Читать книгу I've been a Gipsying - George Smith - Страница 4

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After being kept in bed at a friend’s house by pain and prostration for forty hours, it was pleasant to tramp upon the green, mossy sward of Nature in Victoria Park on a bright Easter Monday morning, with the sun winking and blinking in my face through the trees on my way to the station in the midst of a throng of busy holiday-seekers, dressed in their best clothes, with all the variety of colour and fashion that can only be seen on a bank-holiday. The fashions worn by the ladies ranged from the reign of Queen Anne to that of the latest fantasy under our good Queen Victoria, with plenty of room for digression and varieties according to the individual taste and vagary. Some of the ladies’ pretty faces were not without colour which makes “beautiful for ever.” There were others who might almost claim relationship to Shetland ponies, for their hair hung over their foreheads, covering their “witching eyes,” making them like two-year old colts, and as if they were ashamed to show the noble foreheads God had given them. Others were walking on stilts, evidently with much discomfort, and with both eyes shut to the injury they were inflicting upon their delicate frames and constitutions. This class of young ladies evidently thought that high heels, pretty ankles, and small feet, with plenty of giggle and bosh, were the things to “trap ’em and catch ’em.” Poor things! they are terribly mistaken on this point. The things to “trap ’em and catch ’em” are graceful action, modest reserve, soft looks, a heart full of sympathy, tenderness, goodness, and kindness. Few young men can withstand these “fireworks.” These are the things which make “beautiful for ever.”

The fashions adopted by the gentlemen were all “cuts” and “shapes.” Naughty children vulgarly call them “young dandies”—“flashy fops” whose brains and money—if they ever had any—vanish into smoke or the fumes of a beer barrel. Their garments were covered with creases, caused by the ironing process at their “uncle’s,” which certainly did not add to their appearance, or the elegance of their figures. As they yawned, laughed, shouted, and giggled upon the platform, with their mouths open—not quite as wide as Jumbo’s when apples are thrown at him—it was not surprising that flies fast disappeared.

There were others whose head and face had the appearance of having been in many a storm of the “bull and pup” fashion. They wore pantaloons tight round the knees and wide about the ankles, and coats made of a small Scotch plaid, blue and black cloth, with pockets inside and outside, capable of holding a few rabbits, hares, and partridges without any inconvenience to the wearer. At the heels of these gentry, who loitered about with sticks in their hands, skulked lurcher dogs.

Frequently I came alongside a young gentleman with an intelligent face, marked by thought, care, and study, who evidently was taking an “outing” for the good of his health. As he passed the vacant-minded part of the throng and crush, he seemed to give a kind of side glance of pity and contempt, and then passed along, keeping a sharp look-out after his pockets.

Among the crowd of pleasure-seekers there was a large sprinkling of men with premature grey locks and snowy white hair, betoking a life of hurry and worry, thought, care, and anxiety, with several children jumping and frisking round them with glee, delight, joy, and smiles at the prospect of spending a day with their fathers in the forest free from school and city life. As the lovely children were bounding along, it only required a very slight stretch of imagination to read the thoughts of the good father, and to hear him saying to the children, “I wish I was young again, I should like to have a romp with you to-day; my heart beats with joy at seeing you dance about. God bless you, my dear children; God bless you! I am so glad to see you so happy.” And then tears would trickle down the face of the early careworn father, at the thought of a coming parting, when he would have to bid them good-bye, and leave them in the hands of God and an early widowed mother, to get along as well as they could in the midst of the cold shoulders of the friends of the bygone prosperous times, who have received many favours at the hands of the early grey-bearded father, but shudder at the thought of being asked by the poor widow for a favour.

The children, with ringlets and flowing hair and bright eyes, now cling to him and hold him by the tails of his coat and his hands, and begin to sing as they speed towards the forest—

“The Lion of Judah shall break every chain

And give us the victory again and again;

Be hushed, my sad spirit, the worst that can come

But shortens the journey and hastens me home.”

And away they went out of sight among the tussocks of grass, little hills, hedges, low bushes, and heather, to gather daisies and other wild flowers, perhaps not to be seen again by me till we meet on the plains of Paradise.

Among the crowd there were a number of men, who could not be mistaken by any one who knows anything of literary work and literary men, trying to get a “breath of fresh air” and a few wrinkles off their face, and to come in contact with some one who could touch the spring of pleasure—which by this time had been nearly dried up, or frozen up by studying and anxiety—and bring a smile to the face.

I ran against one man who was evidently in deep trouble, and I began to question him as to the cause of his sorrow, and he told me as follows: “For many years I was a clerk in a solicitor’s office in the city, and on my arrival home at night, I used to write stories and other things for the papers, without pay, merely for pleasure. In course of time my eyesight failed me, and I had to give up my situation. I thought I would try to write a story for publication, so that I might maintain my family, and keep them from the workhouse. I began the tale and finished it. I made sure that I should have no difficulty in getting some publisher to take it up and print it for me, and that I should make a fortune, and be made a man; but to my surprise no one would look at it. I went from one place to another, day after day, without any success, returning home every night thoroughly broken down and dispirited, and to-day I have my manuscript without any prospect of meeting with a customer, and am strolling here to contemplate the next step.” I gave him a little encouragement, and told him to cheer up—

“Behind a frowning Providence He hides a smiling face.”

We shook hands and parted.

I had not gone far before I overtook a woman in deep mourning, with four children walking slowly along. There was no friskiness, liveliness, and sport about this family. The two least hung as it were upon the skirts of the poor sorrowful mother’s garments. Despair seemed to be written not only upon their faces, but upon their clothes and actions. The fountain of tears had been dried up, but not by the kindness of friends, but by poverty and starvation, with all their grim horrors staring them in the face, and with the terrible workhouse as the lot in store for them, till there was scarcely any vitality left in their system from which tears could be extracted either by kindness or sorrow. They seemed to be the embodiment of pallor, languidness, and lifelessness. This poor woman had had a good education; in fact, her manner and conversation seemed to be that of a lady who had moved in good society; but alas, overwork, worry, and death had early robbed her of a good husband, when he was on the threshold of a first-class position and a fortune, and all was gone! gone! and now “blank,” “blank,” “blank” seemed to be written everywhere. I tried to console her best as I could, and left her.

I had now begun to mount the hills of Epping Forest with a different phase of human life before and on either side of me. On the grass were four gipsies and “Rodneys,” with dogs lying beside them. In all appearance they had neither worked nor washed in their lives, and, as they said, they were “too old to learn how now.” I had not got much further before I was accosted by a gipsy girl, apparently about fourteen, with a baby nearly nude, and covered with dirt and filth, draining the nourishment of life from its dirty mother, who exposed her breasts without the least shame. She saw that I noticed her, and without a moment’s hesitation asked me if I wanted my “fortune told.” She said that she would tell it to me for a trifle. Her father—to all appearance—and brothers stood by, and acting either upon her own instincts or a wink from them, she said, “I see you know it better than I can tell you;” and away she sidled off to attend to her cocoa-nuts, saying, after a round of swearing at four gipsy children, “I hope you will give my baby a penny; that’s a good gentleman, do, and God will bless you for it.”

I had not gone far up the hill before I found myself in company with a forest ranger; and a rare good-looking fellow he was. He was a short thickset man, and as round almost as a prize bullock. He said the gipsies—so-called gipsies—were the plague of his life. They were squatting about everywhere, breaking the fences and stealing everything they could lay their hands upon. Before the last three years there were hundreds of gipsies in the forest, living by plunder and fortune-telling, and since they had driven them away, they had settled upon the outskirts of the forest and pieces of waste land, some of which were rented by some of the better class gipsies, and relet again to the other gipsies at a small charge per week, who thus escaped the law. This good ranger said there were no real gipsies at the present time in the country. They had been mixed up with other vagabonds that scarcely a trace of the genuine gipsy was left.

Some old gipsies were complaining very much because the price of cocoa-nuts had been raised. “Until now,” said this lot of vagabond gipsies, “we could get cocoa-nuts at one pound per hundred; now we are, to-day, giving thirty shillings per hundred; and it is no joke when you get some of those old cricketers at work among them. They bowl them off like one o’clock.” “How do you do in such a case?” I asked. “Well, sometimes we let them go on till they get a belly-full, and sometimes we cries quits, and will have no more on ’em, and tell them to go somewhere else, we are quite satisfied. You know, sir, better than I can tell you that it is no joke to have your nuts bowled off like that. I feel sometimes,” said one gipsy, with clenched fist raised almost to my face and closed teeth, “that I should like to bowl their yeds off, and no mistake. I feel savage enough to punch their een out, and I could do it in a jiffy.” He now left me and bawled out, “Now, gents, try your luck, try your luck; all bad uns returned.” There was a brisk trade, and a lot of shoeless, dirty little gipsy children were scrambling after the balls, and throwing to the winners the nuts they had won; every now and then there would be a terrible row over a nut—whether it was properly hit, or who was the rightful owner. “Bang” went a ball from a big fellow against a cocoa-nut, sending it and the juice inside flying in all directions, and the youngsters scrambling after the pieces. And then there would be another bawl out by a gipsy woman, “Bowl again, gentlemen; try your luck, try your luck; all good uns and no bad uns; bad uns returned.” I left this lot of gipsies to pursue my way to the “Robin Hood,” where there was a pell-mell gathering of all sorts of human beings numbering thousands. In elbowing my way through the crowd, a sharp, business-kind of a gipsy-woman, well dressed and not bad looking, eyed me over, and, thinking that I was “Johnny” from the country, said to a woman who was near her, “You keep back, I mean to tell this gentleman his fortune.” Three or four steps forward she took, and then stood full in front of me. “A fine day, sir,” said the gipsy woman with a twinkle in her eye and a side laugh, nudging to another gipsy woman at her elbow. “Yes, a very fine day,” I said. She now drew a little nearer, and said in not very loud tones, “Would you like to have your fortune told you, my good gentleman? I could tell you something that would please you, I am sure. There is good luck in your face. Now, my dear good gentleman, do let me tell your fortune. You will become rich and have many friends, but will have many false friends and enemies.” Just as she was beginning to spin her yarn one of the B— gipsies came up. She was dressed in a glaring red Scotch plaid dress, with red, blue, green, and yellow ribbons flying about her head and shoulders; and in her arms was a baby which was dressed in white linen and needlework. This gipsy woman was stout, dark, and with round features, her black hair was waved like I have seen the manes of horses, and her eye the opposite of heavenly. She now turned to the gipsy woman who had accosted me and said, “Mrs. Smith, you need not tell this gentleman his fortune, he knows more than we both can tell him. This is Mr. Smith of Coalville, he had tea with us at K—.” “Oh,” said the gipsy woman named Smith, “this is Mr. Smith of Coalville, is it? I’ve heard a deal about him. I’ll go, or he’ll be putting me in a book. Goodbye.” She put out her hands to shake mine, and then vanished out of my sight, and I never saw her again in the forest during the day. I suppose she fancied that I should be bringing her to book for fortune-telling. I was now left with the gipsy B— and her baby. She threw aside her shawl in order that I might look at the child, who was apparently about four months old. Poor thing! it did not know that it was the child of sin, for its parents were living in adultery, as nearly all the gipsies do. This gipsy woman was earning money for herself, and an idle man she was keeping, by exhibiting her illegitimate offspring and telling silly girls their fortunes. Think about it lightly as we may, fortune-telling is vastly on the increase all over the country, producing most deadly and soul-crushing results. Just as I was touching the poor baby’s face and putting sixpence in its hand, a gentleman connected with the Ragged School Union came up with his two children. I found as we travelled up the hill together that I was talking to Mr. Curtiss, the organizing secretary of the Union, who was in the forest for an “outing,” and could, no doubt, with Dr. Grosart say—

“I wonder not, when ’mong the fresh, glad leaves,

I hear the early spring-birds sing;

I wonder not that ’neath the sunny eaves

The swallow flits with glancing wing.”