________________________________________________
_ The chance use of the word 'Tramp' in my last paper, brought that
numerous fraternity so vividly before my mind's eye, that I had no
sooner laid down my pen than a compulsion was upon me to take it up
again, and make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all the
summer roads in all directions.
Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits with his
legs in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very
often indeed), he goes to sleep on his back. Yonder, by the high
road, glaring white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit
of turf under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the
highway, the tramp of the order savage, fast asleep. He lies on
the broad of his back, with his face turned up to the sky, and one
of his ragged arms loosely thrown across his face. His bundle
(what can be the contents of that mysterious bundle, to make it
worth his while to carry it about?) is thrown down beside him, and
the waking woman with him sits with her legs in the ditch, and her
back to the road. She wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the
front of her head, to shade her face from the sun in walking, and
she ties her skirts round her in conventionally tight tramp-fashion
with a sort of apron. You can seldom catch sight of her, resting
thus, without seeing her in a despondently defiant manner doing
something to her hair or her bonnet, and glancing at you between
her fingers. She does not often go to sleep herself in the
daytime, but will sit for any length of time beside the man. And
his slumberous propensities would not seem to be referable to the
fatigue of carrying the bundle, for she carries it much oftener and
further than he. When they are afoot, you will mostly find him
slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper, while she lags heavily
behind with the burden. He is given to personally correcting her,
too--which phase of his character develops itself oftenest, on
benches outside alehouse doors--and she appears to become strongly
attached to him for these reasons; it may usually be noticed that
when the poor creature has a bruised face, she is the most
affectionate. He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp,
and has no object whatever in going anywhere. He will sometimes
call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an
imaginary flight. He generally represents himself, in a vague way,
as looking out for a job of work; but he never did work, he never
does, and he never will. It is a favourite fiction with him,
however (as if he were the most industrious character on earth),
that YOU never work; and as he goes past your garden and sees you
looking at your flowers, you will overhear him growl with a strong
sense of contrast, 'YOU are a lucky hidle devil, YOU are!'
The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has the same
injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you
possess, and never did anything to get it: but he is of a less
audacious disposition. He will stop before your gate, and say to
his female companion with an air of constitutional humility and
propitiation--to edify any one who may be within hearing behind a
blind or a bush--'This is a sweet spot, ain't it? A lovelly spot!
And I wonder if they'd give two poor footsore travellers like me
and you, a drop of fresh water out of such a pretty gen-teel crib?
We'd take it wery koind on 'em, wouldn't us? Wery koind, upon my
word, us would?' He has a quick sense of a dog in the vicinity,
and will extend his modestly-injured propitiation to the dog
chained up in your yard; remarking, as he slinks at the yard gate,
'Ah! You are a foine breed o' dog, too, and YOU ain't kep for
nothink! I'd take it wery koind o' your master if he'd elp a
traveller and his woife as envies no gentlefolk their good fortun,
wi' a bit o' your broken wittles. He'd never know the want of it,
nor more would you. Don't bark like that, at poor persons as never
done you no arm; the poor is down-trodden and broke enough without
that; O DON'T!' He generally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving
away, and always looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the
road and down the road, before going on.
Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; let the
hard-working labourer at whose cottage-door they prowl and beg,
have the ague never so badly, these tramps are sure to be in good
health.
There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter this bright
summer day--say, on a road with the sea-breeze making its dust
lively, and sails of ships in the blue distance beyond the slope of
Down. As you walk enjoyingly on, you descry in the perspective at
the bottom of a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that
appears to be sitting airily on a gate, whistling in a cheerful and
disengaged manner. As you approach nearer to it, you observe the
figure to slide down from the gate, to desist from whistling, to
uncock its hat, to become tender of foot, to depress its head and
elevate its shoulders, and to present all the characteristics of
profound despondency. Arriving at the bottom of the hill and
coming close to the figure, you observe it to be the figure of a
shabby young man. He is moving painfully forward, in the direction
in which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied with his
misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until you are
close upon him at the hill-foot. When he is aware of you, you
discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a
remarkably well-spoken young man. You know him to be well-behaved,
by his respectful manner of touching his hat: you know him to be
well-spoken, by his smooth manner of expressing himself. He says
in a flowing confidential voice, and without punctuation, 'I ask
your pardon sir but if you would excuse the liberty of being so
addressed upon the public Iway by one who is almost reduced to rags
though it as not always been so and by no fault of his own but
through ill elth in his family and many unmerited sufferings it
would be a great obligation sir to know the time.' You give the
well-spoken young man the time. The well-spoken young man, keeping
well up with you, resumes: 'I am aware sir that it is a liberty to
intrude a further question on a gentleman walking for his
entertainment but might I make so bold as ask the favour of the way
to Dover sir and about the distance?' You inform the well-spoken
young man that the way to Dover is straight on, and the distance
some eighteen miles. The well-spoken young man becomes greatly
agitated. 'In the condition to which I am reduced,' says he, 'I
could not ope to reach Dover before dark even if my shoes were in a
state to take me there or my feet were in a state to old out over
the flinty road and were not on the bare ground of which any
gentleman has the means to satisfy himself by looking Sir may I
take the liberty of speaking to you?' As the well-spoken young man
keeps so well up with you that you can't prevent his taking the
liberty of speaking to you, he goes on, with fluency: 'Sir it is
not begging that is my intention for I was brought up by the best
of mothers and begging is not my trade I should not know sir how to
follow it as a trade if such were my shameful wishes for the best
of mothers long taught otherwise and in the best of omes though now
reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway Sir my business was
the law-stationering and I was favourably known to the Solicitor-
General the Attorney-General the majority of the judges and the ole
of the legal profession but through ill elth in my family and the
treachery of a friend for whom I became security and he no other
than my own wife's brother the brother of my own wife I was cast
forth with my tender partner and three young children not to beg
for I will sooner die of deprivation but to make my way to the sea-
port town of Dover where I have a relative i in respect not only
that will assist me but that would trust me with untold gold Sir in
appier times and hare this calamity fell upon me I made for my
amusement when I little thought that I should ever need it
excepting for my air this'--here the well-spoken young man put his
hand into his breast--'this comb! Sir I implore you in the name of
charity to purchase a tortoiseshell comb which is a genuine article
at any price that your humanity may put upon it and may the
blessings of a ouseless family awaiting with beating arts the
return of a husband and a father from Dover upon the cold stone
seats of London-bridge ever attend you Sir may I take the liberty
of speaking to you I implore you to buy this comb!' By this time,
being a reasonably good walker, you will have been too much for the
well-spoken young man, who will stop short and express his disgust
and his want of breath, in a long expectoration, as you leave him
behind.
Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright summer day, at
the corner of the next little town or village, you may find another
kind of tramp, embodied in the persons of a most exemplary couple
whose only improvidence appears to have been, that they spent the
last of their little All on soap. They are a man and woman,
spotless to behold--John Anderson, with the frost on his short
smock-frock instead of his 'pow,' attended by Mrs. Anderson. John
is over-ostentatious of the frost upon his raiment, and wears a
curious and, you would say, an almost unnecessary demonstration of
girdle of white linen wound about his waist--a girdle, snowy as
Mrs. Anderson's apron. This cleanliness was the expiring effort of
the respectable couple, and nothing then remained to Mr. Anderson
but to get chalked upon his spade in snow-white copy-book
characters, HUNGRY! and to sit down here. Yes; one thing more
remained to Mr. Anderson--his character; Monarchs could not deprive
him of his hard-earned character. Accordingly, as you come up with
this spectacle of virtue in distress, Mrs. Anderson rises, and with
a decent curtsey presents for your consideration a certificate from
a Doctor of Divinity, the reverend the Vicar of Upper Dodgington,
who informs his Christian friends and all whom it may concern that
the bearers, John Anderson and lawful wife, are persons to whom you
cannot be too liberal. This benevolent pastor omitted no work of
his hands to fit the good couple out, for with half an eye you can
recognise his autograph on the spade.
Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable part of whose
stock-in-trade is a highly perplexed demeanour. He is got up like
a countryman, and you will often come upon the poor fellow, while
he is endeavouring to decipher the inscription on a milestone--
quite a fruitless endeavour, for he cannot read. He asks your
pardon, he truly does (he is very slow of speech, this tramp, and
he looks in a bewildered way all round the prospect while he talks
to you), but all of us shold do as we wold be done by, and he'll
take it kind, if you'll put a power man in the right road fur to
jine his eldest son as has broke his leg bad in the masoning, and
is in this heere Orspit'l as is wrote down by Squire Pouncerby's
own hand as wold not tell a lie fur no man. He then produces from
under his dark frock (being always very slow and perplexed) a neat
but worn old leathern purse, from which he takes a scrap of paper.
On this scrap of paper is written, by Squire Pouncerby, of The
Grove, 'Please to direct the Bearer, a poor but very worthy man, to
the Sussex County Hospital, near Brighton'--a matter of some
difficulty at the moment, seeing that the request comes suddenly
upon you in the depths of Hertfordshire. The more you endeavour to
indicate where Brighton is--when you have with the greatest
difficulty remembered--the less the devoted father can be made to
comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at the prospect;
whereby, being reduced to extremity, you recommend the faithful
parent to begin by going to St. Albans, and present him with half-
a-crown. It does him good, no doubt, but scarcely helps him
forward, since you find him lying drunk that same evening in the
wheelwright's sawpit under the shed where the felled trees are,
opposite the sign of the Three Jolly Hedgers.
But, the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, is the tramp
who pretends to have been a gentleman. 'Educated,' he writes, from
the village beer-shop in pale ink of a ferruginous complexion;
'educated at Trin. Coll. Cam.--nursed in the lap of affluence--once
in my small way the pattron of the Muses,' &c. &c. &c.--surely a
sympathetic mind will not withhold a trifle, to help him on to the
market-town where he thinks of giving a Lecture to the fruges
consumere nati, on things in general? This shameful creature
lolling about hedge tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, now so far
from being black that they look as if they never can have been
black, is more selfish and insolent than even the savage tramp. He
would sponge on the poorest boy for a farthing, and spurn him when
he had got it; he would interpose (if he could get anything by it)
between the baby and the mother's breast. So much lower than the
company he keeps, for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this
pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he maunders on between
the luxuriant hedges; where (to my thinking) even the wild
convolvulus and rose and sweet-briar, are the worse for his going
by, and need time to recover from the taint of him in the air.
The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or six together,
their boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby bundles under
their arms, their sticks newly cut from some roadside wood, are not
eminently prepossessing, but are much less objectionable. There is
a tramp-fellowship among them. They pick one another up at resting
stations, and go on in companies. They always go at a fast swing--
though they generally limp too--and there is invariably one of the
company who has much ado to keep up with the rest. They generally
talk about horses, and any other means of locomotion than walking:
or, one of the company relates some recent experiences of the road-
-which are always disputes and difficulties. As for example. 'So
as I'm a standing at the pump in the market, blest if there don't
come up a Beadle, and he ses, "Mustn't stand here," he ses. "Why
not?" I ses. "No beggars allowed in this town," he ses. "Who's a
beggar?" I ses. "You are," he ses. "Who ever see ME beg? Did
YOU?" I ses. "Then you're a tramp," he ses. "I'd rather be that
than a Beadle," I ses.' (The company express great approval.)
'"Would you?" he ses to me. "Yes, I would," I ses to him. "Well,"
he ses, "anyhow, get out of this town." "Why, blow your little
town!" I ses, "who wants to be in it? Wot does your dirty little
town mean by comin' and stickin' itself in the road to anywhere?
Why don't you get a shovel and a barrer, and clear your town out o'
people's way?"' (The company expressing the highest approval and
laughing aloud, they all go down the hill.)
Then, there are the tramp handicraft men. Are they not all over
England, in this Midsummer time? Where does the lark sing, the
corn grow, the mill turn, the river run, and they are not among the
lights and shadows, tinkering, chair-mending, umbrella-mending,
clock-mending, knife-grinding? Surely, a pleasant thing, if we
were in that condition of life, to grind our way through Kent,
Sussex, and Surrey. For the worst six weeks or so, we should see
the sparks we ground off, fiery bright against a background of
green wheat and green leaves. A little later, and the ripe harvest
would pale our sparks from red to yellow, until we got the dark
newly-turned land for a background again, and they were red once
more. By that time, we should have ground our way to the sea
cliffs, and the whirr of our wheel would be lost in the breaking of
the waves. Our next variety in sparks would be derived from
contrast with the gorgeous medley of colours in the autumn woods,
and, by the time we had ground our way round to the heathy lands
between Reigate and Croydon, doing a prosperous stroke of business
all along, we should show like a little firework in the light
frosty air, and be the next best thing to the blacksmith's forge.
Very agreeable, too, to go on a chair-mending tour. What judges we
should be of rushes, and how knowingly (with a sheaf and a
bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge on bridges, looking
over at osier-beds! Among all the innumerable occupations that
cannot possibly be transacted without the assistance of lookers-on,
chair-mending may take a station in the first rank. When we sat
down with our backs against the barn or the public-house, and began
to mend, what a sense of popularity would grow upon us! When all
the children came to look at us, and the tailor, and the general
dealer, and the farmer who had been giving a small order at the
little saddler's, and the groom from the great house, and the
publican, and even the two skittle-players (and here note that,
howsoever busy all the rest of village human-kind may be, there
will always be two people with leisure to play at skittles,
wherever village skittles are), what encouragement would be on us
to plait and weave! No one looks at us while we plait and weave
these words. Clock-mending again. Except for the slight
inconvenience of carrying a clock under our arm, and the monotony
of making the bell go, whenever we came to a human habitation, what
a pleasant privilege to give a voice to the dumb cottage-clock, and
set it talking to the cottage family again! Likewise we foresee
great interest in going round by the park plantations, under the
overhanging boughs (hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants,
scudding like mad across and across the chequered ground before
us), and so over the park ladder, and through the wood, until we
came to the Keeper's lodge. Then, would, the Keeper be
discoverable at his door, in a deep nest of leaves, smoking his
pipe. Then, on our accosting him in the way of our trade, would he
call to Mrs. Keeper, respecting 't'ould clock' in the kitchen.
Then, would Mrs. Keeper ask us into the lodge, and on due
examination we should offer to make a good job of it for
eighteenpence; which offer, being accepted, would set us tinkling
and clinking among the chubby, awe-struck little Keepers for an
hour and more. So completely to the family's satisfaction would we
achieve our work, that the Keeper would mention how that there was
something wrong with the bell of the turret stable-clock up at the
Hall, and that if we thought good of going up to the housekeeper on
the chance of that job too, why he would take us. Then, should we
go, among the branching oaks and the deep fern, by silent ways of
mystery known to the Keeper, seeing the herd glancing here and
there as we went along, until we came to the old Hall, solemn and
grand. Under the Terrace Flower Garden, and round by the stables,
would the Keeper take us in, and as we passed we should observe how
spacious and stately the stables, and how fine the painting of the
horses' names over their stalls, and how solitary all: the family
being in London. Then, should we find ourselves presented to the
housekeeper, sitting, in hushed state, at needlework, in a bay-
window looking out upon a mighty grim red-brick quadrangle, guarded
by stone lions disrespectfully throwing somersaults over the
escutcheons of the noble family. Then, our services accepted and
we insinuated with a candle into the stable-turret, we should find
it to be a mere question of pendulum, but one that would hold us
until dark. Then, should we fall to work, with a general
impression of Ghosts being about, and of pictures indoors that of a
certainty came out of their frames and 'walked,' if the family
would only own it. Then, should we work and work, until the day
gradually turned to dusk, and even until the dusk gradually turned
to dark. Our task at length accomplished, we should be taken into
an enormous servants' hall, and there regaled with beef and bread,
and powerful ale. Then, paid freely, we should be at liberty to
go, and should be told by a pointing helper to keep round over
yinder by the blasted ash, and so straight through the woods, till
we should see the town-lights right afore us. Then, feeling
lonesome, should we desire upon the whole, that the ash had not
been blasted, or that the helper had had the manners not to mention
it. However, we should keep on, all right, till suddenly the
stable bell would strike ten in the dolefullest way, quite chilling
our blood, though we had so lately taught him how to acquit
himself. Then, as we went on, should we recall old stories, and
dimly consider what it would be most advisable to do, in the event
of a tall figure, all in white, with saucer eyes, coming up and
saying, 'I want you to come to a churchyard and mend a church
clock. Follow me!' Then, should we make a burst to get clear of
the trees, and should soon find ourselves in the open, with the
town-lights bright ahead of us. So should we lie that night at the
ancient sign of the Crispin and Crispanus, and rise early next
morning to be betimes on tramp again.
Bricklayers often tramp, in twos and threes, lying by night at
their 'lodges,' which are scattered all over the country.
Bricklaying is another of the occupations that can by no means be
transacted in rural parts, without the assistance of spectators--of
as many as can be convened. In thinly-peopled spots, I have known
brick-layers on tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to be so
sensible of the indispensability of lookers-on, that they
themselves have sat up in that capacity, and have been unable to
subside into the acceptance of a proffered share in the job, for
two or three days together. Sometimes, the 'navvy,' on tramp, with
an extra pair of half-boots over his shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and
a can, will take a similar part in a job of excavation, and will
look at it without engaging in it, until all his money is gone.
The current of my uncommercial pursuits caused me only last summer
to want a little body of workmen for a certain spell of work in a
pleasant part of the country; and I was at one time honoured with
the attendance of as many as seven-and-twenty, who were looking at
six.
Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in summer-time, without
storing up knowledge of the many tramps who go from one oasis of
town or village to another, to sell a stock in trade, apparently
not worth a shilling when sold? Shrimps are a favourite commodity
for this kind of speculation, and so are cakes of a soft and spongy
character, coupled with Spanish nuts and brandy balls. The stock
is carried on the head in a basket, and, between the head and the
basket, are the trestles on which the stock is displayed at trading
times. Fleet of foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly;
with a certain stiffness of neck, occasioned by much anxious
balancing of baskets; and also with a long, Chinese sort of eye,
which an overweighted forehead would seem to have squeezed into
that form.
On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great rivers, behold
the tramping Soldier. And if you should happen never to have asked
yourself whether his uniform is suited to his work, perhaps the
poor fellow's appearance as he comes distressfully towards you,
with his absurdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his
hand, and his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize, may
suggest the personal inquiry, how you think YOU would like it.
Much better the tramping Sailor, although his cloth is somewhat too
thick for land service. But, why the tramping merchant-mate should
put on a black velvet waistcoat, for a chalky country in the dog-
days, is one of the great secrets of nature that will never be
discovered.
I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side
by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the
trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance
on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river
stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's life. To gain
the milestone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells,
and wild roses, would soon render illegible but for peering
travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, you must come up a
steep hill, come which way you may. So, all the tramps with carts
or caravans--the Gipsy-tramp, the Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack--find
it impossible to resist the temptations of the place, and all turn
the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless the
place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have scorched
its grass! What tramp children do I see here, attired in a handful
of rags, making a gymnasium of the shafts of the cart, making a
feather-bed of the flints and brambles, making a toy of the hobbled
old horse who is not much more like a horse than any cheap toy
would be! Here, do I encounter the cart of mats and brooms and
baskets--with all thoughts of business given to the evening wind--
with the stew made and being served out--with Cheap Jack and Dear
Jill striking soft music out of the plates that are rattled like
warlike cymbals when put up for auction at fairs and markets--their
minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of the nightingales as
they begin to sing in the woods behind them, that if I were to
propose to deal, they would sell me anything at cost price. On
this hallowed ground has it been my happy privilege (let me whisper
it), to behold the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes, eating
meat-pie with the Giant: while, by the hedge-side, on the box of
blankets which I knew contained the snakes, were set forth the cups
and saucers and the teapot. It was on an evening in August, that I
chanced upon this ravishing spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas
the Giant reclined half concealed beneath the overhanging boughs
and seemed indifferent to Nature, the white hair of the gracious
Lady streamed free in the breath of evening, and her pink eyes
found pleasure in the landscape. I heard only a single sentence of
her uttering, yet it bespoke a talent for modest repartee. The
ill-mannered Giant--accursed be his evil race!--had interrupted the
Lady in some remark, and, as I passed that enchanted corner of the
wood, she gently reproved him, with the words, 'Now, Cobby;'--
Cobby! so short a name!--'ain't one fool enough to talk at a time?'
Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though not so
near it as that the song trolled from tap or bench at door, can
invade its woodland silence, is a little hostelry which no man
possessed of a penny was ever known to pass in warm weather.
Before its entrance, are certain pleasant, trimmed limes; likewise,
a cool well, with so musical a bucket-handle that its fall upon the
bucket rim will make a horse prick up his ears and neigh, upon the
droughty road half a mile off. This is a house of great resort for
haymaking tramps and harvest tramps, insomuch that as they sit
within, drinking their mugs of beer, their relinquished scythes and
reaping-hooks glare out of the open windows, as if the whole
establishment were a family war-coach of Ancient Britons. Later in
the season, the whole country-side, for miles and miles, will swarm
with hopping tramps. They come in families, men, women, and
children, every family provided with a bundle of bedding, an iron
pot, a number of babies, and too often with some poor sick creature
quite unfit for the rough life, for whom they suppose the smell of
the fresh hop to be a sovereign remedy. Many of these hoppers are
Irish, but many come from London. They crowd all the roads, and
camp under all the hedges and on all the scraps of common-land, and
live among and upon the hops until they are all picked, and the
hop-gardens, so beautiful through the summer, look as if they had
been laid waste by an invading army. Then, there is a vast exodus
of tramps out of the country; and if you ride or drive round any
turn of any road, at more than a foot pace, you will be bewildered
to find that you have charged into the bosom of fifty families, and
that there are splashing up all around you, in the utmost
prodigality of confusion, bundles of bedding, babies, iron pots,
and a good-humoured multitude of both sexes and all ages, equally
divided between perspiration and intoxication. _
Read next: CHAPTER XII - DULLBOROUGH TOWN
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