Gypsy Smith: His Life & Work/Chapter 2

We were travelling in Hertfordshire. The oldest of the family, a girl, was taken ill. The nearest town was Baldock, and my father at one made for it, so that he might get a doctor for his child. I remember as if it were yesterday that the gipsy waggon 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 waggon and, leaning over the door, called my sick sister to him and examined her. He did not enter our poor waggon. We were only gipsies. "Your daughter has the small-pox," he said to my father, "you must get out of town at once." He sent us to a bye-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 waggon two hundred yards farther down the lane, and stood it on the right-hand side near an old chalkpit. From the door he could see the tent clearly and be within call. The waggon 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 waggon, 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 go to 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 waggon. 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 waggon, until on 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 realised. 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 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 to save her from the terrible disease. And now she too was smitten. He felt that all hope was gone, and knowing he could not keep us separate any longer, he brought the waggon back to the tent. And there lay mother and sister and brother, all three sick with small-pox. In the 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 realise 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?"

"Yes, I am 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 told 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 by the waggon, and wept bitterly. When he went back in 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 -