ENGLISH GYPSIES. (continued 2)

There was certainly, to say the least, a rather bourgeois tone at the race, and gentility was conspicuous by its absence; but I did not find it so outrageously low as I had been led to expect. I confess that I was not encouraged to attempt to increase my little hoard of silver by betting, and the certainty that if I lost I could not lunch made me timid. But the good are never alone in this world, and I found friends whom I dreamed not of. Leaving the crowd, I sought the gypsy vans, and by one of these was old Liz Buckland.

“Sarishan rye! And glad I am to see you. Why didn’t you come down into Kent to see the hoppin’? Many a time the Romanys says they expected to see their rye there. Just the other night, your Coopers was a-lyin’ round their fire, every one of ’em in a new red blanket, lookin’ so beautiful as the light shone on ’em, and I says, ‘If our rye was to see you, he’d just have that book of his out, and take all your pictures.’”

After much gossip over absent friends, I said,—

“Well, dye, I stand a shilling for beer, and that’s all I can do to-day, for I’ve come out with only shove trin-grushi.”

Liz took the shilling, looked at it and at me with an earnest air, and shook her head.

“It’ll never do, rye,—never. A gentleman wants more than six shillin’s to see a race through, and a reg’lar Romany rye like you ought to slap down his lovvo with the best of ’em for the credit of his people. And if you want a bar [a pound] or two, I’ll lend you the money, and never fear about your payment.”

It was kind of the old dye, but I thought that I would pull through on my five shillings, before I would draw on the Romany bank. To be considered with sincere sympathy, as an object of deserving charity, on the lowest race-ground in England, and to be offered eleemosynary relief by a gypsy, was, indeed, touching the hard pan of humiliation. I went my way, idly strolling about, mingling affably with all orders, for my watch was at home. Vacuus viator cantabit. As I stood by a fence, I heard a gentlemanly-looking young man, who was evidently a superior pickpocket, or “a regular fly gonoff,” say to a friend,—

“She’s on the ground,—a great woman among the gypsies. What do they call her?”

“Mrs. Lee.”

“Yes. A swell Romany she is.”

Whenever one hears an Englishman, not a scholar, speak of gypsies as “Romany,” he may be sure that man is rather more on the loose than becomes a steady citizen, and that he walks in ways which, if not of darkness, are at least in a shady demi-jour, with a gentle down grade. I do not think there was anybody on the race-ground who was not familiar with the older word.

It began to rain, and before long my new velveteen coat was very wet. I looked among the booths for one where I might dry myself and get something to eat, and, entering the largest, was struck by the appearance of the landlady. She was a young and decidedly pretty woman, nicely dressed, and was unmistakably gypsy. I had never seen her before, but I knew who she was by a description I had heard. So I went up to the bar and spoke:—

“How are you, Agnes?”

“Bloomin’. What will you have, sir?”

“Dui curro levinor, yeck for tute, yeck for mandy.” (Two glasses for ale,—one for you, one for me.)

She looked up with a quick glance and a wondering smile, and then said,—

“You must be the Romany rye of the Coopers. I’m glad to see you. Bless me, how wet you are. Go to the fire and dry yourself. Here, Bill, I say! Attend to this gentleman.”

There was a tremendous roaring fire at the farther end of the booth, at which were pieces of meat, so enormous as to suggest a giant’s roast or a political barbecue rather than a kitchen. I glanced with some interest at Bill, who came to aid me. In all my life I never saw a man who looked so thoroughly the regular English bull-dog bruiser of the lowest type, but battered and worn out. His nose, by oft-repeated pummeling, had gradually subsided almost to a level with his other features, just as an ancient British grave subsides, under the pelting storms of centuries, into equality with the plain. His eyes looked out from under their bristly eaves like sleepy wild-cats from a pig-pen, and his physique was tremendous. He noticed my look of curiosity.

“Old Bruisin’ Bill, your honor. I was well knowed in the prize-ring once. Been in the newspapers. Now, you mus’n’t dry your coat that way! New welweteen ought always to be wiped afore you dry it. I was a gamekeeper myself for six years, an’ wore it all that time nice and proper, I did, and know how may be you’ve got a thrip’ny bit for old Bill. Thanky.”

I will do Mrs. Agnes Wynn the credit to say that in her booth the best and most abundant meal that I ever saw for the price in England was given for eighteen pence. Fed and dried, I was talking with her, when there came up a pretty boy of ten, so neat and well dressed and altogether so nice that he might have passed current for a gentleman’s son anywhere.

“Well, Agnes. You’re Wynn by name and winsome by nature, and all the best you have has gone into that boy. They say you gypsies used to steal children. I think it’s time to turn the tables, and when I take the game up I’ll begin by stealing your chavo.”

Mrs. Wynn looked pleased. “He is a good boy, as good as he looks, and he goes to school, and don’t keep low company.”

Here two or three octoroon, duodecaroon, or vigintiroon Romany female friends of the landlady came up to be introduced to me, and of course to take something at my expense for the good of the house. This they did in the manner specially favored by gypsies; that is to say, a quart of ale, being ordered, was offered first to me, in honor of my social position, and then passed about from hand to hand. This rite accomplished, I went forth to view the race. The sun had begun to shine again, the damp flags and streamers had dried themselves in its cheering rays, even as I had renewed myself at Dame Wynn’s fire, and I crossed the race-course. The scene was lively, picturesque, and thoroughly English. There are certain pleasures and pursuits which, however they may be perfected in other countries, always seem to belong especially to England, and chief among these is the turf. As a fresh start was made, as the spectators rushed to the ropes, roaring with excitement, and the horses swept by amid hurrahs, I could realize the sympathetic feeling which had been developed in all present by ancient familiarity and many associations with such scenes. Whatever the moral value of these may be, it is certain that anything so racy with local color and so distinctly fixed in popular affection as the race will always appeal to the artist and the student of national scenes.

I found Old Liz lounging with Old Dick, her husband, on the other side. There was a canvas screen, eight feet high, stretched as a background to stop the sticks hurled by the players at “coker-nuts,” while the nuts themselves, each resting on a stick five feet high, looked like disconsolate and starved spectres, waiting to be cruelly treated. In company with the old couple was a commanding-looking, eagle-eyed Romany woman, in whom I at once recognized the remarkable gypsy spoken of by the pickpocket.

“My name is Lee,” she said, in answer to my greeting. “What is yours?”

“Leland.”

“Yes, you have added land to the lee. You are luckier than I am. I’m a Lee without land.”

As she spoke she looked like an ideal Meg Merrilies, and I wished I had her picture. It was very strange that I made the wish at that instant, for just then she was within an ace of having it taken, and therefore arose and went away to avoid it. An itinerant photographer, seeing me talking with the gypsies, was attempting, though I knew it not, to take the group. But the keen eye of the Romany saw it all, and she went her way, because she was of the real old kind, who believe it is unlucky to have their portraits taken. I used to think that this aversion was of the same kind as that which many good men evince in a marked manner when requested by the police to sit for their photographs for the rogues’ gallery. But here I did the gypsies great injustice; for they will allow their likenesses to be taken if you will give them a shoe-string. That this old superstition relative to the binding and loosing of ill-luck by the shoe-string should exist in this connection is of itself curious. In the earliest times the shoe-latchet brought luck, just as the shoe itself did, especially when filled with corn or rice, and thrown after the bride. It is a great pity that the ignorant Gentiles, who are so careful to do this at every wedding, do not know that it is all in vain unless they cry aloud in Hebrew, “Peru urphu!” [159] with all their might when the shoe is cast, and that the shoe should be filled with rice.

She went away, and in a few minutes the photographer came in great glee to show a picture which he had taken.

“’Ere you are, sir. An elegant photograph, surroundin’ sentimental scenery and horiental coker-nuts thrown in,—all for a diminitive little shillin’.”

“Now that time you missed it,” I said; “for on my honor as a gentleman, I have only ninepence in all my pockets.”

“A gent like you with only ninepence!” said the artist.

“If he hasn’t got money in his pocket now,” said Old Liz, speaking up in my defense, “he has plenty at home. He has given pounds and pounds to us gypsies.”

“Dovo’s a huckaben,” I said to her in Romany. “Mandy kekker delled tute kūmi’n a trin-grushi.” (That is untrue. I never gave you more than a shilling.)

“Anyhow,” said Liz, “ninepence is enough for it.” And the man, assenting, gave it to me. It was a very good picture, and I have since had several copies taken of it.

“Yes, rya,” said Old Liz, when I regretted the absence of my Lady Lee, and talked with her about shoe-strings and old shoes, and how necessary it was to cry out “Peru urphu!” when you throw them,—“yes. That’s the way the Gorgis always half does things. You see ’em get a horse-shoe off the roads, and what do they do with it! Goes like dinneli idiots and nails it up with the p’ints down, which, as is well beknown, brings all the bad luck there is flyin’ in the air into the house, and taders chovihanees [draws witches] like anise-seed does rats. Now common sense ought to teach that the shoe ought to be put like horns, with the p’ints up. For if it’s lucky to put real horns up, of course the horse-shoe goes the same drom [road]. And it’s lucky to pick up a red string in the morning,—yes, or at any time; but it’s sure love from a girl if you do,—specially silk. And if so be she gives you a red string or cord, or a strip of red stuff, that means she’ll be bound to you and loves you.”

VI. STREET SKETCHES.

London, during hot weather, after the close of the wise season, suggests to the upper ten thousand, and to the lower twenty thousand who reflect their ways, and to the lowest millions who minister to them all, a scene of doleful dullness. I call the time which has passed wise, because that which succeeds is universally known as the silly season. Then the editors in town have recourse to the American newspapers for amusing murders, while their rural brethren invent great gooseberries. Then the sea-serpent again lifts his awful head. I am always glad when this sterling inheritance of the Northern races reappears; for while we have him I know that the capacity for swallowing a big bouncer, or for inventing one, is not lost. He is characteristic of a fine, bold race. Long may he wave! It is true that we cannot lie as gloriously as our ancestors did about him. When the great news-dealer of Norse times had no home-news he took his lyre, and either spun a yarn about Vinland such as would smash the “Telegraph,” or else sung about “that sea-snake tremendous curled, whose girth encircles half the world.” It is wonderful, it is awful, to consider how true we remain to the traditions of the older time. The French boast that they invented the canard. Let them boast. They also invented the shirt-collar; but hoary legends say that an Englishman invented the shirt for it, as well as the art of washing it. What the shirt is to the collar, that is the glorious, tough old Northern saga, or maritime spun yarn, to the canard, or duck. The yarn will wash; it passes into myth and history; it fits exactly, because it was made to order; its age and glory illustrate the survival of the fittest.

I have, during three or four summers, remained a month in London after the family had taken flight to the sea-side. I stayed to finish books promised for the autumn. It is true that nearly four million of people remain in London during the later summer; but it is wonderful what an influence the absence of a few exerts on them and on the town. Then you realize by the long lines of idle vehicles in the ranks how few people in this world can afford a cab; then you find out how scanty is the number of those who buy goods at the really excellent shops; and then you may finally find out by satisfactory experience, if you are inclined to grumble at your lot in life or your fortune, how much better off you are than ninety-nine in a hundred of your fellow-murmurers at fate.

It was my wont to walk out in the cool of the evening, to smoke my cigar in Regent’s Park, seated on a bench, watching the children as they played about the clock-and-bull fountain,—for it embraces these objects among its adornments,—presented by Cowasie Jehanguire, who added to these magnificent Persian names the prosaic English postscript of Ready Money. In this his name sets forth the history of his Parsee people, who, from being heroic Ghebers, have come down to being bankers, who can “do” any Jew, and who might possibly tackle a Yankee so long as they kept out of New Jersey. One evening I walked outside of the Park, passing by the Gloucester Bridge to a little walk or boulevard, where there are a few benches. I was in deep moon-shadow, formed by the trees; only the ends of my boots shone like eyes in the moonlight as I put them out. After a while I saw a nice-looking young girl, of the humble-decent class, seated by me, and with her I entered into casual conversation. On the bench behind us were two young Italians, conversing in strongly marked Florentine dialect. They evidently thought that no one could understand them; as they became more interested they spoke more distinctly, letting out secrets which I by no means wished to hear.

At that instant I recalled the famous story of Prince Bismarck and the Esthonian young ladies and the watch-key. I whispered to the girl,—

“When I say something to you in a language which you do not understand, answer ‘Si’ as distinctly as you can.”

The damsel was quick to understand. An instant after I said,—

“Ha veduto il mio ’havallo la sera?”

“Si.”

There was a dead silence, and then a rise and a rush. My young friend rolled her eyes up at me, but said nothing. The Italians had departed with their awful mysteries. Then there came by a man who looked much worse. He was a truculent, untamable rough, evidently inspired with gin. At a glance I saw by the manner in which he carried his coat that he was a traveler, or one who lived on the roads. Seeing me he stopped, and said, grimly,—“Do you love your Jesus?” This is certainly a pious question; but it was uttered in a tone which intimated that if I did not answer it affirmatively I might expect anything but Christian treatment. I knew why the man uttered it. He had just come by an open-air preaching in the Park, and the phrase had, moreover, been recently chalked and stenciled by numerous zealous and busy nonconformists all over northwestern London. I smiled, and said, quietly,—

“Pal, mor rakker sā drován. Jā pukenus on the drum.” (Don’t talk so loud, brother. Go away quietly.)

The man’s whole manner changed. As if quite sober, he said,—

“Mang your shunaben, rye. But tute jins chomany. Kushti ratti!” (Beg your pardon, sir. But you do know a thing or two. Good-night!)

“I was awfully frightened,” said the young girl, as the traveler departed. “I’m sure he meant to pitch into us. But what a wonderful way you have, sir, of sending people away! I wasn’t so much astonished when you got rid of the Italians. I suppose ladies and gentlemen know Italian, or else they wouldn’t go to the opera. But this man was a common, bad English tramp; yet I’m sure he spoke to you in some kind of strange language, and you said something to him that changed him into as peaceable as could be. What was it?”

“It was gypsy, young lady,—what the gypsies talk among themselves.”

“Do you know, sir, I think you’re the most mysterious gentleman I ever met.”

“Very likely. Good-night.”

“Good night, sir.”

I was walking with my friend the Palmer, one afternoon in June, in one of the several squares which lie to the west of the British Museum. As we went I saw a singular-looking, slightly-built man, lounging at a corner. He was wretchedly clad, and appeared to be selling some rudely-made, but curious contrivances of notched sticks, intended to contain flowerpots. He also had flower-holders made of twisted copper wire. But the greatest curiosity was the man himself. He had such a wild, wasted, wistful expression, a face marked with a life of almost unconscious misery. And most palpable in it was the unrest, which spoke of an endless struggle with life, and had ended by goading him into incessant wandering. I cannot imagine what people can be made of who can look at such men without emotion.

“That is a gypsy,” I said to the Palmer. “Sarishan, pal!”

The wanderer seemed to be greatly pleased to hear Romany. He declared that he was in the habit of talking it so much to himself when alone that his ordinary name was Romany Dick.

“But if you come down to the Potteries, and want to find me, you mus’n’t ask for Romany Dick, but Divius Dick.” “That means Wild Dick.” “Yes.” “And why?” “Because I wander about so, and can never stay more than a night in any one place. I can’t help it. I must keep going.” He said this with that wistful, sad expression, a yearning as for something which he had never comprehended. Was it rest?

“And so I rakker Romany [talk gypsy to myself], when I’m alone of a night, when the wind blows. It’s better company than talkin’ Gorginess. More sociable. He says—no—I say more sensible things Romaneskas than in English. You understand me?” he exclaimed suddenly, with the same wistful stare.

“Perfectly. It’s quite reasonable. It must be like having two heads instead of one, and being twice as knowing as anybody else.”

“Yes, that’s it. But everybody don’t know it.”

“What do you ask for one of those flower-stands, Dick?”

“A shillin’, sir.”

“Well, here is my name and where I live, on an envelope. And here are two shillings. But if you chore mandy [cheat me] and don’t leave it at the house, I’ll look you up in the Potteries, and koor tute [whip you].”

He looked at me very seriously. “Ah, yes. You could koor me kennā [whip me now]. But you couldn’t have koored my dadas [whipped my father]. Leastways not afore he got his leg broken fightin’ Lancaster Sam. You must have heard of my father,—Single-stick Dick. But if your’re comin’ down to the Potteries, don’t come next Sunday. Come Sunday three weeks. My brother is stardo kennā for chorin a gry [in prison for horse-stealing]. In three weeks he’ll be let out, and we’re goin’ to have a great family party to welcome him, and we’ll be glad to see you. Do come.”

The flower-stand was faithfully delivered, but another engagement prevented an acceptance of the invitation, and I have never seen Dick since.

* * * * *

I was walking along Marylebone Road, which always seems to be a worn and wind-beaten street, very pretty once, and now repenting it; when just beyond Baker Street station I saw a gypsy van hung all round with baskets and wooden-ware. Smoke issued from its pipe, and it went along smoking like any careless pedestrian. It always seems strange to think of a family being thus conveyed with its dinner cooking, the children playing about the stove, over rural roads, past common and gorse and hedge, in and out of villages, and through Great Babylon itself, as if the family had a pied à terre, and were as secluded all the time as though they lived in Little Pedlington or Tinnecum. For they have just the same narrow range of gossip, and just the same set of friends, though the set are always on the move. Traveling does not make a cosmopolite.

By the van strolled the lord and master, with his wife. I accosted him.

“Sarishan?”

“Sarishan rye!”

“Did you ever see me before? Do you know me?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m sorry for that. I have a nice velveteen coat which I have been keeping for your father. How’s your brother Frank? Traveling about Kingston, I suppose. As usual. But I don’t care about trusting the coat to anybody who don’t know me.”

“I’ll take it to him, safe enough, sir.”

“Yes, I dare say. On your back. And wear it yourself six months before you see him.”

Up spoke his wife: “That he shan’t. I’ll take good care that the pooro mush [the old man] gets it all right, in a week.”

“Well, dye, I can trust you. You remember me. And, Anselo, here is my address. Come to the house in half an hour.”

In half an hour the housekeeper, said with a quiet smile,—

“If you please, sir, there’s a gentleman—a gypsy gentleman—wishes to see you.”

It is an English theory that the master can have no “visitors” who are not gentlemen. I must admit that Anselo’s dress was not what could be called gentlemanly. From his hat to his stout shoes he looked the impenitent gypsy and sinful poacher, unaffected and natural. There was a cutaway, sporting look about his coat which indicated that he had grown to it from boyhood “in woodis grene.” He held a heavy-handled whip, a regular Romany tchupni or chūckni, which Mr. Borrow thinks gave rise to the word “jockey.” I thought the same once, but have changed my mind, for there were “jockeys” in England before gypsies. Altogether, Anselo (which comes from Wenceslas) was a determined and vigorous specimen of an old-fashioned English gypsy, a type which, with all its faults, is not wanting in sundry manly virtues.

I knew that Anselo rarely entered any houses save ale-houses, and that he had probably never before been in a study full of books, arms, and bric-a-brac. And he knew that I was aware of it. Now, if he had been more of a fool, like a red Indian or an old-fashioned fop, he would have affected a stoical indifference, for fear of showing his ignorance. As it was, he sat down in an arm-chair, glanced about him, and said just the right thing.

“It must be a pleasant thing, at the end of the day, after one has been running about, to come home to such a room as this, so full of fine things, and sit down in such a comfortable chair.” “Will I have a glass of old ale? Yes, I thank you.” “That is kushto levinor [good ale]. I never tasted better.” “Would I rather have wine or spirits? No, I thank you; such ale as this is fit for a king.”

Here Anselo’s keen eye suddenly rested on something which he understood.

“What a beautiful little rifle! That’s what I call a rinkno yāg-engree [pretty gun].”

“Has it been a wafedo wen [hard winter], Anselo?”

“It has been a dreadful winter, sir. We have been hard put to it sometimes for food. It’s dreadful to think of. I’ve acti’lly seen the time when I was almost desperated, and if I’d had such a gun as that I’m afraid, if I’d been tempted, I could a-found it in my heart to knock over a pheasant.”

I looked sympathetically at Anselo. The idea of his having been brought to the very brink of such a terrible temptation and awful crime was touching. He met the glance with the expression of a good man, who had done no more than his duty, closed his eyes, and softly shook his head. Then he took another glass of ale, as if the memory of the pheasants or something connected with the subject had been too much for him, and spoke:—

“I came here on my horse. But he’s an ugly old white punch. So as not to discredit you, I left him standing before a gentleman’s house, two doors off.”

Here Anselo paused. I acknowledged this touching act of thoughtful delicacy by raising my glass. He drank again, then resumed:—

“But I feel uneasy about leaving a horse by himself in the streets of London. He’ll stand like a driven nail wherever you put him—but there’s always plenty of claw-hammers to draw such nails.”

“Don’t be afraid, Anselo. The park-keeper will not let anybody take him through the gates. I’ll pay for him if he goes.”

But visions of a stolen horse seemed to haunt Anselo. One would have thought that something of the kind had been familiar to him. So I sent for the velveteen coat, and, folding it on his arm, he mounted the old white horse, while waving an adieu with the heavy-handled whip, rode away in the mist, and was seen no more.

Farewell, farewell, thou old brown velveteen! I had thee first in by-gone years, afar, hunting ferocious fox and horrid hare, near Brighton, on the Downs, and wore thee well on many a sketching tour to churches old and castles dark or gray, when winter went with all his raines wete. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite! I bore thee over France unto Marseilles, and on the steamer where we took aboard two hundred Paynim pilgrims of Mahound. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite! Thou wert in Naples by great Virgil’s tomb, and borest dust from Posilippo’s grot, and hast been wetted by the dainty spray from bays and shoals of old Etrurian name. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite! And thou wert in the old Egyptian realm: I had thee on that morning ’neath the palms when long I lingered where of yore had stood the rose-red city, half as old as time. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite! It was a lady called thee into life. She said, Methinks ye need a velvet coat. It is a seemly guise to ride to hounds. Another gave me whip and silvered spurs. Now all have vanished in the darkening past. Ladies and all are gone into the gloom. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite. Thou’st had a venturous and traveled life, for thou wert once in Moscow in the snow. A true Bohemian thou hast ever been, and as a right Bohemian thou wilt die, the garment of a roving Romany. Fain would I see and hear what thou’rt to know of reckless riding and the gypsy tan, of camps in dark green lanes, afar from towns. Farewell, mine coat, and benedicite!

VII. OF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES.

One morning I was walking with Mr. Thomas Carlyle and Mr. Froude. We went across Hyde Park, and paused to rest on the bridge. This is a remarkable place, since there, in the very heart of London, one sees a view which is perfectly rural. The old oaks rise above each other like green waves, the houses in the distance are country-like, while over the trees, and far away, a village-looking spire completes the picture. I think that it was Mr. Froude who called my attention to the beauty of the view, and I remarked that it needed only a gypsy tent and the curling smoke to make it in all respects perfectly English.

“You have paid some attention to gypsies,” said Mr. Carlyle. “They’re not altogether so bad a people as many think. In Scotland, we used to see many of them. I’ll not say that they were not rovers and reivers, but they could be honest at times. The country folk feared them, but those who made friends wi’ them had no cause to complain of their conduct. Once there was a man who was persuaded to lend a gypsy a large sum of money. My father knew the man. It was to be repaid at a certain time. The day came; the gypsy did not. And months passed, and still the creditor had nothing of money but the memory of it; and ye remember ‘nessun maggior dolore,’—that there’s na greater grief than to remember the siller ye once had. Weel, one day the man was surprised to hear that his frien’ the gypsy wanted to see him—interview, ye call it in America. And the gypsy explained that, having been arrested, and unfortunately detained, by some little accident, in preeson, he had na been able to keep his engagement. ‘If ye’ll just gang wi’ me,’ said the gypsy, ‘aw’ll mak’ it all right.’ ‘Mon, aw wull,’ said the creditor,—they were Scotch, ye know, and spoke in deealect. So the gypsy led the way to the house which he had inhabited, a cottage which belonged to the man himself to whom he owed the money. And there he lifted up the hearthstone; the hard-stane they call it in Scotland, and it is called so in the prophecy of Thomas of Ercildowne. And under the hard-stane there was an iron pot. It was full of gold, and out of that gold the gypsy carle paid his creditor. Ye wonder how ’t was come by? Well, ye’ll have heard it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Yes. And what was said of the Poles who had, during the Middle Ages, a reputation almost as good as that of gypsies? Ad secretas Poli, curas extendere noli.” (Never concern your soul as to the secrets of a Pole.)

Mr. Carlyle’s story reminds me that Walter Simpson, in his history of them, says that the Scottish gypsies have ever been distinguished for their gratitude to those who treated them with civility and kindness, anent which he tells a capital story, while other instances sparkle here and there with many brilliant touches in his five hundred-and-fifty-page volume.

I have more than once met with Romanys, when I was in the company of men who, like Carlyle and Bilderdijk, “were also in the world of letters known,” or who might say, “We have deserved to be.” One of the many memories of golden days, all in the merrie tyme of summer song in England, is of the Thames, and of a pleasure party in a little steam-launch. It was a weenie affair,—just room for six forward outside the cubby, which was called the cabin; and of these six, one was Mr. Roebuck,—“the last Englishman,” as some one has called him, but as the late Lord Lytton applies the same term to one of his characters about the time of the Conquest, its accuracy may be doubted. Say the last type of a certain phase of the Englishman; say that Roebuck was the last of the old iron and oak men, the triplex æs et robur chiefs of the Cobbet kind, and the phrase may pass. But it will only pass over into a new variety of true manhood. However frequently the last Englishman may die, I hope it will be ever said of him, Le roi est mort,—vive le roi! I have had talks with Lord Lytton on gypsies. He, too, was once a Romany rye in a small way, and in the gay May heyday of his young manhood once went off with a band of Romanys, and passed weeks in their tents,—no bad thing, either, for anybody. I was more than once tempted to tell him the strange fact that, though he had been among the black people and thought he had learned their language, what they had imposed upon him for that was not Romany, but cant, or English thieves’ slang. For what is given, in good faith, as the gypsy tongue in “Paul Clifford” and the “Disowned,” is only the same old mumping kennick which was palmed off on Bampfylde Moore Carew; or which he palmed on his readers, as the secret of the Roms. But what is the use or humanity of disillusioning an author by correcting an error forty years old. If one could have corrected it in the proof, à la bonne heure! Besides, it was of no particular consequence to anybody whether the characters in “Paul Clifford” called a clergyman a patter-cove or a rashai. It is a supreme moment of triumph for a man when he discovers that his specialty—whatever it be—is not of such value as to be worth troubling anybody with it. As for Everybody, he is fair game.

The boat went up the Thames, and I remember that the river was, that morning, unusually beautiful. It is graceful, as in an outline, even when leaden with November mists, or iron-gray in the drizzle of December, but under the golden sunlight of June it is lovely. It becomes every year, with gay boating parties in semi-fancy dresses, more of a carnival, in which the carnivalers and their carnivalentines assume a more decided character. It is very strange to see this tendency of the age to unfold itself in new festival forms, when those who believe that there can never be any poetry or picturing in life but in the past are wailing over the vanishing of May-poles and old English sports. There may be, from time to time, a pause between the acts; the curtain may be down a little longer than usual; but in the long run the world-old play of the Peoples’ Holiday will go on, as it has been going ever since Satan suggested that little apple-stealing excursion to Eve, which, as explained by the Talmudists, was manifestly the direct cause of all the flirtations and other dreadful doings in all little outings down to the present day, in the drawing-room or “on the leads,” world without end.

And as the boat went along by Weybridge we passed a bank by which was a small gypsy camp; tents and wagons, donkeys and all, reflected in the silent stream, as much as were the swans in the fore-water. And in the camp was a tall, handsome, wild beauty, named Britannia, who knew me well; a damsel fond of larking, with as much genuine devil’s gunpowder in her as would have made an entire pack or a Chinese hundred of sixty-four of the small crackers known as fast girls, in or around society. She was a splendid creature, long and lithe and lissom, but well rounded, of a figure suggestive of leaping hedges; and as the sun shone on her white teeth and burning black eyes, there was a hint of biting, too, about her. She lay coiled and basking, in feline fashion, in the sun; but at sight of me on the boat, up she bounded, and ran along the bank, easily keeping up with the steamer, and crying out to me in Romanes.

Now it just so happened that I by no means felt certain that all of the company present were such genial Bohemians as to appreciate anything like the joyous intimacy which Britannia was manifesting, as she, Atalanta-like, coursed along. Consequently, I was not delighted with her attentions.

“What a fine girl!” said Mr. Roebuck. “How well she would look on the stage! She seems to know you.”

“Certainly,” said one of the ladies, “or she would not be speaking her language. Why don’t you answer her? Let us hear a conversation.”

Thus adjured, I answered,—

“Miri pen, miri kushti pen, beng lel tute, mā rakker sā drován! Or ma rakker Romaneskas. Mān dikesa te rānia shan akai. Miri kameli—mān kair mandy ladge!” (My sister, my nice, sweet sister!—devil take you! don’t hallo at me like that! Or else don’t talk Romany. Don’t you see there are ladies here? My dear, don’t put me to shame!)

“Pen the rani ta wusser mandy a trin-grushi—who—op, hallo!” (Tell the lady to shy me a shilling—whoop!) cried the fast damsel.

“Pa miri duvels kām, pen—o bero se ta duro. Mandy’ll dé tute a pash-korauna keratti if tu tevel jā. Gorgie shan i foki kavakoi!” (For the Lord’s sake, sister!—the boat is too far from shore. I’ll give you half a crown this evening if you’ll clear out. These be Gentiles, these here.)

“It seems to be a melodious language,” said Mr. Roebuck, greatly amused. “What are you saying?”

“I am telling her to hold her tongue, and go.”

“But how on earth does it happen that you speak such a language?” inquired a lady. “I always thought that the gypsies only talked a kind of English slang, and this sounds like a foreign tongue.”

All this time Britannia, like the Cork Leg, never tired, but kept on the chase, neck and neck, till we reached a lock, when, with a merry laugh like a child, she turned on her track and left us.

“Mr. L.’s proficiency in Romany,” said Mr. Roebuck, “is well known to me. I have heard him spoken of as the successor to George Borrow.”

“That,” I replied, “I do not deserve. There are other gentlemen in England who are by far my superiors in knowledge of the people.”

And I spoke very sincerely. Apropos of Mr. George Borrow, I knew him, and a grand old fellow he was,—a fresh and hearty giant, holding his six feet two or three inches as uprightly at eighty as he ever had at eighteen. I believe that was his age, but may be wrong. Borrow was like one of the old Norse heroes, whom he so much admired, or an old-fashioned gypsy bruiser, full of craft and merry tricks. One of these he played on me, and I bear him no malice for it. The manner of the joke was this: I had written a book on the English gypsies and their language; but before I announced it, I wrote a letter to Father George, telling him that I proposed to print it, and asking his permission to dedicate it to him. He did not answer the letter, but “worked the tip” promptly enough, for he immediately announced in the newspapers on the following Monday his “Word-Book of the Romany Language,” “with many pieces in gypsy, illustrative of the way of speaking and thinking of the English gypsies, with specimens of their poetry, and an account of various things relating to gypsy life in England.” This was exactly what I had told him that my book would contain; for I intended originally to publish a vocabulary. Father George covered the track by not answering my letter; but I subsequently ascertained that it had been faithfully delivered to him by a gentleman from whom I obtained the information.

It was like the contest between Hildebrand the elder and his son:—

“A ready trick tried Hildebrand, That old, gray-bearded man; For when the younger raised to strike, Beneath his sword he ran.”

And, like the son, I had no ill feeling about it. My obligations to him for “Lavengro” and the “Romany Rye” and his other works are such as I owe to few men. I have enjoyed gypsying more than any sport in the world, and I owe my love of it all to George Borrow. I have since heard that a part of Mr. Borrow’s “Romano Lavo-Lil” had been in manuscript for thirty years, and that it might never have been published but for my own work. I hope that this is true; for I am sincerely proud to think that I may have been in any way, directly or indirectly, the cause of his giving it to the world. I would gladly enough have burnt my own book, as I said, with a hearty laugh, when I saw the announcement of the “Lavo-Lil,” if it would have pleased the old Romany rye, and I never spoke a truer word. He would not have believed it; but it would have been true, all the same.

I well remember the first time I met George Borrow. It was in the British Museum, and I was introduced to him by Mrs. Estelle Lewis,—now dead,—the well known-friend of Edgar A. Poe. He was seated at a table, and had a large old German folio open before him. We talked about gypsies, and I told him that I had unquestionably found the word for “green,” shelno, in use among the English Romany. He assented, and said that he knew it. I mention this as a proof of the manner in which the “Romano Lavo-Lil” must have been hurried, because he declares in it that there is no English gypsy word for “green.” In this work he asserts that the English gypsy speech does not probably amount to fourteen hundred words. It is a weakness with the Romany rye fraternity to believe that there are no words in gypsy which they to not know. I am sure that my own collection contains nearly four thousand Anglo-Romany terms, many of which I feared were doubtful, but which I am constantly verifying. America is a far better place in which to study the language than England. As an old Scotch gypsy said to me lately, the deepest and cleverest old gypsies all come over here to America, where they have grown rich, and built the old language up again.

I knew a gentleman in London who was a man of extraordinary energy. Having been utterly ruined, at seventy years of age, by a relative, he left England, was absent two or three years in a foreign country, during which time he made in business some fifty thousand pounds, and, returning, settled down in England. He had been in youth for a long time the most intimate friend of George Borrow, who was, he said, a very wild and eccentric youth. One night, when skylarking about London, Borrow was pursued by the police, as he wished to be, even as Panurge so planned as to be chased by the night-watch. He was very tall and strong in those days, a trained shoulder-hitter, and could run like a deer. He was hunted to the Thames, “and there they thought they had him.” But the Romany rye made for the edge, and, leaping into the wan water, like the Squyre in the old ballad, swam to the other side, and escaped.

I have conversed with Mr. Borrow on many subjects,—horses, gypsies, and Old Irish. Anent which latter subject I have heard him declare that he doubted whether there was any man living who could really read an old Irish manuscript. I have seen the same statement made by another writer. My personal impressions of Mr. Borrow were very agreeable, and I was pleased to learn afterwards from Mrs. Lewis that he had expressed himself warmly as regarded myself. As he was not invariably disposed to like those whom be met, it is a source of great pleasure to me to reflect that I have nothing but pleasant memories of the good old Romany rye, the Nestor of gypsy gentlemen. It is commonly reported among gypsies that Mr. Borrow was one by blood, and that his real name was Boro, or great. This is not true. He was of pure English extraction.

When I first met “George Eliot” and G. H. Lewes, at their house in North Bank, the lady turned the conversation almost at once to gypsies. They spoke of having visited the Zincali in Spain, and of several very curious meetings with the Chabos. Mr. Lewes, in fact, seldom met me—and we met very often about town, and at many places, especially at the Trübners’—without conversing on the Romanys. The subject evidently had for him a special fascination. I believe that I have elsewhere mentioned that after I returned from Russia, and had given him, by particular request, an account of my visits to the gypsies of St. Petersburg and Moscow, he was much struck by the fact that I had chiromanced to the Romany clan of the latter city. To tell the fortunes of gypsy girls was, he thought, the refinement of presumption. “There was in this world nothing so impudent as a gypsy when determined to tell a fortune; and the idea of not one, but many gypsy girls believing earnestly in my palmistry was like a righteous retribution.”

The late Tom Taylor had, while a student at Cambridge, been aficionado, or smitten, with gypsies, and made a manuscript vocabulary of Romany words, which he allowed me to use, and from which I obtained several which were new to me. This fact should make all smart gypsy scholars “take tent” and heed as to believing that they know everything. I have many Anglo-Romany words—purely Hindi as to origin—which I have verified again and again, yet which have never appeared in print. Thus far the Romany vocabulary field has been merely scratched over.

Who that knows London knoweth not Sir Patrick Colquhoun? I made his acquaintance in 1848, when, coming over from student-life in Paris and the Revolution, I was most kindly treated by his family. A glorious, tough, widely experienced man he was even in early youth. For then he already bore the enviable reputation of being the first amateur sculler on the Thames, the first gentleman light-weight boxer in England, a graduate with honors of Cambridge, a Doctor Ph. of Heidelberg, a diplomat, and a linguist who knew Arabic, Persian, and Gaelic, Modern Greek and the Omnium Botherum tongues. They don’t make such men nowadays, or, if they do, they leave out the genial element.

Years had passed, and I had returned to London in 1870, and found Sir Patrick living, as of yore, in the Temple, where I once and yet again and again dined with him. It was in the early days of this new spring of English life that we found ourselves by chance at a boat-race on the Thames. It was on the Thames, by his invitation, that I had twenty years before first seen an English regatta, and had a place in the gayly decked, superbly luncheoned barge of his club. It is a curious point in English character that the cleverest people do not realize or understand how festive and genial they really are, or how gayly and picturesquely they conduct their sports. It is a generally accepted doctrine with them that they do this kind of thing better in France; they believe sincerely that they take their own amusements sadly; it is the tone, the style, with the wearily-witty, dreary clowns of the weekly press, in their watery imitations of Thackeray’s worst, to ridicule all English festivity and merry-making, as though sunshine had faded out of life, and God and Nature were dead, and in their place a great wind-bag Jesuit-Mallock were crying, in tones tainted with sulphuretted hydrogen, “Ah bah!” Reader mine, I have seen many a fête in my time, all the way from illuminations of Paris to the Khedive’s fifteen-million-dollar spree in 1873 and the last grand flash of the Roman-candle carnival of 1846, but for true, hearty enjoyment and quiet beauty give me a merry party on the Thames. Give me, I say, its sparkling waters, its green banks, the joyous, beautiful girls, the hearty, handsome men. Give me the boats, darting like fishes, the gay cries. And oh—oh!—give me the Alsopp’s ale in a quart mug, and not a remark save of approbation when I empty it.

I had met Sir Patrick in the crowd, and our conversation turned on gypsies. When living before-time in Roumania, he had Romany servants, and learned a little of their language. Yes, he was inclined to be “affected” into the race, and thereupon we went gypsying. Truly, we had not far to seek, for just outside the crowd a large and flourishing community of the black-blood had set itself up in the pivlioi (cocoa-nut) or kashta (stick) business, and as it was late in the afternoon, and the entire business-world was about as drunk as mere beer could make it, the scene was not unlively. At that time I was new to England, and unknown to every gypsy on the ground. In after-days I learned to know them well, very well, for they were chiefly Coopers and their congeners, who came to speak of me as their rye and own special property or proprietor,—an allegiance which involved on one side an amount of shillings and beer which concentrated might have set up a charity, but which was duly reciprocated on the other by jocular tenures of cocoa-nuts, baskets, and choice and deep words in the language of Egypt.

As we approached the cock-shy, where sticks were cast at cocoa-nuts, a young gypsy chai, whom I learned to know in after-days as Athalia Cooper, asked me to buy some sticks. A penny a throw, all the cocoa-nuts I could hit to be my own. I declined; she became urgent, jolly, riotous, insistive. I endured it well, for I held the winning cards. Qui minus propĕrè, minus prospĕrè. And then, as her voice rose crescendo into a bawl, so that all the Romanys around laughed aloud to see the green Gorgio so chaffed and bothered, I bent me low, and whispered softly in her ear a single monosyllable.

Why are all those sticks dropped so suddenly? Why does Athalia in a second become sober, and stand up staring at me, all her chaff and urgency forgotten. Quite polite and earnest now. But there is joy behind in her heart. This is a game, a jolly game, and no mistake. And uplifting her voice again, as the voice of one who findeth an exceeding great treasure even in the wilderness, she cried aloud,—“It’s a Romany rye!”

The spiciest and saltest and rosiest of Sir Patrick’s own stories, told after dinner over his own old port to a special conventicle of clergymen about town, was never received with such a roar of delight as that cry of Athalia’s was by the Romany clan. Up went three sheers at the find; further afield went the shout proclaiming the discovery of an aristocratic stranger of their race, a rye, who was to them as wheat,—a gypsy gentleman. Neglecting business, they threw down their sticks, and left their cocoanuts to grin in solitude; the dyes turned aside from fortune-telling to see what strange fortune had sent such a visitor. In ten minutes Sir Patrick and I were surrounded by such a circle of sudden admirers and vehement applauders, as it seldom happens to any mortal to acquire—out of Ireland—at such exceedingly short notice and on such easy terms.

They were not particular as to what sort of a gypsy I was, or where I came from, or any nonsense of that sort, you know. It was about cerevisia vincit omnia, or the beery time of day with them, and they cared not for anything. I was extremely welcome; in short, there was poetry in me. I had come down on them by a way that was dark and a trick that was vain, in the path of mystery, and dropped on Athalia and picked her up. It was gypsily done and very creditable to me, and even Sir Patrick was regarded as one to be honored as an accomplice. It is a charming novelty in every life to have the better class of one’s own kind come into it, and nobody feels so keenly as a jolly Romany that jucundum nihil est nisi quod rĕf ǐcit varietas—naught pleases us without variety.

Then and there I drew to me the first threads of what became in after-days a strange and varied skein of humanity. There was the Thames upon a holiday. Now I look back to it, I ask, Ubi sunt? (Where are they all?) Joshua Cooper, as good and earnest a Rom as ever lived, in his grave, with more than one of those who made my acquaintance by hurrahing for me. Some in America, some wandering wide. Yet there by Weybridge still the Thames runs on.

By that sweet river I made many a song. One of these, to the tune of “Waves in Sunlight Dancing,” rises and falls in memory like a fitful fairy coming and going in green shadows, and that it may not perish utterly I here give it a place:—

AVELLA PARL O PĀNI.

Av’ kushto parl o pāni, Av’ kushto mir’ akai! Mi kameli chovihani, Avel ke tiro rye!

Shan raklia rinkenidiri, Mukkellan rinkeni se; Kek rakli ’dré i temia Se rinkenidiri mi.

Shan dudnidiri yākka, Mukkelan dudeni; Kek yākk peshel’ sā kushti Pā miro kameli zi.

Shan balia longi diri, Mukk ’lende bori ’pré, Kek waveri raklia balia, Te lian man opré.

Yoi lela angūstrini, I miri tācheni, Kek wavei mūsh jinella, Sā dovo covva se.

Adré, adré o doeyav Patrinia pellelan, Kennā yek chumer kérdo O wavero well’ án.

Te wenna būtidiri, Ke jana sig akoi Sa sig sa yeck si gillo Shan waveri adoi.

Avella parl o pāni, Avella sig akai! Mi kamli tāni-rāni Avell’ ke tiro rye!

* * * * *

COME OVER THE RIVER

O love, come o’er the water, O love, where’er you be! My own sweetheart, my darling, Come over the river to me!

If any girls are fairer, Then fairer let them be; No maid in all the country Is half so fair to me.

If other eyes are brighter, Then brighter let them shine; I know that none are lighter Upon this heart of mine.

If other’s locks are longer, Then longer let them grow; Hers are the only fish-lines Which ever caught me so.

She wears upon her finger A ring we know so well, And we and that ring only Know what the ring can tell.

From trees into the water Leaves fall and float away, So kisses come and leave us, A thousand in a day.

Yet though they come by thousands, Yet still they show their face; As soon as one has left us Another fills its place.

O love, come o’er the water, O lore, where’er you be! My own sweetheart, my darling, Come over the river to me!