I have been invited to write about my late friend and colleague Francis
Hindes Groome, who died on the 24th ult., and was buried among his
forefathers at Monk Soham in Suffolk. I find the task extremely
difficult. Though he died at fifty, he, with the single exception of
Borrow, had lived more than any other friend of mine, and perhaps
suffered more. Indeed, his was one of the most remarkable and romantic
literary lives that, since Borrow’s, have been lived in my time.
The son of an Archdeacon of Suffolk, he was born in 1851 at Monk Soham
Rectory, where, I believe, his father and his grandfather were born, and
where they certainly lived; for—as has been recorded in one of the
invaluable registry books of my friend Mr. F. A. Crisp—he belonged to one
of the oldest and most distinguished families in Suffolk. He was sent
early to Ipswich School, where he was a very popular boy, but never
strong and never fond of athletic exercises. His early taste for
literature is shown by the fact that with his boy friend Henry Elliot
Maiden he originated a school magazine called the _Elizabethan_. Like
many an organ originated in the outer world, the _Elizabethan_ failed
because it would not, or could not, bring itself into harmony with the
public taste. The boys wanted news of cricket and other games: Groome
and his assistant editor gave them literature as far as it was in their
power to do so.
[Picture: Francis Hindes Groome]
The Ipswich School was a very good one for those who got into the sixth,
as Groome did. The head master, Dr. Holden, was a very fine scholar; and
it is no wonder that Groome throughout his life showed a considerable
knowledge of and interest in classical literature. That he had a real
insight into the structure of Latin verse is seen by a rendering of
Tennyson’s ‘Tithonus,’ which Mr. Maiden has been so very good as to show
me—a rendering for which he got a prize. In 1869 he got prizes for
classical literature, Latin prose, Latin elegiacs, and Latin hexameters.
But if Dr. Holden exercised much influence over Groome’s taste, the
assistant master, Mr. Sanderson, certainly exercised more, for Mr.
Sanderson was an enthusiastic student of Romany. The influence of the
assistant master was soon seen after Groome went up to Oxford. He was
ploughed for his “Smalls,” and, remaining up for part of the “Long,” he
went one night to a fair at Oxford at which many gipsies were present—an
incident which forms an important part of his gipsy story ‘Kriegspiel.’
Groome at once struck up an acquaintance with the gipsies at the fair.
It occurred also that Mr. Sanderson, after Groome had left Ipswich
School, used to go and stay at Monk Soham Rectory every summer for
fishing; and this tended to focus Groome’s interest in Romany matters.
At Göttingen, where he afterwards went, he found himself in a kind of
Romany atmosphere, for, owing perhaps to Benfey’s having been a Göttingen
man, Romany matters were still somewhat rife there in certain sets.
The period from his leaving Göttingen to his appearance in Edinburgh in
1876 as a working literary man of amazing activity, intelligence, and
knowledge is the period that he spent among the gipsies. And it is this
very period of wild adventure and romance that it is impossible for me to
dwell upon here. But on some future occasion I hope to write something
about his adventures as a Romany Rye. His first work was on the ‘Globe
Encyclopædia,’ edited by Dr. John Ross. Even at that time he was very
delicate and subject to long wearisome periods of illness. During his
work on the ‘Globe’ he fell seriously ill in the middle of the letter
_S_. Things were going very badly with him; but they would have gone
much worse had it not been for the affection and generosity of his friend
and colleague Prof. H. A. Webster, who, in order to get the work out in
time, sat up night after night in Groome’s room, writing articles on
Sterne, Voltaire, and other subjects.
Webster’s kindness, and afterwards the kindness of Dr. Patrick, endeared
Edinburgh and Scotland to the “Tarno Rye.” As Webster was at that time
on the staff of ‘The Encyclopædia Britannica,’ I think, but I do not
know, that it was through him that Groome got the commission to write his
article ‘Gypsies’ in that stupendous work. I do not know whether it is
the most important, but I do know that it is one of the most thorough and
conscientious articles in the entire encyclopædia. This was followed by
his being engaged by Messrs. Jack to edit the ‘Ordnance Gazetteer of
Scotland,’ a splendid work, which on its completion was made the subject
of a long and elaborate article in _The Athenæum_—an article which was a
great means of directing attention to him, as he always declared.
Anyhow, people now began to inquire about Groome. In 1880 he brought out
‘In Gypsy Tents,’ which I shall describe further on. In 1885 he was
chosen to join the staff of Messrs. W. & R. Chambers. It is curious to
think of the “Tarno Rye,” perhaps the most variously equipped literary
man in Europe, after such adventures as his, sitting from 10 to 4 every
day on the sub-editorial stool. He was perfectly content on that stool,
however, owing to the genial kindness of his colleague. As sub-editor
under Dr. Patrick, and also as a very copious contributor, he took part
in the preparation of the new edition of ‘Chambers’s Encyclopædia.’ He
took a large part also in preparing ‘Chambers’s Gazetteer’ and
‘Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary.’ Meanwhile he was writing articles
in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ articles in _Blackwood’s
Magazine_ and _The Bookman_, and also reviews upon special subjects in
_The Athenæum_.
This was followed in 1887 by a short Border history, crammed with
knowledge. In 1895 his name became really familiar to the general reader
by his delightful little volume ‘Two Suffolk Friends’—sketches of his
father and his father’s friend Edward FitzGerald—full of humour and
admirable character-drawing.
In 1896 he published his Romany novel ‘Kriegspiel,’ which did not meet
with anything like the success it deserved, although I must say he was
himself in some degree answerable for its comparative failure. The
origin of the story was this. Shortly after our intimacy I told him that
I had written a gipsy story dealing with the East Anglian gipsies and the
Welsh gipsies, but that it had been so dinned into me by Borrow that in
England there was no interest in the gipsies that I had never found heart
to publish it. Groome urged me to let him read it, and he did read it,
as far as it was then complete, and took an extremely kind view of it,
and urged me to bring it out. But now came another and a new cause for
delay in my bringing out ‘Aylwin’: Groome himself, who at that time knew
more about Romany matters than all other Romany students of my
acquaintance put together, showed a remarkable gift as a _raconteur_, and
I felt quite sure that he could, if he set to work, write a Romany
story—_the_ Romany story of the English language. He strongly resisted
the idea for a long time—for two or three years at least—and he was only
persuaded to undertake the task at last by my telling him that I would
never bring out my story until he brought out one himself. At last he
yielded, told me of a plot, a capital one, and set to work upon it. When
it was finished he sent the manuscript to me, and I read it through with
the greatest interest, and also the greatest care. I found, as I
expected to find, that the gipsy chapters were simply perfect, and that
it was altogether an extremely clever romance; but I felt also that
Groome had given no attention whatever to the structure of a story.
Incidents of the most striking and original kind were introduced at the
wrong places, and this made them interesting no longer. So persuaded was
I that the story only needed recasting to prove a real success that I
devoted days, and even weeks, to going through the novel, and indicating
where the transpositions should take place. Groome, however, had got so
entirely sick of his novel before he had completed it that he refused
absolutely to put another hour’s work into it; for, as he said, “the
writing of it had already been a loss to the pantry.”
He sent it, as it was, to an eminent firm of publishers, who, knowing
Groome and his abilities, would have willingly taken it if they had seen
their way to do so. But they could not, for the very reasons that had
induced me to recast it, and they declined it. The book was then sent
round to publisher after publisher with the same result; and yet there
was more fine substance in this novel than in five ordinary stories. It
was at last through the good offices of Mr. Coulson Kernahan that it was
eventually taken by Messrs. Ward & Lock; and, although it won warm
eulogies from such great writers as George Meredith, it never made its
way. Its failure distressed me far more than it distressed Groome, for I
loved the man, and knew what its success would have been to him. Amiable
and charming as Groome was, there was in him a singular vein of dogged
obstinacy after he had formed an opinion; and he not only refused to
recast his story, but refused to abandon the absurd name of ‘Kriegspiel’
for a volume of romantic gipsy adventure. I suspect that a large
proportion of people who asked for ‘Kriegspiel’ at Mudie’s and Smith’s
consisted of officers who thought that it was a book on the German war
game.
I tried to persuade him to begin another gipsy novel, but found it quite
impossible to do so. But even then I waited before bringing out my own
prose story. I published instead my poem in which was told the story of
Rhona Boswell, which, to my own surprise and Groome’s, had a success,
notwithstanding its gipsy subject. Then I brought out my gipsy story,
and accepted its success rather ungratefully, remembering how the
greatest gipsy scholar in the world had failed in this line. In 1899 he
published ‘Gypsy Folk-Tales,’ in which he got the aid of the first Romany
scholar now living, Mr. John Sampson. And this was followed in 1901 by
his edition of ‘Lavengro,’ which, notwithstanding certain unnecessary
carpings at Borrow—such, for instance, as the assertion that the word
“dook” is never used in Anglo-Romany for “ghost”—is beyond any doubt the
best edition of the book ever published. The introduction gives sketches
of all the Romany Ryes and students of Romany, from Andrew Boorde (_c._
1490–1549) down to Mr. G. R. Sims and Mr. David MacRitchie. During this
time it was becoming painfully perceptible to me that his physical powers
were waning, although for two years that decadence seemed to have no
effect upon his mental powers. But at last, while he was working on a
book in which he took the deepest interest—the new edition of ‘Chambers’s
Cyclopædia of English Literature’—it became manifest that the general
physical depression was sapping the forces of the brain.
But it is personal reminiscences of Groome that I have been invited to
write, and I have not yet even begun upon these. Our close friendship
dated no further back than 1881—the year in which died the great Romany
Rye. Indeed, it was owing to Borrow’s death, coupled with Groome’s
interest in that same Romany girl Sinfi Lovell, whom the eloquent Romany
preacher “Gipsy Smith” has lately been expiating upon to immense
audiences, that I first became acquainted with Groome. Although he has
himself in some magazine told the story, it seems necessary for me to
retell it here, for I know of no better way of giving the readers of _The
Athenæum_ a picture of Frank Groome as he lives in my mind.
It was in 1881 that Borrow, who some seven years before went down to
Oulton, as he told me, “to die,” achieved death. And it devolved upon me
as the chief friend of his latest years to write an obituary notice of
him in _The Athenæum_. Among the many interesting letters that it
brought me from strangers was one from Groome, whose name was familiar to
me as the author of the article ‘Gypsies’ in the ‘Encyclopædia
Britannica.’ But besides this I had read ‘In Gypsy Tents,’ a picture of
the very kind of gipsies I knew myself, those of East Anglia—a picture
whose photographic truth had quite startled me. Howsoever much of matter
of fact may be worked into ‘Lavengro’ (and to no one did Borrow talk with
so little reticence upon this delicate subject as to me during many a
stroll about Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park), I am certain that his
first-hand knowledge of gipsy life was quite superficial compared with
Groome’s during the nine years or so that he was brought into contact
with them in Great Britain and on the Continent. Hence a book like ‘In
Gypsy Tents’ has for a student of Romany subjects an interest altogether
different from that which Borrow’s books command; for while Borrow, the
man of genius, throws by the very necessities of his temperament the
colours of romance around his gipsies, the characters of ‘In Gypsy
Tents,’ depicted by a man of remarkable talent merely, are as realistic
as though painted by Zola, while the wealth of gipsy lore at his command
is simply overwhelming.
At that time—with the exception of Borrow and the late Sir Richard
Burton—the only man of letters with whom I had been brought into contact
who knew anything about the gipsies was Tom Taylor, whose picture of
Romany life in an anonymous story called ‘Gypsy Experiences,’ which
appeared in _The Illustrated London News_ in 1851, and in his play ‘Sir
Roger de Coverley,’ is not only fascinating, but on the whole true.
By-the-by, this charming play might be revived now that there is a
revived interest in Romany matters. George Meredith’s wonderful ‘Kiomi’
was a picture, I think, of the only Romany chi he knew; but genius such
as his needs little straw for the making of bricks. The letter I
received from Groome enclosed a ragged and well-worn cutting from a
forgotten anonymous _Athenæum_ article of mine, written as far back as
1877, in which I showed acquaintance with gipsydom and described the
ascent of Snowdon in the company of Sinfi Lovell, which was afterwards
removed bodily to ‘Aylwin.’ Here is the cutting:—
“We had a striking instance of this some years ago, when crossing
Snowdon from Capel Curig, one morning, with a friend. She was not
what is technically called a lady, yet she was both tall and, in her
way, handsome, and was far more clever than many of those who might
look down upon her; for her speculative and her practical abilities
were equally remarkable: besides being the first palmist of her time,
she had the reputation of being able to make more clothes-pegs in an
hour, and sell more, than any other woman in England. The splendour
of that ‘Snowdon sunrise’ was such as we can say, from much
experience, can only be seen about once in a lifetime, and could
never be given by any pen or pencil. ‘You don’t seem to enjoy it a
bit,’ was the irritated remark we could not help making to our
friend, who stood quite silent and apparently deaf to the rhapsodies
in which we had been indulging, as we both stood looking at the
peaks, or rather at the vast masses of billowy vapours enveloping
them, as they sometimes boiled and sometimes blazed, shaking,
whenever the sun struck one and then another, from amethyst to
vermilion, ‘shot’ now and then with gold. ‘Don’t injiy it, don’t I?’
said she, removing her pipe. ‘_You_ injiy talking about it, _I_
injiy lettin’ it soak in.’”
Groome asked whether the gipsy mentioned in the cutting was not a certain
Romany chi whom he named, and said that he had always wondered who the
writer of that article was, and that now he wondered no longer, for he
knew him to be the writer of the obituary notice of George Borrow.
Interested as I was in his letter, it came at a moment when the illness
of a very dear friend of mine threw most other things out of my mind, and
it was a good while before I answered it, and told him what I had to tell
about my Welsh gipsy experiences and the adventure on Snowdon. I got
another letter from him, and this was the beginning of a charming
correspondence. After a while I discovered that there were, besides
Romany matters, other points of attraction between us. Groome was the
son of Edward FitzGerald’s intimate friend Robert Hindes Groome,
Archdeacon of Suffolk. Now long before the great vogue of Omar Khayyam,
and, of course, long before the institution of the Omar Khayyam Club,
there was a little group of Omarians of which I was a member. I need not
say here who were the others of that group, but it was to them I alluded
in the ‘Toast to Omar Khayyam,’ which years afterwards I printed in _The
Athenæum_, and have since reprinted in a volume of mine.
After a while it was arranged that he was to come and visit us for a few
days at The Pines. When it got wind in the little household here that
another Romany Rye, a successor to George Borrow, was to visit us, and
when it further became known that he had travelled with Hungarian
gipsies, Roumanian gipsies, Roumelian gipsies, &c., I don’t know what
kind of wild and dishevelled visitor was not expected. Instead of such a
guest there appeared one of the neatest and most quiet young gentlemen
who had ever presented themselves at the door. No one could possibly
have dared to associate Bohemia with him. As a friend remarked who was
afterwards invited to meet him at luncheon, “Clergyman’s son—suckling for
the Church, was stamped upon him from head to foot.” I will not deny
that so respectable a looking Romany Rye rather disappointed The Pines at
first. At that time he was a little over thirty, but owing to his
slender, graceful figure, and especially owing to his lithe movements and
elastic walk, he seemed to be several years younger.
The subject of Welsh gipsies, and especially of the Romany chi of
Swindon, made us intimate friends in half an hour, and then there were
East Anglia, Omar Khayyàm, and Edward FitzGerald to talk about!—a
delightful new friend for a man who had so lately lost the only other
Romany Rye in the world. Owing to his youthful appearance, I christened
him there and then the “Tarno Rye,” in remembrance of that other “Tarno
Rye” whom Rhona Boswell loved. I soon found that, great as was the
physical contrast between the Tarno Rye and the original Romany Rye, the
mental contrast was greater still. Both were shy—very shy; but while
Borrow’s shyness seemed to be born of wariness, the wariness of a man who
felt that he was famous and had a part to play before an inquisitive
world, Groome’s shyness arose from a modesty that was unique.
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:—