George Borrow in East Anglia

by William A. Dutt

Borrow has gone out of his way in “The Gipsies of Spain” to give a full description of this Gipsy Will and his notable companions. At the risk of wearying some readers who deprecate the prize-ring

and its cosmopolitan environment, the writer quotes something of this description, as it appears in one of the less known of Borrow’s works:

“Some time before the commencement of the combat, three men, mounted on wild-looking horses came dashing down the road in the direction of the meadow, in the midst of which they presently showed themselves, their horses clearing the deep ditches with wonderful alacrity. ‘That’s Gipsy Will and his gang,’ lisped a Hebrew pickpocket; ‘we shall have another fight.’ The word gipsy was always sufficient to excite my curiosity, and I looked attentively at the new-comers.

“I have seen gipsies of various lands, Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish; and I have also seen the legitimate children of most countries of the world; but I never saw, upon the whole, three more remarkable individuals, as far as personal appearance was concerned, than the three English gipsies who now presented themselves to my eyes on that spot. Two of them had dismounted, and were holding their horses by the reins. The tallest, and, at the first glance, the most (!) interesting of the two, was almost a giant, for his height could not have been less than six feet three. It is impossible for the imagination to conceive anything more perfectly beautiful than were the features of this man, and the most skilful sculptor of Greece might have taken them as his model for a hero and a god. The forehead was exceedingly lofty, a rare thing in a gipsy; the nose

less Roman than Grecian, fine, yet delicate; the eyes large, overhung with long drooping lashes, giving them almost a melancholy expression; it was only when the lashes were elevated that the gipsy glance was seen, if that can be called a glance which is a strange stare, like nothing else in the world. His complexion was a beautiful olive; and his teeth were of a brilliancy uncommon even among these people, who have all fine teeth. He was dressed in a coarse waggoner’s slop, which, however, was unable to conceal altogether the proportions of his noble and Herculean figure. He might be about twenty-eight. His companion and his captain, Gipsy Will, was, I think, fifty, when he was hanged ten years subsequently. I have still present before me his bushy black hair, his black face, and his big black eyes, fixed and staring. His dress consisted of a loose blue jockey coat, jockey boots and breeches; in his hand was a huge jockey whip, and on his head (it struck me at the time for its singularity) a broad-brimmed, high-peaked, Andalusian hat, or at least one very much resembling those generally worn in that province. In stature he was shorter than his more youthful companion, yet he must have measured six feet at least, and was stronger built, if possible. What brawn! what bone! what legs! what thighs! The third gipsy, who remained on horseback, looked more like a phantom than anything human. His complexion was the colour of pale dust, and of that same colour was all that pertained to him, hat and

clothes. His boots were dusty, of course, and his very horse was of a dusty dun. His features were whimsically ugly, most of his teeth were gone, and as to his age, he might be thirty or sixty. He was somewhat lame and halt; but an unequalled rider when once upon his steed, which he was naturally not very solicitous to quit. I subsequently discovered that he was considered the wizard of the gang.”

Any one who is familiar with the living descendants of the Romanies of Borrow’s early lifetime will know that amongst the few characteristics of their fathers that have been preserved down to the present day is that skill at boxing or fisticuffs which was an absolute necessity in a time when their hand was against every man and every man’s hand against them. Nearly all the male Romanies are possessed of a lithe, sinewy, active frame, combined with a quickness of hand and eye that gives them a considerable advantage over less alert antagonists of heavier build. They are not, as a rule, in a hurry to come to blows, for they know that in the event of injury or police-court proceedings resulting from an encounter, prejudice is strongly against the gipsy. Still, the Romany blood pulses quickly, and when it flies to the swarthy cheek and sets the eyes flashing, the time has come for someone to beware. The writer has seen something of the gipsy’s skill and adroitness under such conditions, and the impression made was a lasting one. He has known, too, of a small, slim-built Romany thrashing a strong, six-feet-high

constable, for unwarrantable interference with the former’s mother in a public bar. The Romany race is fast dying out from our midst; but it is dying what the sportsman would call “game.”

Although Borrow’s obvious admiration for the brawny men of the prize-ring brought him almost universal condemnation, his opinions were unchanged by his critics’ wrath and denunciations. There were many points in his father’s character for which he held him in esteem and affection; but he admired him most because he had once vanquished Big Ben Brain in a fight in Hyde Park.

“He was always at his best,” writes Mr. Theodore Watts, “in describing a pugilistic encounter; for in the saving grace of pugilism as an English accomplishment, he believed as devoutly as he believed in East Anglia and the Bible.”