Chapter 18
The mixture of races in our cities is rapidly increasing, and we hardly notice it. Yet it is coming to pass that a large part of our population is German and Irish, and that our streets within ten years have become fuller of Italian fruit dealers and organ-grinders, so that _Cives sum Romanus_ (I am a Roman citizen), when abroad, now means either "I possess a monkey" or "I sell pea-nuts." Jews from Jerusalem peddle pocket-books on our sidewalks, Chinamen are monoplizing our washing and ironing, while among laboring classes are thousands of Scandinavians, Bohemians, and other Slaves. The prim provincial element which predominated in my younger years is yielding before this influx of foreigners, and Quaker monotony and stern conservatism are vanishing, while Philadelphia becomes year by year more cosmopolite.
As we left the handsome negroes and continued our walk on Water Street an Italian passed us. He was indeed very dirty and dilapidated; his clothes were of the poorest, and he carried a rag-picker's bag over his shoulder; but his face, as he turned it towards us, was really beautiful.
"_Siete Italiano_?" (Are you an Italian?) asked my uncle.
"_Si_, _signore_" (Yes, sir), he answered, showing all his white teeth, and opening his big brown eyes very wide.
"_E come lei piace questo paese_?" (And how do you like this country?)
"Not at all. It is too cold," was his frank answer, and laughing good-humoredly he continued his search through the gutters. He would have made a good model for an artist, for he had what we do not always see in Italians, the real southern beauty of face and expression. Two or three weeks after this encounter, we were astonished at meeting on Chestnut Street a little man, decently dressed, who at once manifested the most extraordinary and extravagant symptoms of delighted recognition. Never saw I mortal so grin-full, so bowing. As we went on and crossed the street, and looked back, he was waving his hat in the air with one hand, while he made gestures of delight with the other. It was the little Italian rag-picker.
Then along and afar, till we met a woman, decently enough dressed, with jet-black eyes and hair, and looking not unlike a gypsy. "A Romany!" I cried with delight. Her red shawl made me think of gypsies, and when I caught her eye I saw the indescrible flash of the _kalorat_, or black blood. It is very curious that Hindus, Persians, and gypsies have in common an expression of the eye which distinguishes them from all other Oriental races, and chief in this expression is the Romany. Captain Newbold, who first investigated the gypsies of Egypt, declares that, however disguised, he could always detect them by their glance, which is unlike that of any other human being, though something resembling it is often seen in the ruder type of the rural American. I believe myself that there is something in the gypsy eye which is inexplicable, and which enables its possessor to see farther through that strange mill-stone, the human soul, than I can explain. Any one who has ever seen an old fortune-teller of "the people" keeping some simple-minded maiden by the hand, while she holds her by her glittering eye, like the Ancient Mariner, with a basilisk stare, will agree with me. As Scheele de Vere writes, "It must not be forgotten that the human eye has, beyond question, often a power which far transcends the ordinary purposes of sight, and approaches the boundaries of magic."
But one glance, and my companion whispered, "Answer me in Romany when I speak, and don't seem to notice her." And then, in loud tone, he remarked, while looking across the street,--
"_Adovo's a kushto puro rinkeno ker adoi_." (That is a nice old pretty house there.)
"_Avali_, _rya_" (Yes, sir), I replied.
There was a perceptible movement by the woman in the red shawl to keep within ear-shot of us. Mine uncle resumed,--
"_Boro kushto covva se ta rakker a jib te kek Gorgio iinella_." (It's nice to talk a language that no Gentile knows.)
The red shawl was on the trail. "_Je crois que ca mord_," remarked my uncle. We allowed our artist guide to pass on, when, as I expected, I felt a twitch at my outer garment. I turned, and the witch eyes, distended with awe and amazement, were glaring into mine, while she said, in a hurried whisper,--
"Wasn't it Romanes?"
"_Avah_," I replied, "_mendui rakker sarja adovo jib_. _Butikumi ryeskro lis se denna Gorgines_." (Yes, we always talk that language. Much more genteel it is than English.)
"_Te adovo wavero rye_?" (And that _other_ gentleman?) with a glance of suspicion at our artist friend.
"_Sar tacho_" (He's all right), remarked mine uncle, which I greatly fear meant, when correctly translated in a Christian sense, "He's all wrong." But there is a natural sympathy and intelligence between Bohemians of every grade, all the world over, and I never knew a gypsy who did not understand an artist. One glance satisfied her that he was quite worthy of our society.
"And where are you _tannin kenna_?" (tenting now), I inquired.
"We are not tenting at this time of year; we're _kairin_," _i.e._, houseing, or home-ing. It is a good verb, and might be introduced into English.
"And where is your house?"
"There, right by Mammy Sauerkraut's Row. Come in and sit down."
I need not give the Romany which was spoken, but will simply translate. The house was like all the others. We passed through a close, dark passage, in which lay canvas and poles, a kettle and a _sarshta_, or the iron which is stuck into the ground, and by which a kettle hangs. The old-fashioned tripod, popularly supposed to be used by gypsies, in all probability never existed, since the Roms of India to-day use the _sarshta_, as mine uncle tells me he learned from a _ci-devant_ Indian gypsy Dacoit, or wandering thief, who was one of his intimates in London.
We entered an inner room, and I was at once struck by its general indescribable unlikeness to ordinary rooms. Architects declare that the type of the tent is to be distinctly found in all Chinese and Arab or Turkish architecture; it is also as marked in a gypsy's house--when he gets one. This room, which was evidently the common home of a large family, suggested, in its arrangement of furniture and the manner in which its occupants sat around the tent and the wagon. There was a bed, it is true but there was a roll of sail-cloth, which evidently did duty for sleeping on at night, but which now, rolled up, acted the part described by Goldsmith:--
"A thing contrived a double part to play, A bed by night, a sofa during day."
There was one chair and a saddle, a stove and a chest of drawers. I observed an engraving hanging up which I have several times seen in gypsy tents. It represents a very dark Italian youth. It is a favorite also with Roman Catholics, because the boy has a consecrated medal. The gypsies, however, believe that the boy stole the medal. The Catholics think the picture is that of a Roman boy, because the inscription says so; and the gypsies call it a Romany, so that all are satisfied. There were some eight or nine children in the room, and among them more than one whose resemblance to the dark-skinned saint might have given color enough to the theory that he was
"One whose blood Had rolled through gypsies ever since the flood."
There was also a girl, of the pantherine type, and one damsel of about ten, who had light hair and fair complexion, but whose air was gypsy and whose youthful countenance suggested not the golden, but the brazenest, age of life. Scarcely was I seated in the only chair, when this little maiden, after keenly scrutinizing my appearance, and apparently taking in the situation, came up to me and said,--
"Yer come here to have yer fortune told. I'll tell it to yer for five cents."
"_Can tute pen dukkerin aja_?" (Can you tell fortunes already?) I inquired. And if that damsel had been lifted at that instant by the hair into the infinite glory of the seventh sphere, her countenance could not have manifested more amazement. She stood _bouche beante_, stock still staring, open-mouthed wide. I believe one might have put a brandy ball into it, or a "bull's eye," without her jaws closing on the dainty. It was a stare of twenty-four carats, and fourth proof.
"This here _rye_" remarked mine uncle, affably, in middle English, "is a hartist. He puts 'is heart into all he does; _that's_ why. He ain't Romanes, but he may be trusted. He's come here, that wot he has, to draw this 'ere Mammy Sauerkraut's Row, because it's interestin'. He ain't a tax-gatherer. _We_ don't approve o' payin' taxes, none of hus. We practices heconomy, and dislike the po-lice. Who was Mammy Sauerkraut?"
"I know!" cried the youthful would-be fortune-teller. "She was a witch."
"_Tool yer chib_!" (Hold your tongue!) cried the parent. "Don't bother the lady with stories about _chovihanis_" (witches).
"But that's just what I want to hear!" I cried. "Go on, my little dear, about Mammy Sauerkraut, and you will get your five cents yet, if you only give me enough of it."
"Well, then, Mammy Sauerkraut was a witch, and a little black girl who lives next door told me so. And Mammy Sauerkraut used to change herself into a pig of nights, and that's why they called her Sauerkraut. This was because they had pig ketchers going about in those times, and once they ketched a pig that belonged to her, and to be revenged on them she used to look like a pig, and they would follow her clear out of town way up the river, and she'd run, and they'd run after her, till by and by fire would begin to fly out of her bristles, and she jumped into the river and sizzed."
This I thought worthy of the five cents. Then my uncle began to put questions in Romany.
"Where is Anselo W.? He that was _staruben_ for a _gry_?" (imprisoned for a horse).
"_Staruben apopli_." (Imprisoned again.)
"I am sorry for it, sister Nell. He used to play the fiddle well. I wot he was a canty chiel', and dearly lo'ed the whusky, oh!"
"Yes, he was too fond of that. How well he could play!"
"Yes," said my uncle, "he could. And I have sung to his fiddling when the _tatto-pani_ [hot water, _i.e._, spirits] boiled within us, and made us gay, oh, my golden sister! That's the way we Hungarian gypsy gentlemen always call the ladies of our people. I sang in Romany."
"I'd like to hear you sing now," remarked a dark, handsome young man, who had just made a mysterious appearance out of the surrounding shadows.
"It's a _kamaben gilli_" (a love-song), said the _rye_; "and it is beautiful, deep old Romanes,--enough to make you cry."
There was the long sound of a violin, clear as the note of a horn. I had not observed that the dark young man had found one to his hand, and, as he accompanied, my uncle sang; and I give the lyric as he afterwards gave it to me, both in Romany and English. As he frankly admitted, it was his own composition.
KE TEINALI.
Tu shan miri pireni Me kamava tute, Kamlidiri, rinkeni, Kames mande buti?
Sa o miro kushto gry Taders miri wardi,-- Sa o boro buno rye Rikkers lesto stardi.
Sa o bokro dre o char Hawala adovo,-- Sa i choramengeri Lels o ryas luvoo,--
Sa o sasto levinor Kairs amandy matto,-- Sa o yag adre o tan Kairs o geero tatto,--
Sa i puri Romni chai Pens o kushto dukkrin,-- Sa i Gorgi dinneli, Patsers lakis pukkrin,--
Tute taders tiro rom, Sims o gry, o wardi, Tute chores o zi adrom Rikkers sa i stardi.
Tute haws te chores m'ri all, Tutes dukkered buti Tu shan miro jivaben Me t'vel paller tute.
Paller tute sarasa Pardel puv te pani, Trinali--o krallisa! Miri chovihani!
TO TRINALI.
Now thou art my darling girl, And I love thee dearly; Oh, beloved and my fair, Lov'st thou me sincerely?
As my good old trusty horse Draws his load or bears it; As a gallant cavalier Cocks his hat and wears it;
As a sheep devours the grass When the day is sunny; As a thief who has the chance Takes away our money;
As strong ale when taken down Makes the strongest tipsy; As a fire within a tent Warms a shivering gypsy;
As a gypsy grandmother Tells a fortune neatly; As the Gentile trusts in her, And is done completely,--
So you draw me here and there, Where you like you take me; Or you sport me like a hat,-- What you will you make me.
So you steal and gnaw my heart For to that I'm fated! And by you, my gypsy Kate, I'm intoxicated.
And I own you are a witch, I am beaten hollow; Where thou goest in this world I am bound to follow,--
Follow thee, where'er it be, Over land and water, Trinali, my gypsy queen! Witch and witch's daughter!
"Well, that _is_ deep Romanes," said the woman, admiringly. "It's beautiful."
"_I_ should think it was," remarked the violinist. "Why, I didn't understand more than one half of it. But what I caught I understood." Which, I reflected, as he uttered it, is perhaps exactly the case with far more than half the readers of all poetry. They run on in a semi-sensuous mental condition, soothed by cadence and lulled by rhyme, reading as they run for want of thought. Are there not poets of the present day who mean that you shall read them thus, and who cast their gold ornaments hollow, as jewelers do, lest they should be too heavy?
"My children," said Meister Karl, "I could go on all day with Romany songs; and I can count up to a hundred in the black language. I know three words for a mouse, three for a monkey, and three for the shadow which falleth at noonday. And I know how to _pen dukkerin_, _lel dudikabin te chiv o manzin apre latti_." {270}
"Well, the man who knows _that_ is up to _drab_ [medicine], and hasn't much more to learn," said the young man. "When a _rye's_ a Rom he's anywhere at home."
"So _kushto bak_!" (Good luck!) I said, rising to go. "We will come again!"
"Yes, we will come again," said Meister Karl. "Look for me with the roses at the races, and tell me the horse to bet on. You'll find my _patteran_ [a mark or sign to show which way a gypsy has traveled] at the next church-door, or may be on the public-house step. Child of the old Egyptians, mother of all the witches, sister of the stars, daughter of darkness, farewell!"
This bewildering speech was received with admiring awe, and we departed. I should have liked to hear the comments on us which passed that evening among the gypsy denizens of Mammy Sauerkraut's Row.
V. A GYPSY LETTER.
All the gypsies in the country are not upon the roads. Many of them live in houses, and that very respectably, nay, even aristocratically. Yea, and it may be, O reader, that thou hast met them and knowest them not, any more than thou knowest many other deep secrets of the hearts and lives of those who live around thee. Dark are the ways of the Romany, strange his paths, even when reclaimed from the tent and the van. It is, however, intelligible enough that the Rom converted to the true faith of broadcloth garments by Poole, or dresses by Worth, as well as to the holy gospel of daily baths and _savon au violet_, should say as little as possible of his origin. For the majority of the world being snobs, they continually insist that all blood unlike their own is base, and the child of the _kalorat_, knowing this, sayeth naught, and ever carefully keeps the lid of silence on the pot of his birth. And as no being that ever was, is, or will be ever enjoyed holding a secret, playing a part, or otherwise entering into the deepest mystery of life--which is to make a joke of it--so thoroughly as a gypsy, it follows that the being respectable has to him a raciness and drollery and pungency and point which passeth faith. It has often occurred to me, and the older I grow the more I find it true, that the _real_ pleasure which bank presidents, moral politicians, not a few clergymen, and most other highly representative good men take in having a high character is the exquisite secret consciousness of its being utterly undeserved. They love acting. Let no man say that the love of the drama is founded on the artificial or sham. I have heard the Reverend Histriomastix war and batter this on the pulpit; but the utterance _per se_ was an actual, living lie. He was acting while he preached. Love or hunger is not more an innate passion than acting. The child in the nursery, the savage by the Nyanza or in Alaska, the multitude of great cities, all love to bemask and seem what they are not. Crush out carnivals and masked balls and theatres, and lo, you! the disguising and acting and masking show themselves in the whole community. Mawworm and Aminidab Sleek then play a role in every household, and every child becomes a wretched little Roscius. Verily I say unto you, the fewer actors the more acting; the fewer theatres the more stages, and the worse. Lay it to heart, study it deeply, you who believe that the stage is an open door to hell, for the chances are ninety and nine to one that if this be true _you_ will end by consciously or unconsciously keeping a private little gate thereunto. Beloved, put this in thy pipe and fumigate it, that acting in some form is a human instinct which cannot be extinguished, which never has been and never will be; and this being so, is it not better, with Dr. Bellows, to try to put it into proper form than to crush it? Truly it has been proved that with this, as with a certain other unquenchable penchant of humanity, when you suppress a score of professionals you create a thousand zealous amateurs. There was never in this world a stage on which mere acting was more skillfully carried out than in all England under Cromwell, or in Philadelphia under the Quakers. Eccentric dresses, artificial forms of language, separate and "peculiar" expressions of character unlike those of "the world," were all only giving a form to that craving for being odd and queer which forms the soul of masking and acting. Of course people who act all the time object to the stage. _Le diable ne veut pas de miroir_.
The gypsy of society not always, but yet frequently, retains a keen interest in his wild ancestry. He keeps up the language; it is a delightful secret; he loves now and then to take a look at "the old thing." Closely allied to the converted sinners are the _aficionados_, or the ladies and gentlemen born with unconquerable Bohemian tastes, which may be accounted for by their having been themselves gypsies in preexistent lives. No one can explain how or why it is that the _aficion_ comes upon them. It is _in_ them. I know a very learned man in England, a gentleman of high position, one whose name is familiar to my readers. He could never explain or understand why from early childhood he had felt himself drawn towards the wanderers. When he was only ten years old he saved up all his little store of pence wherewith to pay a tinker to give him lessons in Romany, in which tongue he is now a Past Grand. I know ladies in England and in America, both of the blood and otherwise, who would give up a ball of the highest flight in society, to sit an hour in a gypsy tent, and on whom a whispered word of Romany acts like wild-fire. Great as my experience has been I can really no more explain the intensity of this yearning, this _rapport_, than I can fly. My own fancy for gypsydom is faint and feeble compared to what I have found in many others. It is in them like the love for opium, for music, for love itself, or for acting. I confess that there is to me a nameless charm in the strangely, softly flowing language, which gives a sweeter sound to every foreign word which it adopts, just as the melody of a forest stream is said to make more musical the songs of the birds who dwell beside it. Thus Wentzel becomes Wenselo and Anselo; Arthur, Artaros; London, Lundra; Sylvester, Westaros. Such a phrase as "_Dordi_! _dovelo adoi_?" (See! what is that there?) could not be surpassed for mere beauty of sound.
It is apropos of living double lives, and playing parts, and the charm of stealing away unseen, like naughty children, to romp with the tabooed offspring of outlawed neighbors, that I write this, to introduce a letter from a lady, who has kindly permitted me to publish it. It tells its own story of two existences, two souls in one. I give it as it was written, first in Romany, and then in English:--
_Febmunti_ 1_st_.
MIRO KAMLO PAL,--Tu tevel mishto ta shun te latcherdum me akovo kurikus tacho Romany tan akai adre o gav. Buti kamaben lis sas ta dikk mori foki apopli; buti kushti ta shun moro jib. Mi-duvel atch apa mande, si ne shomas pash naflo o Gorginess, vonk' akovo vias. O waver divvus sa me viom fon a swell saleskro haben, dikdom me dui Romani chia beshin alay apre a longo skamin adre --- Square. Kalor yakkor, kalor balyor, lullo diklas apre i sherria, te lender trushnia aglal lender piria. Mi-duvel, shomas pash divio sar kamaben ta dikav lender! Avo! kairdum o wardomengro hatch i graia te sheldom avri, "_Come here_!" Yon penden te me sos a rani ta dukker te vian sig adosta. Awer me saldom te pendom adre Romanis: "Sarishan miri dearis! Tute don't jin mandy's a Romany!" Yon nastis patser lende kania nera yakkor. "Mi-duvel! Sa se tiro nav? putchde yeck. "Miro nav se Britannia Lee." Kenna-sig yon diktas te me sos tachi, te penden amengi lender navia shanas M. te D. Lis sos duro pa lende ta jin sa a Romani rani astis jiv amen Gorgios, te dikk sa Gorgious, awer te vel kushti Romani aja, te tevel buoino lakis kaloratt. Buti rakkerdem apre mori foki, buti nevvi, buti savo sos rumado, te beeno, te puredo, savo sos vino fon o puro tem, te butikumi aja kekkeno sos rakkerben sa gudli. M. pende amengi, "Mandy don't jin how tute can jiv among dem Gorgies." Pukerdom anpali: "Mandy dont jiv, mandy mers kairin amen lender." Yon mangades mande ta well ta dikk a len, adre lendes ker apre o chumba kai atchena pa o wen. Pende M., "Av miri pen ta ha a bitti sar mendi. Tute jins the chais are only kerri aratti te Kurrkus."
Sunday sala miri pen te me ghion adoi te latchedon o ker. O tan sos bitto, awer sa i Romanis pende, dikde boro adosta paller jivin adre o wardo. M. sos adoi te lakis roms dye, a kushti puri chai. A. sar shtor chavia. M. kerde haben sa mendui viom adoi. I puri dye sos mishto ta dikk mande, yoi kamde ta jin sar trustal mande. Rakkerdem buti aja, te yoi pende te yoi ne kekker latchde a Romani rani denna mande. Pendom me ke laki shan adre society kumi Romani rania, awer i galderli Gorgios ne jinena lis.
Yoi pende sa miri pen dikde simlo Lusha Cooper, te siggerde lakis kaloratt butider denna me. "Tute don't favor the Coopers, miri dearie! Tute pens tiri dye rummerd a mush navvered Smith. Was adovo the Smith as lelled kellin te kurin booths pasher Lundra Bridge? Sos tute beeno adre Anglaterra?" Pukkerdom me ke puri dye sar jinav me trustal miri kokeri te simensi. Tu jinsa shan kek Gorgies sa longi-bavoli apre genealogies, sa i puri Romani dyia. Vonka foki nastis chin lende adre lilia, rikkerena lende aduro adre lendros sherria. _Que la main droit perd recueille la gauche_.
"Does tute jin any of the ---'s?" pende M. "Tute dikks sim ta ---'s juva." "Ne kekker, yois too pauno,' pens A. "It's chomani adre the look of her," pende M.