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.