Chapter 5

I have observed that as among men of great and varied culture, and of extensive experience, there are more complex and delicate shades and half-shades of light in the face, so in the palm the lines are correspondingly varied and broken. Take a man of intellect and a peasant, of equal excellence of figure according to the literal rules of art or of anatomy, and this subtile multiplicity of variety shows itself in the whole body in favor of the "gentleman," so that it would almost seem as if every book we read is republished in the person. The first thing that struck me in these gypsy hands was the fewness of the lines, their clearly defined sweep, and their simplicity. In every one the line of life was unbroken, and, in fine, one might think from a drawing of the hand, and without knowing who its owner might be, that he or she was of a type of character unknown in most great European cities,--a being gifted with special culture, and in a certain simple sense refined, but not endowed with experience in a thousand confused phases of life. The hands of a true genius, who has passed through life earnestly devoted to a single art, however, are on the whole like these of the gypsies. Such, for example, are the hands of Fanny Janauschek, the lines of which agree to perfection with the laws of chiromancy. The art reminds one of Cervantes's ape, who told the past and present, but not the future. And here "tell me what thou hast been, and I will tell what thou wilt be" gives a fine opportunity to the soothsayer.

To avoid mistakes I told the fortunes in French, which was translated into Russian. I need not say that every word was listened to with earnest attention, or that the group of dark but young and comely faces, as they gathered around and bent over, would have made a good subject for a picture. After the girls, the mother must needs hear her _dorriki_ also, and last of all the young Russian gentleman, who seemed to take as earnest an interest in his future as even the gypsies. As he alone understood French, and as he appeared to be _un peu gaillard_, and, finally, as the lines of his hand said nothing to the contrary, I predicted for him in detail a fortune in which _bonnes fortunes_ were not at all wanting. I think he was pleased, but when I asked him if he would translate what I had said of his future into Russian, he replied with a slight wink and a scarcely perceptible negative. I suppose he had his reasons for declining.

Then we had singing again, and Christopher, the brother, a wild and gay young gypsy, became so excited that while playing the guitar he also danced and caroled, and the sweet voices of the girls rose in chorus, and I was again importuned for the _Romany_ song, and we had altogether a very Bohemian frolic. I was sorry when the early twilight faded into night, and I was obliged, notwithstanding many entreaties to the contrary, to take my leave. These gypsies had been very friendly and kind to me in a strange city, where I had not an acquaintance, and where I had expected none. They had given me of their very best; for they gave me songs which I can never forget, and which were better to me than all the opera could bestow. The young Russian, polite to the last, went bareheaded with me into the street, and, hailing a sleigh-driver, began to bargain for me. In Moscow, as in other places, it makes a great difference in the fare whether one takes a public conveyance from before the first hotel or from a house in the gypsy quarter. I had paid seventy kopecks to come, and I at once found that my new friend and the driver were engaged in wild and fierce dispute whether I should pay twenty or thirty to return.

"Oh, give him thirty!" I exclaimed. "It's little enough."

"_Non_," replied the Russian, with the air of a man of principles. "_Il ne faut pas gater ces gens-la_." But I gave the driver thirty, all the same, when we got home, and thereby earned the usual shower of blessings.

A few days afterward, while going from Moscow to St. Petersburg, I made the acquaintance of a young Russian noble and diplomat, who was well informed on all current gossip, and learned from him some curious facts. The first young gentleman whom I had seen among the Romanys of Moscow was the son of a Russian prince by a gypsy mother, and the very noble Englishman whose photograph I had seen in Sarsha's collection had not long ago (as rumor averred) paid desperate attentions to the belle of the Romanys without obtaining the least success. My informant did not know her name. Putting this and that together, I think it highly probable that Sarsha was the young lady, and that the _latcho bar_, or diamond, which sparkled on her finger had been paid for with British gold, while the donor had gained the same "unluck" which befell one of his type in the Spanish gypsy song as given by George Borrow:--

"Loud sang the Spanish cavalier, And thus his ditty ran: 'God send the gypsy maiden here, But not the gypsy man.'

"On high arose the moon so bright, The gypsy 'gan to sing, 'I gee a Spaniard coming here, I must be on the wing.'"

AUSTRIAN GYPSIES.

I.

In June, 1878, I went to Paris, during the great Exhibition. I had been invited by Monsieur Edmond About to attend as a delegate the Congres Internationale Litteraire, which was about to be held in the great city. How we assembled, how M. About distinguished himself as one of the most practical and common-sensible of men of genius, and how we were all finally harangued by M. Victor Hugo with the most extraordinary display of oratorical sky-rockets, Catherine-wheels, blue-lights, fire-crackers, and pin-wheels by which it was ever my luck to be amused, is matter of history. But this chapter is only autobiographical, and we will pass over the history. As an Anglo-American delegate, I was introduced to several great men gratis; to the greatest of all I introduced myself at the expense of half a franc. This was to the Chinese giant, Chang, who was on exhibition at a small cafe garden near the Trocadero. There were no other visitors in his pavilion when I entered. He received me with politeness, and we began to converse in fourth-story English, but gradually went down-stairs into Pidgin, until we found ourselves fairly in the kitchen of that humble but entertaining dialect. It is a remarkable sensation to sit alone with a mild monster, and feel like a little boy. I do not distinctly remember whether Chang is eight, or ten or twelve feet high; I only know that, though I am, as he said, "one velly big piecee man," I sat and lifted my eyes from time to time at the usual level, forgetfully expecting to meet his eyes, and beheld instead the buttons on his breast. Then I looked up--like Daruma to Buddha--and up, and saw far above me his "lights of the soul" gleaming down on me as it were from the top of a lofty beacon.

I soon found that Chang, regarding all things from a giant's point of view, esteemed mankind by their size and looks. Therefore, as he had complimented me according to his lights, I replied that he was a "numpa one too muchee glanti handsome man, first chop big."

Then he added, "You belongy Inklis man?"

"No. My one piecee _fa-ke-kwok_; {69} my Melican, galaw. You dlinkee ale some-tim?"

The giant replied that _pay-wine_, which is Pidgin for beer, was not ungrateful to his palate or foreign to his habits. So we had a quart of Alsopp between us, and drank to better acquaintance. I found that the giant had exhibited himself in many lands, and taken great pains to learn the language of each, so that he spoke German, Italian, and Spanish well enough. He had been at a mission-school when he used to "stop China-side," or was in his native land. I assured him that I had perceived it from the first, because he evidently "talked ink," as his countrymen say of words which are uttered by a scholar, and I greatly gratified him by citing some of my own "beautiful verses," which are reversed from a Chinese original:--

"One man who never leadee {69a} Like one dly {69b} inkstan be: You turn he up-side downy, No ink lun {69c} outside he."

So we parted with mutual esteem. This was the second man by the name of Chang whom I had known, and singularly enough they were both exhibited as curiosities. The other made a living as a Siamese twin, and his brother was named Eng. They wrote their autographs for me, and put them wisely at the very top of the page, lest I should write a promise to pay an immense sum of money, or forge a free pass to come into the exhibition gratis over their signatures.

Having seen Chang, I returned to the Hotel de Louvre, dined, and then went forth with friends to the Orangerie. This immense garden, devoted to concerts, beer, and cigars, is said to be capable of containing three thousand people; before I left it it held about five thousand. I knew not why this unwonted crowd had assembled; when I found the cause I was astonished, with reason. At the gate was a bill, on which I read "Les Bohemiennes de Moscow."

"Some small musical comedy, I suppose," I said to myself. "But let us see it." We pressed on.

"Look there!" said my companion. "Those are certainly gypsies."

Sure enough, a procession of men and women, strangely dressed in gayly colored Oriental garments, was entering the gates. But I replied, "Impossible. Not here in Paris. Probably they are performers."

"But see. They notice you. That girl certainly knows you. She's turning her head. There,--I heard her say O Romany rye!"

I was bewildered. The crowd was dense, but as the procession passed me at a second turn I saw they were indeed gypsies, and I was grasped by the hand by more than one. They were my old friends from Moscow. This explained the immense multitude. There was during the Exhibition a great _furor_ as regarded _les zigains_. The gypsy orchestra which performed in the Hungarian cafe was so beset by visitors that a comic paper represented them as covering the roofs of the adjacent houses so as to hear something. This evening the Russian gypsies were to make their debut in the Orangerie, and they were frightened at their own success. They sang, but their voices were inaudible to two thirds of the audience, and those who could not hear roared, "Louder!" Then they adjourned to the open air, where the voices were lost altogether on a crowd calling, "_Garcon_--_vite_--_une tasse cafe_!" or applauding. In the intervals scores of young Russian gentlemen, golden swells, who had known the girls of old, gathered round the fair ones like moths around tapers. The singing was not the same as it had been; the voices were the same, but the sweet wild charm of the Romany caroling, bird-like, for pleasure was gone.

But I found by themselves and unnoticed two of the troupe, whom I shall not soon forget. They were two very handsome youths,--one of sixteen years, the other twenty. And with the first words in Romany they fairly jumped for joy; and the artist who could have caught their picture then would have made a brave one. They were clad in blouses of colored silk, which, with their fine dark complexions and great black eyes, gave them a very picturesque air. These had not seen me in Russia, nor had they heard of me; they were probably from Novogorod. Like the girls they were children, but in a greater degree, for they had not been flattered, and kind words delighted them so that they clapped their hands. They began to hum gypsy songs, and had I not prevented it they would have run at once and brought a guitar, and improvised a small concert for me _al fresco_. I objected to this, not wishing to take part any longer in such a very public exhibition. For the _gobe-mouches_ and starers, noticing a stranger talking with _ces zigains_, had begun to gather in a dense crowd around us, and the two ladies and the gentleman who were with us were seriously inconvenienced. We endeavored to step aside, but the multitude stepped aside also, and would not let us alone. They were French, but they might have been polite. As it was, they broke our merry conference up effectively, and put us to flight.

"Do let us come and see you, _rya_," said the younger boy. "We will sing, for I can really sing beautifully, and we like you so much. Where do you live?"

I could not invite them, for I was about to leave Paris, as I then supposed. I have never seen them since, and there was no adventure and no strange scenery beyond the thousands of lights and guests and trees and voices speaking French. Yet to this day the gay boyishness, the merry laughter, and the child-like _naivete_ of the promptly-formed liking of those gypsy youths remains impressed on my mind with all the color and warmth of an adventure or a living poem. Can you recall no child by any wayside of life to whom you have given a chance smile or a kind word, and been repaid with artless sudden attraction? For to all of us,--yes, to the coldest and worst,--there are such memories of young people, of children, and I pity him who, remembering them, does not feel the touch of a vanished hand and hear a chord which is still. There are adventures which we can tell to others as stories, but the best have no story; they may be only the memory of a strange dog which followed us, and I have one such of a cat who, without any introduction, leaped wildly towards me, "and would not thence away." It is a good life which has many such memories.

I was walking a day or two after with an English friend, who was also a delegate to the International Literary Congress, in the Exhibition, when we approached the side gate, or rear entrance of the Hungarian cafe. Six or seven dark and strange-looking men stood about, dressed in the uniform of a military band. I caught their glances, and saw that they were Romany.

"Now you shall see something queer," I said to my friend.

So advancing to the first dark man I greeted him in gypsy.

"I do not understand you," he promptly replied--or lied.

I turned to a second.

"You have more sense, and you do understand. _Adro miro tem penena mande o baro rai_." (In my country the gypsies call me the great gentleman.)

This phrase may be translated to mean either the "tall gentleman" or the "great lord." It was apparently taken in the latter sense, for at once all the party bowed very low, raising their hands to their foreheads, in Oriental fashion.

"Hallo!" exclaimed my English friend, who had not understood what I had said. "What game is this you are playing on these fellows?"

Up to the front came a superior, the leader of the band.

"Great God!" he exclaimed, "what is this I hear? This is wonderful. To think that there should be anybody here to talk with! I can only talk Magyar and Romanes."

"And what do you talk?" I inquired of the first violin.

"_Ich spreche nur Deutsch_!" he exclaimed, with a strong Vienna accent and a roar of laughter. "I only talk German."

This worthy man, I found, was as much delighted with my German as the leader with my gypsy; and in all my experience I never met two beings so charmed at being able to converse. That I should have met with them was of itself wonderful. Only there was this difference: that the Viennese burst into a laugh every time he spoke, while the gypsy grew more sternly solemn and awfully impressive. There are people to whom mere talking is a pleasure,--never mind the ideas,--and here I had struck two at once. I once knew a gentleman named Stewart. He was the mayor, first physician, and postmaster of St. Paul, Minnesota. While camping out, _en route_, and in a tent with him, it chanced that among the other gentlemen who had tented with us there were two terrible snorers. Now Mr. Stewart had heard that you may stop a man's snoring by whistling. And here was a wonderful opportunity. "So I waited," he said, "until one man was coming down with his snore, _diminuendo_, while the other was rising, _crescendo_, and at the exact point of intersection, _moderato_, I blew my car-whistle, and so got both birds at one shot. I stopped them both." Even as Mayor Stewart had winged his two birds with one ball had I hit my two peregrines.

"We are now going to perform," said the gypsy captain. "Will you not take seats on the platform, and hear us play?"

I did not know it at the time, but I heard afterwards that this was a great compliment, and one rarely bestowed. The platform was small, and we were very near our new friends. Scarcely had the performance begun ere I perceived that, just as the gypsies in Russia had sung their best in my honor, these artists were exerting themselves to the utmost, and, all unheeding the audience, playing directly at me and into me. When any _tour_ was deftly made the dark master nodded to me with gleaming eyes, as if saying, "What do you think of _that_, now?" The Viennese laughed for joy every time his glance met mine, and as I looked at the various Lajoshes and Joshkas of the band, they blew, beat, or scraped with redoubled fury, or sank into thrilling tenderness. Hurrah! here was somebody to play to who knew gypsy and all the games thereof; for a very little, even a word, reveals a great deal, and I must be a virtuoso, at least by Romany, if not by art. It was with all the joy of success that the first piece ended amid thunders of applause.

"That was not the _racoczy_," I said. "Yet it sounded like it."

"No," said the captain. "But _now_ you shall hear the _racoczy_ and the _czardas_ as you never heard them before. For we can play that better than any orchestra in Vienna. Truly, you will never forget us after hearing it."

And then they played the _racoczy_, the national Hungarian favorite, of gypsy composition, with heart and soul. As these men played for me, inspired with their own music, feeling and enjoying it far more than the audience, and all because they had got a gypsy gentleman to play to, I appreciated what a _life_ that was to them, and what it should be; not cold-blooded skill, aiming only at excellence or preexcellence and at setting up the artist, but a fire and a joy, a self-forgetfulness which whirls the soul away as the soul of the Moenad went with the stream adown the mountains,--_Evoe Bacchus_! This feeling is deep in the heart of the Hungarian gypsy; he plays it, he feels it in every air, he knows the rush of the stream as it bounds onwards,--knows that it expresses his deepest desire; and so he has given it words in a song which, to him who has the key, is one of the most touching ever written:--

"Dyal o pani repedishis, M'ro pirano hegedishis;

"Dyal o pani tale vatra, M'ro pirano klanetaha.

"Dyal o pani pe kishai M'ro pirano tsino rai."

"The stream runs on with rushing din As I hear my true love's violin;

"And the river rolls o'er rock and stone As he plays the flute so sweet alone.

"Runs o'er the sand as it began, Then my true love lives a gentleman."

Yes, music whirling the soul away as on a rushing river, the violin notes falling like ripples, the flute tones all aflow among the rocks; and when it sweeps _adagio_ on the sandy bed, then the gypsy player is at heart equal to a lord, then he feels a gentleman. The only true republic is art. There all earthly distinctions pass away; there he is best who lives and feels best, and makes others feel, not that he is cleverer than they, but that he can awaken sympathy and joy.

The intense reality of musical art as a comforter to these gypsies of Eastern Europe is wonderful. Among certain inedited songs of the Transylvanian gypsies, in the Kolosvarer dialect, I find the following:--

"Na janav ko dad m'ro as, Niko mallen mange as, Miro gule dai merdyas Pirani me pregelyas. Uva tu o hegedive Tu sal mindik pash mange."

"I've known no father since my birth, I have no friend alive on earth; My mother's dead this many day, The girl I loved has gone her way; Thou violin with music free Alone art ever true to me."

It is very wonderful that the charm of the Russian gypsy girls' singing was destroyed by the atmosphere or applause of a Paris concert-room, while the Hungarian Romanys conquered it as it were by sheer force, and by conquering gave their music the charm of intensity. I do not deny that in this music, be it of voice or instruments, there is much which is perhaps imagined, which depends on association, which is plain to John but not to Jack; but you have only to advance or retreat a few steps to find the same in the highest art. This, at least, we know: that no performer at any concert in London can awake the feeling of intense enjoyment which these wild minstrels excite in themselves and in others by sympathy. Now it is a question in many forms as to whether art for enjoyment is to die, and art for the sake of art alone survive. Is joyous and healthy nature to vanish step by step from the heart of man, and morbid, egoistic pessimism to take its place? Are over-culture, excessive sentiment, constant self-criticism, and all the brood of nervous curses to monopolize and inspire art? A fine alliance this they are making, the ascetic monk and the atheistic pessimist, to kill Nature! They will never effect it. It may die in many forms. It may lose its charm, as the singing of Sarsha and of Liubasha was lost among the rustling and noise of thousands of Parisian _badauds_ in the Orangerie. But there will be stronger forms of art, which will make themselves heard, as the Hungarian Romanys heeded no din, and bore all away with their music.

"_Latcho divvus miri pralia_!--_miduvel atch pa tumende_!" (Good-day, my brothers. God rest on you) I said, and they rose and bowed, and I went forth into the Exhibition. It was a brave show, that of all the fine things from all parts of the world which man can make, but to me the most interesting of all were the men themselves. Will not the managers of the next world show give us a living ethnological department?

Of these Hungarian gypsies who played in Paris during the Exhibition much was said in the newspapers, and from the following, which appeared in an American journal, written by some one to me unknown, the reader may learn that there were many others to whom their music was deeply thrilling or wildly exciting:--

"The Hungarian Tziganes (Zigeuner) are the rage just now at Paris. The story is that Liszt picked out the individuals composing the band one by one from among the gypsy performers in Hungary and Bohemia. Half-civilized in appearance, dressed in an unbecoming half-military costume, they are nothing while playing Strauss' waltzes or their own; but when they play the Radetsky Defile, the Racoksky March, or their marvelous czardas, one sees and hears the battle, and it is easy to understand the influence of their music in fomenting Hungarian revolutions; why for so long it was made treasonable to play or listen to these czardas; and why, as they heard them, men rose to their feet, gathered together, and with tears rolling down their faces, and throats swelling with emotion, departed to do or die."

And when I remember that they played for me as they said they had played for no other man in Paris, "into the ear,"--and when I think of the gleam in their eyes, I verily believe they _told_ the truth,--I feel glad that I chanced that morning on those dark men and spoke to them in Romany.

* * * * *

Since the above was written I have met in an entertaining work called "Unknown Hungary," by Victor Tissot, with certain remarks on the Hungarian gypsy musicians which are so appropriate that I cite them in full:--