came to a small public-house, which bore the sign of the “Silent Woman,” where we stopped to refresh our cattle and ourselves; and as we sat over our bread and ale, it came to pass that Mr. Petulengro asked me various questions, and amongst others, how I intended to dispose of myself. I told him that I did not know; whereupon, with considerable frankness, he invited me to his camp, and told me that if I chose to settle down amongst them, and become a Rommany chal, [{61}] I should have his wife’s sister, Ursula, who was still unmarried, and occasionally talked of me.