Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

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.”

When we reached the top of the hill, I took a sharp turn to the left, and bid him and his two interesting sons goodbye.

I had not wandered far before I came upon a group of gipsy children, ragged, dirty, and filthy in the extreme. One of them ran after me for some “coppers.” I took the opportunity of having a chat with the poor child, whose clothes seemed to be literally alive with vermin. I asked him what his name was, and his answer was, “I don’t know, I’ve got so many names; sometimes they call me Smith, sometimes Brown, and lots of other names.” “Have you ever been washed in your life?” “Not that I know on, sir.” The feet of the poor lad seemed to have festering holes in them, in which there were vermin getting fat out of the sores, and the colour of his body was that of a tortoise, except patches of a little lighter yellow were to be seen here and there. “Do you ever say your prayers?” “Yes, sir, sometimes.” “What do you say when you say your prayers? Who teaches you them?” “My sister,” said the boy. “Tell me the first line and I will give you a penny.” “I cannot, I’ve forgotten them; and so has my sister.” “Can you read?” “No.” “Were you ever in a school?” “No.” “Did you ever hear of Jesus?” “I never heard of such a man. He does not live upon this forest.” “Where does God live?” “I don’t know; I never heard of him neither. There used to be a chap live in the forest named like it, but he’s been gone away a long time. I think he went a ‘hoppin’ in Kent two or three years ago.” At this juncture a Sunday-school teacher connected with College Green Chapel, Stepney, whom I knew, came up, and we entered into conversation together. The poor lad said he had not had anything to eat “since Saturday.” My young friend gave him some sandwiches, and I gave him some “coppers,” and we separated.

An old gipsy woman appeared upon the scene with two little ragged gipsy children at her heels and a long stick in her hand, reminding me of the “shepherd’s crook.” On her feet were two odd, old, and worn-out navvy’s boots stuffed with rags, pieces of which were trailing after her heels. Her dress—if it could be called dress—was short, and almost hung in shreds; crooked and disgustingly filthy, she strutted about telling fortunes. I said to the old hypocrite, “How old are you? you must be getting a good round age.” With a quivering lip, trembling voice, and a tottering limb and stick she replied, “If it please the Lord, I shall be seventy-five soon.” “Which tribe of the gipsies do you belong to?” “I belong to the Drapers.” She now altered the tone of her voice to that of earnestness and said, “My good gentleman, I hope you have got a penny for me; I’ve had nothing to eat to-day.” Her voice began to quaver again, and, looking up towards the bright blue sky, “Now, my dear good gentleman, please do give me a penny, and the Lord will bless you. I’ve had a large family—nineteen children, and only three are dead.” I said, “What will you charge me for telling me my fortune?” She seemed a different woman in a minute, and replied in sharp tones, “You know it better than I can tell you.” The old gipsy woman fancied that she “smelt a rat,” and she turned away, with some hellish language to the little gipsies, and was lost among the crowd of holiday-makers passing backwards and forwards, drinking, swearing, gambling, fighting, racing, frolicsome, funny, and thoughtful. The curtain was now drawn, and I left her to pursue her satanic work among the simple, gay, and serious.

For a few minutes I stood in meditation and wonder, while the crowds of gipsies were pursuing their work in fortune-telling and at the swings, cocoa-nuts, donkey-riding, steam horses, &c. One young fellow I saw among the gipsies was not of gipsy birth or gipsy extraction. It was quite evident from his manner and tattered, black cloth dress, that the young man was nearly at the bottom of a slippery inclined plane. His figure brought to me a familiar scene of some twenty-five years ago, and with which I was well acquainted. The young man reminded me of the only son of a Methodist local preacher who had had the sole management of extensive earthenware works in the — for a long term of years, and was highly respected in the district. The young man had been petted and almost idolized. This only son was highly educated, and in every way was being prepared to take his father’s place at the works some day. His sisters worked carpet slippers for him, and his mother warmed them before he went to bed; and “good-nights” were given in the midst of loving embraces, prayers, and kisses. Oftentimes they were given and said while tears of thankfulness to God for having given them, as they thought, a son who was to give them comfort, solace, and pride as they toddled down the hill together, while the shades of evening gathered round them. Every one in this Christian household thought no labour in winter or summer, night or day, too much to be bestowed upon their darling son. Alas! alas! this idolized boy, for whom thousands of prayers had been offered to Heaven on his behalf, in an evil hour ceased to pray for himself, and took the wrong turning or “sharp round to the left,” and the last I heard of him was that he had fallen in with a gang of gipsies, ended his days as a vagabond in a union in Yorkshire, and had brought his parents with their early grey hairs in sorrow to the grave. His loving sisters to-day are scattered to the winds. These recollections brought tears to my eyes and a deep, deep sigh from the bottom of my heart.

I hung down my head, for I thought by the smarting of my eyes they would tell a tale, and made my way on foot in the midst of clouds of dust to Chingford, at the edge of the Forest, where Easter Monday was being held in high glee. Among the people, gentle and simple, I met on my way was a cartload of drunken lads and screaming wenches being drawn to the “Robin Hood” and High Beech by a poor, bony, grey, old, worn-out pony, with knees large enough for two horses, owing to its many falls upon the hard stones without the option of choice. If it had not been that it had a load of donkeys and little live beer barrels with their vent pegs drawn, filling the air on this bright spring morning with

“We won’t go home till morning,
We won’t go home till morning,
Till daylight doth appear,”

it might have turned round and bawled out, “Am not I thine ass?” Unfortunately for the poor dumb animal there was no one in its load that had sense, except in response to a policeman’s cudgel, to understand the meaning of “Am not I thine ass?” And away it hobbled and limped till it was out of sight. By this time perhaps the poor thing has been made into sausages, and sold to the “poor” as a rich treat for Sunday only.

One of this load of young sinners stood up in their midst—or I should say was propped up—and, with his hat slouching backward in his neck, shouted, “Mates, let’s give three cheers for Epping Forest.” “All right,” they cried out, “Hip, hip, hurrah! hip, hip, hurrah!” Another bawled out, “Let’s give three cheers for Easter Monday.” “Bravo, Jack; that’s it!” shouted a third, as he lay “all of a heap” at the bottom of the cart. “Hip, hip, hurrah! hip, hip, hurrah! hip, hip, hip—” but they could not in this trial of strength get any farther. The “hurrah” was left for another Easter Monday. By this time, owing to the fumes of the beer barrel and the jolting of the cart, they had become such a “set out as I never did see.” Out of this pell-mell cartload of sin one of the crew, who needed a “slobbing bib,” cried out, “I—I—I say, Bill, let’s give three cheers for your old cat.” “You fool, we have no old cat,” said Bill. “I didn’t say you had.” “You did.” “I didn’t.” “You did,” said Bill. “If you say so again, I’ll punch you.” “Punch away,” said Bill. “Stop till we get to the ‘Robin Hood,’ and then I’ll show you who’s master.” “Sit down, you fool,” said Bill; “you have not the heart of a chicken.”

The Royal Road and Connaught Lake were beheld and passed over, and now, after observing and star-gazing right and left, I was among the gipsies to the left of the Forest Hotel. There was no mistaking them; for some of the poor women with their babies in their arms showed the usual signs of having been in the “wars,” by exhibiting here and there a “black eye;” and without any signs of the maiden and virgin modesty, romantic, backwood gipsy writers, who have never visited gipsy wigwams, say is one of the peculiar traits of gipsy character. Here there were droves of gipsies of all shades, caste, and colour, shouting, fighting, swearing, lying, and thieving to their heart’s content, with hordes of children exhibiting themselves in most disgusting positions in the midst of the boisterous laughter of their beastly parents.

At one of the cocoa-nut stalls stood a big, fat, coarse gipsy woman with black hair, big mouth, and a bare bosom. Hanging at one of her breasts was a poor baby, as thin as a herring, and with festering sores all over its face and body. To me they seemed to be the outcome of starvation, poverty, neglect, and dirt. The woman said that “teething” was the sole cause of the sores. This poor child ought to have been nourished in bed instead of being on its way to the grave, which may be at the back of some bush in the Forest, as I am told has been the case with numbers of gipsy children before. Hundreds, and I might say thousands, of them have been born among the low bushes, furze, and heather on Epping Forest without a tithe of the care which is bestowed upon cats and puppies. If children have been and are still being ushered into the world in such an unceremonious manner, it may be taken for granted that they have been and still are ushered out of the world “when they are not wanted” in an equally unceremonious manner. Queer things come to my ears sometimes. Gipsy morality, cleanliness, faithfulness, honesty, and industry exist only in moonshine—with some noble exceptions—and in the brain of some backwood romantic gipsy novelists, who have more than once been bewitched by the guile of gipsydom detrimental to their own interests and the welfare of our country. A “witching eye” has blindfolded hundreds to the putrifying mass of gipsyism; and a gipsy’s deceitful tongue has thrown thousands of “simple-minded” off their guard, and left them to flounder, struggle, and die in the mud of sin, with a future hope worse than that of a dog.

A tall fellow, almost like two six feet laths nailed together, now came near, and began to abuse the poor woman in a most fearful manner for having been away from the cocoa-nut stall attending to the needs of her child. The swearing was most blood-curdling and horrifying. I left this establishment to witness the cruel treatment the poor donkeys were receiving at the hands of these vagabond gipsies, which is almost beyond description. The thrashing, kicking, and striking with sharp pointed sticks, to make the poor donkeys go faster with their loads of big and little children on their backs, were enough to make one’s hair stand on end.

[Picture: An English gipsy countess on the “look-out”]

I now turned from this scene of human depravity to the Forest Hotel to recruit my inner man; this, after half an hour waiting, was accomplished in a gipsy fashion, and with much scrambling. While entering a few notes in my book, a gentleman, apparently of position and education, wheeled up on his tricycle opposite to my window. He had not long dismounted, lighted his pipe, and sauntered about for a rest, before a gipsy woman wanted to make friends with him, I suppose to tell his fortune. Fortunately he was proof against her “witching eyes,” forced smiles, and “My dear good gentleman,” and turned away from her in disgust. She did not understand rebuffs and scowling looks, and went away with her forced smile of gipsydom hanging upon her lips and in her eyes among the crowd to try her “practised” hand upon some one else not quite so wide-awake as this gentleman upon the tricycle.

A lively change was soon manifest. Dancing among a pother of dust was to be seen in earnest opposite the hotel windows, by a most motley crowd. Fat and thin, tall and lean, young and old, pretty and plain, lovely and ugly, danced round and round till they presented themselves, through sweat and dust, fit subjects for a Turkish bath. The old and fat panted, the young laughed, the giddy screamed, and the thin jumped about as nimble as kittens, and on they whirled towards eternity and the shades of long night.

I now retraced my steps along the Royal Road to the “Robin Hood,” and while doing so I tried to gather, from various sources, the probable number of gipsies, young and old, in Epping Forest on Easter Monday. Sometimes I counted, at other times I asked the royal verderers, gipsies, show people, and others; and, putting all things together, I may safely say that there were thirty gipsy women who were telling fortunes, four hundred gipsy children, and two hundred men and women, not half a dozen of whom could tell A from B. Most of the children were begging, and some few were at the “cocoa-nuts.” Some idea of the gipsy population in and around London may be formed from this estimate, when it is taken into account that holiday festivals were being held on the outskirts of London at the same time, and in all directions. Upon Wanstead Flats, Cherry Island, Barking Road, Canning Town, Hackney Flats, Hackney Marshes, Battersea, Wandsworth, Chelsea, Wardley Street, Notting Hill, and many other places, there must be fully 8000 gipsy children, nearly the whole of whom are illegitimate, growing up as ignorant as heathens, without any prospect of improvement or a lessening of numbers.

I had now arrived again at the High Beech and the “Robin Hood,” and found myself jostled, crushed, and crammed by a tremendous crowd of people. Publicans, fops, sharps, and flats, mounted upon all manner of steeds, varying in style and breed from “Bend Or” to the poor broken-kneed pony owned by a gipsy, were coming cantering, galloping, and trotting to the scene. “What is all this about?” I said to “Jack _Poshcard_,” my old friend the gipsy, who stood at my elbow. “Don’t you know, governor?” said he. “We are going to have a deer turned out directly, and these are the huntsmen, and pretty huntsmen they are, for I could run faster myself.” While the preparations were going on my friend Jack said to me, “Governor, if you will come up again some Sunday I will see that you have a fine hare to take back with you.” While we were talking a hare showed its white tail among the bushes on the side of the hill, and I fancied I heard Jack smacking his lips at this treat in store for him.

There was a tremendous move forward taking place. The deer was turned out, and these London _quasi_-huntsmen were after it as fast as their steeds could carry them, dressed in fashions, colours, and shapes, varying from that of a gipsy to a dandy cockney, holloaing and bellowing like a lot of madcaps from Bedlam and Broadmoor, after a creature they could neither catch, kill, cook, nor eat.

While the din and hubbub were echoing away among the lovely hills and valleys of the forest, I wended my way to the station and to Victoria Park in company, part of the way, with some policemen jostling some youths off to the police station for disgraceful assaults upon young girls.

I strolled in Victoria Park, in company with a friend, the Rev. R. Spears, but no discord nor discordant noises were to be seen or heard.

The Sunday-school children had been enjoying themselves to their heart’s content. The grass, in many places, was literally covered with sandwich papers; and here and there a group of Sunday-school teachers were resting after their hard day’s work to please and amuse the “little folks” in their friskings and gambols in the fresh air. All this brings to my mind most vividly the long term of years when I had had the charge of such interesting gatherings, with their enchanting singing, sweet voices, pleasant faces, and delightful chatter as the little ones danced and bounded to and fro around me with mesmeric influence too powerful to withstand; and at times I have felt an irresistible impulse prompting me to shout out, “God bless the children!”

I had now arrived at the park-keeper’s gate on my way home. The fogs were rising, the shades of evening were gathering around us, silence and solitude were stealing over the scene, and behind me were four young men singing, feelingly, as they followed me out of the park, in the old evening song tune—

“Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day,
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see,
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”

To which I said, Amen and Amen. “So mote it be.”

Rambles among the Gipsies upon Wanstead Flats.

EASTER Tuesday was cold, disagreeable, and damp. A London fog was hanging overhead as I turned early out of my lodgings to visit Wanstead Flats gipsy fair. Between the black fog and the rays of the sun a struggle seemed to be taking place as to which influence should rule London for the day, by imparting either darkness, gloom, and melancholy, or light, brightness, and cheerfulness to the millions of dwellers and toilers in London streets, shops, offices, garrets, cellars, mansions, and palaces. The struggle did not continue long. Fog and mist had to vanish into thin air at the bidding of the Spring sun’s rays, and black particles of soot had to drop upon the pavement to be swept into the London sewers by scavengers. For my own part I felt heavy all day through fog and sunshine.

I duly arrived at Forest Gate, and began to wander among the gipsies, “taking stock,” and indulging in other preliminaries before making a practical “survey” of the whole.

During my peregrinations among the Wanstead Gonjos, Poshpeérdos, Romani-chals, and Romany Ryes, I came upon a gentleman with whom I had a long interesting conversation about the best means, plans, and modes of dealing with our little street Arabs and other juveniles who have “gone wrong,” or are found in paths leading to it. From my friend I gleaned some interesting information relating to the early steps taken to bring them back into paths of honesty, industry, and uprightness. Mary Carpenter, of Bristol, worked hard, long, and successfully in this direction. Although she has passed away, the fruits of her labour are seen at Bristol and at other places in the country to-day, and will continue green till the last trumpet shall sound, and we are called home to live in an atmosphere where there is no sorrow, crying, wretchedness, poverty, misery, or death, and where gipsy and canal children’s rags will be transformed into angel robes, and their dirt and filth into angel brightness and seraphic splendour.

About a century ago, an institution was set on foot in the Borough of Southwark called the Philanthropic Society, date 1780, which provided a home for the children of prisoners, who would otherwise have been thrown upon the world to beg or steal as best they could. For a period of more than half a century, the benevolent character of the society secured for it a fair share of voluntary support from the public. For many years it gathered together and educated both boys and girls—some of whom were gipsy children. The former were taught trades, such as tailoring, shoe-making, and rope-making. The girls were taught laundry work and the duties of domestic life. It was found, however, by much experience, sometimes painful, that the presence of both sexes, although kept as separate as possible, was not advantageous, and therefore, early in the present century, boys only were received. These were non-criminals themselves—only the offspring of that class, and destitute.

When separate prisons were found necessary for the more successful reclaiming, as it was hoped, of juvenile offenders, Parkhurst prison in the Isle of Wight was used for that class. The experiment of keeping young criminals together and away from older ones was considered so far satisfactory that, in the year 1846, Sir George Grey, as Home Secretary, resolved—no doubt at the instigation of Mary Carpenter, and as the result of her agitation in this direction—on trying the experiment of relieving the pressure arising from increased numbers by drafting those who had the most reliable characters into an institution from which they might hope to have more liberty, and ultimately, by continued good conduct, be placed out in service, and so obtain their freedom. All the inmates of Parkhurst prison were under sentence of seven or ten years’ transportation. The Home Secretary had twenty-five of those young persons selected, and a conditional pardon from the Queen was obtained for each, that they might be placed in circumstances to work their way speedily to freedom. The buildings of the Philanthropic Society in Southwark were selected for the experiment, and those juvenile criminals were introduced to their new liberty, and associated with the non-criminal boys then in the Institution. By that action the society changed its character, and henceforth it became a Reformatory School, still retaining its original name.

The experiment was both bold and wise; and to insure success an entire change of management was required. Up to that time repression and terror were too much exercised by the officials who had the care of the inmates. A much more liberal and enlightened policy was resolved upon, and education and home training were to be the substitutes. A large schoolroom was erected on the premises, which were situated immediately behind the Blind Asylum, and extended from the London Road on the east to St. George’s Road on the west, all enclosed within high walls, having a large chapel on the south-west corner, which served for both the inmates of the institution and the general public. It was of the first importance that in making this experiment properly qualified persons should be placed in command. The Rev. Sydney Turner (the favourite son of Sharon Turner, the historian) was the chaplain. The head master and house superintendent was selected from St. John’s College, Battersea, and Mr. George John Stevenson, M.A., was appointed to the responsible position. Both the chaplain and the head master shared alike the deep sense of the responsibility involved in the undertaking, as any amount of failure would have been a disaster to be deplored in many ways. So that it required a strong resolution on the part of those officials to secure success. Mr. Stevenson had to assume the position of father of the family, superintending the food, clothing, recreation, and education of the inmates. A new and experienced matron took charge of the domestic arrangements, and thus, from the very commencement of the new plans, the inmates were made to share in the comforts designed to improve their moral and social condition. All the old _régime_ was abandoned. It had broken down completely so far as either elevating the inmates or securing public patronage were concerned. The Government paid for each of their boys a fixed sum, which supplied the finances required for working the institution, and a cheerful prospect opened out from the beginning, which was shared alike by the officers and those under their care. That some of the more daring spirits should seek to trespass on the additional liberty thus afforded them was natural; that some few should give evidence of their innate desire for wrong-doing was not surprising. The first who violated their agreement to obedience soon found that the arrangements made with the police authorities were such as effectually broke down all their schemes for hastening their liberty. Five or six of the young rascals who escaped one Sunday evening just before bedtime were speedily brought back either by the police or by the superintendent of the institution early the next day, even when scattered over the metropolis; this had a very deterring effect on such efforts in future. They did not believe in what a writer in “The Christian Life” says—

“Obscured life sets down a type of bliss,
A mind content both crown and kingdom is;”

but rather in what a writer in _The Sunday at Home_ for 1878 says—

“Then while the shadows lingering cloked us,
Down to the ghostly shore we sped.”

Those who exercised more patience and discretion were allowed to spend a day with their relatives and to begin to familiarize themselves with the sweets of liberty; and these, after a few months’ experience, were sent out into the world to make a new start in life in such occupations as they had learned during their confinement; or those who preferred a seafaring life were placed in the merchant service. A number of gipsy children, sad to relate, have found their way into our present-day reformatories, industrial schools, and like places.

When at Bristol in 1882, inspecting along with a number of ladies and gentlemen the training ship, the superintendent pointed out to me several little gipsies who had been placed under his charge to become either “men or mice.”

The first year’s experience was of the most gratifying character. The Home Secretary, the Earl of Carlisle, the Bishop of Oxford, and other distinguished persons, visited the institution; and, desiring to become acquainted with the details of the daily experience, sought an interview with Mr. Stevenson, on whom depended mainly the results of the experiment. The effect of those personal investigations was shown by the too early dispatch of a much more numerous company of young transports from Parkhurst. The design was to relieve a heavy pressure felt there; but it had the effect of increasing the difficulties in the Reformatory School in Southwark. With the enlarged operations the official staff had to be increased, and the same superintendence worked out the same results on a larger scale after a little undue tension on both mind and body. The young persons reclaimed by that process found ready openings all over London, and these were frequently visited by the superintendent during the hours the inmates were at work. The education, conducted by Mr. Stevenson and an assistant, did not occupy more than two or three hours daily, so that handicraft operations might have, as it required, more time for exercise.

The first reformatory school for young criminals in the metropolis was, at the end of two years’ experience, a marked and decided success. The mental strain on the superintendent was great and continuous, the duties allowed of no respite for vacation; but as great and permanent advantages were hoped for by the Home Government, all connected with the institution worked for that result, and they had the satisfaction of seeing it. At the end of two years it was resolved to give the institution a more agricultural character, after the example of one established at Mettray, in France, whose founder visited the Philanthropic, in Southwark, during its new experience. To carry out that plan the erection of the Philanthropic Farm School at Red Hill, Reigate, was undertaken. At that time the trustees of the old endowed school on Lambeth Green required a head master, and, unsolicited on his part, Mr. Stevenson was unanimously elected to that office, visiting only occasionally the new establishment, which required officers with agricultural experience; and it was gratifying to him to know that the foundations so broadly laid were successful on a larger scale in working the permanent reformation of juvenile criminals out in the open country than they could possibly be in the crowded metropolis.

The success of this plan for dealing with juvenile criminals makes it evident that a wise statesmanlike plan of educating the gipsy children would turn them into respectable and useful members of society, instead of their growing up to make society their prey.

* * * * *

To come back to the gipsies upon the “Flats,” I bade my friend good-bye, and began in earnest to carry out the object of my visit.

I had not been long on the ground—_marshy flats_—before I saw a young man scampering off to a tumble-down show with a loaf of bread and two red herrings in his arms. He had no hat upon his head, and his hair was cut short. His face was bloated, presenting a piebald appearance of red, white, and black, with a few blotches into the bargain. His foolish colouring paint, jokes, and antics had dyed his skin, stained his conscience, and blackened his heart. His clothing consisted of part of a filthy ragged shirt and a pair of patched and ragged breeches. They looked as if the owner and the tailor were combined in one being, and that the one who stood before me. The stitches in his breeches could not have presented a stranger appearance if they had been worked and made with a cobbler’s awl and a “tackening end.” His boots in better days might have done duty in a drawing-room, but were now transformed. With a laugh and a joke I captured my new friend, and notwithstanding that he had his dinner in his arms, we entered into a long chat together.

I soon found out that he was the “old fool” of the show, with which he was connected, and was known among his fraternity as “Old Bones,” although he did not seem to be over twenty years old. His salary for being the “old fool,” young fool, a fool to himself, and a fool for everybody, was four shillings a week and his “tommy,” or “grub,” which, as he said, was “not very delicious” at all times. I asked “Old Bones” why he was nicknamed “Old Bones.” He said, “Because some of our chaps saw me riding upon an old bony horse one day, with its bones sticking up enough to cut you through, and the more I wolloped it the more it stuck fast and would not go.” When I heard this, one of the ditties I know in the days of my child slavery in the brickfield came up as green as ever—

“If I had a donkey and it would not go,
Must I wollop it? No, no, no!”

“Our chaps,” said Bones, “laughed at me. I had to dismount and let the brute take its chance; and from that day I have been named ‘Old Bones.’” “I’m not very old, am I?” he said, and began to kick about on the ground. But I would not let him go, for I wanted to learn something of his antecedents. He had been a gutta percha shoemaker, and could earn his pound or more per week, but preferred to tramp the country as an “old fool,” live on red herrings, dress in rags, and sleep on straw under the stage. Before he had quite finished his story, another man, dressed in a suit of dirty, greasy, seedy-looking, threadbare, worn-out West of England black cloth, joined us. “Old Bones,” after a good shake of the hand, vanished to his show, red herrings, and “quid of baccy,” and I was left alone with my second acquaintance. I was not long in finding out, according to his statement, that he was a “converted Jew,” and had been to the “Cape” and lost £5000 in the diamond fields, and had come home to “pull up” again, instead of which, he had gone from bad to worse, and was now tramping the country with an old showman as a “fire king,” and sleeping under the stage among old boxes, rags, and straw. His real name was —, but was passing through the world as W—. Strange to say, I knew his brother-in-law, who is a leading man in one of the large English towns.

When I asked the “fire king” how he liked his new profession, he said, “Not at all; at first it was dreadful to get into the taste of the paraffin and oil. After you have put the blazing fusees into your mouth, they leave a taste that does not mix up very well with your food. Paraffin is a good thing for the rheumatics. I never have them now.” I questioned him as to the process the mouth underwent previous to the admission of lighted fusees. “If you keep your mouth wet,” he replied, “have plenty of courage, and breathe out freely, the blazing fire will not hurt you.” My new friend had much of a suspicious cast upon his features; so much so, indeed, that in one of his tramps from Norwich to Bury St. Edmunds, in one day he was taken up three times as “one who was wanted” by the policeman, for doing work not of an angelic kind.

In a van belonging to the owner of “a show of varieties,” there were eight children, besides man, wife, and mother-in-law. The showman could read, and chatter almost like a flock of crows; but none of the children, including several little ones, who assisted him in his performances, could either read or write, except one or two who had a “little smattering.” The showman quite gloried in having beaten the Durham School Board authorities, who had summoned him for not sending his children to school, while temporarily residing in the city. He defied them to produce the Act of Parliament compelling him as a traveller to send his children to school. The school authorities had sued him under their own by-laws, and as they could not produce the Act, he came off with flying colours.

Business was slack with this showman, and he undertook to introduce me to all the “showmen and shows” in the gipsy fair. Of course, I had only time to visit a few of the _best_ specimens. The first show, which was to be a pattern of perfection, was “boarded.” I must confess I did not much like the idea of mounting the steps, in the face of thousands of sightseers, to pass through “fools,” jesters, mountebanks, and painted women dressed in little better than “tights,” and amidst the clash of gongs and drums. I kept my back to the crowd, slouched my cap, buttoned up my coat to the throat, hung down my head, and crept in to witness one of the “Sights of London.” After I had duly arrived inside, I was introduced to my friends the leading performers, amongst whom were the smallest huntsman in the world and the youngest jockey. While we were fraternizing, a row commenced between two of the leading women connected with the show. Two travelling showmen—brothers—had married two travelling showwomen—sisters—among whom jealousy had sprung up. Tears and oaths were likely to be followed by blows sharp and strong and a scattering of beautiful locks of hair. I seemed to be in a fair way for landing into the midst of a terrible row between the two masculine sisters, whose arms and legs indicated no small amount of muscular strength, while their eyes blazed with mischief. One of the dressed showmen, an acrobat, came to me and said, that I was not to think anything of the _fracas_, the women had had only a little chip out, they would be sobered down in a little time. The women came round me with their tale, but I thought it the wisest plan not to interfere in the matter, and kept “mum,” for fear that I might get my bones into trouble. Happily the policeman appeared upon the scene, and before the curtain dropped, and the performing pony had finished his antics, I had with my showman friend made myself scarce. He said he was very sorry, and apologized for having introduced me to his friends under such circumstances. I could see he was chopfallen at the result, as this was a “going concern” in which all parties engaged were to be held up to me as paragons of perfection in the performing and showing business.

My showman friend, according to his own statements, had been almost everything in the “show” line, ranging from that of a tramp to an “old fool.” To my mind he was well qualified for either, or anything else in this line of business, with will strong enough to drag his eight children after him; at any rate, himself and his large family were going fast to ruin.