Among the crowd of gipsies farther away there were two or three real Romanys who had “begun to serve God,” and were distributing tracts among the gipsy children, at which the scissor-grinding push gipsy turned up his nose.
On a little mound stood a little man with a posh gipsy woman by his side, telling those round him that gipsies were angels who had been wafted from India to our midst by the heavenly breezes of the Celestial City, and that their ragged and tattered garments were the robes of Paradise, and whatever they did, however dark and evil, was done under the influences of the good spirit of gipsydom. One little sharp-eyed gipsy fellow, named Deliverance Smith, from Kaulo-gav (Birmingham), called out to the push gipsy, “Sir posh Gorgio, do you mean to say that these old rags I’ve got on have been made and put upon my back by angels; and that when I swears, tells lies, fights, and steals, a good spirit has told me to do so? because if you do, I say it is a lie, and know better than believe your tale.” The push gipsy called the little fellow to him and said in a whisper, “I don’t mean what I say, but I must say something to fill people’s mouths. These girls round me are fond of a ‘lark,’ and I like them. I know nothing about the other gipsies. Keep your mouth shut, and here’s sixpence for you.”
In some of the tents diseased bálamo-mas (pork) was being cooked; in others, hotchi-witchi (hedgehogs), kané-gros (hares), and bouris (snails).
Some of the poor children had never been washed for weeks, except in walnut-water, which, by continual using, gives them the artificial olive hue amateur gipsies admire. Those who are sunfreckled are the hardest to tan. For a time the sunfreckles are seen through the artificial sickly yellow colour on their faces and hands. Some of the children told me that they never undressed. The healthy appearance of former day gipsies is fast passing away, and now, as a rule, they are pale, thin, and sickly-looking. Many of the adults and children were much pitted with the smallpox scars. They wore their clothes till they dropped off.
Outside the encampment stood a number of my friends looking on the scene, a list of whom will be found in my “Canal Adventures by Moonlight” (p. 125), with recent additions since of a number of warm-hearted friends to the cause of the canal and gipsy children.
Some few of the gipsies in this encampment had been married, and that was the only time that they had ever been inside a church; not one gipsy, young or old, had ever been inside a school of any kind. Schoolmasters and ministers were almost unknown to them. They had more acquaintance with policemen and jails than churches and chapels.
Connected with one of the gipsy camps of ragamuffins, I noticed in the distance a tall, thin, unwashed, and emaciated girl of about fourteen winters—it had been nearly all winter with her. The upper part of her thin frame of skin and bones was dressed in a few shreds of rags, and these were not sufficient to cover her bare, dirty bosom, which almost looked the bosom of a skeleton; and on her feet were odd and worn-out, cast-off drawing-room shoes, quite equal to the sad emergency of letting as much mud and water upon her soles as they were to keep the poor lost creature “high and dry” out of the muddy surroundings. She moved among the gipsies with a “trash, trash,” and a most downcast and haggard look of despair upon her face. “Despair” seemed to come with terrible vengeance and prominence out of every word, form, movement, and gesture; except when occasional relapses stole over her, and then the tear-drawing sympathy shone and darted like darts of fire that pierced into the marrow of my soul, bringing the flush and blush to my face, and tears to my eyes, whether I would have them or no. No amount of “screwing up,” or “bottling,” prevented this appearance upon my cheek. The poor girl had fine Grecian features, with long, black, flowing hair, but it was matted together with dirt and filth. With her arms uplifted, and her hands buried scratchingly deep in her hair, she turned to look in the direction where I lay. This was no sooner done than, a flash of hope lighting up her thin face with smiles through her tears, she started to run towards me as fast as she could, calling out, “My father! my father! my father!” Before I had time to turn round she was at my side, and had planted a kiss upon my check. For a moment I was dumbfounded. I said to the lost posh gipsy child, “What is it you want, my dear? I am not your father.” At this reply she looked wild and almost like a maniac, and said, with her face buried in her hands, “I thought you was my father who had come to fetch me out from among the gipsies.” And then she looked again into my face and said, “Arn’t you my father? my father was so much like you. He had white hair like you. Arn’t you my father? I wish I could see my mother. Will she come for me?” I asked her to sit down by my side, and to tell me who she was. She came a little nearer, and began to tell me how it was she came to be among the gipsies. I will give her tale as she related it to me:—
“When I was a little girl about four years old, I remember my mother sending me for some milk to a house near to the old General Baptist Chapel, Church Street, Deptford, [215] and while I was going down the street some dark ragged women—the same you saw me with—asked me to go down to the bottom of the street to look at some fine things, and on the way they gave me a penny and some apples and a little doll. After walking a long way we did not get to the bottom of the street, but we got among a lot of children living under a cart cover by the side of the hedge. They asked me to sit by the fire that was on the ground. I said I wanted to go to my mother. It was getting dark, and I began to cry. They kept saying that they would take me to my mother, and at night they all got into a cart, and said they were taking me home to see my mother, father, brothers, and sisters. We went a long way, and the way they took me was not like Deptford, and I have not seen my mother and father since.” The girl began to cry, and said, “I should like to see father, mother, Polly, and Jim. It is a long time since I saw them. We used to go to school together, Jimmy, Polly, and myself. My father used to take me by the hand to school and chapel on Sundays, and they did sing such nice hymns. I have seen father and mother cry lots of times. Father used to say his prayers every night and morning. They don’t say prayers where I live now. Will you take me to my father and mother? When will you take me? Take me now, and I will give you everything I have in the world. Please don’t go and leave me, and I will give you twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty kisses. I will give you hundreds if you will take me to my mother and father. I hope they are not dead. I hope Polly and Jim are alive. Will you take me, please, sir?”
I told the poor little creature that I could not take her, but that I would send three or four gentlemen for her shortly. At this she began to sob out loudly, “Take me! take me! don’t leave me here!” I directed her to pray to God for deliverance, for there seemed to be none from earth; and with her eyes turned up to heaven she said with Sir John Davis:
“Lord! hear my prayer and listen to my cries,
Let not Thy gracious eye my tears despise.”