It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, and I was walking down Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, when I met with three very dark men.
Dark men are not rarities in my native city. There is, for instance, Eugene, who has the invaluable faculty of being able to turn his hand to an infinite helpfulness in the small arts. These men were darker than Eugene, but they differed from him in this, that while he is a man of color, they were not. For in America the man of Aryan blood, however dark he may be, is always “off” color, while the lightest-hued quadroon is always on it. Which is not the only paradox connected with the descendants of Africans of which I have heard.
I saw at a glance that these dark men were much nearer to the old Aryan stock than are even my purely white readers. For they were more recently from India, and they could speak a language abounding in Hindi, in pure old Sanskrit, and in Persian. Yet they would make no display of it; on the contrary, I knew that they would be very likely at first to deny all knowledge thereof, as well as their race and blood. For they were gypsies; it was very apparent in their eyes, which had the Gitano gleam as one seldom sees it in England. I confess that I experienced a thrill as I exchanged glances withthem. It was a long time since I had seen a Romany, and, as usual, I knew that I was going to astonish them. They were singularly attired, having very good clothes of a quite theatrical foreign fashion, bearing silver buttons as large as and of the shape of hen’s eggs. Their hair hung in black ringlets down their shoulders, and I saw that they had come from the Austrian Slavonian land.
I addressed the eldest in Italian. He answered fluently and politely. I changed to Ilirski or Illyrian and to Serb, of which I have a few phrases in stock. They spoke all these languages fluently, for one was a born Illyrian and one a Serb. They also spoke Nemetz, or German; in fact, everything except English.
“Have you got through all your languages?” I at last inquired.
“Tutte, signore,—all of them.”
“Isn’t thereoneleft behind, which you have forgotten? Think a minute.”
“No, signore. None.”
“What, notone! You know so many that perhaps a language more or less makes no difference to you.”
“By the Lord, signore, you have seen every egg in the basket.”
I looked him fixedly in the eyes, and said, in a low tone,—
“Ne rakesa tu Romanes miro prala?”
There was a startled glance from one to the other, and a silence. I had asked him if he could not talk Romany. And I added,—
“Won’tyou talk a word with a gypsy brother?”
Thatmoved them. They all shook my hands withgreat feeling, expressing intense joy and amazement at meeting with one who knew them.
“Mishto hom me dikava tute.” (I am glad to see you.) So they told me how they were getting on, and where they were camped, and how they sold horses, and so on, and we might have got on much farther had it not been for a very annoying interruption. As I was talking to the gypsies, a great number of men, attracted by the sound of a foreign language, stopped, and fairly pushed themselves up to us, endeavoring to make it all out. When there were at least fifty, they crowded in between me and the foreigners, so that I could hardly talk to them. The crowd did not consist of ordinary people, or snobs. They were well dressed,—young clerks, at least,—who would have fiercely resented being told that they were impertinent.
“Eye-talians, ain’t they?” inquired one man, who was evidently zealous in pursuit of knowledge.
“Why don’t you tell us what they are sayin’?”
“What kind of fellers air they, any way?”
I was desirous of going with the Hungarian Roms. But to walk along Chestnut Street with an augmenting procession of fifty curious Sunday promenaders was not on my card. In fact, I had some difficulty in tearing myself from the inquisitive, questioning, well-dressed people. The gypsies bore the pressure with the serene equanimity of cosmopolite superiority, smiling at provincial rawness. Even so in China and Africa the traveler is mobbed by the many, who, there as here, think that “I want to know” is full excuse for all intrusiveness.Q’est tout comme chez nous. I confess that I was vexed, and, considering that it was in my native city, mortified.
A few days after I went out to thetanwhere these Roms had camped. But the birds had flown, and a little pile of ashes and the usual débris of a gypsy camp were all that remained. The police told me that they had some very fine horses, and had gone to the Northwest; and that is all I ever saw of them.
I have heard of a philanthropist who was turned into a misanthrope by attempting to sketch in public and in galleries. Respectable strangers, even clergymen, would stop and coolly look over his shoulder, and ask questions, and give him advice, until he could work no longer. Why is it that people who would not speak to you for life without an introduction should think that their small curiosity to see your sketches authorizes them to act as aquaintances? Or why is the pursuit of knowledge assumed among the half-bred to be an excuse for so much intrusion? “I want to know.” Well, and what if you do? The man who thinks that his desire for knowledge is an excuse for impertinence—and there are too many who act on this in all sincerity—is of the kind who knocks the fingers off statues, because “he wants them” for his collection; who chips away tombstones, and hews down historic trees, and not infrequently steals outright, and thinks that his pretense of culture is full excuse for all his mean deeds. Of this tribe is the man who cuts his name on all walls and smears it on the pyramids, to proclaim himself a fool to the world; the difference being that, instead of wanting to know anything, he wants everybody to know that His Littleness was once in a great place.
I knew a distinguished artist, who, while in the East, only secured his best sketch of a landscape by employing fifty men to keep off the multitude. Ihave seen a strange fellow take a lady’s sketch out of her hand, excusing himself with the remark that he was so fond of pictures. Of course my readers do not act thus. When they are passing through the Louvre or British Museum they never pause and overlook artists, despite the notices requesting them not to do so. Of course not. Yet I once knew a charming young American lady, who scouted the idea as nonsense that she should not watch artists at work. “Why, we used to make up parties for the purpose of looking at them!” she said. “It was half the fun of going there. I’m sure the artists were delighted to get a chance to talk to us.” Doubtless. And yet there are really very few artists who do not work more at their ease when not watched, and I have known some to whom such watching was misery. They are not, O intruder, painting foryouramusement!
This is not such a far cry from my Romanys as it may seem. When I think of what I have lost in this life by impertinence coming between me and gypsies, I feel that it could not be avoided. The proportion of men, even of gentlemen, or of those who dress decently, who cannot see another well-dressed man talking with a very poor one in public, without at once surmising a mystery, and endeavoring to solve it, is amazing. And they do not stop at a trifle, either.
It is a marked characteristic of all gypsies that they are quite free from any such mean intrusiveness. Whether it is because they themselves are continually treated as curiosities, or because great knowledge of life in a small way has made them philosophers, I will not say, but it is a fact that inthis respect they are invariably the politest people in the world. Perhaps their calm contempt of thegalerly, or green Gorgios, is founded on a consciousness of their superiority in this matter.
The Hungarian gypsy differs from all his brethren of Europe in being more intensely gypsy. He has deeper, wilder, and more original feeling in music, and he is more inspired with a love of travel. Numbers of Hungarian Romany chals—in which I include all Austrian gypsies—travel annually all over Europe, but return as regularly to their own country. I have met with them exhibiting bears in Baden-Baden. These Ričinari, or bear-leaders, form, however, a set within a set, and are in fact more nearly allied to the gypsy bear-leaders of Turkey and Syria than to any other of their own people. They are wild and rude to a proverb, and generally speak a peculiar dialect of Romany, which is called the Bear-leaders’ by philologists. I have also seen Syrian-gypsy Ričinari in Cairo. Many of the better caste make a great deal of money, and some are rich. Like all really pure-blooded gypsies, they have deep feelings, which are easily awakened by kindness, but especially by sympathy and interest.
Oatlands Park (between Weybridge and Walton-upon-Thames) was once the property of the Duke of York, but now the lordly manor-house is a hotel. The grounds about it are well preserved and very picturesque. They should look well, for they cover a vast and wasted fortune. There is, for instance, a grotto which cost forty thousand pounds. It is one of those wretched and tasteless masses of silly rock-rococo work which were so much admired at the beginning of the present century, when sham ruins and sham caverns were preferred to real. There is, also, close by the grotto, a dogs’ burial-ground, in which more than a hundred animals, the favorites of the late duchess, lie buried. Over each is a tombstone, inscribed with a rhyming epitaph, written by the titled lady herself, and which is in sober sadness in every instance doggerel, as befits the subject. In order to degrade the associations of religion and church rites as effectually as possible, there is attached to these graves the semblance of a ruined chapel, the stained-glass window of which was taken from a church.[97]I confess that I could never see eithergrotto or grave-yard without sincerely wishing, out of regard to the memory of both duke and duchess, that these ridiculous relics of vulgar taste and affected sentimentalism could be completely obliterated. But, apart from them, the scenes around are very beautiful; for there are grassy slopes and pleasant lawns, ancient trees and broad gravel walks, over which, as the dry leaves fall on the crisp sunny morning, the feet are tempted to walk on and on, all through the merry golden autumn day.
The neighborhood abounds in memories of olden time. Near Oatlands is a modernized house, in which Henry the Eighth lived in his youth. It belonged then to Cardinal Wolsey; now it is owned by Mr. Lindsay,—a sufficient cause for wits calling it Lindsay-Wolsey, that being also a “fabric.” Within an hour’s walk is the palace built by Cardinal Wolsey, while over the river, and visible from the portico, is the little old Gothic church of Shepperton, and in the same view, to the right, is the old Walton Bridge, by Cowie Stakes, supposed to cover the exact spot where Cæsar crossed. This has been denied by many, but I know that the field adjacent to it abounds in ancient British jars filled with burned bones, the relics of an ancient battle,—probably that which legend states was fought on the neighboring Battle Island. Stout-hearted Queen Bessy has also left her mark on this neighborhood, for within a mile is the old Saxon-towered church of Walton, in which the royal dame was asked for her opinion of the sacrament when it was given to her, to which she replied:—
“Christ was the Word who spake it,He took the bread and brake it;And what that Word did make it,That I believe, and take it.”
“Christ was the Word who spake it,He took the bread and brake it;And what that Word did make it,That I believe, and take it.”
In memory of this the lines were inscribed on the massy Norman pillar by which she stood. From the style and cutting it is evident that the inscription dates from the reign of Elizabeth. And very near Oatlands, in fact on the grounds, there are two ancient yew-trees, several hundred yards apart. The story runs that Queen Elizabeth once drew a long bow and shot an arrow so far that, to commemorate the deed, one of these trees was planted where she stood, and the other where the shaft fell. All England is a museum of touching or quaint relics; to me one of its most interesting cabinets is this of the neighborhood of Weybridge and Walton-upon-Thames.
I once lived for eight months at Oatlands Park, and learned to know the neighborhood well. I had many friends among the families in the vicinity, and, guided by their advice, wandered to every old church and manor-house, ruin and haunted rock, fairy-oak, tower, palace, or shrine within a day’s ramble. But there was one afternoon walk of four miles, round by the river, which I seldom missed. It led by a spot on the bank, and an old willow-tree near the bridge, which spot was greatly haunted by the Romany, so that, excepting during the hopping-season of autumn, when they were away in Kent, I seldom failed to see from afar a light rising smoke, and near it a tent and a van, as the evening shadows blended with the mist from the river in phantom union.
It is a common part of gypsy life that the father shall be away all day, lounging about the next village, possibly in thekitchemaor ale-house, or trying to trade a horse, while the wife trudges over the country, from one farm-house or cottage to another,loaded with baskets, household utensils, toys, or cheap ornaments, which she endeavors, like a true Autolyca, with wily arts and wheedling tones, to sell to the rustics. When it can be managed, this hawking is often an introduction to fortune-telling, and if these fail the gypsy has recourse to begging. But it is a weary life, and the poordyeis always glad enough to get home. During the day the children have been left to look out for themselves or to the care of the eldest, and have tumbled about the van, rolled around with the dog, and fought or frolicked as they chose. But though their parents often have a stock of cheap toys, especially of penny dolls and the like, which they put up as prizes for games at races and fairs, I have never seen these children with playthings. The little girls have no dolls; the boys, indeed, affect whips, as becomes incipient jockeys, but on the whole they never seemed to me to have the same ideas as to play as ordinary house-children. The author of “My Indian Garden” has made the same observation of Hindoo little ones, whose ways are not as our ways were when we were young. Roman and Egyptian children had their dolls; and there is something sadly sweet to me in the sight of these barbarous and naïve facsimiles of miniature humanity, which come up like little spectres out of the dust of ancient days. They are so rude and queer, these Roman puppets; and yet they were loved once, and had pet names, and their owl-like faces were as tenderly kissed as their little mistresses had been by their mothers. So the Romany girl, unlike the Roman, is generally doll-less and toy-less. But the affection between mother and child is as warm among these wanderers as with any other people; and it is a touching sight to see the gypsy whohas been absent all the weary day returning home. And when she is seen from afar off there is a race among all the little dark-brown things to run to mother and get kissed, and cluster and scramble around her, and perhaps receive some little gift which mother’s thoughtful love has provided. Knowing these customs, I was wont to fill my pockets with chestnuts or oranges, and, distributing them among the little ones, talk with them, and await the sunset return of their parents. The confidence or love of all children is delightful; but that of gypsy children resembles the friendship of young foxes, and the study of their artless-artful ways is indeed attractive. I can remember that one afternoon six small Romany boys implored me to give them each a penny. I replied,—
“If I had sixpence, how would you divide it?”
“That would be a penny apiece,” said the eldest boy.
“And if threepence?”
“A ha’penny apiece.”
“And three ha’pence?”
“A farden all round. And then it couldn’t go no furder, unless we bought tobacco an’ diwided it.”
“Well, I have some tobacco. But can any of you smoke?”
They were from four to ten years of age, and at the word every one pulled out the stump of a blackened pipe,—such depraved-looking fragments I never saw,—and holding them all up, and crowding closely around, like hungry poultry with uplifted bills, they began to clamor fortūvalo, or tobacco. They were connoisseurs, too, and the elder boy, as he secured his share, smelled it with intense satisfaction, andsaid, “That’srye’s tūvalo;” that is, “gentleman’s tobacco,” or best quality.
One evening, as the shadows were darkening the day, I met a little gypsy boy, dragging along, with incredible labor, a sack full of wood, which one needed not go far afield to surmise was neither purchased nor begged. The alarmed and guilty or despairing look which he cast at me was very touching. Perhaps he thought I was the gentleman upon whose property he had “found” the wood; or else a magistrate. How he stared when I spoke to him in Romany, and offered to help him carry it! As we bore it along I suggested that we had better be careful and avoid the police, which remark established perfect confidence between us. But as we came to the tent, what was the amazement of the boy’s mother to see him returning with a gentleman helping him to carry his load! And to hear me say in Romany, and in a cheerful tone, “Mother, here is some wood we’ve been stealing for you.”
Gypsies have strong nerves and much cheek, but this was beyond her endowment; she was appalled at the unearthly strangeness of the whole proceeding, and when she spoke there was a skeleton rattle in her words and a quaver of startled ghastliness in her laugh. She had been alarmed for her boy, and when I appeared she thought I was a swell bringing him in under arrest; but when I announced myself in Romany as an accomplice, emotion stifled thought. And I lingered not, and spoke no more, but walked away into the woods and the darkness. However, the legend went forth on the roads, even unto Kingston, and was told among the rollicking Romanys of ’Appy Ampton; for there are always a merry, loafing lotof them about that festive spot, looking out for excursionists through the months when the gorse blooms, and kissing is in season—which is always. And he who seeks them on Sunday may find them camped in Green Lane.
When I wished for a long ramble on the hedge-lined roads—the sweet roads of old England—and by the green fields, I was wont to take a day’s walk to Netley Abbey. Then I could pause, as I went, before many a quiet, sheltered spot, adorned with arbors and green alleys, and protected by trees and hawthorn hedges, and again surrender my soul, while walking, to tender and vague reveries, in which all definite thoughts swim overpowered, yet happy, in a sea of voluptuous emotions inspired by clouds lost in the blue sea of heaven and valleys visioned away into the purple sky. What opium is to one, what hasheesh may be to another, whatkheyfor mere repose concentrated into actuality is to the Arab, that is Nature to him who has followed her for long years through poets and mystics and in works of art, until at last he pierces through dreams and pictures to reality.
The ruins of Netley Abbey, nine or ten miles from Oatlands Park, are picturesque and lonely, and well fitted for the dream-artist in shadows among sunshine. The priory was called Newstead or De Novo Loco in Norman times, when it was founded by Ruald de Calva, in the day of Richard Cœur de Lion. The ruins rise gray, white, and undressed with ivy, that they may contrast the more vividly with the deep emerald of the meadows around. “The surrounding scenery is composed of rivers and rivulets,”—for seven streams run by it, according to Aubrey,—“offoot-bridge and fords, plashy pools and fringed, tangled hollows, trees in groups or alone, and cattle dotted over the pastures:” an English Cuyp from many points of view, beautiful and English-home-like from all. Very near it is the quaint, out-of-the-way, darling little old church of Pirford, up a hill, nestling among trees, a half-Norman, decorated beauty, out of the age, but altogether in the heart. As I came near, of a summer afternoon, the waving of leaves and the buzzing of bees without, and the hum of the voices of children at school within the adjoining building, the cool shade and the beautiful view of the ruined Abbey beyond, made an impression which I can never forget. Among such scenes one learns why the English love so heartily their rural life, and why every object peculiar to it has brought forth a picture or a poem. I can imagine how many a man, who has never known what poetry was at home, has wept with yearning inexpressible, when sitting among burning sands and under the palms of the East, for such scenes as these.
But Netley Abbey is close by the river Wey, and the sight of that river and the thought of the story of the monks of the olden time who dwelt in the Abbey drive away sentiment as suddenly as a north wind scatters sea-fogs. For the legend is a merry one, and the reader may have heard it; but if he has not I will give it in one of the merriest ballads ever written. By whom I know not,—doubtless many know. I sing, while walking, songs of olden time.
A TRUE AND IMPORTANT RELATION OF THE WONDERFUL TUNNELL OF NEWARKE ABBEY AND OF THE UNTIMELY ENDE OF SEVERALL OF YE GHOSTLY BRETH’REN.
The monks of the Wey seldom sung any psalms,And little they thought of religion or qualms;Such rollicking, frolicking, ranting, and gay,And jolly old boys were the monks of the Wey.To the sweet nuns of Ockham devoting their cares,They had little time for their beads and their prayers;For the love of these maidens they sighed night and day,And neglected devotion, these monks of the Wey.And happy i’ faith might these brothers have beenIf the river had never been rolling betweenThe abbey so grand and the convent so gray,That stood on the opposite side of the Wey.For daily they sighed, and then nightly they pinedBut little to anchorite precepts inclined,So smitten with beauty’s enchantments were they,These rollicking, frolicking monks of the Wey.But scandal was rife in the country near,They dared not row over the river for fear;And no more could they swim it, so fat were they,These oily and amorous monks of the Wey.Loudly they groaned for their fate so hard,From the love of these beautiful maidens debarred,Till a brother just hit on a plan which would stayThe woe of these heart-broken monks of the Wey.“Nothing,” quoth he, “should true love sunder;Since we cannot go over, then let us go under!Boats and bridges shall yield to clay,We’ll dig a long tunnel clean under the Wey.”So to it they went with right good will,With spade and shovel and pike and bill;And from evening’s close till the dawn of dayThey worked like miners all under the Wey.And at vesper hour, as their work begun,Each sung of the charms of his favorite nun;“How surprised they will be, and how happy!” said they,“When we pop in upon them from under the Wey!”And for months they kept grubbing and making no soundLike other black moles, darkly under the ground;And no one suspected such going astray,So sly were these mischievous monks of the Wey.At last their fine work was brought near to a closeAnd early one morn from their pallets they rose,And met in their tunnel with lights to surveyIf they’d scooped a free passage right under the Wey.But alas for their fate! As they smirked and they smiled.To think how completely the world was beguiled,The river broke in, and it grieves me to sayIt drowned all the frolicksome monks of the Wey.* * * * *O churchmen beware of the lures of the flesh,The net of the devil has many a mesh!And remember whenever you’re tempted to stray,The fate that befell the poor monks of the Wey.
The monks of the Wey seldom sung any psalms,And little they thought of religion or qualms;Such rollicking, frolicking, ranting, and gay,And jolly old boys were the monks of the Wey.
To the sweet nuns of Ockham devoting their cares,They had little time for their beads and their prayers;For the love of these maidens they sighed night and day,And neglected devotion, these monks of the Wey.
And happy i’ faith might these brothers have beenIf the river had never been rolling betweenThe abbey so grand and the convent so gray,That stood on the opposite side of the Wey.
For daily they sighed, and then nightly they pinedBut little to anchorite precepts inclined,So smitten with beauty’s enchantments were they,These rollicking, frolicking monks of the Wey.
But scandal was rife in the country near,They dared not row over the river for fear;And no more could they swim it, so fat were they,These oily and amorous monks of the Wey.
Loudly they groaned for their fate so hard,From the love of these beautiful maidens debarred,Till a brother just hit on a plan which would stayThe woe of these heart-broken monks of the Wey.
“Nothing,” quoth he, “should true love sunder;Since we cannot go over, then let us go under!Boats and bridges shall yield to clay,We’ll dig a long tunnel clean under the Wey.”
So to it they went with right good will,With spade and shovel and pike and bill;And from evening’s close till the dawn of dayThey worked like miners all under the Wey.
And at vesper hour, as their work begun,Each sung of the charms of his favorite nun;“How surprised they will be, and how happy!” said they,“When we pop in upon them from under the Wey!”
And for months they kept grubbing and making no soundLike other black moles, darkly under the ground;And no one suspected such going astray,So sly were these mischievous monks of the Wey.
At last their fine work was brought near to a closeAnd early one morn from their pallets they rose,And met in their tunnel with lights to surveyIf they’d scooped a free passage right under the Wey.
But alas for their fate! As they smirked and they smiled.To think how completely the world was beguiled,The river broke in, and it grieves me to sayIt drowned all the frolicksome monks of the Wey.
* * * * *
O churchmen beware of the lures of the flesh,The net of the devil has many a mesh!And remember whenever you’re tempted to stray,The fate that befell the poor monks of the Wey.
It was all long ago, and now there are neither monks nor nuns; the convent has been converted, little by little, age by age, into cottages, even as the friars and nuns themselves may have been organically changed possibly into violets, but more probably into the festive sparrows which flit and hop and flirt about the ruins with abrupt startles, like pheasants sudden bursting on the wing. There is a pretty little Latin epigram, written by a gay monk, of a pretty little lady, who, being very amorous, and observing that sparrows were like her as to love, hoped that she might be turned into one after death; and it is notdifficult for a dreamer in an old abbey, of a golden day to fancy that these merry, saucy birdies, who dart and dip in and out of the sunshine or shadow, chirping their shameless dittiespro et con, were once the human dwellers in the spot, who sang their gaudrioles to pleasant strains.
I became familiar with many such scenes for many miles about Oatlands, not merely during solitary walks, but by availing myself of the kind invitations of many friends, and by hunting afoot with the beagles. In this fashion one has hare and hound, but no horse. It is not needed, for while going over crisp stubble and velvet turf, climbing fences and jumping ditches, a man has a keen sense of being his own horse, and when he accomplishes a good leap of being intrinsically well worth £200. And indeed, so long as anybody can walk day in and out a greater distance than would tire a horse, he may well believe he is really worth one. It may be a good thing for us to reflect on the fact that if slavery prevailed at the present day as it did among the polished Greeks the average price of young gentlemen, and even of young ladies, would not be more than what is paid for a good hunter. Divested of diamonds and of Worth’s dresses, what would a girl of average charms be worth to a stranger? Let us reflect!
It was an October morning, and, pausing after a run, I let the pack and the “course-men” sweep away, while I sat in a pleasant spot to enjoy the air and scenery. The solemn grandeur of groves and the quiet dignity of woodland glades, barred with rays of solid-seeming sunshine, such as the saint of old hung his cloak on, the brook into which the overhanging chestnuts drop, as if in sport, their creamygolden little boats of leaves, never seem so beautiful or impressive as immediately after a rush and cry of many men, succeeded by solitude and silence. Little by little the bay of the hounds, the shouts of the hunters, and the occasional sound of the horn grew fainter; the birds once more appeared, and sent forth short calls to their timid friends. I began again to notice who my neighbors were, as to daisies and heather which resided around the stone on which I sat, and the exclusive circle of a fairy-ring at a little distance, which, like many exclusive circles, consisted entirely of mushrooms.
As the beagle-sound died away, and while the hounds were “working around” to the road, I heard footsteps approaching, and looking up saw before me a gypsy woman and a boy. She was a very gypsy woman, an ideal witch, nut-brown, tangle-haired, aquiline of nose, and fierce-eyed; and fiercely did she beg! As amid broken Gothic ruins, overhung with unkempt ivy, one can trace a vanished and strange beauty, so in this worn face of the Romany, mantled by neglected tresses, I could see the remains of what must have been once a wonderful though wild loveliness. As I looked into those serpent eyes; trained for a long life to fascinate in fortune-telling simple dove-girls, I could readily understand the implicit faith with which many writers in the olden time spoke of the “fascination” peculiar to female glances. “The multiplication of women,” said the rabbis, “is the increase of witches,” for the belles in Israel were killing girls, with arrows, the bows whereof are formed by pairs of jet-black eyebrows joined in one. And thus it was that these black-eyed beauties, bymashing[108]men formany generations, with shafts shot sideways and most wantonly, at last sealed their souls into the corner of their eyes, as you have heard before. Cotton Mather tells us that these witches with peaked eye-corners could never weep but three tears out of their long-tailed eyes. And I have observed that such tears, as they sweep down the cheeks of the brunette witches, are also long-tailed, and recall by their shape and glitter the eyes from which they fell, even as the daughter recalls the mother. For all love’s witchcraft lurks in flashing eyes,—lontan del occhio lontan dal’ cuor.
It is a great pity that the pigeon-eye-peaks, so pretty in young witches, become in the old ones crow’s-feet and crafty. When I greeted the woman, she answered in Romany, and said she was a Stanley from the North. She lied bravely, and I told her so. It made no difference in any way, nor was she hurt. The brown boy, who seemed like a goblin, umber-colored fungus, growing by a snaky black wild vine, sat by her and stared at me. I was pleased, when he saidtober, that she corrected him, exclaiming earnestly, “Never saytoberfor road; that iscanting. Always saydrom; that is good Romanes.” There is always a way of bringing up a child in the way he should go,—though it be a gypsy one,—anddromcomes from the Greekdromos, which is elegant and classical. Then she began to beg again, to pass the time, and I lectured her severely on the sin and meanness of her conduct, and said, with bitterness, “Do dogs eat dogs, or are all the Gorgios dead in the land, that you cry for money to me? Oh, you are a fine Stanley! a nice Beshaley you, to sing mumpin and mongerin, when a half-blood Matthewshas too much decency to trouble the rye! And how much will you take? Whatever the gentleman pleases, and thank you, my kind sir, and the blessings of the poor gypsy woman on you. Yes, I know that,givelli, you mother of all the liars. You expect a sixpence, and here it is, and may you get drunk on the money, and be well thrashed by your man for it. And now see what I had in my hand all the time to give you. A lucky half crown, my deary; but that’s not for you now. I only give a sixpence to a beggar, but I stand apash-koraunato any Romany who’s a pal and amāl.”
This pleasing discourse made us very good friends, and, as I kept my eyes sharply fixed on her viper orbs with an air of intense suspicion, everything like ill-feeling or distrust naturally vanished from her mind; for it is of the nature of the Romanys and all their kind to like those whom they respect, and respect those whom they cannot deceive, and to measure mankind exactly by their capacity of being taken in, especially by themselves. As is also the case, in good society, with many ladies and some gentlemen,—and much good may it do them!
There was a brief silence, during which the boy still looked wistfully into my face, as if wondering what kind of gentleman I might be, until his mother said,—
“How do you do with themryas[swells]? What do you tell ’em—about—what do they think—you know?”
This was not explicit, but I understood it perfectly. There is a great deal of such loose, disjointed conversation among gypsies and other half-thinkers. An educated man requires, or pretends to himself to require,a most accurately-detailed and form-polished statement of anything to understand it. The gypsy is less exacting. I have observed among rural Americans much of this lottery style of conversation, in which one man invests in a dubious question, not knowing exactly what sort of a prize or blank answer he may draw. What the gypsy meant effectively was, “How do you account to the Gorgios for knowing so much about us, and talking with us? Our life is as different from yours as possible, and you never acquired such a knowledge of all our tricky ways as you have just shown without much experience of us and a double life. You are related to us in some way, and you deceive the Gorgios about it. What is your little game of life, on general principles?”
For the gypsy is so little accustomed to having any congenial interest taken in him that he can clearly explain it only by consanguinity. And as I was questioned, so I answered,—
“Well, I tell them I like to learn languages, and am trying to learn yours; and then I’m a foreigner in the country, anyhow, and they don’t know mydroms[ways], and they don’t care much what I do,—don’t you see?”
This was perfectly satisfactory, and as the hounds came sweeping round the corner of the wood she rose and went her way, and I saw her growing less and less along the winding road and up the hill, till she disappeared, with her boy, in a small ale-house. “Bang went the sixpence.”
When the last red light was in the west I went down to the river, and as I paused, and looked alternately at the stars reflected and flickering in the water and at the lights in the little gypsy camp,I thought that as the dancing, restless, and broken sparkles were to their serene types above, such were the wandering and wild Romany to the men of culture in their settled homes. It is from the house-dweller that the men of the roads and commons draw the elements of their life, but in that life they are as shaken and confused as the starlight in the rippling river. But if we look through our own life we find that it is not the gypsy alone who is merely a reflection and an imitation of the stars above him, and a creature of second-hand fashion.
I found in the camp an old acquaintance, named Brown, and also perceived at the first greeting that the woman Stanley had told Mrs. Brown that I would not bemongerdo, or begged from, and that the latter, proud of her power in extortion, and as yet invincible in mendicancy, had boasted that she would succeed, let others weakly fail. And to lose no time she went at me with an abruptness and dramatic earnestness which promptly betrayed the secret. And on the spot I made a vow that nothing should get a farthing from me, though I should be drawn by wild horses. And a horse was, indeed, brought into requisition to draw me, or my money, but without success; for Mr. Brown, as I very well knew,—it being just then the current topic in the best society on the road,—had very recently been involved in a tangled trouble with a stolen horse. This horse had been figuratively laid at his door, even as a “love-babe” is sometimes placed on the front steps of a virtuous and grave citizen,—at least, this is what White George averred,—and his very innocence and purity had, like a shining mark, attracted the shafts of the wicked. He had come out unscathed,with a package of papers from a lawyer, which established his character above par; but all this had cost money, beautiful golden money, and brought him to the very brink of ruin! Mrs. Brown’s attack was a desperate and determined effort, and there was more at stake on its success than the reader may surmise. Among gypsy women skill in begging implies the possession of every talent which they most esteem, such as artfulness, cool effrontery, and the power of moving pity or provoking generosity by pique or humor. A quaint and racy book might be written, should it only set forth the manner in which the experienced matrons give straight-tips or suggestions to the maidens as to the manner and lore of begging; and it is something worth hearing when several sit together and devise dodges, and tell anecdotes illustrating the noble art of mendicity, and how it should be properly practiced.
Mrs. Brown knew that to extort alms from me would place her on the pinnacle as an artist. Among all the Cooper clan, to which she was allied, there was not one who ever begged from me, they having all found that the ripest nuts are those which fall from the tree of their own accord, or are blown earthward by the soft breezes of benevolence, and not those which are violently beaten down. She began by pitiful appeals; she was moving, but I did not budge. She grew pathetic; she touched on the stolen horse; she paused, and gushed almost to tears, as much as to say, If it must be, youshallknow all. Ruin stared them in the face; poverty was crushing them. It was well acted,—rather in the Bernhardt style, which, if M. Ondit speaks the truth, is also employed rather extensively for acquiring “de monish.”I looked at the van, of which the Browns are proud, and inquired if it were true that it had been insured for a hundred pounds, as George had recently boasted. Persuasion having failed, Mrs. Brown tried bold defiance, saying that they needed no company who were no good to them, and plainly said to me I might be gone. It was her last card, thinking that a threat to dissolve our acquaintance would drive me to capitulate, and it failed. I laughed, went into the van, sat down, took out my brandy flask, and then accepted some bread and ale, and, to please them, read aloud all the papers acquitting George from all guilt as concerned the stolen horse,—papers which, he declared, had cost him full five pounds. This was a sad come-down from the story first told. Then I seriously rated his wife for begging from me. “You know well enough,” I said, “that I give all I can spare to your family and your people when they are sick or poor. And here you are, the richest Romanys on the road between Windsor and the Boro Gav, begging a friend, who knows all about you, for money! Now, here is a shilling. Take it. Have half a crown? Two of ’em! No! Oh, you don’t want it here in your own house. Well, you have some decency left, and to save your credit I won’t make you take it. And you scandalize me, a gentleman and a friend, just to show this tramp of a Stanleyjuva, who hasn’t even got a drag [wagon], that you can beat hera mongerin mandy[begging me].”
Mrs. Brown assented volubly to everything, and all the time I saw in her smiling eyes, ever agreeing to all, and heard from her voluble lips nothing but thelie,—that lie which is the mental action andinmost grain of the Romany, and especially of thediddikai, or half-breed. Anything and everything—trickery, wheedling or bullying, fawning or threatening, smiles, or rage, or tears—for a sixpence. All day long flattering and tricking to tell fortunes or sell trifles, and all life one greasy lie, with ready frowns or smiles: as it was in India in the beginning, as it is in Europe, and as it will be in America, so long as there shall be a rambler on the roads, amen!
Sweet peace again established, Mrs. Brown became herself once more, and acted the hospitable hostess, exactly in the spirit and manner of any woman who has “a home of her own,” and a spark of decent feeling in her heart. Like many actors, she was a bad lot on the boards, but a very nice person off them. Here in her rolling home she was neither a beggar nor poor, and she issued her orders grandly. “Boil some tea for therye—cook some coffee for therye—wait a few minutes, my darling gentleman, and I’ll brile you a steak—or here’s a fish, if you’d like it?” But I declined everything except the corner of a loaf and some ale; and all the time a little brown boy, with great black eyes, a perfect Murillo model, sat condensed in wondrous narrow space by the fire, baking small apples between the bars of the grate, and rolling up his orbs at me as if wondering what could have brought me into such a circle,—even as he had done that morning in the greenwood.
Now if the reader would know what the interior of a gypsy van, or “drag,” orwardo, is like, he may see it in the following diagram.
Interior of gypsy van
Ais the door;Bis the bed, or rather two beds, each six feet long, like berths, with a vacant space below;Cis a grate cooking-stove;Dis a table, which hangs by hinges from the wall;Eis a chest of drawers;fandfare two chairs. The general appearance of a well-kept van is that of a state-room. Brown’s is a very good van, and quite clean. They are admirably well adapted for slow traveling, and it was in such vans, purchased from gypsies, that Sir Samuel Baker and his wife explored the whole of Cyprus.
Mrs. Brown was proud of her van and of her little treasures. From the great recess under the bed she raked out as a rare curiosity an old Dolly Varden or damasked skirt, not at all worn, quite pretty, and evidently of considerable value to a collector. This had belonged to Mrs. Brown’s grandmother, an old gypsy queen. And it may be observed, by the way, that the claims of every Irishman of every degree to be descended from one of the ancient kings of Ireland fade into nothing before those of the gypsy women, all of whom, with rare exception, are the own daughters of royal personages, granddaughterhood being hardly a claim to true nobility. Then the bed itself was exhibited with pride, and the princess sang its praises, till she affirmed that theryehimself did not sleep on a better one, for which George reprimanded her. But she vigorously defended its excellence, and, to please her, I felt itand declared it was indeed much softer than the one I slept on, which was really true,—thank Heaven—and was received as a great compliment, and afterwards proclaimed on the roads even unto the ends of Surrey.
“Yes,” said Brown, as I observed some osiers in the cupboard, “when I feels like it I sometimes makes a pound a day a-making baskets.”
“I should think,” I said, “that it would be cheaper to buy French baskets of Bulrose [Bulureaux] in Houndsditch, ready made.”
“So one would think; but theranyor[osiers] costs nothin’, and so it’s all profit, any way.”
Then I urged the greater profit of living in America, but both assured me that so long as they could make a good living and be very comfortable, as they considered themselves, in England, it would be nonsense to go to America.
For all things are relative, and many a gypsy whom the begged-from pity sincerely, is as proud and happy in a van as any lord in the land. A very nice, neat young gypsy woman, camped long before just where the Browns were, once said to me, “It isn’t having everything fine and stylish that makes you happy. Now we’ve got a van, and have everything so elegant and comfortable, and sleep warm as anybody; and yet I often say to my husband that we used to be happier when we used to sleep under a hedge with, may be, only a thin blanket, and wake up covered with snow.” Now this woman had only a wretched wagon, and was always tramping in the rain, or cowering in a smoky, ragged tent and sitting on the ground, but she had food, fire, and fun, with warm clothes, and believed herself happy. Truly, she hadbetter reason to think so than any old maid with a heart run to waste on church gossip, or the latest engagements and marriages; for it is better to be a street-boy in a corner with a crust than one who, without it, discusses, in starvation, with his friend the sausages and turtle-soup in a cook-shop window, between which and themselves there is a great pane of glass fixed, never to be penetrated.
I never shall forget the sparkling splendor of that frosty morning in December when I went with a younger friend from Oatlands Park for a day’s walk. I may have seen at other times, but I do not remember, such winter lace-work as then adorned the hedges. The gossamer spider has within her an inward monitor which tells if the weather will be fine; but it says nothing about sudden changes to keen cold, and the artistic result was that the hedges were hung with thousands of Honiton lamp-mats, instead of the thread fly-catchers which their little artists had intended. And on twigs and dead leaves, grass and rock and wall, were such expenditures of Brussels and Spanish point, such a luxury of real old Venetian run mad, and such deliria of Russian lace as made it evident that Mrs. Jack Frost is a very extravagant fairy, but one gifted with exquisite taste. When I reflect how I have in my time spoken of the taste for lace and diamonds in women as entirely without foundation in nature, I feel that I sinned deeply. For Nature, in this lace-work, displays at times a sympathy with humanity,—especially womanity,—and coquets and flirts with it, as becomes the subject, in a manner which is merrily awful. There was once in Philadelphia a shop the windows of which were always filled with different kinds of the richestand rarest lace, and one cold morning I found that the fairies had covered the panes with literal frost fac-similes of the exquisite wares which hung behind. This was no fancy; the copies were as accurate as photographs. Can it be that in the invisible world there are Female Fairy Schools of Design, whose scholars combine in this graceful style Etching on Glass and Art Needlework?
We were going to the village of Hersham to make a call. It was not at any stylish villa or lordly manor-house,—though I knew of more than one in the vicinity where we would have been welcome,—but at a rather disreputable-looking edifice, which bore on its front the sign of “Lodgings for Travellers.” Now “traveller” means, below a certain circle of English life, not the occasional, but the habitual wanderer, or one who dwells upon the roads, and gains his living thereon. I have in my possession several cards of such a house. I found them wrapped in a piece of paper, by a deserted gypsy camp, where they had been lost:—
A NEW HOUSE.
Good Lodging for Travellers.With a Large Private Kitchen.
THE CROSS KEYS,West Street . . . maidenhead.
BY J. HARRIS.
The “private kitchen” indicates that the guests will have facilities for doing their own cooking, as all of them bring their own victuals in perpetual picnic. In the inclosure of the house in Hersham, the tops of two or three gypsy vans could always be seen above the high fence, and there was that generalair of mystery about the entire establishment which is characteristic of all places haunted by people whose ways are not as our ways, and whose little games are not as our little games. I had become acquainted with it and its proprietor, Mr. Hamilton, in that irregular and only way which is usual with such acquaintances. I was walking by the house one summer day, and stopped to ask my way. A handsome dark-brown girl was busy at the wash-tub, two or three older women were clustered at the gate, and in all their faces was the manner of thediddikaiorchureni, or half-blood gypsy. As I spoke I dropped my voice, and said, inquiringly,—
“Romanes?”
“Yes,” was the confidential answer.
They were all astonished, and kept quiet till I had gone a few rods on my way, when the whole party, recovering from their amazement, raised a gentle cheer, expressive of approbation and sympathy. A few days after, walking with a lady in Weybridge, she said to me,—
“Who is that man who looked at you so closely?”
“I do not know.”
“That’s very strange. I am quite sure I heard him utter two words in a strange language, as you passed, as if he only meant them for you. They sounded likesarshaun baw.” Which means, “How are you, sir?” or friend. As we came up the street, I saw the man talking with a well-dressed, sporting-looking man, not quite a gentleman, who sat cheekily in his own jaunty little wagon. As I passed, the one of the wagon said to the other, speaking of me, and in pure Romany, evidently thinking I did not understand,—
“Dikk’adovo Giorgio,adoi!” (Look at that Gorgio, there!)
Being a Romany rye, and not accustomed to be spoken of as a Gorgio, I looked up at him, angrily, when he, seeing that I understood him, smiled, and bowed politely in apology. I laughed and passed on. But I thought it a little strange, for neither of the men had the slightest indication of gypsiness. I met the one who had saidsarishān bāagain, soon after. I found that he and the one of the wagon were not of gypsy blood, but of a class not uncommon in England, who, be they rich or poor, are affected towards gypsies. The wealthy one lived with a gypsy mistress; the poorer one had a gypsy wife, and was very fond of the language. There is a very large class of these mysterious men everywhere about the country. They haunt fairs; they pop up unexpectedly as Jack-in-boxes in unsuspected guise; they look out from under fatherly umbrellas; their name is Legion; their mother is Mystery, and their uncle is Old Tom,—not of Virginia, but of Gin. Once, in the old town of Canterbury, I stood in the street, under the Old Woman with the Clock, one of the quaintest pieces of drollery ever imagined during the Middle Ages. And by me was a tinker, and as his wheel wentsiz-‘z-‘z-‘z,uz-uz-uz-z-z! I talked with him, and there joined us a fat, little, elderly, spectacled, shabby-genteel, but well-to-do-looking sort of a punchy, small tradesman. And, as we spoke, there went by a great, stout, roaring Romany woman,—a scarlet-runner of Babylon run to seed,—with a boy and a hand-cart to carry the seed in. And to her I cried, “Hav akai te mandy’ll del tute a shāori!” (Come here, and I’ll stand a sixpence!) But she did notbelieve in my offer, but went her way, like a Burning Shame, through the crowd, and was lost evermore. I looked at the little old gentleman to see what effect my outcry in a strange language had upon him. But he only remarked, soberly, “Well, now, Ishould’a’ thought a sixpence would ’a’ brought her to!” And the wheel said, “Suz-zuz-zuz-z-z I should ’a’ suz-suz ’a’ thought a suz-z-zixpence would ’a’ suz-zuz ’a’ brought her, too-z-z-z!” And I looked at the Old Woman with the Clock, and she ticked, “A—six—pence—would—have—brought—me—two—three—four”—and I began to dream that all Canterbury was Romany.
We came to the house, the landlord was up-stairs, ill in bed, but would be glad to see us; and he welcomed us warmly, and went deeply into Romany family matters with my friend, the Oxford scholar. Meanwhile, his daughter, a nice brunette, received and read a letter; and he tried to explain to me the mystery of the many men who are not gypsies, yet speak Romany, but could not do it, though he was one of them. It appeared from his account that they were “a kind of mixed, you see, and dusted in, you know, and on it, out of the family, it peppers up; but not exactly, you understand, and that’s the way it is. And I remember a case in point, and that was one day, and I had sold a horse, and was with my boy in amoramengro’s buddika[barber’s shop], and my boy says to me, in Romanes, ‘Father, I’d like to have my hair cut.’ ‘It’s too dear here, my son,’ said I, Romaneskes; ‘for the bill says threepence.’ And then the barber, he ups and says, in Romany, ‘Since you’re Romanys, I’ll cut it fortwopence, though it’s clear out of all my rules.’ And he didit; but why that manrakkered RomanesI don’t know, nor how it comes about; for he hadn’t no more call to it than a pig has to be a preacher. But I’ve known men in Sussex to take to diggin’ truffles on the same principles, and one Gorgio in Hastings that adopted sellin’ fried fish for his livin’, about the town, because he thought it was kind of romantic. That’s it.”
Over the chimney-piece hung a large engraving of Milton and his daughters. It was out of place, and our host knew it, and was proud. He said he had bought it at an auction, and that it was a picture of Middleton,—a poet, he believed; “anyhow, he was a writing man.” But, on second thought, he remembered that the name was not Middleton, but Millerton. And on further reflection, he was still more convinced that Millertonwasa poet.
I once asked old Matthew Cooper the Romany word for a poet. And he promptly replied that he had generally heard such a man called agivellengeroorgilliengro, which means a song-master, but that he himself regardedshereskero-mush, or head-man, as more elegant and deeper; for poets make songs out of their heads, and are also ahead of all other men in head-work. There is a touching and unconscious tribute to the art of arts in this definition which is worth recording. It has been said that, as people grow polite, they cease to be poetical; it is certain that in the first circles they do not speak of their poets with such respect as this.
Out again into the fresh air and the frost on the crisp, crackling road and in the sunshine. At such a time, when cold inspires life, one can understand why the old poets and mystics believed that there was firein ice. Therefore, Saint Sebaldus, coming into the hut of a poor and pious man who was dying of cold, went out, and, bringing in an armful of icicles, laid them on the andirons and made a good fire. Now this fire was the inner glowing glory of God, and worked both ways,—of course you see the connection,—as was shown in Adelheid von Sigolsheim, the Holy Nun of Unterlinden, who was so full of it that she passed the night in a freezing stream, and then stood all the morning, ice-clad, in the choir, and never caught cold. And the pious Peroneta, to avoid a sinful suitor, lived all winter, up to her neck, in ice-water, on the highest Alp in Savoy.[125]These were saints. But there was a gypsy, named Dighton, encamped near Brighton, who told me nearly the same story of another gypsy, who was no saint, and which I repeat merely to show how extremes meet. It was that this gypsy, who was inspired with anything but the inner glowing glory of God, but who was, on the contrary, cram full of pure cussedness, being warmed by the same,—and the devil,—when chased by the constable, took refuge in a river full of freezing slush and broken ice, where he stood up to his neck and defied capture; for he verily cared no more for it than did Saint Peter of Alcantara, who was both ice and fire proof. “Come out of that, my good man,” said the gentleman, whose hen he had stolen, “and I’ll let you go.” “No, I won’t come out,” said the gypsy. “My blood be on your head!” So the gentleman offered him five pounds, and then a suit of clothes, to come ashore. The gypsy reflected, and at last said, “Well, if you’ll add a drink of spirits, I’ll come; but it’s only to oblige you that I budge.”
Then we walked in the sober evening, with its gray gathering shadows, as the last western rose light rippled in the river, yet fading in the sky,—like a good man who, in dying, speaks cheerfully of earthly things, while his soul is vanishing serenely into heaven. The swans, looking like snowballs, unconscious of cold were taking their last swim towards the reedy, brake-tangled islets where they nested, gossiping as they went. The deepening darkness, at such a time, becomes more impressive from the twinkling stars, just as the subduing silence is noted only by the far-borne sounds from the hamlet or farm-house, or the occasional whispers of the night-breeze. So we went on in the twilight, along the Thames, till we saw the night-fire of the Romanys and its gleam on thetan. Atanis, strictly speaking, a tent, but a tent is a dwelling, or stopping-place; and so from earliest Aryan time, the wordtanis like Alabama, or “here we rest,” and may be found intun, the ancestor of town, and instan, as in Hindostan,—and if I blunder, so much the better for the philological gentlemen, who, of all others, most delight in setting erring brothers right, and never miss a chance to show, through others’ shame, how much they know.
There was a bark of a dog, and a voice said, “The Romany rye!” They had not seen us, but the dog knew, and they knew his language.
“Sarishan ryor!”
“O boro duvel atch’ pa leste!” (The great Lord be on you!) This is not a common Romany greeting. It is of ancient days and archaic. Sixty or seventy years ago it was current. Old Gentilla Cooper, the famous fortune-teller of the Devil’s Dike, near Brighton, knew it, and when she heard it from me shewas moved,—just as a very old negro in London was, when I said to him, “Sady, uncle.” I said it because I had recognized by the dog’s bark that it was Sam Smith’s tan. Sam likes to be considered asdeepRomany. He tries to learn old gypsy words, and he affects old gypsy ways. He is pleased to be called Petulengro, which means Smith. Therefore, my greeting was a compliment.
In a few minutes we were in camp and at home. We talked of many things, and among others of witches. It is remarkable that while the current English idea of a witch is that of an old woman who has sold herself to Satan, and is a distinctly marked character, just like Satan himself, that of the witch among gypsies is general and Oriental. There is no Satan in India. Mrs. Smith—since dead—held that witches were to be found everywhere. “You may know a natural witch,” she said, “by certain signs. One of these is straight hair which curls at the ends. Such women have it in them.”
It was only recently, as I write, that I was at a very elegant art reception, which was fully reported in the newspapers. And I was very much astonished when a lady called my attention to another young and very pretty lady, and expressed intense disgust at the way the latter wore her hair. It was simply parted in the middle, and fell down on either side, smooth as a water-fall, and then broke into curls at the ends, just as water, after falling, breaks into waves and rapids. But as she spoke, I felt it all, and saw that Mrs. Petulengro was in the right. The girl with the end-curled hair was uncanny. Her hair curled at the ends,—so did her eyes; shewasa witch.
“But there’s a many witches as knows clever things,” said Mrs. Petulengro. “And I learned from one of them how to cure the rheumatiz. Suppose you’ve got the rheumatiz. Well, just you carry a potato in your pocket. As the potato dries up, your rheumatiz will go away.”
Sam Smith was always known on the roads as Fighting Sam. Years have passed, and when I have asked after him I have always heard that he was either in prison or had just been let out. Once it happened that, during a fight with a Gorgio, the Gorgio’s watch disappeared, and Sam was arrested under suspicion of having got up the fight in order that the watch might disappear. All of his friends declared his innocence. The next trouble was forchorin a gry, or stealing a horse, and so was the next, and so on. As horse-stealing is not a crime, but only “rough gambling,” on the roads, nobody defended him on these counts. He was, so far as this went, only a sporting character. When his wife died he married Athalía, the widow of Joshua Cooper, a gypsy, of whom I shall speak anon. I always liked Sam. Among the travelers, he was always spoken of as genteel, owing to the fact, that whatever the state of his wardrobe might be, he always wore about his neck an immaculate white woolen scarf, and onjours de fête, such as horse-races, sported aboro stardī, or chimney-pot hat. O my friend, Colonel Dash, of the club! Change but the name, this fable is of thee!
“There’s to be awalgoro,kaliko i sala—a fair to-morrow morning, at Cobham,” said Sam, as he departed.
“All right. We’ll be there.”
As I went forth by the river into the night, and the stars looked down like loving eyes, there shot a meteor across the sky, one long trail of light, out of darkness into darkness, one instant bright, then dead forever. And I remembered how I once was told that stars, like mortals, often fall in love. O love, forever in thy glory go! And that they send their starry angels forth, and that the meteors are their messengers. O love, forever in thy glory go! For love and light in heaven, as on earth, were ever one, and planets speak with light. Light is their language; as they love they speak. O love, forever in thy glory go!
The walk from Oatlands Park Hotel to Cobham is beautiful with memorials of Older England. Even on the grounds there is a quaint brick gateway, which is the only relic of a palace which preceded the present pile. The grandfather was indeed a stately edifice, built by Henry VIII., improved and magnified, according to his lights, by Inigo Jones, and then destroyed during the civil war. The river is here very beautiful, and the view was once painted by Turner. It abounds in “short windings and reaches.” Here it is, indeed, the Olerifera Thamesis, as it was called by Guillaume le Breton in his “Phillipeis,” in the days of Richard the Lion Heart. Here the eyots and banks still recall Norman days, for they are “wild and were;” and there is even yet a wary otter or two, known to the gypsies and fishermen, which may be seen of moonlight nights plunging or swimming silently in the haunted water.
Now we pass Walton Church, and look in, that my friend may see the massy Norman pillars and arches, the fine painted glass, and the brasses. One of these represents John Selwyn, who was keeper of the royal park of Oatlands in 1587. Tradition, still current in the village, says that Selwyn was a man of wondrous strength and of rare skill in horsemanship.Once, when Queen Elizabeth was present at a stag hunt, he leaped from his horse upon the back of the stag, while both were running at full speed, kept his seat gracefully, guided the animal towards the queen, and stabbed him so deftly that he fell dead at her majesty’s feet. It was daintily done, and doubtless Queen Bess, who loved a proper man, was well pleased. The brass plate represents Selwyn as riding on the stag, and there is in the village a shop where the neat old dame who presides, or her daughter, will sell you for a penny a picture of the plate, and tell you the story into the bargain. In it the valiant ranger sits on the stag, which he is stabbing through the neck with hiscouteau de chasse, looking meanwhile as solemn as if he were sitting in a pew and listening toDe profundis. He who is great in one respect seldom fails in some other, and there is in the church another and a larger brass, from which it appears that Selwyn not only had a wife, but also eleven children, who are depicted in successive grandeur or gradation. There are monuments by Roubiliac and Chantrey in the church, and on the left side of the altar lies buried William Lilly, the great astrologer, the Sidrophel of Butler’s “Hudibras.” And look into the chancel. There is a tablet to his memory, which was put up by Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, who has left it in print that this “fair black marble stone” cost him £6 4s. 6d. When I was a youth, and used to pore in the old Franklin Library of Philadelphia over Lilly, I never thought that his grave would be so near my home. But a far greater literary favorite of mine lies buried in the church-yard without. This is Dr. Maginn, the author of “Father Tom and the Pope,” and manyanother racy, subtle jest. A fellow of infinite humor,—the truest disciple of Rabelais,—and here he lies without a monument!
Summon the sexton, and let us ask him to show us the scold’s, or gossip’s, bridle. This is a rare curiosity, which is kept in the vestry. It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred years ago there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted with gab and so loaded and primed with the devil’s own gunpowder, that all moral suasion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old Reisersberg wrote, thatfatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere sulphure(’t is all nonsense to try to quench fire with brimstone). For such diavolas they had made—what the sexton is just going to show you—a muzzle of thin iron bars, which pass around the head and are padlocked behind. In front a flat piece of iron enters the mouth and keeps down the tongue. On it is the date 1633, and certain lines, no longer legible:—
“Chester presents Walton with a bridle,To curb women’s tongues that talk too idle.”
“Chester presents Walton with a bridle,To curb women’s tongues that talk too idle.”
A sad story, if we only knew it all! What tradition tells is that long ago there was a Master Chester, who lost a fine estate through the idle, malicious clack of a gossiping, lying woman. “What is good for a bootless bene?” What he did was to endow the church with this admirable piece of head-gear. And when any woman in the parish was unanimously adjudged to be deserving of the honor, the bridle was put on her head and tongue, and she was led about town by the beadle as an example to all the scolding sisterhood. Truly, if it could only be applied to the women and men who repeat gossip, rumorsreports,on dits, small slanders, proved or unproved, to all gobe-mouches, club-gabblers, tea-talkers and tattlers, chatterers, church-twaddlers, wonderers if-it-be-true-what-they-say; in fine, to the entire sister and brother hood of tongue-waggers, I for one would subscribe my mite to have one kept in every church in the world, to be zealously applied to their vile jaws. For verily the mere Social Evil is an angel of light on this earth as regards doing evil, compared to the Sociable Evil,—and thus endeth the first lesson.
We leave the church, so full of friendly memories. In this one building alone there are twenty things known to me from a boy. For from boyhood I have held in my memory those lines by Queen Elizabeth which she uttered here, and have read Lilly and Ashmole and Maginn; and this is only one corner in merrie England! Am I a stranger here? There is a father-land of the soul, which has no limits to him who, far sweeping on the wings of song and history, goes forth over many lands.
We have but a little farther to go on our way before we come to the quaint old manor-house which was of old the home of President Bradshaw, the grim old Puritan. There is an old sailor in the village, who owns a tavern, and he says, and the policeman agrees with him, that it was in this house that the death-warrant of King Charles the First was signed. Also, that there is a subterranean passage which leads from it to the Thames, which was in some way connected with battle, murder, plots, Puritans, sudden death, and politics; though how this was is more than legend can clearly explain. Whether his sacred majesty was led to execution through thiscavity, or whether Charles the Second had it for one of his numerous hiding-places, or returned through it with Nell Gwynn from his exile, are other obscure points debated among the villagers. The truth is that the whole country about Walton is subterrened with strange and winding ways, leading no one knows whither, dug in the days of the monks or knights, from one long-vanished monastery or castle to the other. There is the opening to one of these hard by the hotel, but there was never any gold found in it that ever I heard of. And all the land is full of legend, and ghosts glide o’ nights along the alleys, and there is an infallible fairy well at hand, named the Nun, and within a short walk stands the tremendous Crouch oak, which was known of Saxon days. Whoever gives but a little of its bark to a lady will win her love. It takes its name fromcroix(a cross), according to Mr. Kemble,[134]and it is twenty-four feet in girth. Its first branch, which is forty-eight feet long, shoots out horizontally, and is almost as large as the trunk. Under this tree Wickliffe preached, and Queen Elizabeth dined.
It has been well said by Irving that the English, from the great prevalence of rural habits throughout every class of society, have been extremely fond of those festivals and holidays which agreeably interrupt the stillness of country life. True, the days have gone when burlesque pageant and splendid procession made even villages magnificent. Harp and tabor and viol are no longer heard in every inn when people would be merry, and men have forgotten how to give themselves up to headlong roaring revelry. The last of this tremendous frolicking in Europedied out with the last yearlykermessin Amsterdam, and it was indeed wonderful to see with what utterabandonthe usually stolid Dutch flung themselves into a rushing tide of frantic gayety. Here and there in England a spark of the old fire, lit in mediæval times, still flickers, or perhaps flames, as at Dorking in the annual foot-ball play, which is carried on with such vigor that two or three thousand people run wild in it, while all the windows and street lamps are carefully screened for protection. But notwithstanding the gradually advancing republicanism of the age, which is dressing all men alike, bodily and mentally, the rollicking democracy of these old-fashioned festivals, in which the peasant bonneted the peer without ceremony, and rustic maids ran racesen chemisefor a pound of tea, is entirely too leveling for culture. There are still, however, numbers of village fairs, quietly conducted, in which there is much that is pleasant and picturesque, and this at Cobham was as pretty a bit of its kind as I ever saw. These are old-fashioned and gay in their little retired nooks, and there the plain people show themselves as they really are. The better class of the neighborhood, having no sympathy with such sports or scenes, do not visit village fairs. It is, indeed, a most exceptional thing to see any man who is a “gentleman,” according to the society standard, in any fair except Mayfair in London.