Old Familiar Faces

by Theodore Watts-Dunton

I.

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.

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:—

STANYAKERÉSKI.

Romano ráia, prala, jinimángro,
Konyo chumeráva to chīkát,
Shukar java mangi, ta mukáva
Tut te ’jâ kamdóm me—kushki rat!

Kamli, savimáski, sas i sarla,
Baro zī sas tut, sar, tarno rom,
Lhatián i jivimáski patrin,
Ta līán o purikeno drom.

Boshadé i chiriklé veshténdi;
Sanilé ’pre tuti chal ta chai;
Mūri, pūv ta pāni tu kamésas
Dudyerás o sonakó lilaí.

Palla ’vena brishin, shil, la baval:
Sa’o divés tu murshkinés pīrdán:
Ako kino ’vesa, rat avéla,
Chēros sī te kesa tiro tan.

Parl o tamlo merimásko pāni
Dava tuki miro vast, ta so
Tu kamésas tire kokoréski
Mai kamáva—“Te sovés mīstō!”

Translation.

to francis hindes groome.

Scholar, Gypsy, Brother, Student,
Peacefully I kiss thy forehead,
Quietly I depart and leave
Thee whom I loved—“Good night.”

Sunny, smiling was the morning;
A light heart was thine, as, a youth,
Thou dids’t strike life’s trail
And take the ancient road.

The birds sang in the woods,
Man and maid laughed on thee,
The hills, field, and water thou didst love
The golden summer illuminated.

Then come the rain, cold, and wind,
All the day thou hast tramped bravely.
Now thou growest weary, night comes on.
It is time to make thy tent.

Across death’s dark stream
I give thee my hand; and what
Thou wouldst have desired for thyself
I wish thee—mayst thou sleep well.

II.

Although novelists, dramatists, and poets are particularly fond of trying to paint the gipsies, it cannot be said that many of them have been successful in their delineations. And this is because the inner and the outer life of a proscribed race must necessarily be unlike each other. Meg Merrilies is no more a gipsy than is Borrow’s delightful Isopel Berners. Among the characteristic traits of the Romany woman, Meg does no doubt exhibit two: a wild poetic imagination and a fearlessness such as women rarely display. But no one who had been brought into personal contact with gipsy women could ever have presented Meg Merrilies as one of them. In the true Romany chi poetic imagination is combined with a homeliness and a positive love of respectability which are very curious. Not that Meg, noble as she is, is superior to the kind of heroic woman that the Romany race is capable of producing. Indeed, the great speciality of the Romanies is the superiority of the women to the men—a superiority which extends to everything, unless, perhaps, we except that gift of music for which the gipsies are noticeable. Even in Eastern

Europe—Russia alone excepted—where gipsy music is so universal that, according to some writers, every Hungarian musician is of Romany extraction, it is the men and not, in general, the women who excel. This, however, may simply be the result of opportunity and training.

It is not merely in intelligence, in imagination, in command over language, in breadth of view regarding the “Gorgio” world around them, that the Romany women, in Great Britain at least, leave the men far behind. In character this superiority is equally noticeable. To imagine a gipsy hero is not easy. The male gipsy is not without a certain amount of courage, but it soon gives way, and in a physical conflict between a gipsy and an Englishman it always seems as though ages of oppression have damped its virility. Although some of our most notable prizefighters have been gipsies, it used to be well known in times when the ring was fashionable that a gipsy could not be relied upon “to take punishment” with the stolid indifference of an Englishman or a negro, partly, perhaps, because his more highly strung nervous system makes him more sensitive to pain. The courage of a gipsy woman, on the other hand, has passed into a proverb; nothing seems to daunt her, and yet she will allow her husband, a cowardly ruffian himself, perhaps, to strike her without returning the blow. Wife-beating, however, is not common among the gipsies. It may possibly

be the case that some of the fine qualities of the gipsy woman are the result of that very barrenness of fine qualities among the men of which we have been speaking. The lack of masculine chivalry among the men may in some measure account for the irresistible impulse among the women for taking their own part without appealing to the men for aid. Also this may account for the strong way in which a gipsy woman is often drawn to the “Tarno Rye,” the young English gentleman of whom Matthew Arnold was thinking when he wrote the ‘Scholar-Gipsy,’ and her fidelity to whom is so striking. It is often in such relations as these with the Tarno Rye that the instinct of monogamy in the Romany woman is seen. The unconquerable virtue of the Romany chi was often commented upon by Borrow; and, indeed, every observer of gipsy life is struck by it.

Seeing that the moment the Romanies are brought into contact with the Gorgio world they adopt a method of approach entirely different from the natural method—natural to them in intercourse with each other—it is perhaps no wonder that the popular notion of the gipsy girl, taken mainly from the tradition of the stage, is so fantastically wrong. With regard to the stage, no characters in the least like gipsies ever appeared on the boards, save the characters in Tom Taylor’s

‘Sir Roger de Coverley.’ In the eyes of the novelist, as well as in the eyes of the playwright, devilry seems to be the chief characteristic of the gipsy woman. The fact is, however, that in the average gipsy woman as she really exists there is but little devilry. “Romany guile,” which is well defined in the gipsy phrase as “the lie for the Gorgios,” does not prevent gipsy women from retaining some of the most marked characteristics of childhood throughout their lives. This, indeed, is one of their special charms. In his desire to depict the supposed devilry of the Romany woman, Prosper Mérimée has perpetrated in ‘Carmen’ the greatest of all caricatures of the gipsy girl. A mere incarnation of lust and bloodthirstiness is more likely to exist in any other race than in the Romanies, who have a great deal of love as a sentiment and comparatively very little of love as a movement of animal desire.

In G. P. R. James’s ‘Gipsy’ (1835) there are touches which certainly show some original knowledge of Romany life and character. The same may, perhaps, be said of Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Bird of Passage,’ but the pictures of gipsy life in these and in all other novels are the merest daubs compared with the Kiomi of George Meredith’s story ‘Harry Richmond.’ Not even Borrow and Groome, with all their intimate knowledge of gipsy life, ever painted a more vigorous picture of the Romany chi

than this. The original was well known in the art circles of London at one time, and was probably known to Meredith, but this does not in any way derogate from the splendour of the imaginative achievement of painting in a few touches a Romany girl who must, one would think, live for ever.

Between some Englishmen and gipsy women there is an extraordinary attraction—an attraction, we may say in passing, 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 Berners, she is physically the very opposite of the Romany chi—a Scandinavian Brynhild, in short.

THE END