TENT LIFE WITH ENGLISH GIPSIES IN NORWAY. BY HUBERT SMITH, MEMBER OF THE ENGLISH ALPINE CLUB; NORSKE TURIST FORENING; WITH five full-page ENGRAVINGS, THIRTY-ONE SMALLER ILLUSTRA- SECOND EDITION. HENRY S. KING & Co., 65, CORNHILL, & 12, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 1874. 189181-B [ Review of TENT LIFE WITH ENGLISH GIPSIES IN NORWAY in the Bucks Herald, Saturday, September 5th, 1874.] TENT LIFE WITH ENGLISH GIPSIES IN NORWAY.By Hubert Smith, member of the English Alpine Club; Norske turist forening; and fellow of the Historical Society of Great Britain. Second edition: Henry S. King & Co., 65, Cornhill, London, 1874.-A remarkable and interesting book on a remarkable and interesting subject, made in this particular case more romantic by the circumstances that form the setting, in a manner of the volume itself. Its heroine, Esmeralda, a gipsey girl of nineteen, sister of gipsey Noah, and gipsey Zacariah, is now married to Mr. Smith, the writer, a gentleman of position in the country where the tribe Was settled, or at least had its head-quarters, and the marriage is, we believe, an extremely happy one. It is also not a little remarkable that a Buckinghamshire clergyman, vicar of a neighbouring parish, stood sponsor to the gipsey girl, when she was an infant, and predicted a future for her somewhat different from that of her tribe. These and many other circumstances which it is hardly the province of a reviewer to detail, lend an interest and ensure a popularity to the work before us, which its great merits-and they are undoubtedly great -might not so speedily have won for it; although the second edition in one short year of a guinea book says much in its favour. It will, however, be doubtless more largely circulated than ever since the Times announcement of the marriage. Mr. Smith's plan of campaign was to go through Norway with three gipsies, encamping at different picturesque spots on their journey, eschewing hotels altogether. This plan was most successfully carried out, tambourine amd castanets enlivening their progress from fjord to fjeld, and from village to village, the whole country through which they passed being excited to the greatest interest by the progress of the "Rye" and his nomads. Their three donkeys were especially gazed on with wonder, those animals being scarcely ever seen in Norway, and being viewed as we in this county view Wombwell's or any other menagerie. There is humour and quaintness in many of the writer's remarks, and he is wonderfully frank and simple, without a grain of exaggeration or fine writing in his style. The gipsies are often amusing, and when we read of the trout that are so invariably caught and so deftly cooked, caught by the "Rye" or by Noah and Zachariah, and cooked by Esmeralda, and eaten with all the zest that exercise and appetite give, we are inclined to wish strongly that we too, had been of the party. The Australian meat, too, was of great service, in districts where it was almost impossible to buy what we call "butcher's meat," and Messrs. Hudson Brothers, of Ludgate Hill, will have, we suspect, many travellers' orders resulting from the publication of Tent Life. The illustrations by Mr. Whymper, and the map, are very good, the picture of Esmeralda, which we have been enabled to compare with her photograph, very accurate, and the general get up of the volume very luxurious and tasteful. The potrait of King Carl XV., to whose memory Tent Life is by gracious permission inscribed, stands at the commencement, and is a striking picture. We would add that although the book is about nomads, who do not always bear in popular estimation a lofty character, it is marked by the most correct feeling and taste, and that, underlying its perfect freedom and openness, there is often a solemnity and gravity, worthy of the author, and his high reputation. Tent Life is, indeed, a worthy companion to such productions as Borrow's "Lavengro," Roberts's "Gipsies" and Dean Stanley's "Prize Poem," on the same pecular and picturesque people. PREFACE. WE awoke one morning; our gipsies were gone; our camp was gone; no light shining through as we lay in our tent. No freshness of the morning air; no wafted perfume of fragrant wild flowers; no music of the waterfall in the glen below. We were left to pursue the pathway of our journey alone. Yet our notes de voyage remained to us. Impressions caught on the wayside of travel-written by the light of actual circumstance -we give them to our readers. They are a true episode in a life. THE AUTHOR. |