ON the twenty-second day of June, in the year one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-three, I went to see Thomas Herne, an old Gypsy, of whom I had
heard a great deal. He was living at a place called Mr. Groby’s Court,
not far from the Potteries and the Shepherd’s Bush. When I saw him, he
was sitting on the ground by his door, mending the broken bottom of a
chair. His house was half-house half-waggon, and stood in a corner of
the court; not far from it were two or three other waggon-houses. There
was a disagreeable smell of hogs, though I saw none. I said, “How you
do?” in the Gypsy tongue, and we had discourse together. He was a tall
man, as I could see, though he was sitting. But, though tall, he was not
stout, and his hands were small as those of a lady. His face was as red
as a winter apple, and his hair was rather red than grey. He had a small
hat on his head, and he was not badly dressed. On my asking him how tall
he was, and how old, he said that he was six foot high, all but an inch,
and that he was ninety-two years old. He could not talk much Gypsy, but
understood almost all that I said to him. Our discourse was chiefly in
English. One thing only in his manner of speaking I thought worthy of
remembrance. Instead of saying Romany, like other Gypsies, he said
Roumany, a word which instantly brought to my mind Roumain, the genuine,
ancient name of the Wallachian tongue and people. He seemed to be rather
ashamed of being of Gypsy blood. He told me that he was born in
Buckinghamshire, that he was no true Gypsy, but only half-and-half: his
father was a Gypsy, but his mother was a Gentile of Oxford; he had never
had any particular liking for the Gypsy manner of living, and when little
had been a farmer’s boy. When he grew up he enlisted into the Oxford
militia, and was fourteen years a militia soldier. He had gone much
about England and Scotland in the time of the old war, and had been in
France, having volunteered to go thither to fight against the French. He
had seen Bordeaux and the great city of Paris. After war he had taken up
chair-making, and had travelled about the country, but had been now for
more than thirty years living in London. He had been married, but his
wife had long been dead. She had borne him a son, who was now a man
seventy years of age, looking much older than himself, and at present
lying sick of a burning fever in one of the caravans. He said that at
one time he could make a good deal of money by chair-making, but now from
his great age could scarcely earn a shilling a day. “What a shame,” said
I, “that a man so old as you should have to work at all!” “Courage!
courage!” he cried; “I thank God that I am strong enough to work, and
that I have good friends; I shan’t be sorry to live to be a hundred years
old, though true it is that if I were a gentleman I would do no work.”
His grandson, a man of about five-and-thirty, came now and conversed with
me. He was a good-looking and rather well-dressed man, with something of
a knowing card in his countenance. He said that his grandfather was a
fine old man, who had seen a great deal, and that a great many people
came to hear his stories of the old time, of the French and American
wars, and of what he had seen in other countries. That, truth to say,
there was a time when his way was far from commendable, for that he loved
to fight, swear, and make himself drunk; but that now he was another man,
that he had abandoned all fighting and evil speaking, and, to crown all,
was a tee-totaller, he himself having made him swear that he would no
more drink either gin or ale: that he went every Sunday either to church
or Tabernacle, and that, though he did not know how to read, he loved to
hear the holy book read to him; that the gentlemen of the parish
entertained a great regard for him, and that the church clergyman and,
above all, Dr. P. of the Tabernacle had a high opinion of him, and said
that he would partake of the holy banquet with our Lord Jesus in the
blessed country above. On my inquiring whether the Gypsies came often to
see him, he said that they came now and then to say “Good day” and “How
do you do?” but that was all; that neither his grandfather nor himself
cared to see them, because they were evil people, full of wickedness and
left-handed love, and, above all, very envyous; that in the winter they
all went in a body to the gentlemen and spoke ill of the old man, and
begged the gentlemen to take from him a blanket which the gentlemen had
lent him to warm his poor old body with in the time of the terrible cold;
that it is true their wickedness did the old man no harm, for the
gentlemen told them to go away and be ashamed of themselves, but that it
was not pleasant to think that one was of the same blood as such people.
After some time I gave the old man a small piece of silver, shook him by
the hand, said that I should be glad to see him live to be a hundred, and
went away home.