"_Ne rakesa tu Romanes miro prala_?"
There was a startled glance from one to the other, and a silence. I had
asked him if he could not talk Romany. And I added,--
"_Won't_ you talk a word with a gypsy brother?"
_That_ moved them. They all shook my hands with great feeling,
expressing intense joy and amazement at meeting with one who knew them.
"_Mishto hom me dikava tute_." (I am glad to see you.) So they told me
how they were getting on, and where they were camped, and how they sold
horses, and so on, and we might have got on much farther had it not been
for a very annoying interruption. As I was talking to the gypsies, a
great number of men, attracted by the sound of a foreign language,
stopped, and fairly pushed themselves up to us, endeavoring to make it
all out. When there were at least fifty, they crowded in between me and
the foreigners, so that I could hardly talk to them. The crowd did not
consist of ordinary people, or snobs. They were well dressed,--young
clerks, at least,--who would have fiercely resented being told that they
were impertinent.
"Eye-talians, ain't they?" inquired one man, who was evidently zealous in
pursuit of knowledge.
"Why don't you tell us what they are sayin'?"
"What kind of fellers air they, any way?"
I was desirous of going with the Hungarian Roms. But to walk along
Chestnut Street with an augmenting procession of fifty curious Sunday
promenaders was not on my card. In fact, I had some difficulty in
tearing myself from the inquisitive, questioning, well-dressed people.
The gypsies bore the pressure with the serene equanimity of cosmopolite
superiority, smiling at provincial rawness. Even so in China and Africa
the traveler is mobbed by the many, who, there as here, think that "I
want to know" is full excuse for all intrusiveness. _Q'est tout comme
chez nous_. I confess that I was vexed, and, considering that it was in
my native city, mortified.
A few days after I went out to the _tan_ where these Roms had camped.
But the birds had flown, and a little pile of ashes and the usual debris
of a gypsy camp were all that remained. The police told me that they had
some very fine horses, and had gone to the Northwest; and that is all I
ever saw of them.
I have heard of a philanthropist who was turned into a misanthrope by
attempting to sketch in public and in galleries. Respectable strangers,
even clergymen, would stop and coolly look over his shoulder, and ask
questions, and give him advice, until he could work no longer. Why is it
that people who would not speak to you for life without an introduction
should think that their small curiosity to see your sketches authorizes
them to act as aquaintances? Or why is the pursuit of knowledge assumed
among the half-bred to be an excuse for so much intrusion? "I want to
know." Well, and what if you do? The man who thinks that his desire for
knowledge is an excuse for impertinence--and there are too many who act
on this in all sincerity--is of the kind who knocks the fingers off
statues, because "he wants them" for his collection; who chips away
tombstones, and hews down historic trees, and not infrequently steals
outright, and thinks that his pretense of culture is full excuse for all
his mean deeds. Of this tribe is the man who cuts his name on all walls
and smears it on the pyramids, to proclaim himself a fool to the world;
the difference being that, instead of wanting to know anything, he wants
everybody to know that His Littleness was once in a great place.
I knew a distinguished artist, who, while in the East, only secured his
best sketch of a landscape by employing fifty men to keep off the
multitude. I have seen a strange fellow take a lady's sketch out of her
hand, excusing himself with the remark that he was so fond of pictures.
Of course my readers do not act thus. When they are passing through the
Louvre or British Museum they never pause and overlook artists, despite
the notices requesting them not to do so. Of course not. Yet I once
knew a charming young American lady, who scouted the idea as nonsense
that she should not watch artists at work. "Why, we used to make up
parties for the purpose of looking at them!" she said. "It was half the
fun of going there. I'm sure the artists were delighted to get a chance
to talk to us." Doubtless. And yet there are really very few artists
who do not work more at their ease when not watched, and I have known
some to whom such watching was misery. They are not, O intruder,
painting for _your_ amusement!
This is not such a far cry from my Romanys as it may seem. When I think
of what I have lost in this life by impertinence coming between me and
gypsies, I feel that it could not be avoided. The proportion of men,
even of gentlemen, or of those who dress decently, who cannot see another
well-dressed man talking with a very poor one in public, without at once
surmising a mystery, and endeavoring to solve it, is amazing. And they
do not stop at a trifle, either.
It is a marked characteristic of all gypsies that they are quite free
from any such mean intrusiveness. Whether it is because they themselves
are continually treated as curiosities, or because great knowledge of
life in a small way has made them philosophers, I will not say, but it is
a fact that in this respect they are invariably the politest people in
the world. Perhaps their calm contempt of the _galerly_, or green
Gorgios, is founded on a consciousness of their superiority in this
matter.
The Hungarian gypsy differs from all his brethren of Europe in being more
intensely gypsy. He has deeper, wilder, and more original feeling in
music, and he is more inspired with a love of travel. Numbers of
Hungarian Romany chals--in which I include all Austrian gypsies--travel
annually all over Europe, but return as regularly to their own country.
I have met with them exhibiting bears in Baden-Baden. These Ricinari, or
bear-leaders, form, however, a set within a set, and are in fact more
nearly allied to the gypsy bear-leaders of Turkey and Syria than to any
other of their own people. They are wild and rude to a proverb, and
generally speak a peculiar dialect of Romany, which is called the
Bear-leaders' by philologists. I have also seen Syrian-gypsy Ricinari in
Cairo. Many of the better caste make a great deal of money, and some are
rich. Like all really pure-blooded gypsies, they have deep feelings,
which are easily awakened by kindness, but especially by sympathy and
interest.