Old Familiar Faces

by Theodore Watts-Dunton

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.