I've been a Gipsying / or, Rambles among our Gipsies and their children in their tents and vans

by George Smith

I ran against one man who was evidently in deep trouble, and I began to question him as to the cause of his sorrow, and he told me as follows: “For many years I was a clerk in a solicitor’s office in the city, and on my arrival home at night, I used to write stories and other things for the papers, without pay, merely for pleasure. In course of time my eyesight failed me, and I had to give up my situation. I thought I would try to write a story for publication, so that I might maintain my family, and keep them from the workhouse. I began the tale and finished it. I made sure that I should have no difficulty in getting some publisher to take it up and print it for me, and that I should make a fortune, and be made a man; but to my surprise no one would look at it. I went from one place to another, day after day, without any success, returning home every night thoroughly broken down and dispirited, and to-day I have my manuscript without any prospect of meeting with a customer, and am strolling here to contemplate the next step.” I gave him a little encouragement, and told him to cheer up—

“Behind a frowning Providence He hides a smiling face.”

We shook hands and parted.

I had not gone far before I overtook a woman in deep mourning, with four children walking slowly along. There was no friskiness, liveliness, and sport about this family. The two least hung as it were upon the skirts of the poor sorrowful mother’s garments. Despair seemed to be written not only upon their faces, but upon their clothes and actions. The fountain of tears had been dried up, but not by the kindness of friends, but by poverty and starvation, with all their grim horrors staring them in the face, and with the terrible workhouse as the lot in store for them, till there was scarcely any vitality left in their system from which tears could be extracted either by kindness or sorrow. They seemed to be the embodiment of pallor, languidness, and lifelessness. This poor woman had had a good education; in fact, her manner and conversation seemed to be that of a lady who had moved in good society; but alas, overwork, worry, and death had early robbed her of a good husband, when he was on the threshold of a first-class position and a fortune, and all was gone! gone! and now “blank,” “blank,” “blank” seemed to be written everywhere. I tried to console her best as I could, and left her.

I had now begun to mount the hills of Epping Forest with a different phase of human life before and on either side of me. On the grass were four gipsies and “Rodneys,” with dogs lying beside them. In all appearance they had neither worked nor washed in their lives, and, as they said, they were “too old to learn how now.” I had not got much further before I was accosted by a gipsy girl, apparently about fourteen, with a baby nearly nude, and covered with dirt and filth, draining the nourishment of life from its dirty mother, who exposed her breasts without the least shame. She saw that I noticed her, and without a moment’s hesitation asked me if I wanted my “fortune told.” She said that she would tell it to me for a trifle. Her father—to all appearance—and brothers stood by, and acting either upon her own instincts or a wink from them, she said, “I see you know it better than I can tell you;” and away she sidled off to attend to her cocoa-nuts, saying, after a round of swearing at four gipsy children, “I hope you will give my baby a penny; that’s a good gentleman, do, and God will bless you for it.”

I had not gone far up the hill before I found myself in company with a forest ranger; and a rare good-looking fellow he was. He was a short thickset man, and as round almost as a prize bullock. He said the gipsies—so-called gipsies—were the plague of his life. They were squatting about everywhere, breaking the fences and stealing everything they could lay their hands upon. Before the last three years there were hundreds of gipsies in the forest, living by plunder and fortune-telling, and since they had driven them away, they had settled upon the outskirts of the forest and pieces of waste land, some of which were rented by some of the better class gipsies, and relet again to the other gipsies at a small charge per week, who thus escaped the law. This good ranger said there were no real gipsies at the present time in the country. They had been mixed up with other vagabonds that scarcely a trace of the genuine gipsy was left.

Some old gipsies were complaining very much because the price of cocoa-nuts had been raised. “Until now,” said this lot of vagabond gipsies, “we could get cocoa-nuts at one pound per hundred; now we are, to-day, giving thirty shillings per hundred; and it is no joke when you get some of those old cricketers at work among them. They bowl them off like one o’clock.” “How do you do in such a case?” I asked. “Well, sometimes we let them go on till they get a belly-full, and sometimes we cries quits, and will have no more on ’em, and tell them to go somewhere else, we are quite satisfied. You know, sir, better than I can tell you that it is no joke to have your nuts bowled off like that. I feel sometimes,” said one gipsy, with clenched fist raised almost to my face and closed teeth, “that I should like to bowl their yeds off, and no mistake. I feel savage enough to punch their een out, and I could do it in a jiffy.” He now left me and bawled out, “Now, gents, try your luck, try your luck; all bad uns returned.” There was a brisk trade, and a lot of shoeless, dirty little gipsy children were scrambling after the balls, and throwing to the winners the nuts they had won; every now and then there would be a terrible row over a nut—whether it was properly hit, or who was the rightful owner. “Bang” went a ball from a big fellow against a cocoa-nut, sending it and the juice inside flying in all directions, and the youngsters scrambling after the pieces. And then there would be another bawl out by a gipsy woman, “Bowl again, gentlemen; try your luck, try your luck; all good uns and no bad uns; bad uns returned.” I left this lot of gipsies to pursue my way to the “Robin Hood,” where there was a pell-mell gathering of all sorts of human beings numbering thousands. In elbowing my way through the crowd, a sharp, business-kind of a gipsy-woman, well dressed and not bad looking, eyed me over, and, thinking that I was “Johnny” from the country, said to a woman who was near her, “You keep back, I mean to tell this gentleman his fortune.” Three or four steps forward she took, and then stood full in front of me. “A fine day, sir,” said the gipsy woman with a twinkle in her eye and a side laugh, nudging to another gipsy woman at her elbow. “Yes, a very fine day,” I said. She now drew a little nearer, and said in not very loud tones, “Would you like to have your fortune told you, my good gentleman? I could tell you something that would please you, I am sure. There is good luck in your face. Now, my dear good gentleman, do let me tell your fortune. You will become rich and have many friends, but will have many false friends and enemies.” Just as she was beginning to spin her yarn one of the B— gipsies came up. She was dressed in a glaring red Scotch plaid dress, with red, blue, green, and yellow ribbons flying about her head and shoulders; and in her arms was a baby which was dressed in white linen and needlework. This gipsy woman was stout, dark, and with round features, her black hair was waved like I have seen the manes of horses, and her eye the opposite of heavenly. She now turned to the gipsy woman who had accosted me and said, “Mrs. Smith, you need not tell this gentleman his fortune, he knows more than we both can tell him. This is Mr. Smith of Coalville, he had tea with us at K—.” “Oh,” said the gipsy woman named Smith, “this is Mr. Smith of Coalville, is it? I’ve heard a deal about him. I’ll go, or he’ll be putting me in a book. Goodbye.” She put out her hands to shake mine, and then vanished out of my sight, and I never saw her again in the forest during the day. I suppose she fancied that I should be bringing her to book for fortune-telling. I was now left with the gipsy B— and her baby. She threw aside her shawl in order that I might look at the child, who was apparently about four months old. Poor thing! it did not know that it was the child of sin, for its parents were living in adultery, as nearly all the gipsies do. This gipsy woman was earning money for herself, and an idle man she was keeping, by exhibiting her illegitimate offspring and telling silly girls their fortunes. Think about it lightly as we may, fortune-telling is vastly on the increase all over the country, producing most deadly and soul-crushing results. Just as I was touching the poor baby’s face and putting sixpence in its hand, a gentleman connected with the Ragged School Union came up with his two children. I found as we travelled up the hill together that I was talking to Mr. Curtiss, the organizing secretary of the Union, who was in the forest for an “outing,” and could, no doubt, with Dr. Grosart say—

“I wonder not, when ’mong the fresh, glad leaves,
I hear the early spring-birds sing;
I wonder not that ’neath the sunny eaves
The swallow flits with glancing wing.”

When we reached the top of the hill, I took a sharp turn to the left, and bid him and his two interesting sons goodbye.

I had not wandered far before I came upon a group of gipsy children, ragged, dirty, and filthy in the extreme. One of them ran after me for some “coppers.” I took the opportunity of having a chat with the poor child, whose clothes seemed to be literally alive with vermin. I asked him what his name was, and his answer was, “I don’t know, I’ve got so many names; sometimes they call me Smith, sometimes Brown, and lots of other names.” “Have you ever been washed in your life?” “Not that I know on, sir.” The feet of the poor lad seemed to have festering holes in them, in which there were vermin getting fat out of the sores, and the colour of his body was that of a tortoise, except patches of a little lighter yellow were to be seen here and there. “Do you ever say your prayers?” “Yes, sir, sometimes.” “What do you say when you say your prayers? Who teaches you them?” “My sister,” said the boy. “Tell me the first line and I will give you a penny.” “I cannot, I’ve forgotten them; and so has my sister.” “Can you read?” “No.” “Were you ever in a school?” “No.” “Did you ever hear of Jesus?” “I never heard of such a man. He does not live upon this forest.” “Where does God live?” “I don’t know; I never heard of him neither. There used to be a chap live in the forest named like it, but he’s been gone away a long time. I think he went a ‘hoppin’ in Kent two or three years ago.” At this juncture a Sunday-school teacher connected with College Green Chapel, Stepney, whom I knew, came up, and we entered into conversation together. The poor lad said he had not had anything to eat “since Saturday.” My young friend gave him some sandwiches, and I gave him some “coppers,” and we separated.