Not one of this batch of posh gipsy travellers raised a murmur against my plan for bringing about a free education for the gipsy and other travelling children, and the registration of their vans.
Just under the glittering crown and “coronation pole” stood what, so far as the underworks indicated, had been once an old fish cart, over the top of which had been placed some half-barrel hoops, covered with old tarpauling sheets. The outside woodwork consisted of pieces of orange boxes, packing cases, &c., and was daubed over with paint little better than a child would daub a pigstye door. The dirty patches and blotches of glaring colours were laid on in an infinitely more zigzag fashion than the trailmarks of snails and worms. The creaking door was hung with pieces of leather; in fact, the whole outside, together with the pieces of old leather straps, and string-tied-together harness, old rags, buckets, and boxes underneath, presented a sight that I shall never forget. All this family of Y—ks wanted to make them perfect gipsies was that they should pick up some gipsy slang, Romany, learn how to eat hedgehogs, snails, and diseased pork, tell lies, gabble out fortunes, poison fowls, choke pigs, throttle sheep, take all, by hook or by crook, they could lay their hands upon, wash their faces in walnut water, roll about in mud and filth, smoke and eat “black jack,” and adopt the gipsy names of Smith, Lee, Boswell, Hearn, Lovell, Fletcher, Simpson, Draper. With these gipsy traits brought out they would be enabled to live a roving, lively, idle time of it to their hearts’ content. So say some gipsy writers. What a contrast, I thought, as I saw some young ladies standing at the window of a large house looking upon the scene only a few yards away. There a piano, played by gentle, nimble fingers, was sending forth sweet notes of heavenly, charming music sometimes at a galloping pace, and at other times as the gentle murmuring of clear rippling waters over bright and glossy pebbles, echoing love upon earth and peace and goodwill in the air, turning the widow’s sorrowful tears, the business parent’s troubles and care drops, into silver stepping-stones leading onward and upward to heaven. For the life of me I could not help showing my weakness by lifting up my eyelids to make room for the scalding tears that wanted to force their way down my cheeks. The wide chasm there is between human happiness and heaven and human woe and hell is something horrifying and horrible. Would to God that our sensual, sensational, and degrading backwood gipsy writers could be brought to see the mischief they are doing by dragging the poor lost gipsies and other travellers down to utter ruin, body and soul, for all time and throughout eternity, by their damning, poisonous writings.
Inside the van, on the doorsteps, and upon the shafts of their old tumbledown cart, there were man, woman, and five children. The father and mother could read and write well, but not one of the children could tell a letter, although of school age. The eldest girl of fourteen was the picture of beauty, though terribly thin from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet; but alas, alas! a few rags, ignorance, exposure, poverty, dirt, and wretchedness were trying to do their best to spoil it. The other children, so far as I was able to judge, were equally pretty. Owing to my not being an amateur gipsy, a backwood gipsy slang and book writer, of course I do not set myself up as a connoisseur in these matters. The father was inside the old van stirring the boiling “rock,” which was in an old saucepan upon a little six-inch square stove similar to what I have seen in cobblers’ shops before now. He was a big strong man, apparently capable of any amount of work. The rags of bedding were grimy, greasy, and dirty to the last degree; in fact, soap and water did not appear to have been brought to bear upon anything in the wretched hole. How man, woman, and five children could sleep in such a place is a mystery. God grant that it may be soon solved by the hand of our legislators, philanthropists, and Christians of every grade.
The owner of this travelling van was an engineer and “fitter,” and could, if he followed his employment, earn over two pounds per week. One hundred and seventy pounds was paid by his parents as an apprenticeship premium for him to learn the trade; but, sad to relate, it was ending in his boiling “rock” upon the top of a stove in the midst of dirt and filth. This precious dainty, composed of flour, sugar, treacle, and grease, was to be dealt out by his wife and children by halfpennyworths to little successful popgun firers. What an occupation and ending for a tradesman in possession of strength, sense, and reason! He had been well brought up by Christian parents, but got among loose company, whose chief desire is to be unshackled and free.
The little gleam of light in favour of his future reform was that he seemed to be ashamed of putting his head outside the van. His conscience was not quite dead. May the thundering voice of heaven ring in his ears till he cries out as the poor prodigal did, and once more settles down again in the neighbourhood of Thirsk.
The woman had been a parlour-maid for three years in the family of R—, at Sowerby Bridge, in Yorkshire, where this family hails from. She seemed a hard-working woman, and one who tried hard to make her way, but possessed with an idea that she should like to see some of the London gipsies. No doubt by this time she is making her way there.
The hardships this poor woman and children had to pass through during the last year are most heartrending.
During the whole of one month, with occasional assistance of the father, they had pushed their van about Lincolnshire in the depths of dark, cold, cold winter. They had no horse, and they presented a too wretched spectacle for daylight travelling.
After their day’s work of popgun-firing and “rock”-selling at fairs, feasts, and races they put one or two of the little children who could not toddle alongside their van to bed—and bed it was—and commenced crying, pulling and hauling their van up hill and down dale till they got stuck fast at one of the Lincolnshire towns. By begging, cadging, and starvation the woman managed to scrape two pounds and some three or four shillings together, and off she started by rail from Heckington to Spilsby fair to buy a horse. She had left the children without a morsel of anything to eat. Every penny had been screwed and scraped together to make up the two pounds. She wandered about the fair all day, but could not succeed in buying a horse for two pounds. The horses were being gradually driven off the ground, the poor woman had had only a dry crust to eat, sat down and began to cry; in fact, while she was telling me her sorrowful tale of hardship and suffering, tears rolled freely down her face, and she kept breaking out in sobs and “The Lord love you” many and very many times over, with such an effect upon my poor self that I had but little rest that night. I was quite unnerved, and emptied my pockets of what little money I had among the poor little posh gipsy children. While the woman was sitting in her sorrowful fix a man came up to her and asked her what was the matter with her. The poor creature unbosomed herself, and told him. They both there and then began to hunt up the old horses left in the fair; finally they met with one for two pounds—the grey old pony they had with them standing by the side of the cart when I saw them—and an animal it was, such as one does not see every day for bruises, humps, and hunches.
At four o’clock, with darkness creeping on, and a halter upon the pony’s head, she commenced to tramp, dressed in rags and trashes, and almost an empty craw, from Spilsby back to Heckington, a distance of between thirty and forty miles. Fortunately there was a little moonlight for a good part of the night, which enabled her to get upon the pony’s back to see the guide-posts. Several times she took the wrong turning where there was no guide-post to direct her, but by perseverance righted herself again. The pony was a little lame, and she could not ride, and on they tramped together, occasionally resting by the road side as the silent hours of the cold winterly night quietly and leisurely passed into the future unseen and unknown, except such of it as has been revealed to us by the Great Creator Himself. About two o’clock the next day she arrived at the van door with her old grey pony, and since then they have travelled hundreds of miles together, sometimes pushing, and sometimes pulling along the lanes of life. I asked her if she was not afraid to travel along the lonely lanes and roads leading to Spilsby at the midnight hour. She answered, “The Lord love you, I should at other times, but I did not feel a bit afraid on this night. I wanted to get home with the pony and to see my children, and this kept me a-going forward. Since then,” said the poor woman, “we’ve had a hard time of it; in fact, for the last two years we’ve had only six pennyworth of meat, and six pennyworth of bacon in the van. We live on what we can pick up, but chiefly on dry bread and tea.” She told me herself that for more than a fortnight together she had on only an old dress, a chemise in shreds, and a pair of old boots to move among the fashionable and gay at the fairs, races, and feasts. Thank God for the hope that dwells within the breasts of these at the bottom of the social scale that brighter days will come. Her little girls had not been undressed and washed for weeks, as they had nothing else to put on while they were being washed; and in this way many thousands of English men, women, and children are drifting into damning English gipsy customs, sins, and degrading and depraving habits, beneath, and encouraged by, the smiles, winks, and gabble of our backwood gipsy, gem collectors, and sentimental and sensational writers, who do not care a straw for those whom they are enticing on to ruin, so long as the gold and silver bits drop into their pockets.