Heres a few pieces from The Gypsies by Charles Godfrey Leland about Joshua Cooper, Athalia Cooper, and Sam Smith and Athalia. Its out of copyright so am cutting and pasting.
Sam Smith was always known on the roads as Fighting Sam. Years have
passed, and when I have asked after him I have always heard that he was
either in prison or had just been let out. Once it happened that, during
a fight with a Gorgio, the Gorgio's watch disappeared, and Sam was
arrested under suspicion of having got up the fight in order that the
watch might disappear. All of his friends declared his innocence. The
next trouble was for _chorin a gry_, or stealing a horse, and so was the
next, and so on. As horse-stealing is not a crime, but only "rough
gambling," on the roads, nobody defended him on these counts. He was, so
far as this went, only a sporting character. When his wife died he
married Athalia, the widow of Joshua Cooper, a gypsy, of whom I shall
speak anon. I always liked Sam. Among the travelers, he was always
spoken of as genteel, owing to the fact, that whatever the state of his
wardrobe might be, he always wore about his neck an immaculate white
woolen scarf, and on _jours de fete_, such as horse-races, sported a
_boro stardi_, or chimney-pot hat. O my friend, Colonel Dash, of the
club! Change but the name, this fable is of thee!
"There's to be a _walgoro_, _kaliko i sala_--a fair to-morrow morning, at
Cobham," said Sam, as he departed.
"All right. We'll be there."
As we approached the cock-shy, where sticks were cast at cocoa-nuts, a
young gypsy _chai_, whom I learned to know in after-days as Athalia
Cooper, asked me to buy some sticks. A penny a throw, all the cocoa-nuts
I could hit to be my own. I declined; she became urgent, jolly, riotous,
insistive. I endured it well, for I held the winning cards. _Qui minus
propere_, _minus prospere_. And then, as her voice rose _crescendo_ into
a bawl, so that all the Romanys around laughed aloud to see the green
Gorgio so chaffed and bothered, I bent me low, and whispered softly in
her ear a single monosyllable.
Why are all those sticks dropped so suddenly? Why does Athalia in a
second become sober, and stand up staring at me, all her chaff and
urgency forgotten. Quite polite and earnest now. But there is joy
behind in her heart. This _is_ a game, a jolly game, and no mistake.
And uplifting her voice again, as the voice of one who findeth an
exceeding great treasure even in the wilderness, she cried aloud,--"_It's
a Romany rye_!"
The spiciest and saltest and rosiest of Sir Patrick's own stories, told
after dinner over his own old port to a special conventicle of clergymen
about town, was never received with such a roar of delight as that cry of
Athalia's was by the Romany clan. Up went three sheers at the find;
further afield went the shout proclaiming the discovery of an
aristocratic stranger of their race, a _rye_, who was to them as
wheat,--a gypsy gentleman. Neglecting business, they threw down their
sticks, and left their cocoanuts to grin in solitude; the _dyes_ turned
aside from fortune-telling to see what strange fortune had sent such a
visitor. In ten minutes Sir Patrick and I were surrounded by such a
circle of sudden admirers and vehement applauders, as it seldom happens
to any mortal to acquire--out of Ireland--at such exceedingly short
notice and on such easy terms.
They were not particular as to what sort of a gypsy I was, or where I
came from, or any nonsense of that sort, you know. It was about
_cerevisia vincit omnia_, or the beery time of day with them, and they
cared not for anything. I was extremely welcome; in short, there was
poetry in me. I had come down on them by a way that was dark and a trick
that was vain, in the path of mystery, and dropped on Athalia and picked
her up. It was gypsily done and very creditable to me, and even Sir
Patrick was regarded as one to be honored as an accomplice. It is a
charming novelty in every life to have the better class of one's own kind
come into it, and nobody feels so keenly as a jolly Romany that _jucundum
nihil est nisi quod ref icit varietas_--naught pleases us without
variety.
Then and there I drew to me the first threads of what became in
after-days a strange and varied skein of humanity. There was the Thames
upon a holiday. Now I look back to it, I ask, _Ubi sunt_? (Where are
they all?) Joshua Cooper, as good and earnest a Rom as ever lived, in
his grave, with more than one of those who made my acquaintance by
hurrahing for me. Some in America, some wandering wide. Yet there by
Weybridge still the Thames runs on.
