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

by George Smith

I began to puzzle my brains as to how their deliverance was to be accomplished. For some little time I pondered the matter over, when it occurred to me that at the bottom end of the dismal room I had noticed a place upon the wall which looked like a door that had been plastered over in somebody’s time by pieces of old rags and paper.

I drew near to it, and scanned it over more closely. After feeling round the edges of it for a few minutes, one of the oldest and most wretched-looking gipsies spoke out in hasty tones, and with an amount of warmth that led me to hesitate for a moment to hear what further he had to say. He stopped short. So I said, “Well, Righteous Palmer, what is there behind this opening if I should proceed to find out?” “Oh, a lot, I’m told by those who know. Our place is bad enough, as our old witch knows, and you know, sir; but nothing like what there is behind that there ‘opening,’” pointing with his finger, “and if I was you, my dear good gentleman, I would not stir a peg to see any further. We should not like to see any harm come to you. If it had been anybody else we should not have minded a bit; we would as soon given him a chuck to Nick as look at him, and been glad o’ the job, and ground his bones to powder, and played at football with his skull.” I said, “Well now, Palmer, if you do not mind, we will see.”

“If you do,” said Palmer, “and get into any trouble, or into a place out of which you cannot get back, you must not blame us.” “Will you do what you can to help me?” I said. “Oh yes, we will do what we can for you in any way.” “All right,” I said. I now took out my pocket knife and began to cut and pull some of the paper and old rags off what now was appearing to be a door. The old witches, “hags,” and grey-bearded, bloated, and thin, wretched-looking men, and swarms, almost, of poor emaciated children, eagerly closed round me to see what it would end in. The stinking fire was stirred up to cause fresh light; and in the meantime I kept cutting away, which was no light task, for there were many old knots and rusty nails to be faced. Some of the poor children cried out, “By Jove, it is a door! Wonder where it leads to?” “All right,” I said, “wait and we will see.” And I worked, tugged, and toiled, sometimes in the midst of breathless silence, and at others in a gipsy noise loud enough to drown my own voice and noise of my tinkering. At last the door seemed to be pretty loose. Nervousness and fear seemed to creep over me more than ever as I neared the end. Questions kept popping up in my mind, “Where will it lead to? If it did not lead to an opening and daylight,” I said to myself more than once, “I am a done man.” “Lord help me,” I said, as I put my hand to the door to push it or pull it one way or the other. At last I pulled it open. There was the faintest light to be seen from somewhere, but I could not tell where. All the gipsies came nearer to me, and I said to one of the strongest of them, “Hold my hand, for I do not know where it will lead to. It will either be to my ruin or your happiness.” “We will hold you,” cried one and all; “you shan’t fall at any rate.” “Thank the Lord for this,” I said, and with much trembling I took the first step, not knowing whether it was to be downhill or uphill. In putting my feet out I felt my toe go against something hard. I kicked again and again, and found it to be a stone step. I then put my foot upon it. The gipsies were still at my coat tail. I then put both feet upon it, and felt at the walls, which seemed to widen out. A little more light was manifest, but still I could not tell where it came from. I kept groping and feeling my way step after step. More light of a yellowish tint, not of the cold moonlight hues, was now becoming more visible. The gipsies, especially the children, began to get eager to see the end of it. First one and then another of them said more than once, “The light seems nice; I wonder where it comes from?” The old gipsies were, with this light, made to look most horrible, and slunk back, but the children stuck to me. A great wide passage was now manifest; and altogether an uphill work was becoming more pleasant and cheerful. The gipsy children seemed to be round me by hundreds, and for the life of me I could not tell where they came from. A more miserable lot could not be imagined. Some of the children cried out, “Governor, it seems a long way to the top; how far is it?” Another twenty steps brought us to the top in full face to the rising sun; singing birds filling the air with their chanting; lovely flowers and beautiful mansions, blossoming trees rich with bud, blossom, and fragrance; groves, parks, and long walks without end. The deer were bounding, cattle grazing, and the big lambs were calling out for their mothers. In the long winding distance, at the top of a hill, stood a golden city, whose mansions and palaces were built of large blocks of precious stones, with an arch spanning over the whole composed of a succession of rainbows, with rays of glory indescribable, anxiously forcing their way to add lustre to the scene through the occasional openings to be seen in the illuminated arch. My heart was so overjoyed at having arrived at the top, and seeing vast crowds of little gipsy children brought out of darkness, I began to sing out lustily, with tears in my eyes—

“There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar.
For the Father waits over the way,
To prepare us a dwelling-place there.”

Ami as if by magic, the children sang touchingly the chorus, in which I joined—

“In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

The singing of this tune woke me up, and for the life of me I could not tell where I was, or whether I was in the body or out of it. This matter was soon settled by the “boots” knocking at my door, telling me that it was a quarter-past five o’clock. I partook of a hasty breakfast, and by six o’clock, with the musical bells chiming round me, I was among the gipsies in the fair, some of whom were settling down to their quarters, others were grumbling, and in not a few instances rows were brewing, owing to the space allotted to them not being up to their anticipation. On my way from my lodging to the town I passed a number of most wretched spectacles drawn by donkeys and ponies, fit for the knacker’s yard.

Upon a tumble-down donkey-cart covered over with sticks and old sheeting, drawn by a donkey dressed in harness not worth sixpence, which was tied together with string and pieces of rope, there were women and six poor half-dressed, half-starved, dirty, ragged children. The sight was most pitiable. The little dirty faces, with matted hair, peering through an opening in the rotten calico canvas, reminded me of a nest of young rabbits, rather than human beings with immortal souls, endowed with reason, thought, and intellect, and in the image of God, peeping out of their hole among the dead grass. Oh! what a contrast, I thought, to the architectural grandeur and beauty of the mansions on either hand as they passed through the streets. Why and wherefore is the cause? But I must not stop now to inquire. This problem I must work out later on.

The toll clerk with an amount of tact managed to squeeze the two hundred and twenty vans and shows into the square, keeping fairly the worst kinds in the background, and the best-looking with their faces towards “Lunnun.” “I have,” said the clerk, “much to do to get them all placed. After I have done all I can, I cannot keep them from rows and quarrels. Sometimes it is worse than what you see now. There are many more vans than there are in the fair this morning.” I said to him, “How many do you think there are here this morning?” “Well, sir, there are considerably over two hundred. I counted early yesterday afternoon in one string between here and Somers Town, a hundred and seventy-two vans, and others have been coming since.” At this juncture he spied a gipsy with his van and establishment taking up their abode in the churchyard under the tall trees. He said, “I must be off to stop them.” I followed him to see how the bronzed old gipsy would take to his veto. Fortunately he took to the dismissal with good grace, and more than once said, “Thank you, my good gentleman.” This is one of the characteristics of the old romantic gipsies, when they want anything by favour; seeing that it is not in their power to get it either by craft or bounce, they can ask with much grace, and in this way they often succeed. After the toll clerk was gone I had a chat with the gipsy—who, to his credit, had good cattle between the shafts of his vans. He said that he had at home—but did not say where his home was—eleven grey horses, out of his stock of thirteen. I took his statement with a pinch of salt, and moved off, leaving him to mumble over a joke I left behind, while he changed his quarters.

Not far from this scene there stood at a van door a tall, bony, dirty-looking man, in an almost nude state, and a lot of dirty, ragged children, and the “old woman” washing, hard and fast, some dirty linen in a tin bucket. It struck me that in this case, as with others, dispatch was the soul of business, and I loitered about to see what “shifts” this gipsy family would adopt. Scrub, rub, and a dash into the hot water went the dirty linen. After two or three good rubs and tussels with the linen in the bucket, she pulled it out and wrung it as if she was “screwing its neck off.” When this was over she gave it a good shake, and handed it to her “old man” without drying. The “old man” retired for a few minutes, and then he appeared with a dirty white shirt on his back, sticking more closely to his body than would have been agreeable to most people. Fortunately the warm sun was shining, and by exposing it to the sun’s rays during his pacing backwards and forwards in the square for an hour, he presented a better spectacle. At night upon the stage, with his painted face and coloured pantaloons, his grimy, smoke-coloured shirt passed off fairly well. I could see that the poor children, who stood round the door with matted hair, were to have the same measure dealt out to them that was dealt out to the “old man.” I am not at all surprised to find that diseases of various kinds should be creeping among our present-day gipsies, the bulk of whom wash and dry their linen on their limbs and bodies as above. Among the old gipsies rheumatic diseases were not known, but it is not so now; and it cannot be wondered at when we take into account that men, women, and children cause their bodies to do in wet weather what the “clothes horse” should do, and in fine weather what the “clothes line” should do. Such is “gipsy life” in this nineteenth century, in this our enlightened England.