I. OATLANDS PARK.
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
either grotto 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 Caesar 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.”
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 the kitchema
or 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 poor dye is
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 naive 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 who has 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
for tuvalo, or tobacco. They were connoisseurs, too, and the
elder boy, as he secured his share, smelled it with intense
satisfaction, and said, “That's rye's tuvalo;” 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 lot of 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, what kheyf or 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 Coeur 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,—“of
foot-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.
THE MONKS OF THE WEY.
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 been
If the river had never been rolling between
The 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 pined
But 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 stay
The 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 day
They 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 sound
Like 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 close
And early one morn from their pallets they rose,
And met in their tunnel with lights to survey
If 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 say
It 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 not difficult 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 ditties pro 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 pounds. 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 creamy golden 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, by mashing {108}
men for many 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 said tober, that she
corrected him, exclaiming earnestly, “Never say tober for road;
that is canting. Always say drom; 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,—and drom comes from the Greek
dromos, 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 Matthews has 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
a pash-korauna to any Romany who's a pal and amal.”
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 them ryas [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 my droms [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 be mongerdo, 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, you shall know 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 Stanley juva, who hasn't even got a drag
[wagon], that you can beat her a 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 the lie,—that lie which is the mental action and
inmost grain of the Romany, and especially of the diddikai, 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
the rye—cook some coffee for the rye—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,” or wardo, is like, he may see it in the following
diagram.
[Picture: Interior of gypsy van]
A is the door; B is the bed, or rather two beds, each
six feet long, like berths, with a vacant space below; C is a
grate cooking-stove; D is a table, which hangs by hinges from
the wall; E is a chest of drawers; f and f are 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 the rye
himself did not sleep on a better one, for which George reprimanded
her. But she vigorously defended its excellence, and, to please her, I
felt it and 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 the ranyor [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 had better 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.