BORROW’S GYPSYISM
BORROW’S gypsyism was the most important part of his literary
stock-in-trade. What it was worth, apart from its literary value, is a
moot point.
Any writer who is not a deep gypsiologist must approach such a question
with diffidence. The consensus of opinion is all that can be suggested.
It is that Borrow was unscientific both as a Romany linguist and as a
student of Romany history. His knowledge of this strange race, for whose
origin we go to the Hindu Kush and beyond, was empirical; so was his
acquaintance with the language they took with them all over the world and
preserved for so many years almost as inviolably secret as the Etruscan
mystery. He was an enthusiast, but not a learned enthusiast, and his
method did not lend itself to thoroughness—like that of Mr. Sampson, for
example, of whom a gypsy warned his friends that he would “cut the heart
out of your breast if he thought he’d find a new word in it.” Borrow’s
gypsy stories were not arranged on the elaborate plan of Mr. Sampson’s
excursions into the gypsy lore of Wales. Though he knew the “tinkler”
tribes intimately, it was left for Leland, long years afterwards, to
discover that they had a language of their own, which was not Romany, but
Shelta, subsequently identified with the secret medium of the ancient
bards of Ireland. Leland’s discovery and the investigations of Professor
Kuno Meyer and Mr. Sampson, which traced Shelta back to the Gaelic of ten
centuries ago, surely form one of the great romances of philology.
Leland himself was surprised that Borrow had not penetrated this mystery,
because he had “specially cultivated tinkers.”
In a chapter on this subject intended to form part of a book on Shelta,
never completed, Leland wrote:
“The first or second time I conversed with Borrow was in the British
Museum, where he was examining an old Irish manuscript, and made the
remark to me that he did not believe there was a man now living who
could really read such works. But this Nestor of the Romany ryes,
who was indeed a man of marvellous attainments and real genius, was
somewhat touched with the common weakness of the old school, that he
had mastered many subjects. Thus he positively declared in his
‘Lavo-Lil’ that there are only twelve hundred Anglo-Romany words,
when in fact my own manuscript collection actually contains between
three and four thousand, all approved as authentic by the late
Professor E. H. Palmer. What Borrow would have said had he been told
that there were thousands of tinkers now living who spoke the secret
language of the bards—which was probably that of the Druids—passes
conjecture.” {265}
We should certainly have had a tinker portrait as fine as that of
Murtagh, from whom Borrow learned the Irish Gaelic of ordinary commerce.
But it is idle to pursue the subject of Borrow’s empiricism. That is a
matter which concerns the experts of philology and not the wider world.
The important thing is the use which Borrow made of his gypsy knowledge
and the fascination he himself exercised over the Romany chalu gypsy men.
While he often affected to approach the subject from the scientist’s
point of view, and to lay the Romany language on the dissecting table,
what in actual fact attracted him was the picturesque aspect of gypsy
life. That is what attracts his readers to-day. His books are fitting
companions of the pictures of David Cox and De Wint. Who, looking upon
that wonderful drawing by Cox of “Gypsies Crossing a Moor”—a drawing so
phenomenally realistic of the effect of wind that the spectator is almost
induced to turn up his coat collar—does not recall the description in
“The Zincali” of “the hurried march; the women and children, mounted on
lean but spirited asses, would scour along the plains fleeter than the
wind; ragged and savage-looking men, wielding the scourge and goad, would
scamper by their side or close behind . . .”? And there are a score of
scenes in “Lavengro” to match the sketches made by De Wint in his visits
to the Romany tans (tents)—his glowing yellows, his swarthy faces, and
his romantic rags.
The point specially to be observed is that Borrow’s vision of the gypsy
race in the early part of the nineteenth century is practically the only
one in existence. It has the value of a record, in addition to the value
of a picture. Though there are great numbers of gypsies in the British
islands, the old order of society known to Borrow has largely broken up.
When he knew it, the organisation and status of that society had been
unaltered for centuries. Borrow’s gypsies were as esoteric as they had
been in 1550, when Andrew Borde, writing his “Fyrst Boke of the
Introduction of Knowledge,” “introduced” as a great discovery a few
sentences of Romany, which he described as “Egipt speche,” and drew an
uncomplimentary character sketch of the ’Gyptians, to whom he ascribed
origin in the land of Rameses: “The people of the country be swarte, and
doth go disgised in theyr apparel contrary to other nacions, they be
lyght fingerd and use pyking [picking pockets], they have litle manner,
and evyl looking, and yet be pleasant dansers.” {267} Even while
Borrow’s books were appearing, however, the old gypsy society was
disappearing. The enclosure of the English commons had made it hard for
them to survive in their original state; the arrival of the railway so
altered the whole atmosphere and outlook of the countryside that it
became intolerable to them, and vast numbers of the wealthier class, the
gryengroes or horse-dealers, with whom Borrow consorted, left for a newer
and more simply-organised country on the other side of the Atlantic.
Those who remained deteriorated. Gypsy traditions survive. So does the
language. But the racial purity has been to a great extent lost by
intermarriage among the gypsies, the “tinklers,” and the mumpers; and
many of the caravanners on the English roads to-day have very little
gypsy blood in their veins. How long any gypsyism at all will combat the
onslaughts of the law on the one hand and the motor on the other is a
doubtful point. There is a tendency in the one case to impose conditions
which make the nomadic life almost impracticable; {268} in the other
case, the caravan (in the gypsy sense) is seriously incommoded by the
speeding up of road traffic.
Borrow wrote in his autobiography about gypsies as they were in the days
before education and petrol had combined against them, when their camps
were to be found in lonely lanes and obscure dells, and they rested in
the heat of noon by the green roadside. The substantial accuracy of his
picture has been amply confirmed. He recorded facts about their habits
and their habitat. For some reason he was able to read more deeply into
their character than many observers who are not open to the same charge
of being unscientific. What he tells us of gypsy pride, love of race,
exclusiveness, mutual honour, hostility to the gentiles, faithfulness to
their own standards amidst what seems to be degradation and squalor, is
perfectly true. It remains as true to-day, indeed, as it was when Borrow
wrote, wherever unadulterated gypsy blood is found. He extenuated
nothing. Complaint has been made that, on the contrary, he failed to do
justice to the better side of the gypsy woman’s character. Mr.
Watts-Dunton has pointed this out; and it cannot be denied that the
figures of Mrs. Herne and Leonora are horrible enough, grotesquely
villainous, and compelling mainly by reason of the baneful magnetism of
their unequivocal wickedness. The companion portrait of Ursula should
not, however, be overlooked, nor that section of “The Zincali” which he
devotes to the vindication of the gitanas’ chastity.
The charm exercised by the gypsies upon Borrow was so strong that he said
he did not remember the time when the mere mention of the name failed to
awaken within him feelings hard to be described. He knew all the tribes
of the East of England from his boyhood—the Smiths, the Pinfolds, Grays,
Bosviles,—visited their camps, met them on Mousehold Heath, admired their
horse-craft, worshipped the pugilists among them, followed them to fairs
and studied their tricks and wiles, learnt their language, and found his
way into their confidence. It could only be done because he worked
spells upon them much as they worked their enchantment upon him. The
tall youth with the white hair and the piercing eyes, who seemed to be
more absorbed in their saying and their doing than in any other
employment of his life, became one of them whenever he pleased. They,
indeed, refused to believe that one so learned in their business was not
one of them. Remarking on the fact that in all his intercourse with the
tribes in various parts of the world he had never received the least
injury from men whose hatred and contempt of the “gorgios” (“gentiles,”
or non-gypsies) was inveterate, he said he was “not deceived as to the
motive of their forbearance: they thought him a Rom (_c.f._ page 277),
and on this supposition they hurt him not, their love of ‘the blood’
being their most distinguishing characteristic.” This was the set of
circumstances which enabled Borrow to give us sketches of life and
character as fine as are to be found within any book-covers: the
masterly-limned portrait of Jasper Petulengro, quaintest and most
alluring of pagans, and the towering figure of Tawno Chikno, type of
gypsy beauty and chivalry. This vision of gypsydom in England is one of
Borrow’s finest bequests to his countrymen, if, indeed, its value is not
greater than that of anything else he accomplished.
In Spain he pursued the same road. He would turn aside anywhere to talk
with a gitano (gypsy), and the gypsy episodes help to flush and enliven
the pages of “The Bible in Spain” in a very striking manner. The method
he adopted in compiling “The Zincali” has been remarked in an earlier
chapter. The reader who cares not at all for Sancho de Moncada will yet
find much in the book of curious incident and lively observation. He who
is bored to death with Quinones may yet be interested in such a dramatic
story as that of the Bookseller of Logrono, and in such a graphic
description as that of the forge in the woods, with its gypsy metaphor of
the sparks: “More than a hundred lovely daughters I see produced at one
time, fiery as roses; in one moment they expire, gracefully
circumvolving.” As he tells us in “Lavengro,” Borrow always saw poetry
in a forge. But just as he preferred Gronwy Owen to Homer, so he set the
vision of the gypsy smithy, under the trees of an English dingle or in a
Spanish forest, high above the more grandiose forges of the classic
shades in which
“. . . the mighty family
Of one-eyed brothers hasten to the shore,
And gather round the bellowing Polypheme.”
Indeed, he sometimes expressed downright contempt for Vulcan and his
minions, though he did not disdain the Cyclopean legend as a literary
element in the composition of the scene just mentioned. The traditional
trade of the smith is dying out among the gypsies, and the sale of cheap
tinpots is a much commoner occupation of their lives than the forging of
the petul (horseshoe). Certain aspects of gypsydom described in “The
Zincali,” however, are constant, and here it is proposed to notice more
particularly Borrow’s remarks bearing on the general and permanent
features of Romany character and customs, arts and manners.
The attitude of the race towards questions of religion interested him
greatly. If their progenitors brought any religion with them from beyond
the frontier hills of India, they had lost all trace of it before Western
inquirers began to investigate their history and explore their minds.
“Do you fear God, O Tuérta?” Borrow asked the one-eyed daughter of Pépa
the sybil in Madrid.
“Brother, I fear nothing!” was Tuérta’s reply.
He translated the Gospel of St. Luke into the gypsy language of Spain,
and remarks that the gitános purchased it freely; many of the men
understood it, and prized it highly, but they were induced “more by the
language than the doctrine.” The women, though generally unable to read,
“each wished to have one in her pocket, especially when engaged in
thieving expeditions; for they all looked upon it in the light of a charm
which would preserve them from all danger and mischance.” Having
forgotten whatever gods they ever worshipped before they left their
country of origin, they were perfectly indifferent to the Christianity of
the Western world. There is a curiously interesting passage on this
subject in the introductory chapters of “The Zincali” dealing with the
English gypsies:
“With respect to religion, they call themselves members of the
Established Church, and are generally anxious to have their children
baptised and to obtain a copy of the register. Some of their
baptismal papers, which they carry about with them, are highly
curious, going back for a period of upwards of two hundred years.
With respect to the essential points of religion, they are quite
careless and ignorant; if they believe in a future state, they dread
it not, and if they manifest when dying any anxiety, it is not for
the soul but for the body; a handsome coffin and a grave in a quiet
country churchyard are invariably the objects of their last thoughts,
and it is probable that, in their observance of the rite of baptism,
they are principally influenced by a desire to enjoy the privilege of
burial in consecrated ground.”
This might hold as an accurate account of the gypsies of to-day. In
Eastern Europe, I believe, they are Christians or Mussulmans with the
greatest impartiality, and change from one religion to the other as
circumstances may require. In Great Britain they like the distinction
and the respectability which they suppose to be attached to marriages and
baptisms in the Established Church. The ceremony of baptism is a
favourite one. They do not mind how many times or in how many places
they submit their children to that rite: the sponsors usually give
presents. The German gypsies who were in Great Britain in 1906 had their
children baptised in Glasgow. The Catholic faith is professed by some
Welsh members of the race. But, in general, religion of any type has no
relation whatever to their lives; as a keen observer of the gypsies
remarked to the writer, “they know as much about it as a navvy does of
bimetallism.” They go to tea-meetings which may be organised for their
benefit, and behave themselves as to the manner born; but efforts to
evangelise them have been of little permanent effect. They have no
“religious sense” in our acceptation of the term. Respect for the dead,
however, is still an essential article of the gypsy code.
When that rare old scoundrel Ryley Bosvil lay a-dying, as Borrow relates
in the “Lavo-Lil,” a Methodist visited him and asked him what was his
hope. “My hope is,” said he, “that when I am dead I shall be put into
the ground and my wife and children will weep over me.” They did. And
on the return from the grave they carried out the gypsy custom, brought
from India, of the funeral pyre. Instead of quarrelling over the
division of the property, like Christians, as Borrow sourly says, they
killed his pony and buried it, smashed his caravan and cart into
matchwood, and built a fire, on which they cast his clothes, blankets,
carpets, and curtains; they broke his mirrors and his crockery, and
battered up his hardware, and threw it all on the flames. That practice
is still occasionally carried out in England: the property of the dead
shall not be defiled by the living. And of the dead themselves they
speak only with bated breath. The relatives of a deceased gypsy will
sometimes give up his favourite food. “An old friend of mine . . . gave
up fish when her husband died, because it was the last thing they had
eaten together,” writes to me one who has an intimate knowledge of the
race. The old love for graves in quiet little churchyards survives in
Wales, but in England—at any rate in Lancashire—the gypsies now own
graves in the big cemeteries. This is also the case in France. In
Norway, it is said, nobody knows how they dispose of their dead.
[Picture: Page of Borrow’s Draft of “The Zincali.” By permission of Mr.
Watts-Dunton]
In “The Zincali” Borrow has a short disquisition on gypsy law, which he
analyses under three heads: (1) Separate not from the husbands; (2) Be
faithful to the husbands; (3) Pay your debts to the husbands—the husband
being the “Rom,” as distinct from the “gorgio,” or gentile. He contends
that, whatever may be the moral and legal relations between gypsydom and
the world at large, there is perfect honour amongst the members of the
race itself. He enlarges on the chastity of gypsy women, which is never
overcome, in whatever licentious scenes they may be involved. Experts in
the Romany language take exception to the use of the expression
“husbands” in Borrow’s sense. “Rom” is an obscure word, and “husband” is
only a secondary meaning. Its Indian origin is uncertain; there are in
Western Asia thousands of people who call themselves “Rom” and are not
gypsies. But Borrow’s rendering of the principles of gypsy law is
accurate. Clan attachment is all-powerful still. Mr. Scott-Macfie
informs me of the case of two brothers, friends of his, who quarrelled
and have not spoken for thirty years. Yet they always live in the same
camp, “and when there is a battle Kenza always comes and fights by Noah’s
side, returning to his tent after the struggle without having said a
word.” Their common cause is the concern of all: when a gypsy is in
trouble, money is always forthcoming for his defence and to pay his fine.
The chastity of the gypsy women is the fact to which is owing the
preservation of their race purity against tremendous odds.
The occupations and customs of gypsies have not varied much all the world
over. The men have been jockeys and horse-dealers and the women
fortune-tellers. Borrow has given more than one account of _hokano
baro_, “the great trick,” practised on credulous women, who hide money or
valuables in the earth or elsewhere, deluded by the Romany chi’s (gypsy
woman’s) promise that it shall magically increase—and, of course, never
find it again. The three weeks generally prescribed as the term of its
gestation are quite long enough to put a sufficient number of miles
between the gypsy and her victim. The practice of _hokano baro_ is
becoming rarer, probably not because of any reluctance on the part of the
gypsies to perform it, but because of the gradual decline of the kind of
superstition which made it possible. There are relics of it in the West
of England and elsewhere. The village “witch” occasionally makes an
appearance in the police court, and not many years ago in Cornwall a chi
received imprisonment for a false pretence not less ingenious than the
_hokano baro_, and almost as elaborate as some recent conspiracies in
which no gypsies have been involved. The bait in this case was money “in
Chancery,” and three Cornish housewives were effectually swindled by a
cleverly constructed story in which witchcraft, the planets, phantom
lawyers, and hidden property all played their parts.
To hoax the gentile is a meritorious thing in a gypsy, and there is
evidence that the Romany people themselves are not as a race
superstitious. Their success depended in Borrow’s time upon cold
calculation and rapid judgment of the characters of the people with whom
they had to deal. Pepita’s interview with Cristina in the palace, and
the trick of Aurora upon the wealthy widow lady {279} are evidence of
that. Their modern attitude is precisely the same, though I have been
told of one Welsh gypsy who believed she could work spells, had faith in
her own fortune-telling, and was believed in by other gypsies. A
well-known gryengro in the eastern counties, it is said, never concludes
any important horse-dealing transaction till his mother has “read the
stars” for him. Some gypsies credit the seventh daughter with the power
of true divination. But in the main their art of dukkering, bewitching,
or fortune-telling, is merely the art of gauging the personalities with
which they are dealing, and, as Borrow says, adapting their promises “to
the age and condition of the parties who seek for information”; the gypsy
holds the hand of her client, but her eyes are fixed upon the client’s
face. Readers of “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” a much more numerous
company than those who have studied “The Zincali,” will recall references
in those books to _draving balos_. This was the pleasant custom of
administering to pigs and other comestible animals of the countryside a
certain poison, which infallibly deprived them of life but did not render
their flesh unfit for food. Having done this in secret, the gypsy would
go up to the farmer openly and offer some small price for the carcass,
and his offer would be accepted, since a porker supposed to have died of
disease was marketable in no other quarter. The custom does not linger
in England, but a recent traveller in Spain saw at Martos, in the
province of Jaen, a whole gypsy tribe feeding on the roasted body of a
poisoned pig.
Among the Romany habits quaintly discussed in “The Zincali” {280} which
still survive in gypsydom is that of the _patteran_, or trail—the bunches
of twigs or handfuls of grass scattered at a cross-road to indicate to
stragglers the way which their companions have taken. It has been
remarked that the ranks of the gryengroes, or horse-dealers, of the class
described in Borrow’s books have been greatly depleted, particularly by
emigration to the Western continent; but there are representatives of
these, the gypsy aristocracy, still to be seen at the English horse-sales
and fairs, and very formidable judges of a horse they are, though I know
of none quite so expert as Jasper Petulengro. One of them not long ago
bought a piece of land near Lowestoft, in order that he and his friends
might camp undisturbed by the law and unvexed by the police.
No account of Borrow’s gypsyism can neglect the wonderful scene or series
of scenes which, omitted from “The Zincali,” were included in “The Bible
in Spain,” picturing his journey from Badajoz towards Madrid in company
with Antonio Lopez. These passages, in the ninth and tenth chapters of
the book, convey an extraordinary impression of the gypsy character and
of gypsy habits. They contain sketches of persons and incidents vivid as
lightning flashes; they are full of Borrow’s best matter and in his most
characteristic manner. See the fierce gitano in his zamarra, or cloak of
sheepskin, and his high-peaked Andalusian hat, coming to interview the
London Caloro (gypsy) who has so strange a knowledge of their language
that the gypsies for whom he has written a gospel call him “brother.”
Antonio, bound on a journey on “the affairs of Egypt,” has bethought him
that the strange Caloro is going to Madrid. The country is very
disturbed; the gypsies are taking advantage of the uproar to plunder the
gentiles; and the Caloro may fall a victim to them. Antonio proposes,
therefore, to accompany him as far as the frontiers of Castile, so that
he may not run the risk of a mistake; while, as for perils from any other
quarter than the bands of gypsy brigands—does not Antonio carry in his
bosom the magic _bar lachi_, the lodestone, a talisman which renders him
immune from knife or bullet, and for him makes “the dark night the same
as the fair day, and the wild carrascal [forest] as the market-place?”
The _bar lachi_ occupies a prominent place in “The Zincali,” where a
strange story is told of the fascination exercised upon the gitanós by
the large piece of lodestone in the museum at Madrid, and the recipe is
given for a magic potion consisting of a little powder from the stone
dropped in a glass of the potent spirit aguardiente. Antonio had
fortified himself with such a draught before he came to make his proposal
that they should ride forth together, Borrow on the fleet horse which had
cost fifty dollars, and the gypsy on a mule.
From the moment when Borrow’s love of adventure and desire to get insight
into Spanish gypsydom led him to accept this strange proposal instead of
going to Madrid in prosaic British fashion by the stage-coach, his pages
are lit by variegated lights—the blaze of straw fires roasting pig, the
eye of the sun in dusty village streets, or its rays percolating through
the maze of forest trees, or the brasero’s glow in the vast ruined house
in Merida, where the gypsy crone tells him her story of torrid adventure
in Morocco among the Corahai, her fortune-telling and her hokkawaring
(deceiving) among the desert tribes. They are overhung by the mystery of
the object of Antonio’s journey, which remains unsolved. They echo with
the weird converse of Antonio himself, with his guitar-strings vibrating
in the shadows of the great room lit by an earthen lamp on the floor,
with the patter of the gypsy girls’ feet as they dance. Nobody has ever
mixed ingredients like these into such a dish as Borrow served up—the
ancient gitana who knew “more crabbed things and crabbed words than all
the Erraté [gypsy folk] betwixt here and Catalonia,” the venal alguazils,
or excise officers, looking for contraband who were bribed by the present
of a cigar and frightened out of the house by the maledictions of the old
woman and her girls, the bivouac among the trees, the dialogues on solemn
questions with Pepindorio the pagan.
The most interesting gypsy-hunt in which Borrow indulged in the later
part of his life was the search in the Cheviot Hills for relics of old
Will Faa, the gypsy “king,” smuggler, and innkeeper of Kirk Yetholm.
Faa, the bearer of a celebrated name in Scottish gypsydom, flourished in
the eighteenth century during those years when the nomads had recovered
from the effects of the early persecutions, and had not yet been assailed
by an organised rural police. This monarch in the Augustan age of the
Romanies had been a person of great consequence in Borderland, and it was
at the house he occupied in Kirk Yetholm—an inn which in ’64 had much of
the appearance of a ruined Spanish posada—that Borrow was gazing when a
woman accosted him on gypsy subjects, and told him that a granddaughter
of Will Faa was residing in the town. The incident, with his visit to
this celebrity, Esther Blyth, “the Queen of the Nokkums,” {284} provides
the material for the last and the best chapter of “The Romano Lavo-Lil.”
He describes his “deep discourse” with her “about matters Nokkum, about
the words they used and the famous ones among them in the older time.”
There is a curious forecast here of Leland’s discovery of Shelta, and its
identification with the language of the ancient Gaelic bards, though
Borrow remained quite innocent of its significance. The Queen of the
Nokkums had not much Romany, but used a “poggado jib” (a broken jargon)
consisting partly of gypsy words, partly of Lowland Scots, and partly of
cant, “the allegorical jargon of thieves.” He remarks: “Then she called
a donkey _asal_, and a stone _cloch_, which words are neither cant nor
gypsy, but Irish or Gaelic. I incurred her vehement indignation by
saying they were Gaelic. She contradicted me flatly, and said that
whatever I might know” (and he had been astonishing her with his Romany
jib, as usual), “I was quite wrong there, for that neither she nor any
one of her people would condescend to speak anything so low as Gaelic,
or, indeed, if they possibly could avoid it, have anything to do with the
poverty-stricken creatures who used it.” Borrow goes on to moralise in
his own way on the effect built up in the minds of the public at large on
the subject of the Highlanders and their Gaelic by “the magic writings of
Walter Scott,” and to contrast it with the contempt in which both people
and language were held in Scott’s own land.
The faltering hand of age is all too plainly seen in this Kirk Yetholm
sketch. It has a certain interest, but it lacks the wondrous witchery of
his earlier dialogues with gypsies in “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye.”
Perhaps there was every bit as much of the picturesque and romantic in
his later intercourse with the swarthy people; but he was not the same
Borrow. He had not the old spirit, the vim, the elasticity, and he could
not invest his gypsy friends and their surroundings with the charm that
pervaded his former writing on the subject. He had lost zest. He knew
and mentioned that the Romany chals and chis whom he saw in dingy
metropolitan suburbs or slums were out for a great part of the year in
the green lanes and pleasant ways of Kent; but he gives us no pictures of
the patch of grass, so vividly described by Dickens about the same time,
“between the road-dust and the trees,” the place whose sweet temptations
“all the tramps with carts or caravans, the gypsy-tramp, the show-tramp,
the cheap-jack, find it impossible to resist,” where “all turn the horse
loose when they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless the place! I love
the ashes of the vagabond fires that have scorched its grass!” Yet that
was just the picture that would have appealed to the younger Borrow.
During his residence in London he paid many visits to the gypsy haunts in
the neighbourhood, such as the no-man’s-land at Wandsworth, where was to
be found a very Babel of gypsies, mumpers, and Irish vagrants, as unlike
a true gypsy encampment as anything on earth—a medley of caravans and
carts, horses and donkeys, basket-makers and clothes-peg carvers,
broken-down pugilists and the scum of the nether world. There were
sketches to be made of such characters as Mrs. Cooper, the deserted wife
of Jack Cooper, a famous gypsy prize-fighter. With her he would sit “in
her little tent after she had taken her cup of tea . . . and hear her
talk of old times and things: how Jack courted her ’neath the trees of
Loughton Forest, and how, when tired of courting, they would get up and
box.” There were suggestions to be offered of such personalities as the
“dark, mysterious, beautiful, terrible creature,” with a lovely gypsy
face, but an expression “evil—evil to a degree,” who was a puzzle to all
the inhabitants of the gypsery, now dukkering for servant girls or
bandying slang with butcher-boys, and anon “in a beautiful half
riding-dress, her hair fantastically plaited and adorned with pearls,
standing beside the carriage of a countess telling the fortune of her
ladyship with the voice and look of a pythoness.” There were stories to
be told of the encampment at Latimer’s Green in the north of London, and
of the rookery at “The Mount,” in the East End, and there was a biography
to be related of that tremendous fellow, Ryley Bosvil, the tinker who
wore gold pieces for coat-buttons, who had two wives, gave himself grand
airs, and composed Romany verses, of which the following ode to one of
his better halves is a spirited specimen—the translation is Borrow’s:
“Beneath the bright sun there is none, there is none,
I love like my Yocky Shuri;
With the greatest delight in blood I would fight
To the knees for my Yocky Shuri!”
But in all these literary excursions into gypsydom, the effervescence had
gone. It was left for other pens to transmute the gorgio’s impressions
of the Romany into real poetry. And even Borrow’s own adventures in
these later times are better described by another than by himself.
Mr. Watts-Dunton relates one of the best gypsy stories ever told about
Borrow. It arose out of a discussion between them as to the probable
nature of the appeal, if any, which Matthew Arnold’s poem of “The Scholar
Gypsy” would make to a real Romany chi. Borrow had ventured the opinion
that whatever might be the poetical merits of Arnold’s work, it was clear
that he had no conception of the Romany temper, and that gypsies would be
unable either to understand its motive or to sympathise with it. Mr.
Watts-Dunton thought, on the contrary, that, however blind a gypsy might
be to the beauties of Arnold’s style, “the motive was so clearly
developed that the most illiterate person could understand it.” They
went off together to a gypsy camp to test the question, agreeing to read
the poem to the first intelligent gypsy woman they should find—for gypsy
men, said Borrow, were “too prosaic to furnish a fair test.” The
encounter with the Romanies came about through the discovery of a magpie
crouching in a hawthorn bush. The bird did not attempt to fly away as
they approached. Mr. Watts-Dunton exclaimed, “It is wounded, or else
dying—or is it a tame bird escaped from a cage?”
“Hawk!” said Borrow laconically, and turned up his face and gazed
into the sky. “The magpie is waiting till the hawk has caught his
quarry and made his meal. I fancy he has himself been ‘chivvied’ by
the hawk, as the gypsies would say.”
And there, sure enough, beneath one of the silver clouds that specked
the dazzling blue, a hawk—one of the kind which takes its prey in the
open rather than in the thick woodlands—was wheeling up and up, and
trying its best to get above a poor little lark in order to stoop at
and devour it. . . .
As Borrow and his friend were gazing at the bird, a woman’s voice at
their elbows said:
“It’s lucky to chivvy the hawk that chivvies a magpie. I shall stop
here till the hawk’s flew away.”
They turned round, and there stood a magnificent gypsy woman,
carrying, gypsy fashion, a weakly child that, in spite of its sallow
and wasted cheek, proclaimed itself to be hers. By her side stood a
young gipsy girl of about seventeen years of age. She was
beautiful—quite remarkably so—but her beauty was not of the typical
Romany kind. It was, perhaps, more like the beauty of a Capri girl.
She was bareheaded—there was not even a gypsy handkerchief on her
head—her hair was not plaited, and was not smooth and glossy like a
gypsy girl’s hair, but flowed thick and heavy and rippling down the
back of her neck and upon her shoulders. In the tumbled tresses
glittered certain objects, which at first sight seemed to be jewels.
They were small dead dragon-flies of the crimson kind called
“sylphs.”
The woman was a well-known gypsy, Perpinia Boswell, with whom both
students were acquainted. Borrow expressed surprise at the condition of
the infant, and remarked that the “chavo” (baby) ought not to look like
that with such a mother. Perpinia agreed. It was a misery to her,
especially as her husband, Mike, was “such a daddy, too,” stronger for a
man than she was for a woman. A great black cutty protruded between the
woman’s teeth.
“How many pipes of tobacco do you smoke in a day?” asked Mr.
Watts-Dunton. She could not say, but the girl ventured the calculation
that it was as many as she could afford to buy. Her husband did not like
her to smoke, and said it made her look “like an old Londra woman in
Common Garding Market.”
“You must not smoke another pipe,” said Borrow’s friend to the
mother—“not another pipe till the child leaves the breast.”
“What?” said Perpinia defiantly. “As if I could live without my
pipe!”
“Fancy Pep a-livin’ without her baccy,” laughed the girl of the
dragon-flies.
“Your child can’t live with it,” said Borrow’s friend to Perpinia.
“That pipe of yours is full of a poison called nicotine.”
“Nick what?” said the girl, laughing. “That’s a new kind o’ Nick.
Why, you smoke yourself!”
“Nicotine,” said Borrow’s friend; “and the first part of Pep’s body
that the poison gets into is her breast, and—”
“Gets into my burk?” said Perpinia; “get along wi’ ye.”
“Yes.”
“Do it poison Pep’s milk?” said the girl.
“Yes.”
“That ain’t true,” said Perpinia; “can’t be true.”
“It _is_ true,” said Borrow’s friend. “If you don’t give up that
pipe for a time the child will die, or else be a rickety thing all
his life. If you _do_ give it up, it will grow up to be as fine a
Romany chal as Mike himself.”
“Chavo agin pipe, Pep,” said the girl.
“Lend me your pipe, Perpinia,” said Borrow, in that
hail-fellow-well-met tone of his which he reserved for the Romanies—a
tone which no Romany could ever resist. And he took it gently from
the woman’s lips. “Don’t smoke any more till I come to the camp and
see the chavo again.”
The woman looked very angry at first.
“He be’s a good-friend to the Romanies,” said the girl in an
appeasing tone.
“That’s true,” said the woman, “but he’s no business to take my pipe
out o’ my mouth for all that.”
She made no further protest, but remained to keep guard over the magpie
which was to bring luck to her chavo, while Borrow walked away with the
pipe in his pocket, accompanied by his friend and the young girl. The
three sat down on a fallen tree to put Arnold’s poem through the crucible
of the gypsy mind. The girl was a beauty of the most entrancing type to
be found among her race, and her loveliness made a strong appeal even to
Borrow, whose taste—the subject of frequent remark—was not so much for
tawny women, however seductive, as for tall and stately fair girls, such
as Isopel Berners and the queens of the North. The gypsy’s complexion,
says Mr. Watts-Dunton,
“though darker than an English girl’s, was rather lighter than any
ordinary gypsy’s. Her eyes were of an indescribable hue, but an
artist who has since then painted her portrait for Borrow’s friend
described it as a mingling of pansy-purple and dark tawny. The
pupils were so large that, being set in the somewhat almond-shaped
and long-eyelashed lids of her race, they were partly curtained both
above and below, and this had the effect of making the eyes seem
always a little contracted and just about to smile. The great size
and deep richness of the eyes made the straight little nose seem
smaller than it really was, they also lessened the apparent size of
the mouth, which, red as a rosebud, looked quite small until she
laughed, when the white teeth made quite a wide glitter.”
The poem was interrupted, before three lines had been read, by a swarm of
dragon-flies which swam in the sunshine around the girl’s head, causing
her to exclaim that the “Devil’s needles” were come to sew up her eyes
for killing their brothers. “I dussn’t set here,” said she. “Us
Romanies call this ‘Dragon-fly brook.’ And that’s the king of the
dragon-flies; he lives here.” The insects presently disappeared, and she
sat down again to hear the lil (book). She was interested in the prose
story of Glanville, on which Arnold’s poem was founded, but the poem
itself bewildered her, except that “her eyes flashed now and then at the
lovely bits of description.” It was read a second time. “Can’t make out
what the lil’s all about—seems all about nothink! Seems to me that the
pretty sights what makes a Romany fit to jump out o’ her skin for joy
makes this ’ere gorgio want to cry. What a rum lot gorgios is sure_ly_!”
And then she sprang up and ran off towards the camp with the agility
of a greyhound, turning round every few moments, pirouetting and
laughing aloud.
“The beauty of that girl,” Borrow again murmured, “is quite—quite—”
Again he did not finish his sentence, but after a while said:
“That was all true about the nicotine?”
“Partly, I think,” said his friend, “but not being a medical man I
must not be too emphatic. If it _is_ true it ought to be a criminal
offence for any woman to smoke in excess while she is suckling a
child.”
“Say it ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all,”
growled Borrow. “Fancy kissing a woman’s mouth that smelt of stale
tobacco—pheugh!”
Borrow did not forget the incident. Perpinia abstained from tobacco, and
in a fortnight, after several visits to the camp, he had the satisfaction
of knowing that the child was recovering from its illness.
“Is not Perpinia very grateful to you and to me?” said the friend.
“Yes,” said Borrow, with a twinkle in his eye. “She manages to feel
grateful to you and me for making her give up the pipe, and also to
believe at the same time that her child was saved by the good luck
that came to her because she guarded the magpie.”