Chapter 17

As a philologist merely, to speak of nothing else, his equipment was ten times that of Borrow, whose temperament may be called anti-academic, and who really knew nothing thoroughly. But while Borrow was for ever displaying his philology, and seemed always far prouder of it than of his fascinating powers as a writer of romantic adventures, Groome’s philological stores, like all his other intellectual riches, had to be drawn from him by his interlocutor if they were to be recognized at all. Whenever Borrow enunciated anything showing, as he thought, exceptional philological knowledge or exceptional acquaintance with matters Romany, it was his way always to bring it out with a sort of rustic twinkle of conscious superiority, which in its way, however, was very engaging. From Groome, on the contrary, philological lore would drop, when it did come, as unconsciously as drops of rain that fall. It was the same with his knowledge of Romany matters, which was so vast. Not once in all my close intercourse with him did he display his knowledge of this subject save in answer to some inquiry. The same thing is to be noticed in ‘Kriegspiel.’ Romany students alone are able by reading between the lines to discover how deep is the hidden knowledge of Romany matters, so full is the story of allusions which are lost upon the general reader—lost, indeed, upon all readers except the very few. For instance, the gipsy villain of the story, Perun, when telling the tale of his crime against the father of the hero who married the Romany chi whom Perun had hoped to marry, makes allusion thus to the dead woman: “And then about her as I have named too often to-day.” Had Borrow been alluding to the Romany taboo of the names of the dead, how differently would he have gone to work! how eager would he have been to display and explain his knowledge of this remarkable Romany superstition! The same remark may be made upon the gipsy heroine’s sly allusion in ‘Kriegspiel’ to “Squire Lucas,” the Romany equivalent of Baron Munchausen, an allusion which none but a Romany student would understand.

Before luncheon Groome and I took a walk over the common, and along the Portsmouth Road, through the Robin Hood Gate and across Richmond Park, where Borrow and I and Dr. Hake had so often strolled. I wondered what the Gryengroes whom Borrow used to foregather with would have thought of my new friend. In personal appearance the two Romany Ryes were as unlike as in every point of character they were unlike. Borrow’s giant frame made him stand conspicuous wherever he went, Groome’s slender, slight body gave an impression of great agility; and the walk of the two great pedestrians was equally contrasted. Borrow’s slope over the ground with the loose, long step of a hound I have, on a previous occasion, described; Groome’s walk was springy as a gipsy lad’s, and as noiseless as a cat’s.

Of course, the talk during that walk ran very much upon Borrow, whom Groome had seen once or twice, but whom he did not in the least understand. The two men were antipathetic to each other. It was then that he told me how he had first been thrown across the gipsies, and it was then that he began to open up to me his wonderful record of experiences among them. The talk during that first out of many most delightful strolls ran upon Benfey, and afterwards upon all kinds of Romany matters. I remember how warm he waxed upon his pet aversion, “Smith of Coalville,” as he called him, who, he said, for the purposes of a professional philanthropist, had done infinite mischief to the gipsies by confounding them with all the wandering cockney raff from the slums of London. On my repeating to him what, among other things, the Romany chi before mentioned said to me during the ascent of Snowdon from Capel Curig, that “to make _kairengroes_ (house-dwellers) of full-blooded Romanies was impossible, because they were the cuckoos of the human race, who had no desire to build nests, and were pricked on to move about from one place to another over the earth,” Groome’s tongue became loosened, and he launched out into a monologue on this subject full of learning and full, as it seemed to me, of original views upon the Romanies.

As an instance of the cuckoo instincts of the true Romany, he told me that in North America—for which land, alas! so many of our best Romanies even in Borrow’s time were leaving Gypsey Dell and the grassy lanes of old England—the gipsies have contracted a habit, which is growing rather than waning, of migrating southward in autumn and northward again in spring. He then launched out upon the subject of the wide dispersion of the Romanies not only in Europe—where they are found from almost the extreme north to the extreme south, and from the shores of the Bosphorus to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean—but also from north to south and from east to west in Asia, in Africa, from Egypt to the very south of the Soudan, and in America from Canada to the River Amazon. And he then went on to show how intensely migratory they were over all these vast areas.

So absorbing had been the gipsy talk that I am afraid the waiting luncheon was spoilt. The little luncheon party was composed of fervent admirers of Sir Walter Scott—bigoted admirers, I fear, some of our present-day critics would have dubbed us; and it chanced that we all agreed in pronouncing ‘Guy Mannering’ to be the most fascinating of all the Wizard’s work. Of course Meg Merrilies became at once the centre of the talk. One contended that, great as Meg was as a woman, she was as a gipsy a failure; in short, that Scott’s idea of the Scottish gipsy woman was conventional—a fancy portrait in which are depicted some of the loftiest characteristics of the Highland woman rather than of the Scottish gipsy. The true romany chi can be quite as noble as Meg Merrilies, said one, but great in a different way. From Meg Merrilies the talk naturally turned upon Jane Gordon of Kirk Yetholm, Meg’s prototype, who, when an old woman, was ducked to death in the River Eden at Carlisle. Then came the subject of Kirk Yetholm itself, the famous headquarters of the Scotch Romanies; and after this it naturally turned to Kirk Yetholm’s most famous inhabitant, old Will Faas, the gipsy king, whose corpse was escorted to Yetholm by three hundred and more donkeys. And upon all these subjects Groome’s knowledge was like an inexhaustible fountain; or rather it was like a tap, ready to supply any amount of lore when called upon to do so.

But it was not merely upon Romany subjects that Groome found points of sympathy at The Pines during that first luncheon; there was that other subject before mentioned, Edward FitzGerald and Omar Khayyàm. We, a handful of Omarians of those antediluvian days, were perhaps all the more intense in our cult because we believed it to be esoteric. And here was a guest who had been brought into actual personal contact with the wonderful old Fitz. As a child of eight he had seen him—talked with him—been patted on the head by him. Groome’s father, the Archdeacon of Suffolk, was one of FitzGerald’s most intimate friends. This was at once a delightful and a powerful link between Frank Groome and those at the luncheon table; and when he heard, as he soon did, the toast to “Omar Khayyàm,” none drank that toast with more gusto than he. The fact is, as the Romanies say, that true friendship, like true love, is apt to begin at first sight. But I must stop. Frequently when the “Tarno Rye” came to England his headquarters were at The Pines. Many and delightful were the strolls he and I had together. One day we went to hear a gipsy band supposed to be composed of Roumelian gipsies. After we had listened to several well-executed things Groome sauntered up to one of the performers and spoke to him in Roumelian Romany. The man, although he did not understand Groome, knew that he was speaking Romany of some kind, and began speaking in Hungarian Romany, and was at once responded to by Groome in that variety of the Romany tongue. Groome then turned to another of the performers, and was answered in English Romany. At last he found one, and one only, in the band who was a Roumelian gipsy, and a conversation between them at once began.

This incident affords an illustration of the width as well as the thoroughness of Groome’s knowledge of Romany matters. I have affirmed in ‘Aylwin’ that Sinfi Lovell—a born linguist who could neither read nor write—was the only gipsy who knew both English and Welsh Romany. Groome was one of the few Englishmen who knew the most interesting of all varieties of the Romany tongue. But latterly he talked a great deal of the vast knowledge of the Welsh gipsies, both as to language and folklore, possessed by Mr. John Sampson, University Librarian at Liverpool, the scholar who did so much to aid Groome in his last volume on Romany subjects, called ‘Gypsy Folk-Tales.’ It therefore gives me the greatest pleasure to end these very inadequate words of mine with a beautiful little poem in Welsh Romany by Mr. Sampson upon the death of the “Tarno Rye.” In a very few years Welsh Romany will become absolutely extinct, and then this little gem, so full of the Romany feeling, will be greatly prized. I wish I could have written the poem myself, but no man could have written it save Mr. Sampson:—

STANYAKERÉSKI.

Romano ráia, prala, jinimángro, Konyo chumeráva to chīkát, Shukar java mangi, ta mukáva Tut te ’jâ kamdóm me—kushki rat!

Kamli, savimáski, sas i sarla, Baro zī sas tut, sar, tarno rom, Lhatián i jivimáski patrin, Ta līán o purikeno drom.

Boshadé i chiriklé veshténdi; Sanilé ’pre tuti chal ta chai; Mūri, pūv ta pāni tu kamésas Dudyerás o sonakó lilaí.

Palla ’vena brishin, shil, la baval: Sa’o divés tu murshkinés pīrdán: Ako kino ’vesa, rat avéla, Chēros sī te kesa tiro tan.

Parl o tamlo merimásko pāni Dava tuki miro vast, ta so Tu kamésas tire kokoréski Mai kamáva—“Te sovés mīstō!”

_Translation_.

TO FRANCIS HINDES GROOME.

Scholar, Gypsy, Brother, Student, Peacefully I kiss thy forehead, Quietly I depart and leave Thee whom I loved—“Good night.”

Sunny, smiling was the morning; A light heart was thine, as, a youth, Thou dids’t strike life’s trail And take the ancient road.

The birds sang in the woods, Man and maid laughed on thee, The hills, field, and water thou didst love The golden summer illuminated.

Then come the rain, cold, and wind, All the day thou hast tramped bravely. Now thou growest weary, night comes on. It is time to make thy tent.

Across death’s dark stream I give thee my hand; and what Thou wouldst have desired for thyself I wish thee—mayst thou sleep well.

II.

Although novelists, dramatists, and poets are particularly fond of trying to paint the gipsies, it cannot be said that many of them have been successful in their delineations. And this is because the inner and the outer life of a proscribed race must necessarily be unlike each other. Meg Merrilies is no more a gipsy than is Borrow’s delightful Isopel Berners. Among the characteristic traits of the Romany woman, Meg does no doubt exhibit two: a wild poetic imagination and a fearlessness such as women rarely display. But no one who had been brought into personal contact with gipsy women could ever have presented Meg Merrilies as one of them. In the true Romany chi poetic imagination is combined with a homeliness and a positive love of respectability which are very curious. Not that Meg, noble as she is, is superior to the kind of heroic woman that the Romany race is capable of producing. Indeed, the great speciality of the Romanies is the superiority of the women to the men—a superiority which extends to everything, unless, perhaps, we except that gift of music for which the gipsies are noticeable. Even in Eastern Europe—Russia alone excepted—where gipsy music is so universal that, according to some writers, every Hungarian musician is of Romany extraction, it is the men and not, in general, the women who excel. This, however, may simply be the result of opportunity and training.

It is not merely in intelligence, in imagination, in command over language, in breadth of view regarding the “Gorgio” world around them, that the Romany women, in Great Britain at least, leave the men far behind. In character this superiority is equally noticeable. To imagine a gipsy hero is not easy. The male gipsy is not without a certain amount of courage, but it soon gives way, and in a physical conflict between a gipsy and an Englishman it always seems as though ages of oppression have damped its virility. Although some of our most notable prizefighters have been gipsies, it used to be well known in times when the ring was fashionable that a gipsy could not be relied upon “to take punishment” with the stolid indifference of an Englishman or a negro, partly, perhaps, because his more highly strung nervous system makes him more sensitive to pain. The courage of a gipsy woman, on the other hand, has passed into a proverb; nothing seems to daunt her, and yet she will allow her husband, a cowardly ruffian himself, perhaps, to strike her without returning the blow. Wife-beating, however, is not common among the gipsies. It may possibly be the case that some of the fine qualities of the gipsy woman are the result of that very barrenness of fine qualities among the men of which we have been speaking. The lack of masculine chivalry among the men may in some measure account for the irresistible impulse among the women for taking their own part without appealing to the men for aid. Also this may account for the strong way in which a gipsy woman is often drawn to the “Tarno Rye,” the young English gentleman of whom Matthew Arnold was thinking when he wrote the ‘Scholar-Gipsy,’ and her fidelity to whom is so striking. It is often in such relations as these with the Tarno Rye that the instinct of monogamy in the Romany woman is seen. The unconquerable virtue of the Romany chi was often commented upon by Borrow; and, indeed, every observer of gipsy life is struck by it.

Seeing that the moment the Romanies are brought into contact with the Gorgio world they adopt a method of approach entirely different from the natural method—natural to them in intercourse with each other—it is perhaps no wonder that the popular notion of the gipsy girl, taken mainly from the tradition of the stage, is so fantastically wrong. With regard to the stage, no characters in the least like gipsies ever appeared on the boards, save the characters in Tom Taylor’s ‘Sir Roger de Coverley.’ In the eyes of the novelist, as well as in the eyes of the playwright, devilry seems to be the chief characteristic of the gipsy woman. The fact is, however, that in the average gipsy woman as she really exists there is but little devilry. “Romany guile,” which is well defined in the gipsy phrase as “the lie for the Gorgios,” does not prevent gipsy women from retaining some of the most marked characteristics of childhood throughout their lives. This, indeed, is one of their special charms. In his desire to depict the supposed devilry of the Romany woman, Prosper Mérimée has perpetrated in ‘Carmen’ the greatest of all caricatures of the gipsy girl. A mere incarnation of lust and bloodthirstiness is more likely to exist in any other race than in the Romanies, who have a great deal of love as a sentiment and comparatively very little of love as a movement of animal desire.

In G. P. R. James’s ‘Gipsy’ (1835) there are touches which certainly show some original knowledge of Romany life and character. The same may, perhaps, be said of Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Bird of Passage,’ but the pictures of gipsy life in these and in all other novels are the merest daubs compared with the Kiomi of George Meredith’s story ‘Harry Richmond.’ Not even Borrow and Groome, with all their intimate knowledge of gipsy life, ever painted a more vigorous picture of the Romany chi than this. The original was well known in the art circles of London at one time, and was probably known to Meredith, but this does not in any way derogate from the splendour of the imaginative achievement of painting in a few touches a Romany girl who must, one would think, live for ever.

Between some Englishmen and gipsy women there is an extraordinary attraction—an attraction, we may say in passing, which did not exist between Borrow and the gipsy women with whom he was brought into contact. Supposing Borrow to have been physically drawn to any woman, she would have been of the Scandinavian type; she would have been what he used to call a Brynhild. It was tall blondes he really admired. Hence, notwithstanding his love of the economies of gipsy life, his gipsy women are all mere “scenic characters”—they clothe and beautify the scene; they are not dramatic characters. When he comes to delineate a heroine, Isopel Berners, she is physically the very opposite of the Romany chi—a Scandinavian Brynhild, in short.

THE END

Footnotes:

{15} Mr. Coulson Kernahan.

{17} The writer is much indebted to Mr. Coulson Kernahan for this story and much other information of life at “The Pines.”

{18} ‘My Reminiscences,’ by Lord Ronald Gower.

{25} Of August 13, 1881. By Mr. A. Egmont Hake.

{32} Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, art-critic, who poisoned a number of his relatives for their money, a contributor to _The London Magazine_ and exhibitor at the Royal Academy. He died a convict in Tasmania in 1852.

{33} C. G. Leland (“Hans Breitmann”), on whom Borrow’s books had “an incredible influence,” and caused him to take up the study of things Romany.

{34} Louis Jeremiah Abershaw, better known as Jerry Abershaw, 1773?-1795, a notorious highwayman, who was the terror of the roads from London to Wimbledon and Kingston. Borrow with characteristic perversity persisted in regarding the redoubtable Jerry as a hero, in spite of the fact that he justly met his death on the gallows.

{50} ‘Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow.’ Derived from Official and other Authentic Sources. By William I. Knapp, Ph.D. With Portrait and Illustrations. 2 vols. (Murray.)

{60} The “reader” was Richard Ford, author of the ‘Handbook for Travellers in Spain,’ &c. He subsequently became Burrow’s warm admirer and friend.

{77} ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as Designer and Writer.’ Notes by William Michael Rossetti. (Cassell and Co.)

{104} ‘Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854–1870.’ By George Birkbeck Hill. (Fisher Unwin.)

{108} The year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

{132} ‘Alfred, Lord Tennyson: a Memoir.’ By his Son. 2 vols. (Macmillan).

{156} “My father’s words.”

{168} _The Times_, October 18, 1876.

{195} ‘New Poems.’ By Christina Rossetti. Edited by William Michael Rossetti. (Macmillan & Co.)

{231} ‘Poems, Dramatic and Lyrical.’ By Lord de Tabley. Second Series. (Lane.)

{263} ‘A Dream of John Ball and a King’s Lesson.’ ‘Signs of Change.’

{264} Written in 1888.