Gipsy Smith; his life and work

Front matter

ehh Hi i HUTTE a H rt tite i t

Gipsy Smith ee aes

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Introduction To American Edition

By G. CAMPBELL MORGAN

Y first acquaintance with Gipsy Smith was made in 1886 when I entered upon work in

Hull, which he had originated. Going at the invitation of the committee then in oversight of the work at Wilberforce Hall to conduct services for fourteen days, I remained thirteen months, and thus had opportunity to observe the results of his labors. I found very many whole-hearted followers of Jesus Christ in dead earnest about the conversion of others. These, most of them, had been brought to God under the preaching of this man. Many of them remain in the churches of the town unto this day, and retain their first love to Christ and devotion for His cause. During this time I often met Gipsy, and from the first my heart was joined to his as a brother beloved, and I count him still as my close personal friend and a highly valued fellowlaborer in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ. During these years I have noted with great joy his remarkable development, until to-day he stands at the very front of those who are doing the work of the Evangelist. His early life, as this book

6 Introduction to American Edition clearly shows, consisted of certain facts which were against the chances of his success, and yet, taking a higher viewpoint of consideration, they were in his favor.

His lack of educational advantages would have seemed likely to bar his progress. He recognized this, and set himself from the first with a devotion and earnestness which were magnificent to remedy the defect. He has been a hard worker and hard reader, and this has found its reward in the fact that to-day he has acquired a style and delivery that is full of force and beauty. One of our great London dailies said of him recently that he is one of the finest exponents of the possibilities of Anglosaxon speech since the days of John Bright.

It is possible to hear him again and again, as I have done, without detecting a flaw in his grammar or pronunciation; and one is filled with wonder at his wonderful triumph in this direction.

In his case the very early lack has been the stimulus of constant effort, and there has been no arrest of development consequent upon the mistaken notion—alas, too common among more favored men —that he had his education long ago.

Greatly in his favor is the fact that he was a child of nature, nurtured near to her heart. When that Spirit who breatheth where He listeth brought him into living contact with Christ, the gain of this early environment was manifest.

To know him to-day is to catch the sweet, healthy freshness of woods and flowers and dear old mother

Introduction to American Edition 7 earth, and to breathe the fragrance of the life lived far from the stifling atmosphere of great cities. I never talk with him without taking in a wholesome quantity of ozone. His most remarkable growth has been spiritual. In tone and temper, and those fine qualities of spirit which are the fairest productions of Christian life, he has steadily advanced, and to-day more than ever is a child of God in outward conduct and inward character.

Though thus a child of the country, his mission has been pre-eminently that of a messenger of the Gospel to great cities. It is one of the most heartstirring and spirit-reviving sights I know to watch a dense mass of city folk, toilers in the factories, clerks from the offices, professional men, and those of culture and leisure, listen to him as he pleads with tender eloquence the cause of the Master.

Gipsy Smith is an evangelist by right of a “ gift,” bestowed by the Spirit of God, as certainly as there ever was such in the history of the Church. In his case, moreover, we have a conspicuous example of the fact that the Spirit bestows such gifts on those by natural endowment fitted to receive and use them. There is no conflict between a man as God made him and the work of grace in him when he is utterly abandoned to the will of God.

This story of his life is full of deep interest, as it breathes the very spirit of the man—artless, intense, transparent. For it I bespeak a reading on the part of all those who love the Lord Jesus and are interested in the story of His methods with the mes-

8 Introduction to American Edition sengers of His grace. I welcome the book asa fresh living message of that grace, and as adding another to the long list of lives that show forth the excellencies of Him who calls men out of darkness into His marvellous light.

This brief prefatory work is a work of love, for out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh, and of my friend who is at once Gipsy and Gentleman, because wholly Christian, I can truly say, thank my God upon every remembrance of him.

Introduction

By Rev. Dr. ALEXANDER MCLAREN

THERE is little need for any introduction to this book; but my friend Gipsy Smith having done me the honor of asking me to prefix a few words to it, I gladly comply with his request. I have at least one qualification for my present position—namely, my long and close knowledge of the man who here tells his life-story, and I can say with absolute confidence and sincerity that that knowledge has discovered to me a character of rare sweetness, goodness, simplicity, and godliness, and possessed of something of that strange attractiveness with which popular beliefs have endowed his race. But the fascination is explicable on better grounds than magic spells ; it is the charm of a nature which draws others to itself, because it goes out to meet them, and is loved because it loves.

The life told in this book has its picturesque and its pathetic sides, but is worthy of study for deeper reasons than these. It witnesses to the transforming power of Jesus Christ, entering a soul through that soul’s faith. A gipsy encampment is the last place whence an evangelist might be expected to emerge. Almost alien to our civilization, with

10 Introduction little education, with vices and limitations inherited from generations who were despised and suspected, and with the virtues of a foreign clan encamped on hostile ground, the gipsies have been all but overlooked by the churches, with one or two exceptions, such as the work of Crabbe half a century since among those of Hampshire and the New Forest. But the story in this book brings one more striking and welcome evidence that there are no hopeless classes in the view of the gospel. We are accustomed to say that often enough, but we do not always act as if we believed it, and it may do some of us good to have another living example of Christ’s power to elevate and enrich a life, whatever its antecedents, disadvantages, and limitations. Gipsy or gentleman, “we have all of us one human heart,”’ and the deepest need in that heart is an anodyne for the sense of sin, and a power which will implant in it righteousness. Here is a case in which Christ’s gospel has met both wants. Is there anything else that would or could do that?

For another reason this book deserves study, for it raises serious questions as to the Church’s office of “evangelizing every creature.’’ Gipsy Smith has remarkable qualifications for that work, and has done it all over the country with a sobriety, transparent sincerity, and loyalty to the ordinary ministrations of the churches which deserve and have received general recognition. But what he has not is as instructive as what he has. He is not an orator, gor a scholar, nor a theologian. He is not a genius.

Introduction il

But, notwithstanding these deficiencies in his equipment, he can reach men’s hearts, and turn them from darkness to light in a degree which many of us ministers cannot do. It will be a good day for all the churches when their members ask themselves whether they are doing the work for which they are established by their Lord, if they fail in winning men to be His, and whether Christ will be satisfied if, when He asks them why they have not carried out His commands to take His gospel to those around them who are without it, they answer, ‘“ Lord, we were so busy studying deep theological questions, arguing about the validity of critical inquiries as to the dates of the books of the Bible, preaching and hearing eloquent discourses, comforting and edifying one another, that we had to leave the Christless masses alone.’”’ This book tells the experience of one man who has been an evangelist and nothing more. May it help to rouse the conscience of the church to feel that it is to be the messenger of the glad tidings first of all, whatever else it may be in addition! May it set many others to bethink themselves whether they, too, are not sufficiently furnished “for the work of an evangelist’ to some hearts at least, though they have neither learning nor eloquence, since they have the knowledge of One who has saved them, and desires through them to save others:' ALEXANDER MCLAREN.

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Contents

BIRTH AND ANCESTRY—WITH SOME NOTES OF GIPSY CUSTOMS . 5 ° ° °

MY MOTHER . e e ° > ° °

A MISCHIEVOUS LITTLE BOY—WITH SOMETHING ABOUT PLUMS, TROUSERS, RABBITS, EGGS, AND A CIRCUS . ‘ ‘ : : }

Chapter 1 Birth And Ancestry—with Some Notes Of Gipsy Customs

I WAS born on the 31st of March, 1860, in a gipsy tent, the son of gipsies, Cornelius Smith and his wife, Mary Welch. The place was the parish of Wanstead, near Epping Forest, a mile and a half from the ‘‘Green Man,” Leytonstone. When I got old enough to ask questions about my birth my mother was dead, but my father told me the place, though not the date. It was only quite recently that I knew the date for certain. A good aunt of mine took the trouble to get some one to examine the register of Wanstead Church, and there found an entry giving the date of the birth and christening of Rodney Smith. I discovered that I was a year younger than I took myself to be. The gipsies care little for religion and know nothing really of God and the Bible, yet they always take care to get their babies christened, because it is a matter of business. The clergyman of the nearest parish church is invited to come to the encampment and perform i the ceremony. To the “ gorgios” (people who are not gipsies) the event is one of rare and curious interest. Some of the ladies of the congregation are sure to accompany the parson to see the gipsy baby, and they cannot very well do this without bringing presents for the gipsy mother and more often for the baby. The gipsies believe in christenings for the profit they can make out of them. They have, besides, some sort of notion that it is the right thing to do.

I was the fourth child of my parents. Two girls and a boy came before me and two girls came after me. All my brothers and sisters, except the last born, are alive. My eldest sister is Mrs. Ball, wife of Councillor Ball, of Hanley, the first gipsy in the history of the country to occupy a seat in a town council. And he is always returned at the head of the poll. Councillor Ball, who is an auctioneer, has given up his tent and lives in a house. My brother Ezekiel works on the railway at Cambridge, and is a leading spirit of the Railway Mission there. He was the last of the family to leave the gipsy tent, and he did it after a deal of persuasion and with great reluctance. My father and I, on visiting Cambridge, got him to take up his quarters in a nice little cottage there. When I returned to the town some months later and sought him in his cottage, I found that he was not there and that he had gone back to his tent. “ Whatever made you leave the cottage, Ezekiel?’ I asked. “It was so cold,” he replied. Gipsy wagons and tents are very comfort-

Birth and Ancestry 19 able—“ gorgios”’ should make no mistake about that. My second sister, Lovinia, is Mrs. Oakley, and lives at Luton, a widow. I had a mission at Luton last year, and she was one of those who came to Christ. My father, myself, and others of us had offered thou sands of prayers for her, and at that mission, she, a backslider for over twenty-five years, was restored. God gave me this honor—the joy of bringing my beloved sister back to the fold. I need not say that I think of that mission with a special warmth of gratitude to God. Mrs. Evens—Matilda, the baby of the family—helped me a great deal in my early evangelistic labors, and together with her husband has done and is doing good work for the Liverpool Wesleyan Mission.

Eighty out of every hundred gipsies have Bible names. My father was called Cornelius, my brother Ezekiel. My uncle Bartholomew was the father of twelve children, to every one of whom he gave a_ scriptural name— Naomi, Samson, Delilah, Elijah, Simeon, and the like. Fancy having a Samson and a Delilah in the same family! Yet the gipsies have no Bibles, and if they had they could not read them. Whence, then, these scriptural names? Do they not come down to us from tradition? May it not be that we are one of the lost tribes? We ourselves believe that we are akin to the Jews, and when one regards the gipsies from the point of view of an outsider one is able to discover some striking resemblances between the gipsies and the Jews. In the first place, many gipsies bear a striking facial re semblance to the Jews. Our noses are not usually quite so prominent, but we often have the eyes and hair of Jews. Nature asserts herself. And although, as far as the knowledge of religion is concerned, gipsies dwell in the deepest heathen darkness, in the days when I was a boy they scrupulously observed the law of the Sabbath, except when the “gorgios” visited them and tempted them with money to tell their fortunes. It was a great trouble to my father—I am speaking of him in his unregenerate days—to have to pull up his tent on the Sabbath day. And I have known him go a mile on Saturday to get a bucket of water, so that he should not have to travel for iton the Sunday. And the bundles of sticks for the fire on Sunday were all gathered the day before. Even whistling a song tune was not allowed on the Sunday. When I was a boy I have been knocked over more than once for so far forgetting myself as to engage in this simple diversion on the Sunday. Sunday to the gipsies is a real rest-day. And at the same time it is the only day on which they get a properly cooked mid-day meal! Then, again, the ancient Jewish law and custom of marriage is the same as that which is in vogue, or was in vogue, until quite recently among the gipsies. Sixty years ago a marriage according to the law of the land was unknown among the gipsies. The sweethearting of a gipsy young man and maiden usually extends over a long period, or, as “gorgios” would say, the rule is long engagements. Very often they have grown up sweethearts from boy and girl. It

Birth and Ancestry 21 was so with my brother Ezekiel and his wife. There is never such a thing as a gipsy breach of promise case, and if there were the evidence would probably be scanty, for gipsy sweethearts do not write to each other—because they cannot. Ninety-nine out of every hundred of them have never held a pen in their hands. When the young people are able to set up for themselves they make a covenant with each other. Beyond this there is no marriage ceremony. There is nothing of jumping over tongs or broomsticks, or any other of the tomfooleries that outsiders attribute to gipsies. The ceremonial is the same as that which was observed at the nuptials of Rebekah and Isaac. Isaac brought Rebekah into his tent, and she became his wife, and he lived with her. The gipsies are the most faithful and devoted of husbands. I ought to add that the making of the marriage covenant is usually followed by a spree.

When a gipsy becomes converted, one of the first things about which he gets anxious is this defective marriage ceremonial. At one of my missions an old gipsy man of seventy-four sought and found his Saviour. Hewentaway happy. Somedays after he came back to see me. I perceived that something was oppressing his mind. “ Well, uncle, what’s the matter?’’ I asked. By the way, I should say that gipsies have great reverence for old age. We should never think of addressing an old man or woman by his or her name—not Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith, John or Sally, but always uncle or aunt, terms of affection and respect among us. Uncle looked at me gloomily and said: “The truth is, my dear, my wife and I have never been legally married.’”?’ They had been married according to the only fashion known among the gipsies, and I told him that in the eyes of God they were true husband and wife. But he would not be persuaded. “No,” he said, “I am converted now; I want everything to be straight. We must get legally married.’’ And they did, and were satisfied.

Like the Jews, the gipsies have in a wonderful way preserved their identity as a race. Their separate existence can be traced back for centuries. Throughout these long years they have kept their language, habits, customs, and eccentricities untouched. The history of gipsies and of their tongue has baffled the most taborious and erudite scholars. We can be traced back until we are lost on the plains of India, but even in these far-off days we were a distinct race. Like the Jews, the gipsies are very clean. A man who does not keep his person or belongings clean is called “chickly” (dirty), and is despised. They have hand-towels for washing themselves, and these are used for nothing else. They are scrupulously careful about their food. They would not think of washing their table-cloth with the other linen. Cups and saucers are never washed in soapy water. I saw my uncle trample on and destroy a copper kettle-lid because one of his children by mistake had dropped it in the wash-tub. It had become “unclean.”’ A sick person has a spoon, plate, and

Birth and Ancestry 23 basin all to himself. When he has recovered or if he dies they are all destroyed. It is customary at death to destroy the possessions of the dead person or to bury them with him. When an uncle of mine died, my aunt bought a coffin large enough for all his possessions—including his fiddle, cup and saucer, plate, knife, etc.—except, of course, his wagon. My wife and my sister pleaded hard for the cup and saucer as a keepsake, but she was resolute. Nobody should ever use them again.

To return to my father. He earned his living by making baskets, clothes-pegs, all sorts of tinware, and recaning cane-chairs. Of course in his unconverted days he “found” the willows for the baskets and the wood for the clothes-pegs. Guipsies only buy what they cannot “find.” My father had inherited his occupation from many generations of ancestors. He also pursued the trade of horse-dealer, a business in which gipsies are thoroughly expert. What a gipsy does not know about horses is not worth knowing. The trade is one in which tricks and dodges are frequently practised. A Dr. Chinnery, whom I met on one of my visits to America, told me of a gipsy horse-dealer for whose conversion he had been particularly anxious and with whom he had frequently talked. Said this gipsy, “Can I be a Christian and sell horses?’ Dr. Chinnery urged him to try, and he did. The poor gipsy found the conjunction of callings very difficult, but he managed to make it work. After two or three years, Dr. Chinnery asked him how he was getting on. He answered that when he had a good horse to sell he told those with whom he was dealing that it was a good horse. Since he had become a Christian they believed him. If it was a horse about which he knew little, or a horse of which he had doubts, he said: “ My friends this (naming the sum) is my price. I do not know anything about the horse; you must examine him yourselves, and assure yourselves of his fitness. Use your judgment; you buy him at your own risk.” It will be seen from this anecdote that the gipsies are not wanting in finesse. This gipsy had also not a little of the Yankee cuteness which is breathed in with the American air. His Christianity did not in the least hinder, but rather helped, his horse-dealing.

The gipsy women sell what their husbands make, and of course when we were all little my mother did the selling for us. The women are the travellers for the concern; the men are the manufacturers. This old trade of making baskets is passing out of the hands of the gipsies; they can buy these goods for less than it costs to make them, and consequently they confine themselves to selling them. Recaning chairs and mending baskets is still done by some. Most of the men deal in horses and in anything else which is possible to their manner of life, and out of which they can make money. I estimate that there are from 20,000 to 25,000 gipsies in the British Isles. The women-folk among them still do most of the selling, but I am afraid that too frequently they carry their wares about with them merely as a blind.

Birth and Ancestry 25

The occupation of most of them is fortune-telling. It is the fashion and the folly of the “ gorgios” that have to a large extent forced this disgraceful profession upon gipsy women. Soothsaying is an Eastern custom, a gift that Westerners have attributed to Orientals. The gipsies are an Eastern race, and the idea has in course of generations grown up among outsiders that they, too, can reveal the secrets of the hidden future. The gipsies do not themselves believe this; they know that fortune-telling is a mere cheat, but they are not averse to making profit out of the folly and superstition of the “gorgios.”’ I know some of my people may be very angry with me for this statement, but the truth must be told.

We travelled in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, Bedford, and Hertford. In my young days I knew these parts of England well, but since I left my gipsy tent, nearly a quarter of a century ago, I have not seen much of them. I had no education and no knowledge of “gorgio” civiliza: tion, and I grew up as wild as the birds, frolicsome as the lambs, and as difficult to catch as the rabbits. All the grasses and flowers and trees of the field and all living things were my friends and companions. Some of them, indeed, got almost too familiar with me. The rabbits, for instance, were so fond of me that they sometimes followed me home. I think I learned then to have a sympathetic nature, even if I learned nothing else. My earliest clear impression of these days, which have now retreated so far into the past, is that of falling from the front of my father’s wagon. I had given the horse a stroke, as boys will do. He made a sudden leap and jerked me off onto the road. What followed has passed from my mind, but my father tells me I was run over by his wagon, and if my loud screams had not attracted his attention I should have been run over also by his brother’s wagon, which followed his.

It was my mother’s death, however, which woke me to full consciousness, if I may so put it. This event made a wound in my heart which has never to this day been really healed, and even at this moment, though I am now in middle life, I often feel my hungry soul pining and yearning for my mother. “ Rodney, you have no mother!’’—that was really the first and the ineffaceable impression of my boy’s

Life,

CHAPTER tf MY MOTHER

WE were travelling in Hertfordshire. The eldest of the family, a girl, was taken ill. The nearest town was Baldock, and my father at once made for it, so that he might get a doctor for his child. I remember as if it were yesterday that the gipsy wagon stood outside the door of the doctor’s house. My father told him he had a sick daughter. The doctor mounted the steps of the wagon and, leaning over the door, called my sick sister to him and examined her. He did not enter our poor wagon. We were only gipsies. “Your daughter has the small-pox,” he said to my father; “you must get out of the town at once.” He sent us to a by-lane about one and a half miles away—it is called Norton Lane. In a little bend of this lane, on the left-hand side, between a huge overhanging hawthorn and a wood on the right-hand side, making a natural arch, father erected our tent. There he left mother and four children. He took the wagon two hundred yards farther down the lane, and stood it on the right-hand side near an old chalk-pit. From the door he could see the tent clearly and be within call. The wagon was the sick-room and my father was the nurse. In a few days the doctor, coming to the tent, discovered that my brother Ezekiel also had the small-pox, and he, too, was sent to the wagon, so that my father had now two invalids to nurse. Poor mother used to wander up and down the lane in an almost distracted condition, and my father heard her cry again and again: “My poor children will die, and I am not allowed to goto them!”’ Mother had to go into Baldock to buy food, and, after preparing it in the tent, carried it half-way from there to the wagon. Then she put it on the ground and waited till my father came for it. She shouted or waved her silk handkerchief to attract his attention. Sometimes he came at once, but at other times he would be busy with the invalids and unable to leave them just at the moment. And then mother went back, leaving the food on the ground, and sometimes before father had reached it, it was covered with snow, for it was the month of March and the weather was severe. And mother, in the anxiety of her loving heart, got every day, I think, a little nearer and nearer to the wagon, until one day she went too near, and then she also fell sick. When the doctor came he said it was the small-pox. |

My father was in the uttermost distress. His worst fears were realized. He had hoped to save mother, for he loved her as only a gipsy can love. She was the wife of his youth and the mother of his children. They were both very young when they married, not much over twenty, and they were still very young. He would have died to save her. He had struggled with his calamities bravely for a whole

My Mother 2y month, nursing his two first-born with whole-hearted love and devotion, and had never had his clothes off, day or night. And this he had done in order te save her from the terrible disease. And nowshe, too, was smitten. He felt that all hope was gone, and knowing he could not keep us separate any longer, he brought the wagon back to the tent. And there lay mother and sister and brother, all three sick with small-pox. In two or three days a little baby was born.

Mother knew she was dying. Our hands were stretched out to hold her, but they were not strong enough. Other hands, omnipotent and eternal, were taking her from us. Father seemed to realize, too, that she was going. He sat beside her one day and asked her if she thought of God. For the poor gipsies believe in God, and believe that he is good and merciful. And she said, “ Yes.”

“Do you try to pray, my dear?”

“Ves, Iam trying, and while I am trying to pray it seems as though a black hand comes before me and shows me all that I have done, and something whispers, ‘ There is no mercy for you!’ ”

But my father had great assurance that God would forgive her, and told her about Christ and asked her to look to Him. He died for sinners. He was her Saviour. My father had some time before been in prison for three months on a false charge, and it was there that he had been toid what now he tried to teach my mother. After my father had told her all he knew of the gospel she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Then he went outside, stood behind the wagon, and wept bitterly. When he went back again to see her she looked calmly into his face, and said, with a smile: “I want you to promise me one thing. Will you be a good father to my children?’ He promised her that he would; at that moment he would have promised her anything. Again he went outside and wept, and while he was weeping he heard her sing: