Though written many years ago this story was, for certain personal
reasons easy to guess, withheld from publication--withheld, as _The
Times_ pointed out, because 'with the _Dichtung_ was mingled
a good deal of _Wahrheit_,' But why did I still delay in
publishing it after these reasons for withholding it had passed away?
This is a question that has often been put to me both in print and in
conversation. And yet I should have imagined that the explanation was
not far to seek. It was simply diffidence; in other words it was that
infirmity which, though generally supposed to belong to youth, comes
to a writer, if it comes at all, with years. Undoubtedly there was a
time in my life when I should have leapt with considerable rashness
into the brilliant ranks of our contemporary novelists. But this was
before I had reached what I will call the diffident period in the
life of a writer. And then, again, I had often been told by George
Borrow, and also by my friend Francis Groome, the great living
authority on Romany matters, that there was in England no interest in
Gypsies. Altogether then, had it not been for the unexpected success
of _The Coming of Love_, a story of Gypsy life, it is doubtful
whether I should not have delayed the publication of _Aylwin_
until the great warder of the gates of day we call Death should close
his portal behind me and shut me off from these dreams. However, I am
very glad now that I did publish it; for it has brought around me a
number of new friends--brought them at a time when new friends were
what I yearned for--a time when, looking back through this vision of
my life, I seem to be looking down an Appian way--a street of
tombs--the tombs of those I loved. No wonder, then, that I was deeply
touched by the kindness with which the Public and the Press received
the story.
One critic did me the honour of remarking upon what he called the
'absolute newness of the plot and incidents of _Aylwin_.' He
seems to have forgotten, however, that one incident--the most daring
incident in the book--that of the rifling of a grave for treasure
--is not new: it will at once remind folk-lorists of certain
practices charged against our old Norse invaders. And students of
Celtic and Gaelic literature are familiar with the same idea. Quite,
lately, indeed, Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his analysis of the Gaelic
_Agallamh na Senorach_, or 'Colloquy of the Elders,' has made
some interesting remarks upon the subject.
As far as I remember, the only objection made by the critics to
_Aylwin_ was that I had imported into a story written for
popular acceptance too many speculations and breedings upon the
gravest of all subjects--the subject of love at struggle with death.
My answer to this is that although it did win a great popular
acceptance I never expected it to do so. I knew the book to be an
expression of idiosyncrasy, and no man knows how much or how little
his idiosyncrasy is in harmony with the temper of his time, until his
book has been given to the world. It was the story of _Aylwin_
that was born of the speculations upon Love and Death; it was not the
speculations that were pressed into the story; without these
speculations there could have been no story to tell. Indeed the chief
fault which myself should find with _Aylwin_, if my business
were to criticise it, would be that it gives not too little but too
much prominence to the strong incidents of the story--a story written
as a comment on love's warfare with death--written to show that
confronted as a man is every moment by signs of the fragility and
brevity of human life, the great marvel connected with him is not
that his thoughts dwell frequently upon the unknown country beyond
Orion where the beloved dead are loving us still, but that he can
find time and patience to think upon anything else--a story written
further to show how terribly despair becomes intensified when a man
has lost--or thinks he has lost--a woman whose love was the only
light of his world--when his soul is torn from his body, as it were,
and whisked off on the wings of the 'viewless winds' right away
beyond the farthest star, till the universe hangs beneath his feet a
trembling point of twinkling light, and at last even this dies away
and his soul cries out for help in that utter darkness and
loneliness.
It was to depict this phase of human emotion that both _Aylwin_
and its sequel, _The Coming of Love_, were written. They were
missives from the lonely watch-tower of the writer's soul, sent out
into the strange and busy battle of the world--sent out to find, if
possible, another soul or two to whom the watcher was, without
knowing it, akin.
And now as to my two Gypsy heroines, the Sinfi Lovell of
_Aylwin_ and the Rhona Boswell of _The Coming of Love_.
Although Borrow belonged to a different generation from mine, I
enjoyed his intimate friendship in his later years--during the time
when he lived in Hereford Square; and since his death I have written
a good deal about him--both in prose and in verse--in the Athenæum,
in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and in other places. When, some seven
or eight years ago, I brought out an edition of _Lavengro_ (in
Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co.'s Minerva Library), I prefaced that
delightful book by a few desultory remarks upon Sorrow's Gypsy
characters. On that occasion I gave a slight sketch of the most
remarkable 'Romany Chi' that had ever been met with in the part of
East Anglia known to Borrow and myself--Sinfi Lovell. I described
her playing on the crwth. I discussed her exploits as a boxer, and I
contrasted her in many ways with the glorious Anglo-Saxon road-girl
Isopel Berners. Since the publication of _Aylwin_ and _The
Coming of Love_ I have received very many letters from English and
American readers inquiring whether 'the Gypsy girl described in the
introduction to _Lavenyro_ is the same as the Sinfi Lovell of
_Aylwin_,' and also whether 'the Rhona Boswell that figures in
the prose story is the same as the Rhona of _The Coming of
Love_?' The evidence of the reality of Rhona so impressed itself
upon the reader that on the appearance of Rhona's first letter in the
_Athenæum_, where the poem was printed in fragments, I got among
other letters one from the sweet poet and adorable woman Jean
Ingelow, who was then very ill,--near her death indeed,--urging me to
tell her whether Rhona's love-letter was not a versification of a
real letter from a real Gypsy to her lover. As it was obviously
impossible for me to answer the queries individually, I take this
opportunity of saying that the Sinfi of _Aylwin_ and the Sinfi
described in my introduction to _Lavengro_ are one and the same
character--except that the story of the child Sinfi's weeping for the
'poor dead Gorgios' in the churchyard, given in the Introduction, is
really told by the Gypsies, not of Sinfi, but of Rhona Boswell. Sinfi
is the character alluded to in the now famous sonnet describing 'the
walking lord of Gypsy lore,' Borrow, by his most intimate friend Dr.
Gordon Hake.
'And he, the walking lord of Gypsy lore!
How often 'mid the deer that grazed the Park,
Or in the fields and heath and windy moor,
Made musical with many a soaring lark,
Have we not held brisk commune with him there,
While Lavengro, then towering by your side,
With rose complexion and bright silvery hair,
Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride
To tell the legends of the fading race--.
As at the summons of his piercing glance,
Its story peopling his brown eyes and face,
While you called up that pendant of romance
To Petulengro with his boxing glory
Your Amazonian Sinfi's noble story?'
Now that so many of the griengroes (horse-dealers), who form the
aristocracy of the Romany race, have left England for America, it is
natural enough that to some readers of _Aylwin_ and _The
Coming of Love_ my pictures of Romany life seem a little
idealised. The _Times_, in a kindly notice of _The Coming of
Love_, said that the kind of Gypsies there depicted are a very
interesting people, 'unless the author has flattered them unduly.'
Those who best knew the Gypsy women of that period will be the first
to aver that I have not flattered them unduly. But I have fully
discussed this matter, and given a somewhat elaborate account of
Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell, in the introduction to the fifth
edition of _The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswell's Story._