The five minutes’ trotting down the hill with this youthful encouraging band brought my forty years’ joyous and soul-saving episodes of Sunday-school life vividly before me, which had the soothing effect of temporarily shaking off my late hour’s experiences with the gipsies, and causing my heart to dance for joy.
A little later on I took the main road to High Beach and the “Robin Hood.” I had not got far upon the way before I was accosted by three semi-drunken, “respectable”-looking roughs, asking all sorts of insulting questions; and because I could not point them to a “California,” but rather to a “Bedlam,” I really thought that I should have to “lookout for squalls.” They began in earnest to close round me. By a little manœuvring, and the fortunate appearance of two or three gentlemen, I eluded their clutches.
The road up the hill to the “Robin Hood” was literally crowded with travellers, foolish and gay; cabs and carriages teemed with passengers of the gentle and simple sort, roughs and riffraff, went puffing and panting along. There were the thick and thin, tall and short, weak and strong, all jostling together as on Bank Holidays. I could hardly realize the fact that it was an English Sunday. In one trap, drawn by a poor bony animal scarcely able to crawl, there were fifteen men, women, and children, shouting and screaming as if it were a fair day—wild, mad, and frantic with swill to their heart’s core. The gipsies were in full swing. There were no less than fifty horses and donkeys running, galloping, trotting, and walking, with men, women, and children upon their backs. Half-tipsy girls seemed to have lost all sense of modesty and shame. The long sticks of the gipsies laid heavily upon the bones of the poor animals set the women and girls “a-screeching” and shouting, sounds which did not rise very high before they were turned into God’s curses.
I knew many of the gipsies, and, contrary to what I had expected, I did not receive one cross look. The eldest son of a gipsy, named Pether, to whom I shall refer later on, took me into his tea, gingerbeer, and pop tent; and nothing would satisfy him but that I must have some gingerbeer and cake, and while I was eating he handed me his fat baby to look at. It certainly bade fair to become a bigger man than General Tom Thumb. I touched the baby’s cheek and put a small coin in its tiny hand. I also spoke a word of genuine praise to the young gipsy mother on account of the good start she was making, and afterwards I shook hands with the gipsy pair and bade them good-bye. To Pether’s credit be it said that, although he owns horses, swings, cocoa-nuts, &c., he never employs them on Sundays. His gipsy father had told him more than once that “there is no good got by it. I have noticed it more than once, what’s got by cocoa-nuts, swings, and horses on Sunday, the devil fetches before dinner on Monday.”
Upon the forest, on God’s day of rest, there were no fewer than from five hundred to one thousand gipsy children, not a dozen of whom could read and write a sentence, or had ever been in a place of worship.
In going to my friend’s, the house-dwelling gipsy, for tea, in response to his kind invitation, that we might have a chat together, I called to see a gipsy woman of the name of B— whom I knew, as I also did her parents, who had recently come to live in the place. When I arrived at the wretched, miserable, dirty abode, I found that her gipsy husband had been sent for, and was now “doing fourteen years”—for what offence I did not attempt to find out—and that his place had been filled by another idle scamp; and, if reports be true, he has also been sent for “to do double duty,” and whose place also has been filled up in the social circle with another gipsy. This gipsy woman has entered into a fourth alliance, and, as one of the gipsies recently said, she has really been “churched” this time. I saw much, smelt a deal, but said little; and, after giving the poor child of six a trifle, I made haste to join my friends the gipsies at tea.
When I was invited, my friend Pether said: “You could not mistake the house. Over the door it reads, ‘J. Pether, the Ratcatcher and Butcher.’ If you ask any one in Loughton for ‘Scarecrow,’ ‘Poshcard,’ ‘Shovecard,’ or ‘Jack Scare,’ they will direct you to my house. I am known for miles round.” Of course I had no difficulty in finding my friend, with so many names and titles. On arriving at the door my big friend came hobbling along to open it. If my little hand had been a rough, big, cocoa-nut that he had been going to “shie” with vengeance at somebody’s head, he could not have given it a firmer grip. Fortunately he did not break any bones in it. I had not been long seated upon the bench before his “poorly” wife came downstairs. The best cups and saucers were set on a coverless table, and the cake, which was a little too rich, was placed thereon. By the side of the fireplace upon the floor was their poor crippled son of about sixteen years, who had lost the use of his arms and legs, but had retained his senses. Tea was handed out to us, and I did fairly well. I enjoyed the tea, although I felt pained and sorrowful to see a sharp youth confined at home under such sad circumstances. They did their best to make me happy and comfortable. At our table sat one of Mr. Pether’s sons, who was in the militia. He had a kindly word for almost everybody in the regiment to which he belonged, especially for the Duke of Connaught, who had a kindly word for him. The Duke asked him one day if he would like to join the Line, to which young Pether said “No.” “The Duke is a gentleman, and pleases everybody,” said Pether, the young militiaman. “Verily, this is a truth spoken by a gipsy soldier,” I said to Pether senior. “Yes, governor,” said Mr. Pether; “and the Queen is a good woman, too.” To which I replied, “There could not be a better; she is the best Queen that England ever saw.” This brought a smile upon their faces over our hot gipsy tea.
Tea was now over, and our chat began. The first thing I said to Mr. Pether was, “How is it that you have become a gipsy with so many names?” This question called forth a laugh and a groan. A laugh, because it brought to his mind so many reminiscences of bygone days; and a groan, because his gouty leg had an extra twinge from some cause or other, which caused him to pull a wry face for a minute. I could not help smiling, when with one breath he laughed out, “Ah, ah, ah, ah!” and in the next he cried out, “Oh, oh! it almost makes me sweat.” “Well, to begin at the beginning, sir, my father was a butcher and farmer, and he sent me early to London—I think before I was nine years old—to be with an uncle, who was a butcher. I was with him for a few years, but he was not very kind. He used to put me to the worst and coldest kind of work, winter or summer; and I was often put upon by his man and a young chap he had. The chap used to plague me terribly, and call me all sorts of names; and I was a lad that was tempery and peppery, and would not be put on by anybody. One day the chap begun to leather me with a cow’s tongue, which cuts like a knife, upon the bare skin. He leathered me so much that blood ran down my arms and face. This got my blood up, and while he was bending to pick up something I seized the poleaxe that stood close by and struck him when no one was near with the sharp edge of it upon his head, the same as I would a bullock, and felled him to the ground like an ox. As soon as I saw blood flowing I made sure that I had killed him, and, without waiting to pick up my clothes, I ran off as fast as my legs would carry me, without stopping till I got to Harrow-on-the-Hill. I dirted my clothes and coat and mangled them so that nobody could tell me, and I changed my name to ‘Poshcard’ for a time. I then began to wander about the lanes, and to beg, and to sleep in the barns and under stacks on the roadside. Sometimes I could pick up a job at butchers’, doing what they call ‘running guts’ for sausages and black pudding. My clothes at times were all alive. When anybody gave me an old coat or shirt, socks or boots, I never took them off till they dropped off. I have slept under ricks in the winter till the straw has been frozen to my feet. Hundreds of times I have slept between the cows for warmth, while they have lain down in the sheds and cow-houses. I used to creep in between them softly and snoozle the night away. The warmth of the cows has kept me alive hundreds of times. I have at times almost lived on carrots. When blackberries were ripe I used to eat many of them; in fact, I used to steal peas and beans, or any mortal thing that I came near. Sometimes I fell in with drovers. I have got in the winter-time under a hedge and nibbled a turnip for my Sunday dinner. I was for some time with a farmer, and used to mind his cattle, and he got to like me so much that he used to place confidence in me. He would trust me with anything. One time he sent me to sell a calf for him, but instead of returning with the money I ran away and bought a suit of clothes with it. I durst not face him again after that. For fourteen years I was wandering up and down England in this way, daily expecting to be taken up for murder.
“I then joined a gang of gipsies of the name of Lee, and with them I have lied, lived, stole, and slept, more like a dog than a human being. I used to run donkeys all day, and when the old woman came home from fortune-telling she would give me two pieces of bread and butter from somebody’s table for my dinner and tea which some of the servant girls had given to her. Among the gipsies I used to be reckoned the very devil. I have fought hundreds of times, and was never beaten in my life. The time when I was more nearly beaten than any other was with my brother-in-law, a gipsy. We fought hard and fast, up and down, for nearly an hour, and then we gave it up as both of us being as good as each other. I have had both my arms broken, legs broken, shoulder-blades broken, and kicked over my head till I have been senseless, in gipsy rows. Oh! sir, I could tell you a lot more, and I will do so sometime.”
This terrible recital of facts—of the cruelty, hardships, wrong-doing of present-day gipsy life—almost caused my hair to stand on an end whilst he related the horrors of backwood and daylight gipsyism in our midst.