To which I said, Amen!
Large numbers of them had been in jail. Their short cropped hair and other symptoms told the black tale.
All the vans, tents, &c., were not to be reckoned as teeming with human wretchedness, squalor, dirt, filth, and sin. Some ditch and mossy bank abodes were as clean as the circumstances would admit of, and the tent and van dwellers were healthy-looking, plump, and clean.
A terrible row commenced among the gipsies over a dog, which ended in bloodshed and murder. Right up at the far corner two men were digging a hole about two feet six inches long, and twelve inches wide, and two feet deep. After it was dug a woman stole stealthily along with a heavy parcel in her arms, covered with a cloth, which might or might not have been a dead dog. As the gipsy woman carrying the mysterious bundle approached, one of the men withdrew to act as a kind of spy guard. For a few minutes he looked about, and then called out crouchingly, and in a loud whisper, “The skies are clear.” The woman ran with death in her arms, the devil in her heart, and a hellish glare upon her features, and deposited her load in the cold, cold ground without a tear or a sigh. No mournful cortége or funeral knell told the tale of what was going on. Within three minutes all was levelled up, and the three departed—where I don’t know; at any rate, I have not seen them since.
Immediately after this sad event I saw coming down the by-lane a School Board officer, a sanitary officer, and a Christian minister. I watched with longing eyes to see what they were going to do. They came nearer and nearer, till they arrived at the gate leading into the meadow. For a few minutes they stood at the gate, which was locked. I liked the looks of them. They looked like brothers of mercy. Their countenances were heavenly. I felt that I could have shouted “Glory.” I hastened to unlock the gate, and the brothers of mercy walked in to lift the children upon the path leading to heaven. Just at this juncture a thunderstorm came on, and the dripping from the leaves overhead woke me up. For a few minutes I did not know where I was, whether in the body or out of it. Feeling as Anna Shipton felt when she wrote in the Sword and Travel for 1871:—
“Thou knowest my way—how lone, how dark, how cheerless,
If Thy dear hand I fail in all to see;
Bright with Thy smile of love my heart is fearless
When in my weakness I can lean on Thee.”
I pulled myself together to deal with sad, terribly sad, facts, and continued my walk to Long Buckby, my midday reverie in the land of shadows, lying between dreams and visions, being over. On mounting the hill leading into the town I met with a tall old man dressed in a pauper’s garb, and with a “few slates off.” He said he had lived in a cottage with the windows nailed up for seventy years. I asked him how old he was. He answered, “Over seventy.” He next turned the compliment upon myself, and said, “How old are you?” I said, “Fifty-one.” “Oh,” said the old man, after looking at my once black hair, which my friends tell me is now growing snowy white in the cause of the children, hastened by the bleaching of hard struggles, conflicts, and fightings, “you are older than me; I thought so.” I said “I did not think so.”
There are some quaint, ancient-looking houses in the town, evidently of the time of the Commonwealth. These are built of stone at the bottom, mud in the middle, and brick at the top, and they are thatched with straw and end in smoke. In the centre of this “radical town,” peopled with good-hearted folks, stands a very strong, tall, oak pole, some eighty feet high, with a crown upon the top of it, which pole was taken many years ago out of Earl Spencer’s park at Althorp. It is known by the name of “the coronation pole.” The original “coronation pole” was put up when George III. was crowned, and was cut down in William IV.’s time, owing, as one of the very old townsmen said, “to his turning Conservative.” A man named Hare, whom I had a chat with, helped to saw it down with a “cross-cut” saw. It was sold publicly for two pounds, and the money spent in drink in a public-house opposite. The present pole stands some twenty yards from where the former one stood. The massive crown upon the top of the pole is similar to the one worn by our blessed and noble Queen, and long may it remain.
In the square, and beneath the shadow of the “coronation pole,” were some six vans, &c. In three of the vans there were eighteen children of all ages and sizes, seven men and women. None of the children could tell a letter, but three of the men and women could read and write. One of the travellers, the father of six of the children, had received his education at the Bedford Grammar School. With these good-hearted people I had some tea, and they gave me a cocoa-nut to take home for my family. I gave the children some pictures and a few articles of clothing for one or two or three of them, and then wended my way among the feasters and fair-goers. In the “feast” there was a woman with a “rock stall,” who had been a Sunday-school scholar, but was now gipsying the country with her two sons. They slept under their stall at night. She said she thought that God did, and believed he would, answer the prayers of backsliders before any others, to which I said, “Amen; He does and will.” I left her with tears in her eyes for a gossip with Mr. “Flash” and his dark-eyed, sharp, business wife, who with steam horses and shooting galleries are making money fast, so that they may “retire in their old age.” Mr. Flash’s life, struggles, and various vicissitudes present plenty of material for a backwood gipsy novel of the blunder-bosh kind.
Flash and his wife were just having a ham tea, and they invited me to join them, which of course I did, and rubbed my hands quickly with delight. It was a prime cut, the frizzling and frying of which brought water to my teeth and a smacking of my lips. I was served with tea out of one of their best old china cups, which was a treat every one had not the pleasure of enjoying. After my gipsy rambles I thoroughly enjoyed the late tea. They showed me their beautiful feather bed at the end of the van, and unbosomed some of their successes and some of their trials and hardships. I gave them a few pictures, which they said they should have framed. They then filled my bag with “prize onions,” and I shook hands with them, to meet again some day, perhaps at Bagworth or Barleston, in Leicestershire, where Flash first saw daylight.