Part 1

Transcribed from the 1913 Henry Young and Sons edition by David Price, email [email protected]

[Picture: Book cover]

[Picture: Vola. Photo, by Fred. Shaw, Esq.]

GYPSY COPPERSMITHS IN LIVERPOOL AND BIRKENHEAD

BY ANDREAS (MUI SHUKO)

[Picture: Graph of serpent with letters R. A. S. M. around it]

LIVERPOOL HENRY YOUNG AND SONS 1913

* * * * *

Printed by ROBERT MCGEE & CO., Ltd., 34 South Castle Street, Liverpool.

* * * * *

To E. O. W.,

as amends for his annoyance when the railway-officials refused to allow the donkey to travel with a dog-ticket, and

To B. G.-S.,

in gratitude for comforting portions of St. Luke and scrambled eggs administered in hours of depression, these sketches are dedicated.

_December_, _1913_.

TABLE SHOWING THE RELATION OF THE GYPSIES MENTIONED. {v}

Tomo. Gunia = Binka (f.) Grantsha (b. 1825) = Lolodzhi (f.).

Descendants of Gunia:

Gunia = Binka (f.) Kokoi (Fanaz). = Vorzha (f.) Worsho (Garaz) b. 1881. = Saliska (Anastasi). Luba, a widow.

Descendants of Grantsha:

Grantsha (b. 1825) = Lolodzhi (f.). Worsho Fardi Yishwan. Yantshi. Vorzha 3 other (Nikola (Andreas) = = Worsha (f.). = daughters or Kola b. 1860. Parashiva (f.). Yono. Tshoron) = Lotka (f.). the (f.). chief. = Tinka (f.). Worsho 5 6 2 married (Vasili). children. children. sons. 4 other children. Milanko.

4 other children.

Descendants of Worsho (Nikola or Kola Tshoron) the chief:

Worsho (Nikola or Kola Tshoron) the chief. = Tinka (f.). Kola Yanko b. Terka (f.). Zhawzha 2 other (Nikola) 1893. = = Burda (Sophie). = daughters. the Vola (f.). (Morkosh). Pudamo younger. = (Adam Liza (f.). Kirpatsh).

CONTENTS {vi}

PAGE 1. Everywhere strangers: everywhere at home 1 2. Imperium in imperio 7 3. Gypsy bagmen 13 4. The tale of a tub 20 5. Parliaments 26 6. The photograph 32 7. The sick boy 38 8. A good work 44 9. The revelation 50 10. An unwritten tongue 57

1. EVERYWHERE STRANGERS: EVERYWHERE AT HOME. {1}

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]

2. IMPERIUM IN IMPERIO. {7}

MANY kinds of foreigner tread the streets of Liverpool, and thus, when Uncle Kola and his tribe appeared on the banks of the Mersey from nowhere in particular the little boys put him down as a new species of “Dago,” and did not embarrass him with unwelcome attention. Yet Kola is an extraordinary man, and even his costume is conspicuous. His trousers, superfluously baggy and decorated with wide stripes of bright green and red, are thrust into great top-boots elaborately stitched. The complicated braiding of his dark blue coat and waistcoat would be remarkable were it not eclipsed by the glory of his enormous buttons, splendid examples of the silversmith’s craft. Kola is tall and powerfully built, and he wears his finery with effect, supporting himself by a five-foot staff almost covered with silver, on which shine countless little images of Buddha. His keen eye, aquiline nose, strong mouth, and venerable beard tinged with grey make derision impossible; and he walked our thoroughfares with dignity, slowly, gravely scrutinizing the town as if it owed him money.

And Kola intended that it should—before he left it. That was why he had come. He was already rich; his pockets contained bank-notes which he could have exchanged anywhere for several hundred golden sovereigns, and his relations believe that he is worth £30,000. On great occasions he can decorate his table, which stands only fourteen inches high, with lordly plate; a silver samovar weighing twenty-three pounds is matched by a huge salver and an immense bucket of the same precious metal decorated in high relief. The weight of solid gold which his wife carries in her hair, on her blouse, and round her neck and wrists is nothing less than royal. Kola is, in fact, a ruler; and, if the citizens of Liverpool took but little interest in him and his subjects, he reciprocated their contempt, regarding them simply as so many more or less stupid persons who were destined to provide for him and his tribe what they were then seeking—copper pots to mend.

Kola is suave and courtly, and if you had asked him what were his name and nationality he would have replied at once that he was Nicolas Tshoron, a Caucasian, Russian, Ruthenian, Galitsian, or Hungarian. He has now removed his kingdom to Brazil, and if you were to follow him across the Atlantic and repeat the question it is probable that he would elect to call himself Italian, French, or English. He may be all of these if a short period of residence is sufficient qualification; but, though he knows it not, Rumania has stronger claims to him, and India stronger claims still. Sitting on the carpeted floor of his great pedimental tent, surrounded by his family and connexions, you would have found that he is really Worsho, son of Grantsha, and that he is a Gypsy. Not, of course, exactly the kind we know; he would call our Gypsies scornfully _Sinte_, and claim that he and his tribe alone are the _Roma_. Intellectually he is a giant. In the morning his subjects would set out to solicit orders, returning despondently as night fell with empty hands or single pans on their shoulders. But Kola would march triumphantly to the camp followed by a lorry heavily laden with cauldrons he had collected for repair. It was Kola who directed the work, and when any special difficulty arose it was he who sat down and overcame it. He was completely illiterate; yet he used a complicated form of contract which he dictated and his patrons wrote and signed. It concealed artfully the extortionate charges he proposed to make, and hoodwinked not only the authorities of a great political club but even those of a municipal kitchen. And it was Kola who faced the indignant customer who came to protest against the charge, and either browbeat him into submission or put him into court.

The craft of the Gypsies was magnificent, and they wielded their hammers sensitively, as if there were nerve-endings in the heads. They were admittedly more skilful than British coppersmiths, ready to undertake and execute successfully work that would elsewhere be refused as impossible. But their ideas of remuneration were grandiose, and in a country where bargaining is a neglected science they retained an oriental habit of demanding ten times as much as they were prepared to accept. It mattered not if his customers were offended—Kola never intended to see them again. And so he and his subjects spent a few weeks in each town collecting work, a few weeks in doing it, and a few turbulent and glorious weeks in exacting payment. Then they shook the dust from off the soles of their feet, and departed for ever from the city they had exhausted.

Kola’s policy is successful; it has made him rich. Other Gypsies have attached themselves to his family, married his relations, and placed him at the head of an important tribe, whose activities he regulates, whose well-being he cares for, whose movements he directs, which he governs as “king.” When dissatisfaction arises the malcontents are free to migrate to another monarchy; but so long as Kola is successful and so long as his subjects share his success, thus long will his kingdom endure.

Kola’s kingdom should be impossible. It is contrary to reason, contrary at all events to what we call reason, that a community should prefer the primitive ways of the Middle Ages to the latest improvements of modern civilization. His bellows were old-fashioned even in the fifteenth century and survive now only among savages; yet in his eyes they are still the best bellows, and if out of curiosity he were to purchase a mechanical blower he would probably hand it over to his grandchildren for a toy. With pockets well lined with money he neglects to buy table cutlery, tears his portion of bread from the loaf and scrapes it clumsily in the butter-dish. The luxurious chairs and sofas with which he furnishes his royal tent are vain ostentation; guests may use them, but Kola himself prefers to sit, as his ancestors have sat for countless centuries, cross-legged on the ground. Us and all that we value, with the single exception of money, he despises even more cordially than we despise him. Like a drop of oil in a glass of water he and his tribe live in our midst untouched, strangely aloof and alien, a wonderful spectacle of an _Imperium in Imperio_.

3. GYPSY BAGMEN. {13}

THE commercial traveller is more truly born to his profession than the poet, unless an unreasonably exacting definition of poet be accepted; and to those who are not thus born, it seems inexplicable that any sane person should willingly adopt so toilsome and disagreeable, yet thankless and inglorious, an occupation, and even learn to like it. Paradoxically the Gypsy coppersmiths, in travelling, combined the methods of a raw apprentice, foredoomed to failure, with diligence, enthusiasm—and success—which proved them born bagmen. They evidently enjoyed being “on the road” in this very un-Gypsylike sense; yet, Gypsylike, retained their independence, differing from the common “drummer” in that they represented, not an exacting master, but their own still more exacting selves. The fact that they travelled was not remarkable—travelling was the necessary prelude to their industry. What was astonishing was the versatility which enabled them both to beat our native coppersmiths in smithcraft and to rival British agents in the energy with which they canvassed for the orders they were themselves to execute.

With patience anybody can become a fairly good commercial traveller who has a respectable appearance and good address, carries a useful article, and asks a reasonable price. The Gypsies certainly carried a useful article, inasmuch as their repairs were skilful and thorough, but all the other circumstances were against them. Their extravagant costume reminded those on whom they called of brigands rather than of sober business-men, and brigands are not welcome in offices or factories. In combination with their black hair and glittering eyes it was apt to betray their nationality. If it did, so much the worse, for a commercial transaction with a Gypsy is several degrees more unpopular than a commercial transaction with a Jew.

As for address, it mattered not at first whether they possessed it or not, for they spoke no English. They soon discovered and engaged threadbare ungrammatical aliens to talk for them, but until they obtained such assistance they were content to carry tattered scraps of soiled paper on which their qualifications were set forth in a handwriting and dialect which were very far from commanding the respect of possible customers. Here again they reared an unnecessary obstacle against their own success, for it is an axiom that the worse the business, the better must be the quality of the stationery. Even when they had learned a little English—and, belying Gypsy reputation, they learnt it very slowly—they scorned to use ingratiating behaviour, delicate compliment, or even funny stories; their whole persuasive stock-in-trade was a whine, a dogged and irritating perseverance, inability to recognize the moment when it is more profitable to go than to stay, and stone-deafness to the most emphatic “no.” In short, their method was simply the endless importunity which their wives and children devoted to shameless and successful begging.

It is easy to give goods away; only an expert bagman can get a high price. Price is the real criterion of the traveller. In this respect the Gypsies were nothing if not ambitious, for they set out with the intention of exacting remuneration so exorbitant that their repairs often cost more than a pot new from the maker. Thus their only practicable policy was to conceal carefully the sum they proposed to ask, and escape at all costs from the danger of giving the estimate which was always demanded. The form of their contract was ingeniously designed to serve this purpose, and they also attempted to disarm natural suspicion by offering to mend—or insisting on mending, for they were very masterful—the first article for nothing as a proof of their skill. The latter device was generally unsuccessful, for in Great Britain the offer of something for nothing, or the pretence that it is work, not wages, that is wanted, is apt rather to increase than diminish mistrust. Moreover their conduct was in other respects far from reassuring. When the owner of a pot, wearied by their persistence and, if convinced of nothing else, convinced at least that his only hope of getting back to business lay in surrender, had resolved reluctantly to entrust the vessel to their care, they would reawaken his slumbering suspicions by suggesting that he would require surety for its safe return. And the unhappy man was obliged to postpone his relief from torture, and set his tired wits to work devising non-committal receipts for gold coins and foreign bank-notes in the genuineness of which he very shrewdly disbelieved.

The deposit was part of a game which the Gypsies refused to play otherwise than by rule. And so humble Worsho Kokoiesko would fish out the single gold piece which represented all his fortune which his wife did not wear, and the great Kola would brandish bundles of French notes in the face of his victim. Kola was accustomed—perhaps wisely—to flaunt his wealth, but some of his relations who were also well-to-do used professions of poverty as arguments when soliciting work. To their strangely illogical minds simulated indigence was not inconsistent with the exhibition of large sums of money. I have myself assisted, as dragoman, in their negotiations with an important manufacturer of jam. “Tell him,” they said, “that we are Hungarian coppersmiths.” This I did, without serious scruples, adding at their command, and with a clear conscience, that their work was excellent. To their next instructions, “Tell him that our wives are starving and our children crying for bread,” I was inclined to demur, but was sternly overruled. The jam-manufacturer was visibly affected, and pity for these strangers within our inhospitable gates appeared for a moment in his face. But only for a moment; hurriedly thrusting a bundle covered with red silk into my hands, the Gypsies added: “Show him this; tell him not to be afraid to trust us.” And as I untied the knots twenty great yellow coins appeared—£80 in solid gold!

No less conspicuous than their want of finesse was their want of organization. They neither divided the city into districts to parcel them out among their members, nor even the users of copper vessels into classes. Collecting addresses from strangers they met casually, they visited factories and institutions at random, wasting much time in long tramps from one extreme end of the town to the other and then immediately back to the first district. Lucky the man who discovered a new, unvisited manufactory; a courteous reception and patient hearing were generally given him. The patience of most manufacturers had been early exhausted by the repeated and lengthy invasions of other members of the tribe, and they were in no mood for further interviews. Some of the more enterprising and wealthy Gypsies seemed to realize this, for they made expensive journeys from Birkenhead to Manchester, Leeds, and even the Isle of Man. The disappointingly small results would have disheartened an ordinary commercial traveller, but the Gypsies were anything but ordinary travellers. And gradually their patience was rewarded, and the camp became littered with cauldrons and pots awaiting repair, striking evidence of the almost miraculous power of sheer, unreasoning tenacity.

4. THE TALE OF A TUB.