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CHAPTER XII.
THE GIPSY GIRL
Wherein are inscribed all the particulars of a visit to the “Gipsy Girl,” of No. 207, Third Avenue, with an allusion to Gin, and other luxuries dear to the heart of that beautiful Rover
There is much less affectation of high-flown and lofty-sounding names among the ladies of the black-art mysteries, than might very naturally be expected. Most of them are content with plain “Madame” Smith, or unadorned “Mrs.” Jones, and “The Gipsy Girl” is almost the only exception to this rule that is to be encountered among all the fortune-tellers of the city.
This arises from no poverty of invention on their part, but from a sound conviction that in this case, simplicity is an element of sound policy. There has been no lack of “mysteriously gifted prophetesses,” and of “astonishing star readers;” there have been, I believe, within the last few years, a “Daughter of Saturn,” and a “Sorceress of the Silver Girdle;” and once the “Queen of the Seven Mysteries” condescended to sojourn in Gotham for five weeks, but on the whole it has been found that a more modest title pays better. To be sure, the “Daughter of Saturn” was tried for conspiring with two other persons to swindle an old and wealthy gentleman out of seventeen hundred dollars, and the “Queen of the Seven Mysteries” was dispossessed by a constable for non-payment of rent; and these untoward circumstances may have acted as a “modest quencher” on the then growing disposition to indulge in fantastic and romantic appellations.
At this present time “The Gipsy Girl” enjoys almost a monopoly of this sort of thing, and she is by no means constant to one name, but sometimes announces herself as “The Gipsy Woman,” “The Gipsy Palmist,” and “The Gipsy Wonder,” as her whim changes.
This woman has not been in New York years enough to become complicated in as many rascalities as some of her elder sisters in the mystic arts, but her surroundings are of a nature to indicate that she has not been backward in her American education on these points. She has not been remarkably successful in making money, as a witch; not having been educated among the strumpets and gamblers of the city she lacked that extensive acquaintance on going into business, that had secured for her rivals in trade such immediate success. Her fondness for gin has also proved a serious bar to her rapid advancement, and has given not a few of her customers the idea that she is not so eminently trustworthy as one having the control of the destinies of others should be. In fact, she loves her enemy, the bottle, to that extent, that she has many times permitted her devotion to it to interfere seriously with her business, leading her to disappoint customers. The quality of her sober predictions is about the same as that of others in the same profession, but her intoxicated foretellings are deserving of a chapter to themselves, and they shall have it, for from force of peculiar circumstances, which will be explained hereafter, the Cash Customer made three visits to this celebrated woman. Her first address was 207 3d Avenue, between Eighteenth and Nineteenth Streets.
The Gipsy Girl! How romantically suggestive was this feminine phrase to the fancy of an enthusiastic reporter. Was it then, indeed, permitted that he should know Meg Merrilees in private life? His heart danced at the poetic possibility, and his heels would have extemporized a vigorous hornpipe but that his saltatory ardor was quenched by the depressing sturdiness of cow-hide boots. With the most pleasing anticipations he perused the subjoined advertisement again and again, and looked to the happy future with a joyful hope.
“A Wonder – The Gipsy Girl. – If you wish to know all the secrets of your past and future life, the knowledge of which may save you years of sorrow and care, don’t fail to consult the above-named palmist. Charge 50 cents. The Gipsy has also on hand a secret which will enable any lady or gentleman to win or obtain the affections of the opposite sex. Charge extra. No. 207 3d av., between 18th and 19th sts.”
How the knowledge of all the secrets of his past life was to save him years of sorrow and care at this late day he could not exactly comprehend, and was willing to pay fifty cents for the information. And then wasn’t it worth half a dollar to see a live gipsy? Of course it was.
Kettles, camp-fires, white tents under green trees, indigenous brown babies and exotic white ones, with a panorama of empty cradles and mourning mothers in the distance, moonlight nights, midnight foraging excursions, expeditions against impertinent game-keepers, demonstrations against hen-roosts – successful by masterly generalship and pure strategic science – and the midnight forest cookery of contraband game, surreptitious pigs and clandestine chickens – were among the romantic ideas of a delightful vagabond gipsy life that at once suggested themselves to the mind of the Cash Customer. He did not really expect to find the Third-Avenue gipsy camped out under a bed-quilt tent in the lee of the house, or cooking her dinner in an iron pot over an out-door fire in the back yard, but he had a vague undefined hope that there would be some visible indications of gipsy life, if it was nothing more than the pawn-tickets for stolen spoons.
He thought to find at least one or two beautiful babies knocking about, decorated with coral necklaces and golden clasps, suggestive of rich parents and better days, and had firmly resolved to send the little innocents to the alms-house by way of improving their condition. Full of these romantic notions, the reporter started on his philanthropic mission, taking the preliminary precaution of leaving at home his watch and pocket-book, and carrying with him only small change enough to pay the advertised charges.
In one of those three-story brick houses so abounding in this city, which seem to have been built by the mile and cut off in slices to suit purchasers, in the Third Avenue above Eighteenth Street, dwelt at that time the gay Bohemian. The building in which she lived, though three stories in height, is very short between joints, which style of architecture makes all the rooms low and squat, as if somebody had shut the house into itself like a telescope, and had never pulled it out again.
Out of the chimney, which was the little end of the telescope, issued a sickly smoke; and through a door in the lower story, which was the big end thereof, was the stranger admitted by a little girl. This girl was, probably, a pure article of gipsy herself originally, but had been so much adulterated by partial civilization that she combed her hair daily and submitted to shoes and stockings without a murmur. Ragged indeed was this reclaimed wanderer; saucy and dirty-faced was this sprouting young maiden, but she was sharp-witted, and scented money as quickly as if she had been the oldest hag of her tribe; so she asked her customer to walk up stairs, which he did. She herself went up stairs with a skip and a whirl, showed her visitor into the grand reception room with a gyrating flourish, and disappeared in a “courtesy” of so many complex and dizzy rotations that she seemed to the eyes of the bewildered traveller to evaporate in a red flannel mist. As soon as she had spun herself out of sight he recovered his presence of mind and looked about him.
The romantic gipsy who sojourned here had tried to furnish her rooms like civilized people, doubtless out of respect to her many patrons. A thread-bare carpet was under foot; a little parlor stove with a little fire in it was standing on a little piece of zinc, and did its little utmost to heat the room; an uncomfortable looking sofa covered with shabby and faded red damask graced one side of the apartment, and a lounge, of curtailed dimensions, partially covered with shreds of turkey red calico, adorned another side.
This latter article of furniture, with its tattered cover, through which suspicious bits of curled hair peeped out, and wide crevices in its rickety frame were plainly visible, looked much too suggestive of cockroaches and other insect delicacies of the season to be an inviting place of repose.
Three chairs were dispersed throughout the room, on one of which the reporter bestowed himself, and the rest of the furniture consisted of a table, so exceedingly shaky and sensitive in the joints that it might have been the grim skeleton of some former table, loosely hung together with unseen wires; and a cheap looking-glass that had suffered so serious a comminuted fracture as to be past all surgery – this was all except some little plaster images of saints, strangers to the Cash Customer, and a black rosary, which article would seem to show that efforts had been put forth to Christianize this nut-brown gipsy maid.
A clinking of glasses was heard in the adjoining apartment, then the door was opened with an independent flirt, and the gay Bohemian appeared on the scene.
If it were desired to fancy visions of enchanting loveliness it would be necessary to insert therein other ingredients than the gipsy girl of the Third Avenue; alone she would be insufficient; too much would be left to the imagination; and in any event the illusion would be too great to last long.
She is of medium height, her eyes are brown and bright, and her hands are very large and red. She has no hair, but wears a scratch red wig, which gives her head a utilitarian character. Her face is deeply pitted with the small-pox, more than pitted – gullied, scarred, and seamed, as though some jealous rival had been trying to plough her complexion under; little short light hairs are thinly scattered on her cheek bones and upper lip, and in the shadows of the little ridges that disease had left, irresistibly compelling the mind to make an absurd comparison of her face with a sterile field, and imagine that at some past day it had been spaded up to plant a beard, which had only grown in scanty patches, here and there. Her nails were horny and ill-shaped, and underneath them and at their roots were large deposits of dirt and other fertilizing compounds, under the stimulating influence of which they had grown lank and long. Her attire was a sort of cross between the picturesque wildness of the gipsy, and the more civilized and unbecoming dress of Third Avenue Christians.
She was apparelled, principally, in a red flannel jacket, and a check handkerchief, which was passed under her chin and tied on the top of her wig, where the knot looked like a blue butterfly. There was a gown, but a series of subsoiling experiments would have been necessary to determine the material and texture; the surface was palpably dirt. Accompanying her there was a strong smell of gin, and from the odor of the liquor the visitor judged that it was a very poor article.
This gay old gipsy drew a chair to the table, and sat down, not in a graceful and composed manner, but more as if she had been dumped from a cart. She soon partially recovered herself, and straightened up slightly from the heap into which she had collapsed, and, turning her head away from her customer, she elaborately remarked: “Fifty cents and your left ’and.”
The Individual made a careful search for his small change, and fished out the exact amount which he promptly paid over.
This delightful gipsy then took his left hand and looked at it for a minute in an imbecile kind of way, as if she didn’t know exactly what to do with it, and was undecided whether it was to be made into soup, or she was to drink it immediately with warm water and a little sugar. This last impression evidently prevailed, for she tried to pour it into her apron, and only recovered from her delusion when the fingers tangled themselves up in the strings. Then a glimmering of the true state of the case seemed to dawn upon her, and she began to have a dim idea that she was expected to say something.
Now the roving gipsy was not by any means intoxicated at this time; that is to say, she may have been partaking of gin, or gin and water, or may have been sucking sugar that had gin on it, or she may have been taking a little gin and peppermint for a stomach-ache, or she may have been bathing her head in gin, or have been otherwise making use of that potent remedy as a medicine, but she was by no means a subject for official interference in case she had wandered into the street, but she was, to tell the truth, not in her most clear-headed condition; although probably she did not see more than one Cash Customer sitting solemnly before her, still that one was quite as many as she could well manage at that time.
After the signal failure of her little demonstration on the hand of her guest, she, by a strong effort, seemed to concentrate her faculties, and after several trials she roused herself and spoke as follows, emphasizing the short words with spiteful vindictiveness, and paying the most particular attention to the improper aspiration of the h’s.
“You are a person as has seen a great deal of dif – ”
The gay Bohemian here evidently desired to say “difficulty,” but the word was a sad stumbling-block, a four-syllable rock ahead which was too much for her powers in her then exhausted state of mind; she charged on the unfortunate word boldly, however, and tried to carry it by storm, but each time was repulsed with great loss of breath – “a great deal of dif – dif – dif – diffle” – it was no use, so she tried back and began again.
“You are a man as has seen a great deal of diffleculency,” was what she said, but it didn’t seem to satisfy her, so she tried again, and after a number of trials she hit a happy medium between “dif” and “diffleculency” and compromised on “difflety,” which useful addition to the language she took occasion to repeat as often as possible with an air of decided triumph.
“You are a man as has seen a great deal of difflety and trouble – I would not go to say you ’ave been through too much difflety and trouble, still you ’ave seen difflety and trouble. If you had been a luckier man in your past life you would not ’ave seen so much difflety and trouble, still you ’ave seen difflety and trouble – I ’ope you will not see so much difflety and trouble in the future – Life: you will live long; you will live to be 69 years of hage and will die of a lingering disease – you will be sick for a long time, and will not suffer much difflety and trouble – sixty-nine years of hage you will live to be – Death: don’t think of death; that is too far hoff a you to think of – but you will die when you are 69 years of hage, and you may ’ope to go right hup to ’eaven, for you will ’ave no more difflety and trouble then – Money: you will ’ave money, and you will ’ave plenty of money, but you must not look for money until you ’ave reached your middle hage– a distant Hinglish relative of yours will leave you money, but you will ’ave difflety and trouble in getting it; do not hexpect to get this money without difflety, no do not cherish such a ’ope – hit will be in the ’ands of a man who wont hanswer your letters nor take notice of your happlications, you will ’ave to cross the hocean yourself; this money will be a good deal of money and will make you ’appy for the rest of your days – Business: you will thrive in business, you will never be hunfortunate in business, you will ’ave luck in business, you will always do a good business, may hexpect to make money by large speculations in business; difflety and trouble in business you will not know – Great Troubles: you need not hexpect to ’ave many great troubles for you will not; you ’ave ’ad your great troubles in your hearly days – Sickness: you will never see no sickness, ’ave no fear of sickness for you will not see none; sickness, do not care for it and make your mind heasy– Friends: you ’ave got many friends, both ’ere and helsewhere, your friends will be ’appy and you will be ’appy, there will be no difflety and trouble between you, you ’ave ’ad trouble with your friends, but you face brighter days, be ’appy – Wives: you will ’ave but one wife; in the third month from now you will ’ear from ’er, you will get a letter from ’er, and in the fourth month you will be married – she is not particularly ’andsome, nor she is not specially hugly, she ’as got blue heyes and brown ’air, is partickler fond of ’ome and is now heighteen years of hage – ’Appiness: you will be the ’appiest people in all the land, you can’t himagine the ’appiness you will ’ave – Children: you will ’ave three children, after you are married you will see no more difflety and trouble; you will die in a foreign land across the hocean but you will die ’appy. ’Ope for ’appiness and ’ave no huneasiness.”
Thus prophesied the gay Bohemian, the nut-brown maid, the dark-eyed oracle, the wise charmer, the female seer, the beautiful sibyl, the lovely enchantress, the romantic “gipsy girl” of the Third Avenue.
Romance and poesy were effectually demolished by the overpowering realities of dirt, vulgarity, cockneyism, ignorance, scratch-wigs, bad English, and bad gin. Sadly the Individual walked down stairs behind the gyrating girl, who reappeared with an agile pirouette, twirled down on her toes, and opened the door with a dizzy revolution that made her look as if her head and shoulders had got into a whirlpool of petticoats, and were past all hope of mortal rescue. The little chink, as of a bottle and glass, came faintly from the apartment which is the home of the gipsy, and the individual fancied that the gay Bohemian had returned to her devotions.
CHAPTER XIII.
MADAME FLEURY, No. 263 BROOME STREET
Contains a true account of the Magic Establishment of Mrs. Fleury, of No. 263 Broome Street, and also shows the exact quantity of Witchcraft that snuffy personage can afford for one Dollar
From what the reader has already perused of the predictions and prophecies of these modern dealers in magic, he will hardly think them of a character to inspire any great degree of confidence in the minds of people of ordinary common sense. Still less will he be disposed to believe that merchants of “credit and renown;” business men, engaged in occupations, the operations of which are presumed to be governed by the nicest mathematical calculations, are ever so far influenced by the miserable jargon of these “fortune-tellers,” as to seriously consult them in business matters of great importance.
Such, however, is the humiliating truth.
There are in New York city a number of merchants, bankers, brokers, and other persons eminent in the business world, and respectable in all social relations, who never make an important business move in any direction, until after consultation with one or another of the Witches of New York.
There are many who are regular periodical customers, and who visit the shrine of the oracle once a month, or once in six weeks, as regularly as they make out their balance-sheets, or take an account of stock, and who guide their future investments and business ventures as much by the written fifty-cent prophecy as by either of the other documents.
Many country merchants have also learned this trick, and some of them are in constant correspondence with the cheap sybils of Grand Street; and others, when they come to the city for their stock of goods for the next half year, visit their chosen fortune-teller and get full and explicit directions how to conduct their business for the coming six months. Of course, these proceedings are conducted with the greatest possible secrecy, and the attention of the writer was first awakened to this fact by the indiscreet boastings of certain ones of the witches themselves, who are not a little proud of their influence, and after observations afforded ample proof and corroboration of all he had been told.
Great money enterprises have without doubt been seriously affected by the yea or nay of the Bible and key, and perhaps the Atlantic Cable Company would have received more hearty assistance, and its stock more extensive subscriptions in Wall Street, if certain ones of the fortune-tellers had possessed more faith in its success, and had so advised their patrons.
Incredible as these statements may seem, they are nevertheless true, and this fact is another proof that gross superstition is not confined to the low and filthy parts of the city, where rags and dirt are the universal rule, but that it has likewise a thrifty growth in quarters of the town where stand the palaces of the “merchant princes,” and in avenues where rags are almost unknown, and broadcloth, and gold, and fine-twined linen are the common wear.
It is said that certain counsel eminent in the learned profession of the law, and that certain even of the judges of the bench, have been known to consult the female practicers of the Black Art, but the author has never been personally cognizant of a case of this kind, and has no means of knowing whether the consultation was intended to benefit the lawyer or the witch; whether the former desired enlightenment as to the management of some knotty professional point, or whether the latter wanted legal advice as to some of the side branches of her business.
Mrs. Fleury, whose domicile and mode of procedure are described in this present chapter, has a large run of this sort of what may be termed respectable custom, and she does not fail to profit by it to the utmost. She came to New York, from France, about six or seven years ago, and at once established herself in the witch business, which she could advertise extensively in the papers, although the other branches of her profession, by which she probably makes more money than by telling fortunes, would by no means bear newspaper publicity. What these other branches are, is more explicitly stated in other chapters of this book, and, in fact, needs to be but hinted at, to be at once understood by nearly all who read.
Madame Fleury advertised the world of her arrival in America, and of her supernatural powers, and in a short time customers began to flock in. It is now her boast that she has as “respectable a connexion” as any one in the trade, and that she has as great a number of “regular, reliable customers,” as any conjuress in America. She says that most of her “regular customers” visit her once in six weeks, six being with her a favorite number, and she not undertaking to guarantee her business predictions for a greater length of time.
Whether she makes any discount from her ordinary prices to these regular traders, she did not state, but probably witchcraft is governed by the same rule as other commodities, and comes cheaper to wholesale dealers.
Duly armed and equipped with staff and scrip, and duly fortified within by such stimulants as the exigencies of the case seemed to demand, the Cash Customer set out for 263 Broome Street, and after strict trial and due examination of the premises and the people, he made the following report.
It was a favorite remark of a learned though mistaken philosopher of the olden time, that “you can’t make a whistle of a pig’s tail.” The philosopher died, but his saying was accepted by the world as an axiom – a bit of incontrovertible truth, eternal, Godlike, fully up to par, worth a hundred per cent., with no possibility of discount. Time, however, which often demonstrates the fallibility of human wisdom, has not spared even this oft-quoted adage; and now there is not a collection of curiosities in the land which lacks a pig-tail whistle to proclaim in the shrillest tones the falsity of the wise man’s proposition, and the triumph of Yankee ingenuity. Had this same philosopher been interrogated on the subject, he would undoubtedly have announced, and with an equal show of probability on his side of the argument, that “you can’t make a star-reading prophetess out of a snuffy old woman;” but had he lived to the present day, the Cash Customer would have taken great pleasure in exhibiting to him these two apparently irreconcilable characters combined in a single person, and that person Mrs. Fleury, who pays for the daily insertion of the following advertisement in the newspapers.
“ASTROLOGY. – Mrs. Fleury, from Paris, is the most celebrated lady of the present age, in telling future events, true and certain. She answers questions on business, marriage, absent friends, &c., by magnetism. Office No. 263 Broome-st.”
There is not so much of promise in this paragraph, as there is in some of the more grandiloquent announcements of the other witches – not probably, that Madame Fleury is any less pretentious than they, but her knowledge of the English language is not perfect enough to enable her to give her ideas their full effect.
The Cash Customer resolved to visit this “most celebrated lady of the age,” who had come all the way from Paris, to tell his “future events true and certain,” nothing daunted by the circumstance that she lives in the filthiest part of Broome Street, which has never been swept clean since it was a very new Broome indeed.
If our fancy farmers, who expend so much money upon the various foreign manures and fertilizing compounds, would but turn their eyes in the direction of Broome Street, a single glance would convince them of the inexhaustible resources of their own country, while guano would instantly depreciate in value, and the island of Ichaboe not be worth a quarrel. This prolific and valuable deposit that covers Broome Street bears perennial crops: in the spring and summer, dirty-faced children and mean-looking dogs seem to spring from it spontaneously; they are succeeded during the colder weather by a crop of tumble-down barrels, and cast-away broken carts; while the humbler and more insignificant things, the uncared for weeds, so to speak, of the abundant harvest, such as potato parings, and fish heads, and shreds of ragged dish-cloths, and bits of broken crockery, and old bones, are in season all the year round.
In the midst of this filth, with policy-shops adjacent, and pawnbrokers’ offices close at hand, and rum shops convenient in the neighborhood – where the reeking streets and stagnant gutters, and the heaps of decomposing garbage, send up a stench so thick and heavy that it beslimes everything it touches, and makes a man feel as if he were far past the saving powers of soap and soft water, and was fast dissolving into rancid lard oil – in this congenial atmosphere flourishes the prophetess, and here is found the mansion of Mrs. Fleury, “the most celebrated lady of the age in telling future events.” Her mansion is not one that would be selected as a permanent residence by any one with a superabundance of cash capital, nor did it seem quite suited to the deservings of the “most celebrated lady of the present age;” the house, a three-story brick, originally intended to be something above the common, has been for so many years misused and badly treated by reckless tenants, that it has completely lost its good temper, as well as its good looks, and is now in a perpetual state of aggravated sulkiness. It resents the presence of a stranger as an impertinent intrusion, and avenges the personality in various disagreeable ways. It twitches its rickety stairways impatiently under his feet, as if to shake him off and damage him by the fall – it viciously attempts to pinch and jam his fingers with moody dogged doors, which hold back as long as they can, and then close with a sudden snap, exceedingly dangerous to the unwary – it tears his clothes with ambushed rusty nails, and unsuspected hooks, and sharp and jagged splinters – it creaks its floors under his tread with a doleful whine, and complains of his cruel treatment in sharp-pointed, many-cornered tears of plaster, which it drops from the ceiling upon his head the instant he takes his hat off – it yawns its wide cellar doors open like a greedy mouth, evidently hoping that an unlucky step will pitch him headlong down – and it conducts itself in a thousand ill-natured ways like a sulky child that has been waked up too early in the morning, and not properly whipped into good behavior. The Individual, however, entered the doors, unabashed by the malignant scowl which was visible all over the face of the unamiable mansion, and stumbled through a narrow, dirty hall, up two flights of groaning stairs, before he discovered any sign of the whereabouts of Madame. She evidently did not occupy the entire of this sulky edifice, or he would have seen some of the servants or retainers, who would have been only too happy to direct him to the head-quarters of the sorceress. But the few people he saw about the place seemed to be each one occupied with his or her own private affairs, and to be too much taken up therewith to pay the slightest attention to the new-comer. Their attentions to each other were confined to reproaches, uncomplimentary assertions, and sundry maledictory remarks, accompanied, in case of the younger members of the various tribes, with pinches, pokes, punches, and small but frequent showers of brickbats.
The Individual disregarded these evidences of good feeling, not considering himself called upon to reply to any which were not addressed to him individually, and plodded on till his roving eye rested on a tin sign, on which was inscribed, “Madame Fleury, Room No. 4.” There were no mysterious emblems or cabalistic flourishes accompanying this simple announcement.
He pulled the knob and the door was instantly opened by the lady herself, so quickly that the bell had no time to ring until all necessity for it was over – she had evidently heard the advancing footsteps of her customer, and had stood ready to pounce upon him. She ushered him into the apartment, where he soon recovered his self-possession, and took an observation.
The room was a small square one, shabbily furnished with very few articles of furniture, and these were dimly visible through the snuffy mist which filled the apartment; there was snuff everywhere; there was a snuffy dust on the chairs; there was a precipitate of snuff on the floor, and, if snuff was capable of crystallization, there would undoubtedly have been stalactitic formations of snuff depending from the ceiling; the Madame herself was snuff-colored, as if she had been boiled in a decoction of tobacco.
