George Borrow in East Anglia Part 3

East Anglia has for centuries been a favourite roaming ground for certain of the families of the true Romany tribe. The reason for this, a.s.signed by the gipsies themselves, is not a flattering one to East Englanders.

They will tell you, if you are in their confidence, that they come to East Anglia on account of the simplicity and gullibility of its inhabitants. Nowhere else can the swarthy _chals_ find _gorgios_ so ready to purchase a doctored nag, or the dark-eyed _chis_ so easily cozen credulous villagers and simple servant-girls by the mysteries of _dukkeripen_. Every fair-ground and race-course is dotted with their travelling vans; the end of every harvest sees them congregate on the village greens; the "making up" of the North Sea fishing-boats attracts them to the Eastern coast.

It may well be that Borrow first made the acquaintance of the Romanies when a child at East Dereham, for there is a heath just outside the little town which has long been their central halting-place for the district. If this was the case, he has left no record of such a meeting: in all probability, had his wondering eyes rested upon their unfamiliar faces and smouldering camp-fires he would have shared the childish fears instilled by kitchen and nursery legends and have fled the scene. It was outside Norman Cross that he first came into close contact with the alien wanderers. Straying into a green lane he fell in with a low tent from which smoke was issuing, and in front of which a man was carding plaited straw, while a woman was engaged in the manufacture of spurious coin.

Their queer appearance, so unlike that of any men or women he had hitherto encountered, excited his lively curiosity; but, ere he had time to examine them closely, they were down upon him with threats and curses.

Violence was about to be done to him when a viper, which he had concealed in his jacket, lifted its head from his bosom, and the gipsies' wrath at being discovered changed to awe of one who fearlessly handled such a deadly creature. From that day Borrow's interest in the Romany tribe continued to widen and deepen, until, at length, when fame and fortune were his, it led him to take extended journeys into Hungary, Wallachia, and other European countries for the purpose of searching out the descendants of the original wanderers from the East and learning from them their language, customs and history.

Borrow himself says that he could remember no time when the mere mention of the name of gipsy did not awaken within him feelings hard to be described. He could not account for it, but some of the Romanies, he remarks, "to whom I have stated this circ.u.mstance have accounted for it on the supposition that the soul which at present animates my body has at some former period tenanted that of one of their people, for many among them are believers in metempsychosis and, like the followers of Bouddha, imagine that their souls by pa.s.sing through an infinite number of bodies, attain at length sufficient purity to be admitted to a state of perfect rest and quietude, which is the only idea of heaven they can form."

The Norwich Castle Hill provided Borrow with many opportunities of observing the habits of the East Anglian Romanies, who, in his day, attended in considerable numbers the horse sales and fairs that were held in the old city. Thither would come the Smiths or Petulengros, Bosviles, Grays and Pinfolds; and often, when they left the Hill, he would accompany them to their camps on Mousehold Heath and to neighbouring fairs and markets. Their daring horsemanship fascinated him, while the strange tongue they employed amongst themselves when bargaining with the farmers and dealers, aroused in him a curiosity that could only be satisfied by a closer acquaintance with its form and meaning. Many of the _chals_ and _chis_ to be met with in "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye"

were transferred to the pages of those works from the East Anglian heaths and fairsteads. It was on a heath not far from his Suffolk home that he introduced the Jew of Fez to Jasper Petulengro in order that he might refute the theory entertained by one of his critics that the Romanies were nothing less than the descendants of the two lost tribes of Israel.

The village of Oulton, too, gave him many chances of intercourse with the gipsies. Within five minutes' walk of his home there is a spot where they frequently a.s.sembled, and where a few of them may sometimes be seen even at the present day. The writer has reason to know that the gipsies looked upon Borrow with no small amount of curiosity, for they were unaccustomed to meet with _gorgios_ of his position who took so keen an interest in their sayings and doings. As a rule, they are exceedingly suspicious of the approaches of any one outside the Romany pale; and it must not be a.s.sumed that he was popular with them because he usually succeeded in extracting from them the information he required. There was something about Borrow that made it hard to evade his questioning; he had such a masterful way with him, and his keen eyes fixed upon a man as though they would pierce him through and read his most secret thoughts.

He himself attributes his success with the gipsies to his knowledge of the Romany tongue and customs, while they firmly believed that he had gipsy blood in his veins. "He has known them," he says, writing of himself as the author of "The Zincali," "for upwards of twenty years in various countries, and they never injured a hair of his head or deprived him of a shred of his raiment; but he is not deceived as to the motive of their forbearance: they thought him a _Rom_, and on this supposition they hurt him not, their love of 'the blood' being their most distinguishing characteristic." This error on their part served his purpose well, as it enabled him to obtain from them a great deal of curious knowledge that would never have come into his possession had it been known he was one of the despised _gorgios_. He was known amongst them as the Romany Rye; but that is a name by which, even at the present day, they distinguished any stranger who can "rokkra Romany" to the extent of a dozen words.

Although Borrow spent so much time amongst the East Anglian gipsies, it is often difficult to ascertain the exact localities in which he met with them. He seldom condescends to give the date of any incident, and as infrequently does he choose to enlighten us as to his precise whereabouts when it occurred. Then, too, one might conclude that his investigations were almost wholly confined to two families, those of the Smiths or Petulengros, and Hernes. As Mr. Watts has aptly remarked, one would imagine from all that is said about these families in "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" that he knew nothing about the other Romanies of the Eastern Counties. Yet he must have been familiar also with the Bosviles, Grays, and Pinfolds, some descendants of whom still haunt the heaths and greens of Eastern England. According to Borrow, the Petulengros were continually turning up wherever he might wander. Jasper Petulengro's nature seems something akin to that of the Wandering Jew; and yet, if we may believe "Lavengro" and our own knowledge, the Smiths look upon East Anglia as their native heath. First, he appears in the green lane near Norman Cross; then at Norwich Fair and on Mousehold Heath; again at Greenwich Fair, where he tries to persuade Lavengro to take to the gipsy life; and once more in the neighbourhood of the noted dingle of the Isopel Berners episode. This, of course, is due to the exigencies of what Mr. Watts calls a "spiritual biography," and it is evident that whenever anything particularly striking pertaining to the Romanies occurs to Borrow the Romanies themselves promptly appear to ill.u.s.trate it.

Yet we know that Jasper Petulengro was a genuine character, even if he comes to us under a fict.i.tious name. He was a representative of one of the oldest of the East Anglian gipsy families, and a personal friend of Borrow, who found in him much that was in common with his own nature.

Borrow has left a dependable record of a meeting which took place between them at his Oulton home, during the Christmas of 1842. "He stayed with me during the greater part of the morning, discoursing on the affairs of Egypt, the aspect of which, he a.s.sured me, was becoming daily worse and worse. There is no living for the poor people, brother, said he, the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly, that they grudge our cattle a bite of gra.s.s by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon. Unless times alter, brother, and of that I see no probability, unless you are made either poknees or mecralliskoe geiro (Justice of the Peace or Prime Minister), I am afraid the poor persons will have to give up wandering altogether, and then what will become of them?"

Yet there was much of Borrow's nature that was in common with that of Jasper Petulengro. Often the swarthy, horse-dealing gipsy was the mouthpiece through which he breathed forth his own abhorrence of conventional restraints and the thronging crowds of busy streets. He loved the open air country life that he lived near the Suffolk coast, where the fresh salt winds sweep up from the sea across gorse-clad denes and pleasant pasture-lands. He was happiest when amongst the "summer saturated heathen" of the heath and glen. Who can doubt that the much-quoted conversation in the twenty-fifth chapter of "Lavengro," gives expression to much of Borrow's own philosophy?

"Life is sweet, brother."

"Do you think so?"

"Think so! There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?"

"I would wish to die?"

"You talk like a gorgio-which is the same as talking like a fool-were you a Romany chal you would talk wiser. Wish to die, indeed! A Romany chal would wish to live for ever!"

"In sickness, Jasper?"

"There's the sun and stars, brother."

"In blindness, Jasper?"

"There's the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live for ever."

Like Bamfylde Moore Carew, though for a different reason, it was to the gipsy life that Borrow turned after his unsuccessful literary work in London. Disappointed and despondent, he fled the scenes that had witnessed his failures. It is easy to imagine how great must have been his sense of freedom when he cast off the shackles of city life, and breathed again the air of the hills and pine-woods of rural England.

With the poet whose bones rest in the midst of the little town of his birth, he felt and all his life maintained, that

"'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its l.u.s.tre and perfume, And we are weeds without it. All constraint, Except what wisdom lays on evil men, Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes Their progress in the road of science; blinds The eyesight of discovery, and begets In those that suffer it, a sordid mind b.e.s.t.i.a.l, a meagre intellect, unfit To be the tenant of man's n.o.ble form."

The gipsies of the first quarter of the present century possessed the distinctive characteristics of their type in a far more marked degree than their descendants of to-day. There were few amongst them who had not a fair knowledge of the old Romany tongue, though they were utterly ignorant of its source. Questioned as to where their ancestors came from, they would tell you Egypt; and "business of Egypt" was their name for the mysteries of fortune-telling, and the other questionable proceedings they engaged in. Several of their families were fairly well-to-do in the eyes of their tribe, though the fact was carefully concealed from inquisitive gorgios. Often a gipsy _gry-engro_, or horse-dealer, would have a score or more horses on his hands at a time, while, not infrequently, his sales on a fair-day would amount to 50 or 60. The women of his camp would be gaudily and expensively dressed, and bedecked in heavy gold jewelry: he, himself, would often spend five or six pounds on a suit of clothes, and half a guinea on a silk handkerchief for his neck. Few of the women ever thought of marrying out of the Romany tribe, and their virtue and constancy were an example to all cla.s.ses of society.

This last-mentioned fact is the more striking in view of the intense admiration often felt for the handsome _chis_ by men who were not of the gipsy race. Commenting upon it not long ago, {77} an _Athenaeum_ reviewer said: "Between some Englishmen and gipsy women there is an extraordinary attraction-an attraction, we may say in pa.s.sing, 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 Bernes, she is physically the very opposite of the Romany _chi_-a Scandinavian Brynhild, in short."

Mr. Watts has remarked on Borrow's neglect to portray the higher traits in the gipsy woman's character. Mrs. Herne and her grandchild Leonora, who are instanced as the two great successes of his Romany group, are both steeped in wickedness, and by omitting to draw a picture of the women's loftier side, he is said to have failed to demonstrate their great claim for distinction. There is a good deal of truth in this accusation; and yet it cannot be admitted wholly justifiable. In "The Romany Rye" we have a whole chapter devoted to the emphasising of the chast.i.ty of the Romany girls, and their self-sacrificing devotion to their husbands. Ursula marries a lazy, good-for-nothing _chal_, and then expressess her willingness to steal and swindle in order to keep him in comfort. The method is not commendable, but the object that prompts it is highly praiseworthy-from a Romany point of view.

But to-day the old race of genuine Romanies is fast dying out, and soon we shall have wholly lost the traces of a people who for many centuries have const.i.tuted a familiar feature of English country life. One of the last surviving _chals_ of an old East Anglian gipsy family, in reply to a remark of the writer said, not long ago, "Yes, it is quite true that the old race of gipsies is dying out; there are very few of the real old Romanies to be met with at the present day. 'Mumpers' there are in plenty; folks who sell baskets and peddle clothes-pegs; but they are not of the true gipsy breed. At one time a gipsy never married out of his or her own tribe; but that day has gone, and there has been reared a mixed race with little of the true blood in them. Marrying into the 'mumping'

and house-dwelling families has brought this about, and soon there will be no true Romanies left. Here and there you may meet a few, such as the Grays, Lees, and Coopers, and one or two of the Pinfolds; but they, too, are going the way of the rest. Yes, as you say, it is a pity, for after all the Romanies are a strange people, and, bad as they may have been, they were not without their good points. They knew a good horse when they saw one, and they let people see how a man, if he chooses, can shift for himself, without being beholden to any one. Anyhow, they have given clever men something to puzzle their brains about, and their language is not, as some would have it, a mere thieves 'patter,' but is a good, if not a better one, than that which the clever men speak themselves."

"Yes," went on my Romany friend, "this old language seems to interest a good many of the clever men. I have known some of them come to our tents and vans and write down the words and their meaning as we told them. I did not mind their doing it; but some of my people did not like it, and told them lies, and put them off with all sorts of queer stories. They were afraid the men should put the words into their books, and then it might be awkward for the gipsies when they wished to have a little talk amongst themselves on matters that were n.o.body's business but their own.

Very few of the gipsies can read, so they did not learn the language in that way; most of us who know anything of it picked it up from our fathers and mothers when we were young. My father used to teach me certain sayings about horses that were very useful when we were dealing at the fairs. Now, however, some people who are not gipsies know more about these things than we do ourselves."

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

_London and Edinburgh_

Footnotes:

{41} "The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gipsies of Spain," issued in two volumes in 1841.

{45} This is the name that was given to a small inlet during Borrows residence at Oulton. To-day it is sometimes called Burrough's Ham.

{77} _Athenaeum_, March 28, 1896.