THE SLUM GIPSIES
By AVICE TREVELYAN
LONDON, east of Aldgate, has few redeeming features ; mile after mile of dusty dirty streets with swaying trams, mean little houses, filthy slums and tawdry, sometimes sordid, shops. Yet. here and there among this ugliness and squalor are unexpectedly beautiful things ; ships in the docks and on the river, a glimpse 9f a street market in the sun, old houses where merchants or •sea captains once lived, perhaps part of the villages absorbed a hundred years ago by the growing London.
One feels in the East End both fascination and repul- sion ; fascination for the unexpected and quite often romantic things and people one encounters, but repulsion for the conditions in which they live. One morning in Limehouse I saw house after house unfit for human beings to live in ; often damp, decaying and verminous. Sometimes large families were sleeping in one room, and I remember a small room containing four beds where eleven people slept. Later in the basement of the coloured men's restaurant I was shown the proprietor's three black curly-headed children, eating out of porridge bowls, looking like the three bears in the nursery story. In a tumbledown house close by, it was pitch black in spite of the morning sun. and silent after the noises of the street outside. There was a step on the stairs, and out of the darkness the despairing voice of an English- woman ; she was married to a Chinaman, who was wanted by the police, and dared not come home. Ten minutes afterwards a cheerful Chinaman was showing us his restaurant, staffed entirely with Chinese. Queer looking foods were hanging on a string across the spotless kitchen, and upstairs in the office a Chinese mongoose darted out from under the table, a wonderful rat-catcher, looking like a rat itself with a long tail.
Perhaps the most attractive people I have met in the East End are the gipsies living in the middle of the slum. I came upon them by chance one summer afternoon. " The Vampire Bat and Blood Brother " was the film advertised by the cinema at the corner of the East India Dock Road, but, resisting this attraction, I turned into the mean, dirty little side streets. Five minutes' walk through this depressing part of the East End brought me to one of the worst slums in that area. The houses faced on to a narrow, foul-smelling little passage, and the air seemed permeated with damp, decay and filth.
The worst houses were built round a patch- of derelict land, surrounded by a ramshackle wooden paling. On seeing a door with a padlock I asked the Sanitary Inspector what it was used for, and was told some gipsies lived inside. He knocked, and the door was opened by a tall good-looking woman, who invited us to Come in. Inside the barricade were three gaily-painted gipsy caravans, with brightly polished brass fittings. Here the gipsies had settled for some years, paying 25s. a week for" the land. The caravans themselves were spotlessly clean, though all round there was a good deal of litter. In the corner the landlord had fitted- up a wooden shed with a tap in it.
Old grandma was giving her- caravan a final sweep and dust, and shaking out the mats in the morning sun. She invited me inside where everything seemed clean and tidy, apologizing as she-did so for not having finished the morning's work... She liked the open-air life she told me, and couldn't abide a house. Her son-in-law and grandson went off selling rugs which they got from. the factory round the corner, and it suited them to live nearby instead of travelling the roads. They were only partly gipsies,- being too fair for the true Romany strain, but_I marvelled that anyone with gipsy blood could live among those decaying surroundings, breathing that foul air.
Old grandma, who was really not so old, had wonder- fully curled hair of a startling shade of red, and a flow of words it was hard to stein. She and one grandchild slept in her caravan, and the rest of the family in the other two. The daughter who was tall and fair and neatly dressed, showed me the very old Essex car, covered with a ragged tarpaulin, in which these modern gipsies toured the roads with their rugs for sale. I went - into the two family caravans, which were put together end to end, and bitterly regretted it ; for it was a hot afternoon, and they were filled with several beds, all the household possessions, and a large family of gipsy children ; all the doors and windows Were shut.
The gipsy woman looked out of the window at the Sanitary Inspector, who, with the marvellous patience which seems common in his profession, was listening to grandma's many troubles. " Is that gentleman . your. husband, Miss ? '7 she .asked. When I said I had not met him before she explained that she wanted to give him a present, and going into the other caravan returned with a large yellow rug with a bear's head in the middle. " He's such a nice gentleman," she said, " always coming round to see us."
These gipsies arc the most friendly and hospitable people. Even a stray visitor is not allowed to go without being. offered a cup of tea and something to eat. I went to see them again later in the summer, and found • only the husband and a dark-eyed daughter of fourteen. This was the first time I had seen him, but he invited me to tea in the caravan with manners which would have graced a Bishop. I asked if he ever took the caravans on the road, thinking that' the old car would be used to pull them. Sometimes he said he took them out, but not very often now. His uncle had some old Tilling's 'buses and he borrowed one to pull the caravans, and, strange as it may seem, the perfect solemnity of his face convinced me that this was not • a ,joke.
I think by now the gipsies will have left their patch of land ; those poisonous houses are to be swept. right • away, and the. whole area replanned. I am hoping that one summer morning in a. country lane I may meet a strange procession of three caravans, drawn by an old Tilling's 'bus, and see grandma shaking out the mats in the sun.
Previous page
