WHEN you want to find a Gypsy the police are more likely to be able to
give you his address than directories, bankers, or ministers of religion;
and it was a Liverpool policeman who sent me to the back of the municipal
slaughter-house to seek a horde of “Hungarian” _Roms_ whose arrival had
been announced by the evening papers. In a squalid street, at a corner
where insanitary dwellings had been demolished, I found a vacant plot of
brick-strewn ground surrounded by high walls. There, evidently, were my
Gypsies, for a crowd of boys had gathered round the one door, struggling
for a glance through its keyhole. Mistaking me for a detective, they
made way, and I knocked loudly and long.
The boys were not mistaken. There was a scene within which was worth
looking at. The strangers had journeyed so rapidly from Marseilles to
Liverpool that they had outstripped their heavy baggage, and, arriving
before their tents, were obliged to bivouac under tiny extemporized
shelters propped against the windowless house-walls which formed two
sides of the square. They were making the best of circumstances with
considerable success, for they had with them countless beds of eiderdown
in brilliantly coloured covers, and they had their all-important
samovars. The men were out, but the women, protected by a
police-serjeant from the inhospitable attentions of their neighbours,
were in the camp, and into that shabby yard they had brought an
unaccustomed glory which was altogether foreign and oriental.
He who stepped through the battered door in St. Andrew Street travelled
fifteen hundred miles in a second. Without, the slaughter-house and
slums—dull, drab Liverpool; within, the glorious East—strange dark faces
of exotic beauty, a blaze of scarlet gowns and yellow gold. For the
women were bedizened with much jewellery: rings shone on their fingers,
barbaric bracelets on their arms, chains and corals dangled from their
necks, heavy pendants from their ears, and on their blouses sparkled many
trinkets and brooches. Their jet-black hair hung in two plaits over
their shoulders, and in each plait was woven a cord to which were
attached six or seven great gold medals, generally Continental coins of
100 francs, but often our own magnificent five-pound pieces. And
everywhere children gambolled—pictures of health and happiness, fawn-like
creatures whose scanty shifts scarcely concealed their lithe brown
bodies.
Centuries ago man’s inhumanity taught Gypsies the lesson that language is
given them for the purpose of concealing their thoughts, and even now a
Gypsy invitation, especially if it be pressing and cordial, often proves
to have been a device for preventing a second visit. I was assured that
carts had been ordered for seven o’clock to effect the removal of the
band to two houses they had rented in Pitt Street. Wishing to see the
flitting, I returned earlier than the time stated, found that they had
departed at six, tracked them with difficulty, and overtook them, not in
Pitt Street, but on the Landing-stage, awaiting the Birkenhead
luggage-boat. At the head of the procession was a large tilted cart in
which squatted all the women and children, from elderly and angular
Mothers of Egypt to beautiful Vola, the chief’s daughter-in-law, carrying
her little baby. Two waggons followed, loaded with luggage, over which,
high piled, was the bedding, and on top of all, dressed in the costume of
theatrical brigands, the black-bearded men carrying long staves
elaborately decorated with silver.
There were full forty souls in the party, but when the boat arrived at
Birkenhead, Kola, the chief, held up the traffic by engaging the
ticket-collector in an altercation as to the exact number. Since he
spoke in Russian and the official in English, neither convinced the
other. The chief maintained that there were only fourteen; the collector
set the figure considerably higher, but as no two of his repeated
attempts at enumeration agreed with one another, while the chiefs
estimate never varied, Kola may be said to have had, on the whole, the
best of the argument. At all events the management preferred giving way
to being detained all night, and Uncle Kola triumphantly led his
procession up the bridge.
Meanwhile a spectator passing along Green Lane, Tranmere, might have seen
a very curious spectacle in the English Gypsies’ camp, for that was the
destination of the aliens. On a bare patch of cindery earth between the
dark brown tents of the Boswells and Robinsons, a piece of carpet had
been spread, and on it, as advanced guard awaiting the main body, sat
portly Tinka, the chief’s wife. Cross-legged, motionless, aloof, her
eyes fixed on a distant infinity, quite alone yet totally unconcerned,
she smoked her cigarette calmly in a long meerschaum holder. Red-robed
as ever, wearing an immense weight of solid gold, brilliant as a flame,
she contrasted strangely with the dingy colouring of the place: a Chinese
idol in a Methodist chapel would have been less incongruous. But the
English Gypsies, aping her detachment, feigned absence of interest; no
one was visible—nevertheless many an eye was eagerly pressed to a hole in
the tent-blanket.
This invasion by foreign Gypsies was not relished by the old inhabitants
of the pitch, and they threatened to drive the aliens out. But the
aliens neither valued popularity nor feared the _Sinte_, as they
contemptuously called their British brethren; with scarce a glance
towards, or a thought of, their neighbours, they went diligently to work
to make themselves comfortable. First they removed, without permission,
all the carts from stables near the camp, and set them, shafts in air, to
make shelters for the night, one for each family. Then, needing coke,
and brooms, and water, and other necessaries, they turned to the despised
_Sinte_ and borrowed what they required from them. And then the English
Gypsy women fell in love with Vola’s baby, and the English Gypsy men were
impressed by Kola’s size and ability, and the gorgeous display of gold
touched a responsive chord in all their hearts. And so in an incredibly
short space of time the strangers became completely at home.
[Picture: Kola (on right). Photo, by Central News]