“To the American reader generally the work will illustrate a phase of
life and history with which it may be reasonably assumed he is not
much conversant; for, although he must have some knowledge of the
Gipsy race generally, there is no work, that I am aware of, that
treats of the body like the present” (p. 7).
And I illustrated the race in America in notes to the work, and in as
much as I could well introduce in my long Disquisition, bringing in that
part of it which had its origin perhaps from the settlement of the
American Colonies. When Mr. Leland borrowed from my work for his article
in _Johnson’s Cyclopædia_ he gave the name of the book with the _London_
imprint, while from the first page to the last it showed that it was an
_American_ book, based on a _Scotch_ MS.; and the copy which he used in
all probability bore a _New York_ imprint.
I admit this of Mr. Leland, that, by availing himself of the hard labours
of others, at least to give him a start, he has added greatly to our
knowledge of the Gipsy language, so far as I know and can judge; but that
is nearly all that can be said of him. What he has told us of the
information got from a native of India as to the Gipsies there being
called “Syrians” shows that he was merely in good luck in falling in with
the man from whom he obtained it; while, if it is reliable, it confirms
my conjecture, although of that it does not seem to have been his
business to inform the world. His chapter on the “Shelta or Tinkers’
Talk,” picked up also as it were by accident from a stray tinker, is
indeed of great interest; but the world has reason to question his
judgment when he says that “it is, in fact, a language, for it can be
spoken grammatically, and without using English or Romany” (p. 371).
Another occasion for questioning his judgment is when he says that “Mr.
[Walter] Simson, had he known the ‘Tinklers’ better, would have found
that, not Romany, but Shelta was the really secret language which they
employed, although Romany is also more or less familiar to them all” (p.
371); for almost anyone by reading the _History_ can see the absurdity of
it. {15}
This book of Mr. Leland (although described in the Preface as “Sketches
of experiences among the Gipsies”), to justify its title of _The
Gipsies_, should have been constructed on some plan and scientifically
arranged, with a great variety of particulars, and no extraneous matter
or padding in it. In place of that we have little but random sketches or
scenes connected with the race. There is no principle running through
it, for we are told in the Introduction that
“The day is coming when there will be no . . . wild wanderers . . .
and certainly no Gipsies” (p. 15). And after describing how English
sparrows have driven so many kinds of native birds out of
Philadelphia, he says, “So the people of self-conscious culture and
the mart and factory are banishing the wilder sort . . . As a London
reviewer said when I asserted in a book that the child was perhaps
born who would see the last Gipsy, ‘Somehow we feel sorry for that
child’” (p. 15). And in describing English fairs, as represented by
that at Cobham, he says, “In a few years the last of them will have
been closed, and the last Gipsy will be there to look on” (p. 142).
Profound research and philosophical observation and reasoning do not seem
to constitute Mr. Leland’s forte. It is a little puzzling to decide how
to treat a man like him; for his “confident assertions” in regard to the
disappearance, or what some would call the _extinction_, of the race are
but “contradictions” of his own information and opinions; saying nothing
of what I published at great length on the perpetuation of the Gipsies in
a settled state, all of which he admits having “carefully read.” Among
Mr. Leland’s information is the following:—
“Go where we may we find the Jew. Has any other wandered so far?
Yes, one; for wherever Jew has gone there too we find the Gipsy” (p.
18). “It . . . . has penetrated into every village which European
civilization has ever touched. He who speaks Romany . . . . will
meet those with whom a very few words may at once establish a
peculiar understanding . . . This widely spread brotherhood . . . are
honestly proud that a gentleman is not ashamed of them” (p. 25).
“Communities of gentlemanly and lady-like Gipsies’” in Russia (p.
25). “All the Gipsies in the country are not upon the roads. Many
of them live in houses, and that very respectably, nay, even
aristocratically. Yea, and it may be, O reader, that thou hast met
them and knowest them not . . . It is intelligible enough” that such
a Gipsy “should say as little as possible of his origin, . . . and
ever carefully keep the lid of silence on the pot of his birth” (p.
272). “The Gipsy of society, not always, but yet frequently, retains
a keen interest in his wild ancestry. He keeps up the language; it
is a delightful secret; he loves now and then to take a look at ‘the
old thing’ [one of my phrases, as I have already mentioned] . . . I
know ladies in England and in America, both of the blood and
otherwise, who would give up a ball of the highest flight in society
to sit an hour in a Gipsy tent, and on whom a whispered word in
Romany acts like wild-fire. Great as my experience has been I can
really no more explain the intensity of this yearning, this
_rapport_, than I can fly. My own fancy for Gipsydom is faint and
feeble compared to what I have found in many others” (p. 274).
One would naturally conclude that this _race_ is not disappearing as
“British birds are chasing American ones out of Philadelphia”; and that
it could not be said that “the child is perhaps born who will see the
last Gipsy,” even in his primitive condition. {16}
Mr. Leland explains, in his chapter on Cobham Fair, how the Gipsy problem
“puzzled and muddled” him.
“I was very much impressed at this fair with the extensive and
unsuspected amount of Romany existent in our rural population . . .
There were many men in the common room, mostly well dressed, and
decent even if doubtful looking. I observed that several used Romany
words in casual conversation. I came to the conclusion at last that
all who were present knew something of it” (p. 140). And of eleven
kinds of people that were at the fair, he said that “there is always
a leaven and a suspicion of Gipsiness. If there be no descent, there
is affinity by marriage, familiarity, knowledge of words and ways,
sweethearting and trafficking, so that they know the children of the
Rom as the house-world does not know them, and they in some sort
belong together” (p. 140).