The Rural Life of England

by William Howitt

“This same party often camped at a spot in the forest called Marl-pit Oak—and nearer to my residence on a hill near the road, called Gally Hill, and were not ill thought of by the farmers and poor people, and one or two forest girls would sometimes steal to their tents, sure of a savoury regale. The wonder is, how they lived so well—for their kettles were not filled with the produce of poaching or of thefts in the hen-roost—still less with meat ‘that had died of its own accord,’ as the people say. No; they used frequently to go back from the town laden with good joints honestly purchased and paid for at the butchers.

“On one occasion, a day or two before Easter Sunday, Brother John and two of the ladies of the tribe displayed their marketing to my neighbours at the turnpike-gate—a fine breast, loin, and leg of veal. ‘To-morrow’s Easter Sunday;’ said they, ‘and we always have a feast of veal on that day.’ (Singular! is it not?) ‘How can you contrive to roast it at your fires?’ inquired the woman who is now my servant. ‘Better a deal than you can at your poor pinched in grates,’ was the answer; ‘and then we shall have rice-puddings, capital rice-puddings.’ ‘But you can’t bake, if you can roast?’ ‘Can’t we? come and taste if you ever knowed better baking in your life.’ (I should have accepted the invitation if it had been made to me). And then they described their culinary process. Having mixed their ingredients—all of the best—in a large brown pan of that sort of ware which is fireproof, they covered it with another of the same sort, set it deep in a bed of glowing peat-ashes, and heaped it over to a foot depth with the same. I have no doubt of the excellency of the method,—not very unlike that in use by many of the savage tribes. There were seven daughters of this particular family of the Stanleys, all splendid beauties;—one but too celebrated, ‘the beautiful Caroline Stanley.’ She fell into worse company than that of her own people, and on two or three occasions was absent from them for a year and more at a time, living in splendour as ‘maitresse en titre,’ to more than one officer of high rank; dashed about in elegant carriages, clothed in ‘silken sheen,’ and all sorts of bravery, and carried it with a high hand (poor Caroline!) through her seasons of ‘bad eminence.’ But all the while she was out of her element; the free creature of the woods pined to be there again; and some fine morning she would be off without leave taking, and leaving behind her every atom of the dear-bought finery, that had become fetters to her. I knew her well by sight, and such a Cleopatra of regal beauty I never could have imaged to myself.

“A short time before her first initiation in civilization and corruption, I saw her showing off in high style. I called to give some order to my milliner, but sat quietly down to await her leisure, finding her engaged in high disputation with the gipsy beauty, who was rating her in no measured terms for some deviation from orders in the making of a bonnet which Caroline was in the act of trying on before the glass. And such airs and graces she gave herself! I never was more diverted.

“‘Woman!’ she called the poor milliner, at every sentence. ‘Did you think, because I’m a gipsy, I’d wear such a thing as this,’ said she, and dashed off the bonnet—an expensive one of black velvet, with a deep lace flounce—to the farther end of the room. When I last heard of her, a few years back, she was wandering—withered and haggard—with her diminished tribe. It has been much diminished of late years by the conviction and transportation of many of the men for horse-stealing; of their proficiency in which I have had sad experience. Some years ago, I lost a very beautiful and favourite pony, at the same time that a rather valuable mare was stolen from a neighbour of mine (a farrier), and a young galloway from another man, named Edward Pierce. Having done every thing in our power to regain our lost steeds, we at last gave up the pursuit as useless.

“Nearly two years afterwards, my neighbour, the farrier, came to ask me if I would join him and Pierce in some further endeavours to recover the stolen horses, which we had a fair chance of doing, he thought, according to the letter he presented for my perusal, a curious one it was, dated, ‘The Hulks, Portsmouth.’ The writer (one of the Stanleys) stated, that having been condemned to seven years’ transportation, for a recent offence, he wished to stock himself with a few comforts for his voyage, and, therefore, if we, the losers of such and such horses, stolen at such a time, would make it ‘worth his while,’ he would put us in a way to have them back again. He began his letter (it was addressed to Pierce), ‘Dear friend,’ and said at the conclusion, that not liking to go by his own name in such a place, and in his present circumstances, he had taken the liberty to use his, and begged to be addressed as Edward Pierce. One of the girl Stanleys married a Blake, and prosperous vagabonds they were,—kept a chaise-cart, and a fine horse, with expensive plated harness. On the occasion of the christening of their first child, which took place at Beaulieu, they invited all the farmers and respectable country folk for miles round to a feast on the heath, and a sumptuous feast it was, and every thing ‘done decently and in order.’ Abundance of good things, eatables and drinkables.

“The tables, borrowed for the occasion, almost elegantly spread. Liquor in abundance, good ale and strong, but no abuse of it. Fiddling and dancing afterwards till the long summer day closed in, and then the wild hosts and their civilized guests parted with mutual good-will; the most respectable of the latter (good substantial farmers, their wives and families) protesting they had never been so well treated, or in company more decently conducted.

“Mr. Crabbe alludes at p. 29 of the ‘Gipsies’ Advocate,’ to a circumstance connected with gipsy burials, as having occurred in the neighbouring county of Wilts. I suspect it to be the same which was related to me two years ago, by the vicar of a parish in the New Forest, who had it from his intimate friend the curate of a Wiltshire parish, the name of which I forget. A small party of gipsies had remained stationary in the neighbourhood for an unusual length of time, detained by the illness of one of them, a very young woman and beautiful—lately married to a man as comely as herself. ‘One of the finest young men,’ the curate said, ‘he ever set eyes on.’ The woman died, and soon after the husband came, almost in a state of distraction, to apply for leave to bury her in the church. The permission could not be granted, though the man pleaded with passionate earnestness, saying, any required sum, however large, should be forthcoming, might he but lay her in the church. Finding that to be impossible, he bought a piece of ground in the churchyard, made a deep vault, where she was interred, and over it caused a monument to be erected, which was not only costly but in good taste, as was the simple record inscribed on it. This occurred several years ago, and not once has he omitted an annual visit to the grave since the day of his wife’s interment.

“The magistrates, country gentlemen, and farmers, in the neighbourhood of Mr. Crabbe’s gipsy colony, complain bitterly of the effects of his benevolent scheme—affirming that it subjects them to the perpetual depredations of swarms of vagrants of all sorts, and that the good man himself is the dupe of nine-tenths of these persons, who allow him for a time to reckon them among his reformed gipsies. Be it as it may that this well meaning man is or is not imposed on, certain it is, that as a nation we are chargeable with culpable neglect towards these wild denizens. We ‘compass sea and land to make one proselyte,’ and at home, we suffer fellow beings to live and die among us, as unheeded and uncared for (far more so) as ‘the beasts that perish.’”

We may illustrate this just remark of Mrs. Southey’s, and at the same time, the occasional scenes of wild life in England, by quoting from Mr. Crabbe’s volume the following extraordinary anecdote.

“George III. being out one day hunting, the chase lay through the skirts of the forest. The stag had been hard run, and to escape the dogs, had crossed the river in a deep part. The dogs could not be brought to follow; and it became necessary, in order to come up with it, to make a circuitous route along the banks of the river, through some thick and troublesome underwood. The roughness of the ground, the long grass, and frequent thickets, obliged the sportsmen to separate from each other; each one endeavouring to make the best and speediest route he could. Before they had reached the end of the forest, the king’s horse manifested signs of fatigue and uneasiness, so much so, that his Majesty resolved upon yielding the pleasures of the chase to those of compassion for his horse. With this view he turned down the first avenue of the forest, and determined on riding quietly to the oaks, there to wait for some of his attendants. The king had only proceeded a few yards, when, instead of the cry of the hounds he fancied he heard the cry of human distress. As he rode forward, he heard it more distinctly:—‘Oh, my mother! my mother! God pity and bless my poor mother!’ The curiosity and kindness of the sovereign led him instantly to the spot. It was a little green plot on one side of the forest, where was spread on the grass, under a branching oak, a little pallet, half covered with a kind of tent; and a basket or two with some packs, lay on the ground at a few paces distant from the tent. Near to the root of the tree he observed a little swarthy girl about eight years of age, on her knees praying, while her little black eyes ran down with tears. Distress of any kind was always relieved by his Majesty, for he had a heart which melted at human woe. ‘What my child, is the cause of your weeping?’ he asked, ‘For what do you pray?’ The little creature at first started, then rose from her knees; and pointing to the tent, said,—‘Oh sir, my dying mother!’ ‘What?’ said his Majesty, dismounting, and fastening his horse up to the branches of the oak, ‘what, my child? tell me all about it.’ The little creature now led the king to the tent; where lay, partly covered, a middle-aged female gipsy in the last stages of a decline, and in the last moments of life. She turned her dying eyes expressively to the royal visiter, then looked up to heaven, but not a word did she utter; the organs of speech had ceased their office; the silver cord was loosed, and the wheel broken at the cistern. The little girl then wept aloud, and stooping down, wiped the dying sweat from her mother’s face. The king, much affected, asked the child her name, and of her family, and how long her mother had been ill. Just at that moment another gipsy girl, much older, came out of breath to the spot. She had been to the town of W———, and brought some medicine for her dying mother. Observing a stranger, she curtsied modestly, and hastening to her mother, knelt down by her side, kissed her pallid lips, and burst into tears. ‘What, my dear child,’ said his Majesty, ‘can be done for you?’ ‘O sir,’ she replied, ‘my dying mother wanted a religious person to teach her, and to pray with her before she died. I ran all the way before it was light this morning to W———, and asked for a minister, but no one could I get to come with me to pray with my dear mother!’ The dying woman seemed sensible of what her daughter was saying, and her countenance was much agitated. The air was again rent with the cries of the distressed daughters. The king, full of kindness, instantly endeavoured to comfort them. He said, ‘I am a minister, and God has sent me to instruct and comfort your mother.’ He then sate down on a pack by the side of the pallet, and taking the hand of the dying gipsy, discoursed on the demerit of sin, and the nature of redemption. He then pointed her to Christ, the all-sufficient Saviour. While doing this, the poor creature seemed to gather consolation and hope: her eyes sparkled with brightness, and her countenance became animated. She looked up—she smiled; but it was the last smile; it was the glimmering of expiring nature. As the expression of peace, however, remained strong in her countenance, it was not till some time had elapsed, that they perceived the struggling spirit had left mortality.