Kitabı oku: «The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan», sayfa 8
“It will be half-past eight before the saloon and after-cabin are thoroughly in order, for the Wanderer is quite a Pullman car and lady’s boudoir, minus the lady. Then, my old friend, visitors will begin to drop in, and probably for nearly an hour I am holding a kind of levée. It is a species of lionising that I have now got hardened to. Everybody admires everything, and I have to answer the same kind of questions day after day. It is nice, however, to find people who know me and have read my writings in every village in the kingdom. Hurricane Bob, of course, comes in for a big share of admiration. He gets showers of kisses, and many a fair cheek rests lovingly on his bonnie brow. I have to be content with smiles and glances, flowers and fruit, and eggs and new potatoes. The other day a handsome salmon came. It was a broiling hot day. The salmon said he must be eaten fresh. I was equal to the occasion. The lordly fish was cooked, the crew of the Wanderer, all told, gathered around him on the grass, and soon he had to change his tense– from the present to the past.
“The other day pigeons came. My valet plucked them, and the day being windy, and he, knowing no better, did the work standing, and, lor! how the feathers flew. It was a rain of feathers, and a reign of terror, for the ladies passing to the station had to put up their umbrellas.
“But the steps are up, the horses are in, good-byes said, hands are waved by the kindly crowd, and away we rattle. My place is ever on the coupé, note-book in hand.
“‘A chiel’s among ye,’ etc.
“My valet is riding on ahead on the tricycle. This year it is the charming ‘Marlborough,’ which is such a pleasant one to ride. On and on, now we go, through the beautiful country; something to attract our attention at every hundred yards. Heavens! my dear Caw, how little those who travel by train know of the delights of the road. We trot along while on level roads, we madly rush the short, steep hills at a glorious gallop, we crawl up the long, bad hills, and carefully – with skid and chain on the near hind wheel – we stagger down the break-neck ‘pinches.’ The brake is a powerful one, and in bad countries is in constant use, so that its brass handle shines like gold, and my arm aches ere night with putting it on and off.
“Well, there is a midday halt after ten miles, generally on the roadside near water. We have a modest lunch of hard-boiled eggs, milk, beer, cheese, bread, and crushed oats and a bit of clover. Then on and on again. By five we have probably settled for the night, when dinner is prepared. We hardly need supper, and what with the rattling along all day, and the hum of the great van – with running and riding, and studying natural history and phenomena, including faces – I am tired, and so are we all, by nine o’clock.
“But we generally have music before then. I have a small harmonium, a guitar, and a fiddle, and my valet plays well on the flute.
“‘Then comes still evening on.’
“The bats and owls come out, and we retire.
“Of weather we have all varieties – the hot and the cool, the rain that rattles on the roof, the wind that makes the Wanderer rock, and the occasional thunderstorm. One dark night last week – we were in a lonely place – I sat out on the coupé till one o’clock – ‘the wee short hoor ayont the twal’ – watching the vivid blue lightning, that curled like fiery snakes among the trees. By the way, I had nothing on but my night-shirt, and a dread spectre I must have appeared to anyone passing, seen but for a moment in the lightning’s flash, then gone. I marvelled next day that I had caught a slight cold.
“I love little, quiet meadows, Caw. I dote on rural villages, and hate big towns. If the caravan is not lying on the grass there is no comfort.
“I lay last night in the cosiest meadow ever I have been in. The very rural hamlet of Bunny, Notts, is a quarter of a mile away, but all the world is screened away from me with trees and hedges. I have for meadow-mates two intelligent cows, who can’t quite make us out. They couldn’t make Bob out either, till in the zeal of his guardianship he got one of them by the tail. There is in this hamlet of three hundred souls one inn – it is tottering to decay – a pound, a police-station, and a church. The church is ever so old, the weather-cock has long been blown down, and the clock has stopped for ever. The whole village is about as lively and bright as a farthing candle stuck in an empty beer bottle.
“But here come the horses. Good-bye till we meet.
“Gordon Stables, —
“Ye Gentleman Gipsy.”
Chapter Fifteen.
The Humours of the Road – Inn Signs – What I am Taken for – A Study of Faces – Milestones and Finger-Posts – Tramps – The Man with the Iron Mask – The Collie Dog – Gipsies’ Dogs – A Midnight Attack on the Wanderer
“I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.”
Dryden.
Madly dashing on through the country as cyclists do, on their way to John o’ Groats or elsewhere, probably at an average rate of seventy miles a day, neither scenery nor anything else can be either enjoyed or appreciated.
The cyclist arrives in the evening at his inn, tired, dusty, and disagreeably damp as to underclothing. He has now no other wish except to dine and go to bed. Morning sees him in the saddle again, whirring ever onwards to the distant goal.
He is doing a record. Let him. For him the birds sing not in woodland or copse; for him no wild flowers spring; he pauses not to listen to hum of bee or murmur of brooklet, nor to admire the beauties of heathy hills, purple with the glorious heather, or bosky dells, green with feathery larch or silvery birch; nor does he see the rolling cloudscapes, with their rifts of blue between. On – on – on – his way is ever on.
But gipsy-folks, like myself, jogging along at a quiet six-or-seven-miles-an-hour pace, observe and note everything. And it is surprising what trifles amuse us.
Although I constantly took notes from the coupé, or from my cycle saddle, and now and then made rough sketches, I can in these pages only give samples from these notes.
A volume could be written on public-house or inn signs, for example.
Another on strange names.
A third on trees.
A fourth on water – lakes, brooklets, rivers, cataracts, and mill-streams.
A fifth upon faces.
And so on, ad libitum.
As to signs, many are curious enough, but there is a considerable amount of sameness about many. You meet Red Lions, White Harts, Kings’ Arms, Dukes’ Arms, Cricketers’ Arms, and arms of all sorts everywhere, and Woolpacks, and Eagles, and Rising Suns, ad nauseam.
The sign of a five-barred gate hung out is not uncommon in the Midland Counties, with the following doggerel verse: —
“This gate hangs well,
And hinders none;
Refresh and pay,
And travel on.”
Although the Wanderer is nearly always taken for what she is – a private carriage on a large scale – still it is amusing sometimes to note what I am mistaken for, to wit: —
1. “General” in the Salvation Army.
2. Surgeon-attendant on a nervous old lady who is supposed to be inside.
3. A travelling artist.
4. A photographer.
5. A menagerie.
6. A Cheap-Jack.
7. A Bible carriage.
8. A madman.
9. An eccentric baronet.
10. A political agent.
11. Lord E.
12. Some other “nob.”
13. And last, but not least, King of the Gipsies.
It must not be supposed that I mind a single bit what people think of me, so long as I have a quiet, comfortable meadow to stand in at night and a good stable for Corn-flower and Pea-blossom. But how would you like, reader, to be taken for a travelling show, and to make your way through a village followed by a crowd of admiring children, counting their pence, and wondering when you were going to open?
Polly’s cage would occasionally be hanging from the verandah over the coupé, with Hurricane Bob lying on his rug, and I would hear such remarks as these from the juvenile crowd: —
“Oh! look at his long moustache.”
“Oh! look at his hat, Mary.”
“Susan, Susan, look at the Poll parrot.”
“Look! it is holding a biscuit in its hand.”
“Look at the bear.”
“No, it’s a dog.”
“You’re a hass! it’s a bear.”
“Lift me up to see, Tildie.”
“Lift me up too.”
Here again is my coachman being interviewed by some country bumpkins: – “Who be your master, matie?”
“A private gentleman.”
“Is he a Liberal?”
“No.”
“Is he a Tory?”
“Perhaps.”
“Is he a Salvationist?”
“Not much.”
“What does he do?”
“Nothing.”
“What does he keep?”
“The Sabbath.”
“Got anything to sell?”
“No! Do you take us for Cheap-Jacks?”
“Got anything to give away, then?” It will be observed that even a gentleman gipsy’s life has its drawbacks, but not many. One, however, is a deficiency of privacy. For instance, though I have on board both a guitar and fiddle, I can neither play nor sing so much of an evening as I would like to do, because a little mob always gathers round to listen, and I might just as well be on the stage. But in quiet country places I have often, when I saw I was not unappreciated, played and sang just because they seemed to like it.
The faces I see on the road are often a study in themselves, and one might really make a kind of classification of those that are constantly recurring. I have only space to give a sample from memory.
1. This face to me is not a pleasing memory. It is that of the severe-looking female in a low pony carriage. She may or may not be an old maid. Very likely she is; and no wonder, for she is flat-faced and painfully plain. Beside her sits her companion, and behind her a man in a cheap livery; while she herself handles the ribbons, driving a rough, independent, self-willed pony. These people sternly refuse to look at us. They turn away their eyes from beholding vanity; or they take us for real gipsies – “worse than even actors.” I can easily imagine some of the items of the home life of this party: the tidily kept garden; the old gardener, who also cleans the boots and waits at table; the stuffy little parlour, with the windows always down; the fat Pomeranian dog; the tabby cat; and the occasional “muffin shines,” as Yankees call them, where bad tea is served – bad tea and ruined reputations. Avast! old lady; the sun shines more brightly when you are out of sight.
2. The joskin or country lout. He stops to stare. Probably he has a pitchfork in his hand. On his face is a wondering, half-amused smile, but his eyes are so wide open that he looks scared. His mouth is open, too, and big enough apparently to hold a mangel-wurzel.
Go on, Garge; we won’t harm thee, lad.
3. Cottage folks of all kinds and colours. Look at the weary face of that woman with the weary-looking baby on her arm. The husband is smoking a dirty pipe, but he smiles on us as we go whirling past; and his children, a-squat in the gutter, leave their mud pies and sing and shout and scream at us, waving their dusty hats and their little brown arms in the air.
4. Honest John Bull himself, sure enough, well-to-do-looking in face and dress. He smiles admiringly at us, and seems really to want us to know that he takes an interest in us and our mode of life.
5. The ubiquitous boarding-school girl of gentle seventeen. It may not be etiquette, she knows, to stare or look at passers-by, but for this once only she will have a glance. Lamps shimmering crimson through the big windows, and nicely draped curtains! how can she help it? We are glad she does not try to; her sweet young face refreshes us as do flowers in June, and we forget all about the severe-looking female, who turned away her eyes from beholding vanity.
Milestones and Finger-Posts
England is the land of finger-posts and disreputable milestones. It is the land of lanes, and that is the reason finger-posts are so much needed.
In Scotland they keep up a decent set of milestones, but they do not affect finger-posts. If you want to know the road, climb a hill and look; or ask. In the wildest parts of the Highlands, about Dalwhinnie for instance, you have snow-posts. These look quite out of place in summer, but in winter you must steer straight from one to the other, else, as there is no vestige of a fence, you may tumble over the adjoining precipice.
Like the faces we meet on the roads, we have also types of milestones and finger-posts. Of the former we have —
1. The squat milestone, of stone (page 69).
2. The parallelogram milestone, of stone (page 115).
3. The triangular milestone, also of stone, with reading on two sides (page 124).
4. The round-headed, dilapidated milestone, that tells you nothing (page 141).
5. The wedge-shaped milestone, stone with an iron slab let in (page 159).
6. The reticent milestone, which, instead of names, only gives you letters (page 169).
7. The mushroom milestone, of iron. Forgive the Irish bull. This milestone grows at Nottingham (page 178). So also does —
8. The respectable iron milestone (page 208).
9. The aesthetic milestone, of iron, and found only in the border-land (page 219).
Of finger-posts I shall mention three types: —
1. The solid and respectable.
2. The limp and uncertain.
3. The aesthetic.
But what have we here? A milestone? Nay, but a murder-stone.
I stop the caravan and get down to look and to read the inscription, the gist of which is as follows:
“This stone was erected to mark the spot where Eliza Shepherd, aetat 17, was cruelly murdered in 1817.”
I gaze around me. It is a lovely day, with large white cumulus clouds rolling lazily over a brilliant blue sky. It is a lonely but a lovely place, a fairy-like ferny hollow, close to the edge of a dark wood.
Yes, it is a lovely place now in the sunlight, but I cannot help thinking of that terrible night when poor young Eliza, returning from the shoemaker’s shop, met that tramp who with his knife did the ugly deed. It is satisfactory to learn that he swung for it on the gallows-tree.
But here is a notice-board worth looking at. It is a warning to dog-owners. It reads thus: —
“Notis
Trespassers will be prosecuted
dowgs will be shote.”
On a weird-looking tree behind it hangs a dead cur by the tail.
Here is a Highland post-office, simply a little red-painted dog-kennel on the top of a pole, standing all alone in the middle of a bleak moorland.
Tramps
We meet these everywhere, but more especially on the great highway between Scotland and the South.
While cruising on the coast of Africa, in open boats, wherever we found cocoa-nut trees growing, there we found inhabitants; and so on the roads of England, wherever you find telegraph poles, you will find tramps.
They are of both sexes, and of all sorts and sizes; and, remember, I am not alluding to itinerant gipsies, or even to tinkers, but to the vast army of homeless nomads, who wander from place to place during all the sweet summer weather, and seem to like it.
Sometimes they sell trinkets, such as paper and pins, combs, or trashy jewellery, sometimes they get a day’s work here and there, but mostly they “cadge,” and their characters can be summed up in two words – “liars and vagabonds.” There are honest men on the march among them, however, tradesmen out of work, and flitting south or north in the hopes of bettering their condition. But these latter seldom beg, and if they do, they talk intelligible English.
If a man comes to the back door of your caravan and addresses you thus: “Chuck us a dollop o’ stale tommy, guv’nor, will yer?” you may put him down as a professional tramp. But if you really are an honest tramp, reader – that is, a ragged pedestrian, a pedestrian minus purple and fine linen – then I readily admit that there is something to be said in favour of your peculiar kind of life after all.
To loll about on sunshiny days, to recline upon green mossy banks and dreamily chew the stalks of tender glasses, to saunter on and on and never know nor care what or where you are coming to, to gaze upon and enjoy the beautiful scenery, to listen to song of wild bird and drowsy hum of bee, – all this is pleasant enough, it must be confessed.
Then you can drink of the running stream, unless, as often happens, fortune throws the price of a pint of cold fourpenny in your way. And you have plenty of fresh air. “Too much,” do you say? Yes, because it makes you hungry; but then, there are plenty of turnip fields. Besides, if you call at a cottage, and put on a pitiful face, you will nearly always find some one to “chuck you a dollop o’ stale tommy.”
Do you long for society? There is plenty on the road, plenty of people in the same boat.
And you are your own master; you are as free as the wind that bloweth where it listeth, unless indeed a policeman attempts to check your liberty. But he may not be able to prefer a charge against you; and if he ever goes so far as to lock you up on suspicion, it is only a temporary change in your modus vivendi; you are well-housed and fed for a week or two, then – out and away again.
When night comes on, and the evening star glints out of the himmel-blue, you can generally manage to creep into a shed or shieling of some sort; and if not, you have only to fall back upon the cosy hayrick.
Oh! I believe there are worse lives than yours; and if I were not a gipsy, I am not sure I would not turn a tramp myself.
The Man with the Iron Mask
We came across him frequently away up in the north of England, and a mysterious-looking individual he is, nearly always old, say on the shady side of sixty.
There he sits now on a little three-legged stool by the wayside. In front of him is a kind of anvil, in his hand a hammer. To his right is a heap of stones mingled with gravel; from this he fills a mounted sieve, and rakes the stones therefrom with his hammer as he wants them.
The iron mask is to protect his face and eyes, and a curious spectacle he looks. He has probably been sitting there since morning, but as soon as the shades of evening fall, he will take up his stool and his hammer and wend his way homewards to his little cottage in the glen, and it is to be hoped his “old ’ooman” will have something nice ready for his supper.
The Scotch Collie Dog
Where will you find a dog with a more honest and open countenance than Collie, or one more energetic and willing, or more devoted to his master’s interest? Says Bobbie Burns in his “Twa Dogs:”
“The other was a ploughman’s collie.
* * * * *
He was a gash (wise) and faithfu’ tyke,
As ever lap a sheugh (ditch) or dyke.
His honest sonsy bawan’t (white-striped) face,
Ay gat him friends in ilka place;
His breast was white, his towsie back
Weel clad wi’ coat o’ glossy black,
His gawcie tail, wi’ upward curl,
Hung o’er his hurdils wi’ a swirl.”
You find the collie everywhere all over broad Scotland. The only place where I do not like to see him is on chain.
Yonder he is even now trotting merrily on in front of that farmer’s gig, sometimes barking with half-hysterical joy, sometimes jumping up and kissing the old mare’s soft brown nose, by way of encouraging her.
Yonder again, standing on the top of a stone fence herding cows, and suspiciously eyeing every stranger who passes. He is giving us a line of his mind even now. He says we are only gipsy-folk, and no doubt want to steal a cow and take her away in the caravan.
There runs a collie assisting a sheep-drover. There trots another at the heels of a flock of cattle.
Another is out in the field up there watching the people making hay, while still another is lying on his master’s coat, while that master is at work. His master is only a ditcher. What does that matter? He is a king to Collie.
At Aberuthven was a retriever-collie who – his master, at whose farm I lay, told me – went every day down the long loaning to fetch the letters when the postman blew his horn. This dog’s name is Fred, and it was Fred’s own father who taught him this, and “in two lessons” Fred’s father always went for the letters, and never failed except once to bring them. On this particular occasion, he was seen to disappear behind a bush with a letter in his mouth, and presently to come forth without it. No trace of it was to be found. But a week after another letter was received asking the farmer why he had not acknowledged the bride’s cake. So the murder was out, for the dog’s honesty had not been proof against a bit of cake, and he had swallowed it, envelope and all.
Gipsies’ Dogs
These are, as a rule, a mongrel lot, but very faithful, and contented with their roving life. They are as follows: —
1. The bulldog, used for guard and for fighting, with “a bit o’ money on him” sometimes.
2. The retriever, a useful and determined guard dog and child’s companion.
3. The big mongrel mastiff. The fatter and the uglier he is the better, and the greater the sensation he will create in country villages.
4. The whippet: a handy dog in many ways; and to him gipsies are indebted for many a good stew of hare or rabbit.
5. Lastly, the terribly fat, immensely big black Russian retriever. His tail is always cut off to make him resemble a bear, and give an air of greater éclat to the caravan that owns him.
A Midnight Attack on the “Wanderer.”
We were lying in a lonely meadow, in a rough country away up on the borders of Yorkshire, and did not consider ourselves by any means in a very safe place. The Wanderer was pretty close to the roadside; and there were no houses about except a questionable-looking inn, that stood on the borders of a gloomy wood. The people here might or might not be villainous. At all events, it was not on their account we were uneasy. But a gang of the worst class of gipsies was to pass that night from a neighbouring fair, and there was a probability that they might attack the carriage.
Foley before lying down barricaded the back door with the large Rippingille stove, and I myself had seen to the chambers of my revolver, all six of them.
I had one lookout before lying down. It was a still and sultry summer’s night, with clouds all over the stars, so that it was almost dark. In ten minutes more I was sound asleep.
It must have been long past midnight when I awoke with a start.
Hurricane Bob was growling low and ominously; I could distinctly hear footsteps, and thought I could distinguish voices confabbing in whispers near the van.
It was almost pitch dark now, and from the closeness of the night it was evident a thunderstorm would burst over us.
Silencing the dog, I quickly got on my clothes, just as the caravan began to shake and quiver, as if some one were breaking open the after-door.
My mind was made up at once. I determined to carry the war into the enemy’s quarters, so, seizing my sword, I quietly opened the front door, and slid down to the ground off the coupé.
I got in beneath the caravan and crept aft. There they were, whoever they were; I could just perceive two pairs of legs close to the caravan, and these legs were arrayed in what seemed to me to be white duck trousers. “Now,” said I to myself, “the shin is a most vulnerable part; I’ll have a hack at these extremities with the back of the sword.”
And so I did.
I hit out with all my might.
The effect was magical.
There was a load roar of pain, and away galloped the midnight marauders, in a wild and startled stampede.
And who were they after all? Why, only a couple of young steers, who had been chewing a bath towel – one at one end, the other at the other – that Foley had left hanging under the van.
Such then are some of the humours of an amateur gipsy’s life.
