Chapter XXV

GORGIOS AND ROMANIES

THE publication of 'The Coming of Love' in book form preceded that of 'Aylwin' by about a year, but it had been appearing piecemeal in the 'Athenaeum' since 1882.

"So far as regards Rhona Boswell's story," says Mr. Watts-Dunton, "'The Coming of Love' is a sequel to 'Aylwin.' If the allusions to Rhona's lover, Percy Aylwin, in the prose story have been, in some degree, misunderstood by some readers--if there is any danger of Henry Aylwin, the hero of the novel, being confounded with Percy Aylwin, the hero of this poem--it only shows how difficult it is for the poet or the novelist (who must needs see his characters from the concave side only) to realize that it is the convex side only which he can present to his reader.

The fact is that the motive of 'Aylwin'--dealing only as it does with that which is elemental and unchangeable in man--is of so entirely poetic a nature that I began to write it in verse. After a while, however, I found that a story of so many incidents and complications as the one that was growing under my hand could only be told in prose. This was before I had written any prose at all--yes, it is so long ago as that. And when, afterwards, I began to write criticism, I had (for certain reasons--important then, but of no importance now) abandoned the idea of offering the novel to the outside public at all. Among my friends it had been widely read, both in manuscript and in type.

But with regard to Romany women, Henry Aylwin's feeling towards them was the very opposite of Percy's. When, in speaking of George Borrow some years ago, I made the remark that between Englishmen of a certain type and gypsy women there is an extraordinary physical attraction--an attraction which did not exist between Borrow and the gypsy women with whom he was brought into contact--I was thinking specially of the character depicted here under the name of Percy Aylwin. And I asked then the question--Supposing Borrow to have been physically drawn with much power towards any woman, could she possibly have been Romany? Would she not rather have been of the Scandinavian type?--would she not have been what he used to call a 'Brynhild'? From many conversations with him on this subject, I think she must necessarily have been a tall blonde of the type of Isopel Berners--who, by-the-by, was much more a portrait of a splendid East-Anglian road-girl than is generally imagined. And I think, besides, that Borrow's sympathy with the Anglo-Saxon type may account for the fact that, notwithstanding his love of the free and easy economies of life among the better class of Gryengroes, his gypsy women are all what have been called 'scenic characters.'

When he comes to delineate a heroine, she is the superb Isopel Berners--that is to say, she is physically (and indeed mentally, too), the very opposite of the Romany chi. It was here, as I happen to know, that Borrow's sympathies were with Henry Aylwin far more than with Percy Aylwin.

The type of the Romany chi, though very delightful to Henry Aylwin as regards companionship, had no physical attractions for him, otherwise the witchery of the girl here called Rhona Boswell, whom he knew as a child long before Percy Aylwin knew her, must surely have eclipsed such charms as Winifred Wynne or any other winsome 'Gorgie' could possess. On the other hand, it would, I believe, have been impossible for Percy Aylwin to be brought closely and long in contact with a Romany girl like Sinfi Lovell and remain untouched by those unique physical attractions of hers--attractions that made her universally admired by the best judges of female beauty as being the most splendid 'face-model' of her time, and as being in form the grandest woman ever seen in the studios--attractions that upon Henry Aylwin seem to have made almost no impression.

There is no accounting for this, as there is no accounting for anything connected with the mysterious witchery of sex. And again, the strong inscrutable way in which some gypsy girls are drawn towards a 'Tarno Rye' (as a young English gentleman is called), is quite inexplicable. Some have thought--and Borrow was one of them--that it may arise from that infirmity of the Romany Chal which causes the girls to 'take their own part' without appealing to their men-companions for aid--that lack of masculine chivalry among the men of their own race.

And now for a word or two upon a matter in connection with 'Aylwin' and 'The Coming of Love' which interests me more deeply. Some of those who have been specially attracted towards Sinfi Lovell have had misgivings, I find, as to whether she is not an idealization, an impossible Romany chi, and some of those who have been specially attracted towards Rhona Boswell have had the same misgivings as to her.

One of the great racial specialities of the Romany is the superiority of the women to the men. For it is not merely in intelligence, in imagination, in command over language, in comparative breadth of view regarding the Gorgio world that the Romany women (in Great Britain, at least) leave the men far behind. In everything that goes to make nobility of character this superiority is equally noticeable. To imagine a gypsy hero is, I will confess, rather difficult. Not that the average male gypsy is without a certain amount of courage, but it soon gives way, and, in a conflict between a gypsy and an Englishman, it always seems as though ages of oppression have damped the virility of Romany stamina.

Although some of our most notable prize-fighters have been gypsies, it used to be well known, in times when the ring was fashionable, that a gypsy could not always 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 gypsy woman, on the other hand, has passed into a proverb; nothing seems to daunt it. This superiority of the women to the men extends to everything, unless, perhaps, we except that gift of music for which the gypsies as a race are noticeable. With regard to music, however, even in Eastern Europe (Russia alone excepted), where gypsy 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. Those, however, who knew Sinfi Lovell may think with me that this state of things may simply be the result of opportunity and training."