Part 3 (1/2)
East Anglia has for centuries been a favourite roaming ground for certain of the families of the true Romany tribe. The reason for this, a.s.signed by the gipsies themselves, is not a flattering one to East Englanders.
They will tell you, if you are in their confidence, that they come to East Anglia on account of the simplicity and gullibility of its inhabitants. Nowhere else can the swarthy _chals_ find _gorgios_ so ready to purchase a doctored nag, or the dark-eyed _chis_ so easily cozen credulous villagers and simple servant-girls by the mysteries of _dukkeripen_. Every fair-ground and race-course is dotted with their travelling vans; the end of every harvest sees them congregate on the village greens; the ”making up” of the North Sea fis.h.i.+ng-boats attracts them to the Eastern coast.
It may well be that Borrow first made the acquaintance of the Romanies when a child at East Dereham, for there is a heath just outside the little town which has long been their central halting-place for the district. If this was the case, he has left no record of such a meeting: in all probability, had his wondering eyes rested upon their unfamiliar faces and smouldering camp-fires he would have shared the childish fears instilled by kitchen and nursery legends and have fled the scene. It was outside Norman Cross that he first came into close contact with the alien wanderers. Straying into a green lane he fell in with a low tent from which smoke was issuing, and in front of which a man was carding plaited straw, while a woman was engaged in the manufacture of spurious coin.
Their queer appearance, so unlike that of any men or women he had hitherto encountered, excited his lively curiosity; but, ere he had time to examine them closely, they were down upon him with threats and curses.
Violence was about to be done to him when a viper, which he had concealed in his jacket, lifted its head from his bosom, and the gipsies' wrath at being discovered changed to awe of one who fearlessly handled such a deadly creature. From that day Borrow's interest in the Romany tribe continued to widen and deepen, until, at length, when fame and fortune were his, it led him to take extended journeys into Hungary, Wallachia, and other European countries for the purpose of searching out the descendants of the original wanderers from the East and learning from them their language, customs and history.
Borrow himself says that he could remember no time when the mere mention of the name of gipsy did not awaken within him feelings hard to be described. He could not account for it, but some of the Romanies, he remarks, ”to whom I have stated this circ.u.mstance have accounted for it on the supposition that the soul which at present animates my body has at some former period tenanted that of one of their people, for many among them are believers in metempsychosis and, like the followers of Bouddha, imagine that their souls by pa.s.sing through an infinite number of bodies, attain at length sufficient purity to be admitted to a state of perfect rest and quietude, which is the only idea of heaven they can form.”
The Norwich Castle Hill provided Borrow with many opportunities of observing the habits of the East Anglian Romanies, who, in his day, attended in considerable numbers the horse sales and fairs that were held in the old city. Thither would come the Smiths or Petulengros, Bosviles, Grays and Pinfolds; and often, when they left the Hill, he would accompany them to their camps on Mousehold Heath and to neighbouring fairs and markets. Their daring horsemans.h.i.+p fascinated him, while the strange tongue they employed amongst themselves when bargaining with the farmers and dealers, aroused in him a curiosity that could only be satisfied by a closer acquaintance with its form and meaning. Many of the _chals_ and _chis_ to be met with in ”Lavengro” and ”The Romany Rye”
were transferred to the pages of those works from the East Anglian heaths and fairsteads. It was on a heath not far from his Suffolk home that he introduced the Jew of Fez to Jasper Petulengro in order that he might refute the theory entertained by one of his critics that the Romanies were nothing less than the descendants of the two lost tribes of Israel.
The village of Oulton, too, gave him many chances of intercourse with the gipsies. Within five minutes' walk of his home there is a spot where they frequently a.s.sembled, and where a few of them may sometimes be seen even at the present day. The writer has reason to know that the gipsies looked upon Borrow with no small amount of curiosity, for they were unaccustomed to meet with _gorgios_ of his position who took so keen an interest in their sayings and doings. As a rule, they are exceedingly suspicious of the approaches of any one outside the Romany pale; and it must not be a.s.sumed that he was popular with them because he usually succeeded in extracting from them the information he required. There was something about Borrow that made it hard to evade his questioning; he had such a masterful way with him, and his keen eyes fixed upon a man as though they would pierce him through and read his most secret thoughts.
He himself attributes his success with the gipsies to his knowledge of the Romany tongue and customs, while they firmly believed that he had gipsy blood in his veins. ”He has known them,” he says, writing of himself as the author of ”The Zincali,” ”for upwards of twenty years in various countries, and they never injured a hair of his head or deprived him of a shred of his raiment; but he is not deceived as to the motive of their forbearance: they thought him a _Rom_, and on this supposition they hurt him not, their love of 'the blood' being their most distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic.” This error on their part served his purpose well, as it enabled him to obtain from them a great deal of curious knowledge that would never have come into his possession had it been known he was one of the despised _gorgios_. He was known amongst them as the Romany Rye; but that is a name by which, even at the present day, they distinguished any stranger who can ”rokkra Romany” to the extent of a dozen words.
Although Borrow spent so much time amongst the East Anglian gipsies, it is often difficult to ascertain the exact localities in which he met with them. He seldom condescends to give the date of any incident, and as infrequently does he choose to enlighten us as to his precise whereabouts when it occurred. Then, too, one might conclude that his investigations were almost wholly confined to two families, those of the Smiths or Petulengros, and Hernes. As Mr. Watts has aptly remarked, one would imagine from all that is said about these families in ”Lavengro” and ”The Romany Rye” that he knew nothing about the other Romanies of the Eastern Counties. Yet he must have been familiar also with the Bosviles, Grays, and Pinfolds, some descendants of whom still haunt the heaths and greens of Eastern England. According to Borrow, the Petulengros were continually turning up wherever he might wander. Jasper Petulengro's nature seems something akin to that of the Wandering Jew; and yet, if we may believe ”Lavengro” and our own knowledge, the Smiths look upon East Anglia as their native heath. First, he appears in the green lane near Norman Cross; then at Norwich Fair and on Mousehold Heath; again at Greenwich Fair, where he tries to persuade Lavengro to take to the gipsy life; and once more in the neighbourhood of the noted dingle of the Isopel Berners episode. This, of course, is due to the exigencies of what Mr. Watts calls a ”spiritual biography,” and it is evident that whenever anything particularly striking pertaining to the Romanies occurs to Borrow the Romanies themselves promptly appear to ill.u.s.trate it.
Yet we know that Jasper Petulengro was a genuine character, even if he comes to us under a fict.i.tious name. He was a representative of one of the oldest of the East Anglian gipsy families, and a personal friend of Borrow, who found in him much that was in common with his own nature.
Borrow has left a dependable record of a meeting which took place between them at his Oulton home, during the Christmas of 1842. ”He stayed with me during the greater part of the morning, discoursing on the affairs of Egypt, the aspect of which, he a.s.sured me, was becoming daily worse and worse. There is no living for the poor people, brother, said he, the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly, that they grudge our cattle a bite of gra.s.s by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon. Unless times alter, brother, and of that I see no probability, unless you are made either poknees or mecralliskoe geiro (Justice of the Peace or Prime Minister), I am afraid the poor persons will have to give up wandering altogether, and then what will become of them?”
Yet there was much of Borrow's nature that was in common with that of Jasper Petulengro. Often the swarthy, horse-dealing gipsy was the mouthpiece through which he breathed forth his own abhorrence of conventional restraints and the thronging crowds of busy streets. He loved the open air country life that he lived near the Suffolk coast, where the fresh salt winds sweep up from the sea across gorse-clad denes and pleasant pasture-lands. He was happiest when amongst the ”summer saturated heathen” of the heath and glen. Who can doubt that the much-quoted conversation in the twenty-fifth chapter of ”Lavengro,” gives expression to much of Borrow's own philosophy?
”Life is sweet, brother.”
”Do you think so?”
”Think so! There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?”
”I would wish to die?”
”You talk like a gorgio-which is the same as talking like a fool-were you a Romany chal you would talk wiser. Wish to die, indeed! A Romany chal would wish to live for ever!”
”In sickness, Jasper?”
”There's the sun and stars, brother.”