age, but if she did not she would probably starve. She is very short
of statue, being little more than five feet and an inch high, but she
is wonderfully strongly built. Her head is very large, and seems to
have been placed at once upon her shoulders without any interposition
of neck. Her face is broad, with a good-humoured expression upon it,
and in general with very little vivacity; at times, however, it
lights up, and then all the Gypsy beams forth. Old as she is, her
hair, which is very long, is as black as the plumage of a crow, and
she walks sturdily, though with not much elasticity, on her short,
thick legs, and, if requested, would take up the heaviest man in
Wandsworth or Battersea and walk away with him. She is, upon the
whole, the oddest Gypsy woman ever seen; see her once and you will
never forget her. Who is she? you ask. Who is she? Why, Mrs.
Cooper, the wife of Jack Cooper, the fighting Gypsy, once the terror
of all the Light Weights of the English Ring; who knocked West
Country Dick to pieces, and killed Paddy O'Leary, the fighting pot-
boy, Jack Randall's pet. Ah, it would have been well for Jack if he
had always stuck to his true, lawful Romany wife, whom at one time he
was very fond of, and whom he used to dress in silks and satins, and
best scarlet cloth, purchased with the money gained in his fair,
gallant battles in the Ring! But he did not stick to her, deserting
her for a painted Jezebel, to support whom he sold his battles, by
doing which he lost his friends and backers; then took from his poor
wife all he had given her, and even plundered her of her own
property, down to the very blankets which she lay upon; and who
finally was so infatuated with love for his paramour that he bore the
blame of a crime which she had committed, and in which he had no
share, suffering ignominy and transportation in order to save her.
Better had he never deserted his tatchie romadie, his own true
Charlotte, who, when all deserted him, the painted Jezebel being the
first to do so, stood by him, supporting him with money in prison,
and feeing counsel on his trial from the scanty proceeds of her
dukkering. All that happened many years ago; Jack's term of
transportation, a lengthy one, has long, long been expired, but he
has not come back, though every year since the expiration of his
servitude he has written her a letter, or caused one to be written to
her, to say that he is coming, that he is coming; so that she is
always expecting him, and is at all times willing, as she says, to
re-invest him with all the privileges of a husband, and to beg and
dukker to support him if necessary. A true wife she has been to him,
a tatchie romadie, and has never taken up with any man since he left
her, though many have been the tempting offers that she has had,
connubial offers, notwithstanding the oddity of her appearance. Only
one wish she has now in this world, the wish that he may return; but
her wish, it is to be feared, is a vain one, for Jack lingers and
lingers in the Sonnakye Tem, golden Australia, teaching, it is said,
the young Australians to box, tempted by certain shining nuggets, the
produce of the golden region. It is pleasant, though there is
something mournful in it, to visit Mrs. Cooper after nightfall, to
sit with her in her little tent after she has taken her cup of tea,
and is warming her tired limbs at her little coke fire, and hear her
talk of old times and things: how Jack courted her 'neath the trees
of Loughton Forest, and how, when tired of courting, they would get
up and box, and how he occasionally gave her a black eye, and how she
invariably flung him at a close; and how they were lawfully married
at church, and what a nice man the clergyman was, and what funny
things he said both before and after he had united them; how stoutly
West Country Dick contended against Jack, though always losing; how