Old Friends at Cambridge and Elsewhere

by John Willis Clark

The beginning of Palmer’s education was of the most ordinary description, and little need be said about it. He was sent in the first instance to a private school, and afterwards to the Perse Grammar School. There he made rapid progress, arriving at the sixth form before he was fifteen; but all we hear about his studies is that he distinguished himself in Greek and Latin, and disliked mathematics. By the time he was sixteen he had learnt all that he was likely to learn at school, and was sent to London to earn his living. He became a junior clerk in a house of business in East-cheap, where he remained for three years, and might have remained for the term of his natural life, had he not been obliged to resign his situation on account of ill-health. Symptoms of pulmonary disease manifested themselves, and he got worse so rapidly that he was told that he had little hope of recovery. He returned to Cambridge, with the conviction that he had but a few weeks to live, and that he had better die comfortably among his relations, than miserably among strangers. But after a few weeks of severe illness he recovered, suddenly and strangely. Mr Besant tells a curious story, which Palmer is reported to have believed, that the cure had been effected by a dose of lobelia, administered by a herbalist. That Palmer swallowed the drug—of which, by the way, he nearly died—is certain, and that he recovered is equally certain; but that the dose and the recovery can be correlated as cause and effect is more than we are prepared to admit. We are rather disposed to accept a less sensational theory, expressed by a gentleman who at that period was one of his intimate friends:

‘Careful watchfulness on the part of his aunt, open air, exercise, and freedom from restraint, were the principal means of patching him up. He had frequent attacks of blood-spitting afterwards, and was altogether one of those wonderful creatures that defy doctors and quacks alike, and won’t die of the disease which is theirs by inheritance. How little any of us thought that he would die a hero!’

Palmer’s peculiar gift of acquiring languages had manifested itself even before he went to London. Throughout his whole career his strength as a linguist lay in his extraordinary aptitude for learning a spoken language. The literature came afterwards. We are not aware that he was ever what is called a good scholar in Latin or in Greek, simply for the reason, according to our view, that those languages are no longer spoken anywhere. He did not repudiate the literature of a language; far from it. Probably few Orientalists have known the literatures of Arabia and Persia better than he knew them; but he learnt to speak Arabic and Persian before he learnt to read them. In this he resembled Cardinal Mezzofanti, who had the same power of picking up a language for speaking purposes from a few conversations—learning some words, and constructing for himself first a vocabulary and then a grammar. When Palmer was still a boy at school he learnt Romany. He learnt it, says Mr Besant, ‘by paying travelling tinkers sixpence for a lesson, by haunting the tents, talking to the men, and crossing the women’s palms with his pocket-money in exchange for a few more words to add to his vocabulary. In this way he gradually made for himself a Gipsy dictionary.’ In time he became a proficient in Gipsy lore, and Mr Besant tells several curious stories about his adventures with that remarkable people. We will quote the narrative supplied to him by Mr Charles Leland—better known as Hans Breitmann—Palmer’s intimate friend and brother in Romany lore.

‘In one respect Palmer was truly remarkable. He combined plain common sense, clear judgment, and great quickness of perception into all the relations of a question, with a keen love of fun and romance. I could fill a volume with the eccentric adventures which we had in common, particularly among the gipsies. To these good folk we were always a first-class mystery, but none the less popular on that account. What with our speaking Romany “down to the bottom crust,” and Palmer’s incredible proficiency at thimble-rig, “ringing the changes,” picking pockets, card-sharping, three-monté, and every kind of legerdemain, these honest people never could quite make up their minds whether we were a kind of Brahmins, to which they were as Sudras, or what. Woe to the gipsy sharp who tried the cards with the Professor! How often have we gone into a tan where we were all unknown, and regarded as a couple of green Gentiles! And with what a wonderful air of innocence would Palmer play the part of a lamb, and ask them to give him a specimen of their language; and when they refused, or professed themselves unable to do so, how amiably he would turn to me and remark in deep Romany that we were mistaken, and that the people of the tent were only miserable “mumpers” of mixed blood, who could not rakker! Once I remember he said this to a gipsy, who retaliated in a great rage, “How could I know that you were a gipsy, if you come here dressed up like a gorgio and looking like a gentleman?”

‘One day, with Palmer, in the fens near Cambridge, we came upon a picturesque sight. It was a large band of gipsies on a halt. As we subsequently learned, they had made the day before an immense raid in robbing hen-roosts and poaching, and were loaded with game, fowls, and eggs. None of them knew me, but several knew the Professor as a lawyer. One took him aside to confide as a client their late misdoings. “We have been,” said he——

‘“You have been stealing eggs,” replied Palmer.

‘“How did you know that?”

‘“By the yolk on your waistcoat,” answered the Professor in Romany. “The next time you had better hide the marks[^[89]].”’

These experiences among the gipsies took place in 1874 or 1875, when Palmer had perfected himself in their language, and we must go back for a moment to the period spent in London. There, in his leisure hours, he managed to learn Italian and French, by a process similar to that by which he had previously acquired the rudiments of Romany.

‘The method he pursued is instructive. He found out where Italians might be expected to meet, and went every evening to sit among them and hear them talk. Thus, there was in those days a café in Titchborne Street frequented by Italian refugees, political exiles, and republicans. Here Palmer sat and listened and presently began to talk, and so became an ardent partisan of Italian unity. There was also at that time—I think many of them have now migrated to Hammersmith—a great colony of Italian organ-grinders and sellers of plaster-cast images in and about Saffron Hill. He went among these worthy people, sat with them in their restaurants, drank their sour wine, talked with them, and acquired their patois. He found out Italian waiters at restaurants and talked with them; at the docks he went on board Italian ships, and talked with the sailors; and in these ways learned the various dialects of Genoa, Naples, Nice, Livorno, Venice, and Messina. One of his friends at this time was a well-known Signor Buonocorre, the so-called “Fire King,” who used to astonish the multitude nightly at Cremorne Gardens and elsewhere by his feats. For Palmer was always attracted by people who run shows, “do” things, act, pretend, persuade, deceive, and in fact are interesting for any kind of cleverness. However, the first result of this perseverance was that he made himself a perfect master of Italian, that he knew the country speech as well as the Italian of the schools, and that he could converse with the Piedmontese, the Venetian, the Roman, the Sicilian, or the Calabrian, in their own dialects, as well as with the purest native of Florence.