Many kinds of foreigner tread the streets of Liverpool, and thus, when Uncle Kola and his tribe appeared on the banks of the Mersey from nowhere in particular the little boys put him down as a new species of “Dago,” and did not embarrass him with unwelcome attention. Yet Kola is an extraordinary man, and even his costume is conspicuous. His trousers, superfluously baggy and decorated with wide stripes of bright green and red, are thrust into great top-boots elaborately stitched. The complicated braiding of his dark blue coat and waistcoat would be remarkable were it not eclipsed by the glory of his enormous buttons, splendid examples of the silversmith’s craft. Kola is tall and powerfully built, and he wears his finery with effect, supporting himself by a five-foot staff almost covered with silver, on which shine countless little images of Buddha. His keen eye, aquiline nose, strong mouth, and venerable beard tinged with grey make derision impossible; and he walked our thoroughfares with dignity, slowly, gravely scrutinizing the town as if it owed him money.

And Kola intended that it should—before he left it. That was why he had come. He was already rich; his pockets contained bank-notes which he could have exchanged anywhere for several hundred golden sovereigns, and his relations believe that he is worth £30,000. On great occasions he can decorate his table, which stands only fourteen inches high, with lordly plate; a silver samovar weighing twenty-three pounds is matched by a huge salver and an immense bucket of the same precious metal decorated in high relief. The weight of solid gold which his wife carries in her hair, on her blouse, and round her neck and wrists is nothing less than royal. Kola is, in fact, a ruler; and, if the citizens of Liverpool took but little interest in him and his subjects, he reciprocated their contempt, regarding them simply as so many more or less stupid persons who were destined to provide for him and his tribe what they were then seeking—copper pots to mend.Kola is suave and courtly, and if you had asked him what were his name and nationality he would have replied at once that he was Nicolas Tshoron, a Caucasian, Russian, Ruthenian, Galitsian, or Hungarian. He has now removed his kingdom to Brazil, and if you were to follow him across the Atlantic and repeat the question it is probable that he would elect to call himself Italian, French, or English. He may be all of these if a short period of residence is sufficient qualification; but, though he knows it not, Rumania has stronger claims to him, and India stronger claims still. Sitting on the carpeted floor of his great pedimental tent, surrounded by his family and connexions, you would have found that he is really Worsho, son of Grantsha, and that he is a Gypsy. Not, of course, exactly the kind we know; he would call our Gypsies scornfully Sinte, and claim that he and his tribe alone are the Roma. Intellectually he is a giant. In the morning his subjects would set out to solicit orders, returning despondently as night fell with empty hands or single pans on their shoulders. But Kola would march triumphantly to the camp followed by a lorry heavily laden with cauldrons he had collected for repair. It was Kola who directed the work, and when any special difficulty arose it was he who sat down and overcame it. He was completely illiterate; yet he used a complicated form of contract which he dictated and his patrons wrote and signed. It concealed artfully the extortionate charges he proposed to make, and hoodwinked not only the authorities of a great political club but even those of a municipal kitchen. And it was Kola who faced the indignant customer who came to protest against the charge, and either browbeat him into submission or put him into court.

The craft of the Gypsies was magnificent, and they wielded their hammers sensitively, as if there were nerve-endings in the heads. They were admittedly more skilful than British coppersmiths, ready to undertake and execute successfully work that would elsewhere be refused as impossible. But their ideas of remuneration were grandiose, and in a country where bargaining is a neglected science they retained an oriental habit of demanding ten times as much as they were prepared to accept. It mattered not if his customers were offended—Kola never intended to see them again. And so he and his subjects spent a few weeks in each town collecting work, a few weeks in doing it, and a few turbulent and glorious weeks in exacting payment. Then they shook the dust from off the soles of their feet, and departed for ever from the city they had exhausted.

Kola’s policy is successful; it has made him rich. Other Gypsies have attached themselves to his family, married his relations, and placed him at the head of an important tribe, whose activities he regulates, whose well-being he cares for, whose movements he directs, which he governs as “king.” When dissatisfaction arises the malcontents are free to migrate to another monarchy; but so long as Kola is successful and so long as his subjects share his success, thus long will his kingdom endure.

Kola’s kingdom should be impossible. It is contrary to reason, contrary at all events to what we call reason, that a community should prefer the primitive ways of the Middle Ages to the latest improvements of modern civilization. His bellows were old-fashioned even in the fifteenth century and survive now only among savages; yet in his eyes they are still the best bellows, and if out of curiosity he were to purchase a mechanical blower he would probably hand it over to his grandchildren for a toy. With pockets well lined with money he neglects to buy table cutlery, tears his portion of bread from the loaf and scrapes it clumsily in the butter-dish. The luxurious chairs and sofas with which he furnishes his royal tent are vain ostentation; guests may use them, but Kola himself prefers to sit, as his ancestors have sat for countless centuries, cross-legged on the ground. Us and all that we value, with the single exception of money, he despises even more cordially than we despise him. Like a drop of oil in a glass of water he and his tribe live in our midst untouched, strangely aloof and alien, a wonderful spectacle of an Imperium in Imperio.