“It was at this moment that some of his Majesty’s attendants, who had missed him at the chase, and had been riding through the forest in search of him, rode up, and found him comforting the afflicted gipsies. It was an affecting sight, and worthy of everlasting record in the annals of kings.
“He now rose up, put some gold into the hands of the afflicted girls, promised them his protection, and bade them look to heaven. He then wiped the tears from his eyes, and mounted his horse. His attendants, greatly affected, stood in silent admiration. Lord L——— was going to speak, but his Majesty, turning to the gipsies, and pointing to the breathless corpse, and to the weeping girls, said, with strong emotion,—‘Who, my lord, who, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto these?’”
GIPSIES OF FASHION.
An incident which occurred to me in the summer of 1837, shewed me most strikingly how next to impossible it is for the peculiar manner and costume of the English gipsies to be personated. In an evening drive on the 27th of July, with a young friend staying with us, as we passed through, or by, the little rustic hamlet of Stoke D’Abernon, for it consists of houses scattered along one side of the road, I was struck with two singular female figures at a little distance before us. They were both young—the one about the middle size, the other rather taller. The taller one was dressed in a dark cotton bedgown, dark petticoat, grey stockings, and shoes; on her head was tied a yellow silk handkerchief, and in her hand she held, as a walking-staff, a long stout hazel wand, recently cut from the hedge. The other had on also a short bedgown, but of a pink colour, striped and figured with white, a dark petticoat, and ankle-boots. On her head she wore an old straw bonnet. As my eye caught them at a distance,—the one standing with her tall stick by a pool on one side of the way, the other in the act of begging from, or addressing, a gentleman who was sitting on a stile, I could not help exclaiming,—“What have we got here!—Maria de Moulins and Madge Wildfire?” As we drew near, they came running up to us, and, one on each side of the pony-chaise, began begging most importunately: “Will you give us sixpence? Do give us sixpence! Do, dear gentleman, give us sixpence! Dear lady, do tell the gentleman to give us sixpence!” It was only necessary to give a slight glance at the faces of these beggars, and to hear one tone of their voices, to know that it was a frolic—that they were ladies of education and family, from some of the neighbouring country houses, thus dressed up. They had hair and eyes jet black as any gipsies; and after all that has been said of the beauty of some of the gipsy women—and they have a great deal—were handsomer than any gipsies I ever saw. The taller, who appeared the younger of the two, was a very lovely woman, of a slender figure, the exquisite symmetry of which was not to be disguised by the rustic dress she had assumed. The other had, or affected, a slight lisp. Irresistible as such beggars might appear, I resolved to refuse them, in order to see how they would keep up the attempt, and how they would take a refusal. I therefore said, laughing, “O! I have no sixpences for beggars like you; you certainly are very charming beggars; you have chosen a very rustic costume; you act your part very well indeed, and I hope you will enjoy your frolic.” All this time I kept driving on at a good pace; but the resolute damsels still ran on, importuning for a sixpence. One soon dropped behind—the taller one still ran on with her stick in her hand, in a voice of much softness and sweetness still begging for sixpence—as they were poor strangers, and had got nothing all day! As she ran, this sort of badinage passed:—“Where do you come from?” “O, we have come all the way from Epsom to meet our young man here, and he has deceived us.”—“Well, I hope no young man will deceive you more cruelly.” “Dear gentleman, if you won’t give us sixpence, give us a penny then to buy us a glass of ale!” “O, you are no ale drinkers—what should you think of a glass of gin?” “I should like something, for I am very tired: and what is sixpence to you?—you have a very good horse in your chaise; I have no doubt you are a gentleman of independent fortune—do give us sixpence!” “No, I wish I were half as rich as you are.” Here the Queen of Love and Beauty stopped, and turned round with an air of very beautiful disdain. As she went back to join her companion, we were again struck with the grace of her form, and the buoyancy of her carriage.
My impression was that these ladies were merely acting beggars; but we soon found that they were acting gipsies; for they offered to tell almost every body’s fortunes, and actually did tell some. As we returned, we met them coming up a hollow woody lane, near Bookham Common, about a mile from where we left them; and behold! they and the gentleman who was there sitting on the stile—a military-looking man with light mustachios—were walking familiarly on together. It was evident that they had found “their young man!” It was a group worthy of the pencil of Stothard; and on the opposite side of the lane, from a cottage above it, out were come a countrywoman, and six or seven children, of different ages, in their rustic costume, and stood to look at them—a little picture after the very heart of Collins. The moment our actresses saw us, they motioned their escort to move off to the other side of the way, and to walk on, as though he did not belong to them, and again renewed their importunity as we passed. I merely smiled, and moved my hat to them. As we proceeded, I stopped and asked of all the country people I met—who was that gentleman? and who the ladies dressed as beggars? The miller thought the gentleman was from Bookham Lodge, the seat of Captain Blackwood—he heard a large party of gentry was just come there; “but the women, sir, they are Dutch women!” Dutch women! Broom-girls, in fact! Broom-girls, with legs and arms like young elephants! and broad solid figures, as if cut out of blocks of wood—how very like those slim and elegant creatures! But it was enough for the worthy miller, whose fortune they had offered to tell, that they had on short bedgowns and dark petticoats. A grocer from Epsom, with his spring-cart, going as they do all round the country, from one gentleman’s house to another, had had his fortune told by them, and was lost in amaze at the announcement that he had had nine children, six of whom were still living—five girls and one boy; the very facts to a hair! A farmer and his wife at Stoke, never dreamt that the gentleman whom they had noticed belonged to these “young baggages of beggars,” that had been sitting on the bank by the road-side opposite their house; but his wife said one of them was the handsomest beggar she ever saw. “Ay, they were both good-looking,” said the man, “and had famous things on.” The groom at the parsonage-gate “didn’t know the gentleman in the mustachios; but the women, bless you, they were no ladies.” “Why?” “O, they carried it on too far for ladies here, I assure you.” “What did they do?” “O! they came ringing at the bell like new ’uns; six or seven times they called us out—they would take no nay.”
Little did these fair ladies, when sallying out for this frolic in the sylvan lanes of Surrey, dream, I dare say, that they should meet “a chiel takin’ notes,” that would put their exploits into print. Here they are, however; and if they should chance to see this, I must tell them, that they were very sweet nondescripts, but not very perfect beggars; and far, far indeed, from perfect Zinganies. For Madge Wildfires, they were not amiss; but beggars, impudent as they are, seldom ask for sixpences; seldom appear in new apparel; never run by the side of carriages—that is left to beggar children. Pleading looks, and a pitiful whining tone, with low genuflections, mark the young beggar-woman, as she stands fixed at one place;—her husband is dead, and she is going home to her parents or parish; or he is gone for a soldier, and she is following to the garrison. Lancashire witches they would have done for capitally—but then witches don’t tell fortunes by palmistry; their vocation is by spell and cauldron; and as for gipsies, why it is just as difficult to mistake the particular expression and cultivated voice of an English lady, as it is the features and voice of the real gipsy-woman. Black eyes and black hair these ladies had; but they had neither the olive skin, nor the bold, easy degagée air of the gipsy belle; and what do gipsies with such beautifully slender and delicate hands? They were importunate; but nothing but a life and an education in the gipsy-camp, and perhaps the blood and descent of the gipsy, can give the peculiar style of palaver—the suaviter in modo—the unique flattery—the “you are born fortunate, sir”—with which the gipsy accosts you. And the costume! The gipsy wears nothing short. She has a long gown,—a long red cloak—a handkerchief tied over her head, it is true, but upon it a large flapping bonnet with lace trimming, or black beaver hat;—instead of that fairy form, she is generally strapping, tall, and strong—and instead of those taper ankles and small feet, which could evidently dance down the four-and-twenty hours, she has her lower limbs arrayed in black stockings and stout shoes that would do for a wagoner. Young gipsy women walk with sticks! how rarely do you see an old one with one? Knowing now who these ladies were, I should, beforehand, have expected a closer personation of the gipsy; but the result only proves the difficulty of the attempt. It must, however be confessed, that this was as pretty a little rural adventure as one could desire to meet with.
CHAPTER II.
NOOKS OF THE WORLD;
OR, A PEEP INTO THE BACK SETTLEMENTS OF ENGLAND.
There are thousands of places in this beautiful kingdom, which if you could change their situation—if you could take some plain, monotonous, and uninteresting tracts from the neighbourhood of large cities, from positions barren and of daily observance, and place these in their stead—would acquire an incalculable value; while the common spots would serve the present inhabitants of those sweet places just as well, and often far better, for the ordinary purposes of their lives—for walking over in the day, sleeping in during the night, and raising grass, cattle, and corn upon. The dwellers of cities—the men who have made fortunes, or are making them, and yet long for the quietness and beauty of the country—but especially the literary, the nature-loving, the poetical—would, to use a common expression, jump at them; and, if it were in their power to secure them, would make heavens-upon-earth of them. Yes! they are such spots as thousands are longing for; as the day-dreaming young, and the world-weary old, are yearning after, and painting to their mind’s eye, daily in great cities; and the dull, the common-place, the unpercipient of their beauty and their glory, are dwelling in them;—paradisiacal fields and magnificent mountains; or cloudy hollows in their mottled sides; or little cleuchs and glens, hidden and green—overhung with wild wood—rocky, and resounding with dashing and splashing streams;—places, where the eye sees the distant flocks and their slowly-stalking shepherds—the climbing goat, the soaring eagle: and the ear catches their far-off cries; whence a thousand splendours and pageants, changing aspects, and kindling and dying glories, in earth and sky, are witnessed; the cheerful arising of morning—the still, crimson, violet, purple, azure, dim grey, and then dark fading away of day into night, are watched; where the high and clear grandeur and solitude of night, with its moon and stars, and wandering breezes, and soul-enwrapping freshness, are seen and felt. Such places as these, and the brown or summer-empurpled heath, with its patch of ancient forest; its blasted, shattered, yet living old trees, greeting you with feelings and fancies of long-past centuries; the clear, rushing brook; the bubbling and most crystalline spring; and the turf that springs under your feet with a delicious elasticity, and sends up to your senses a fresh and forest-born odour; or cottages perched in the sides of glades, or on eminences by the sea—the soul-inspiring sea—with its wide views of coming and going ships, its fresh gales, and its everlasting change of light and life, on its waters, and on its shores; its sailors, and its fishermen, with all their doings, families, and dependencies—every one of them thoroughly covered and saturated with the spirit of picturesque and homely beauty; or inland hollows and fields, and old hamlets, lying amid great woods and slopes of wondrous loveliness;—if we could but turn things round, and bring these near us, and unite, at once, city advantages, city society, and them! But it never can be! And there are living in them, from generation to generation, numbers of people who are not to be envied, because they know nothing at all of the enviableness of their situation.