Part 2 (2/2)
”'But what would Mrs. Petulengro say?'
”'Why, to tell you the truth, brother, it was she who first put the thought into my mind. She has always, you know, had strange notions in her head, gorgiko notions, I suppose we may call them, about gentility and the like, and reading and writing. Now, though she can neither read nor write herself, she thinks that she is lost among our people and that they are no society for her. So says she to me one day, ”Pharaoh,” says she, ”I wish you would take another wife, that I might have a little pleasant company. As for these here, I am their betters.” ”I have no objection,” said I; ”who shall it be? Shall it be a Cooper or a Stanley?” ”A Cooper or a Stanley!” said she, with a toss of her head, ”I might as well keep my present company as theirs; none of your rubbish; let it be a _gorgie_, one that I can speak an idea with”-that was her word, I think. Now I am thinking that this here Bess of yours would be just the kind of person both for my wife and myself. My wife wants something gorgiko, something genteel. Now Bess is of blood gorgious; if you doubt it, look in her face, all full of _p.a.w.no ratter_, white blood, brother; and as for gentility, n.o.body can make exceptions to Bess's gentility, seeing she was born in the workhouse of Melford the Short, where she learned to read and write. She is no Irish woman, brother, but English pure, and her father was a farmer.
”'So much as far as my wife is concerned. As for myself, I tell you what, brother, I want a strapper; one who can give and take. The Flying Tinker is abroad, vowing vengeance against us all. I know what the Flying Tinker is, so does Tawno. The Flying Tinker came to our camp. ”d.a.m.n you all,” says he, ”I'll fight the best of you for nothing.”-”Done!” says Tawno, ”I'll be ready for you in a minute.”
So Tawno went into his tent and came out naked. ”Here's at you,”
says Tawno. Brother, Tawno fought for two hours with the Flying Tinker, for two whole hours, and it's hard to say which had the best of it or the worst. I tell you what, brother, I think Tawno had the worst of it. Night came on. Tawno went into his tent to dress himself and the Flying Tinker went his way.
”'Now suppose, brother, the Flying Tinker comes upon us when Tawno is away. Who is to fight the Flying Tinker when he says: ”D---n you, I will fight the best of you”? Brother, I will fight the Flying Tinker for five pounds; but I couldn't for less. The Flying Tinker is a big man, and though he hasn't my science, he weighs five stone heavier.
It wouldn't do for me to fight a man like that for nothing. But there's Bess, who can afford to fight the Flying Tinker at any time for what he's got, and that's three ha'pence. She can beat him, brother; I bet five pounds that Bess can beat the Flying Tinker.
Now, if I marry Bess, I'm quite easy on his score. He comes to our camp and says his say. ”I won't dirty my hands with you,” says I, ”at least not under five pounds; but here's Bess who'll fight you for nothing.” I tell you what, brother, when he knows that Bess is Mrs.
Pharaoh, he'll fight shy of our camp; he won't come near it, brother.
He knows Bess don't like him, and what's more, that she can lick him.
He'll let us alone; at least I think so. If he does come, I'll smoke my pipe whilst Bess is beating the Flying Tinker. Brother, I'm dry, and will now take a cup of ale.'”
Why did Borrow reject this pa.s.sage? Was it owing to his dread of respectability's frowns?-or was it not rather because he felt that here his exaggeration, his departure from the true in quest of the striking, did not recommend itself to his cooler judgment? For those who know anything of the gipsies would say at once that it would have been impossible for Mrs. Petulengro to make this suggestion; and that, even if she had made it, Mr. Petulengro would not have dared to broach it to any English road-girl, least of all to a girl like Isopel Berners. The pa.s.sage, however, is the most interesting doc.u.ment that Dr. Knapp has published.
What may be called the Isopel Berners chapter of Borrow's life was soon to be followed by the ”veiled period”-that is to say, the period between the point where ends 'The Romany Rye' and the point where the Bible Society engages Borrow.
Dr. Knapp's mind seems a good deal exercised concerning this period.
Borrow having chosen to draw the veil over that period, no one has any right to raise it-or, rather, perhaps no one would have had any right to do so had not Borrow himself thrown such a needless mystery around it.
In considering any matter in connexion with Borrow it is always necessary to take into account the secretiveness of his disposition, and also his pa.s.sion for posing. He had a child's fondness for the wonderful. It is through his own love of mystification that students like Dr. Knapp must needs pry into these matters-must needs ask why Borrow drew the veil over seven years-must needs ask whether during the ”veiled period” he led a life of squalid misery, compared with which his sojourn with Isopel Berners in Mumpers' Dingle was luxury, or whether he was really travelling, as he pretended to have been, over the world.
By yielding to his instinct as a born showman he excites a curiosity which would otherwise be unjustifiable. Even if Dr. Knapp had been able to approach Borrow's stepdaughter-which he seems not to have been able to do-it is pretty certain that she could have told him nothing of that mysterious seven years. For about this subject the people to whom Borrow seems to have been most reticent were his wife and her daughter. Indeed, it was not until after his wife's death that he would allude to this period even to his most intimate friends. One of the very few people to whom he did latterly talk with anything like frankness about this period in his life-Dr. Gordon Hake-is dead; and perhaps there is not more than about one other person now living who had anything of his confidence.
With regard to this veiled period, people who read the idyllic pictures in 'Lavengro' and 'The Romany Rye' of the life of a gipsy gentleman working as a hedge-smith in the dingle or by the roadside seem to forget that Borrow was then working not for amus.e.m.e.nt, but for bread, and they forget how scant the bread must have been that could be bought for the odd sixpence or the few coppers that he was able to earn. To those, however, who do not forget this it needs no revelation from doc.u.ments, and none from any surviving friend, to come to the conclusion that as Borrow was mainly living in England during these seven years (continuing for a considerable time his life of a wanderer, and afterwards living as an obscure literary struggler in Norwich), his life was during this period one of privation, disappointment, and gloom. It was for him to decide what he would give to the public and what he would withhold.
The concluding chapter of Dr. Knapp's book is not only pathetic-it is painful. In the summer of 1874 Borrow left London, bade adieu to Mr.
Murray and a few friends, and returned to Oulton-to die. On the 26th of July, 1881, he was found dead in his home at Oulton, in his seventy-ninth year.
II. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, 18281882.
I.
At Birchington-on-Sea one of the most rarely gifted men of our time has just died [April 9th, 1882] after a lingering illness. During the time that his 'Ballads and Sonnets' was pa.s.sing through the press last autumn his health began to give way, and he left London for c.u.mberland. A stay of a few weeks in the Vale of St. John, however, did nothing to improve his health, and he returned much shattered. After a time a numbness in the left arm excited fear of paralysis, and he became dangerously ill.
It is probable, indeed, that nothing but the skill and unwearied attention of Mr. John Marshall saved his life then, as it had done upon several previous occasions. Such of his friends as were then in London-W. B. Scott, Burne Jones, Leyland, F. s.h.i.+elds, Mr. Dunn, and others-feeling the greatest alarm, showed him every affectionate attention, and spared no effort to preserve a life so precious and so beloved. Mr. Seddon having placed at his disposal West Cliff Bungalow, Birchington-on-Sea, he went thither, accompanied by his mother and sister and Mr. Hall Caine, about nine weeks since, but received no benefit from the change, and, gradually sinking from a complication of disorders, he died on Sunday last at 10 P.M.
[Picture: Dante Gabriel Rosette. From a crayon-drawing by himself reproduced by the kind permission of Mrs. W. M. Rossetti]
Were I even competent to enter upon the discussion of Rossetti's gifts as a poet and as a painter, it would not be possible to do so here and at this moment. That the quality of romantic imagination informs with more vitality his work than it can be said to inform the work of any of his contemporaries was recognized at first by the few, and is now (judging from the great popularity of his last volume of poetry) being recognized by the many. And the same, I think, may be said of his painting. Those who had the privilege of a personal acquaintance with him knew how ”of imagination all compact” he was. Imagination, indeed, was at once his blessing and his bane. To see too vividly-to love too intensely-to suffer and enjoy too acutely-is the doom, no doubt, of all those ”lost wanderers from Arden” who, according to the Rosicrucian story, sing the world's songs; and to Rossetti this applies more, perhaps, than to most poets. And when we consider that the one quality in all poetry which really gives it an endurance outlasting the generation of its birth is neither music nor colour, nor even intellectual substance, but the clearness of the seeing; the living breath of imagination-the very qualities, in short, for which such poems as 'Sister Helen' and 'Rose Mary' are so conspicuous-we are driven to the conclusion that Rossetti's poetry has a long and enduring future before it.
A life more devoted to literature and art than his it is impossible to imagine. Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti was born at 38, Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London, on the 12th of May, 1828. He was the first son and second child of Gabriele Rossetti, the patriotic poet, who, born at Vasto in the Abruzzi, settled in Naples, and took an active part in extorting from the Neapolitan king Ferdinand I. the const.i.tution granted in 1820, which const.i.tution being traitorously cancelled by the king in 1821, Rossetti had to escape for his life to Malta with various other persecuted const.i.tutionalists. From Malta Gabriele Rossetti went to England about 1823, where he married in 1826 Frances Polidori, daughter of Alfieri's secretary and sister of Byron's Dr. Polidori. He became Professor of Italian in King's College, London, became also prominent as a commentator on Dante, and died in April, 1854. His children, four in number-Maria Francesca, Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and Christina Georgina-all turned to literature or to art, or to both, and all became famous. There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Rossetti family will hold a position quite unique in the literary and artistic annals of our time.
Young Rossetti was first sent to the private school of the Rev. Mr. Paul in Foley Street, Portland Place, where he remained, however, for only three quarters of a year, from the autumn of 1835 to the summer of 1836.
He next went to King's College School in the autumn of 1836, where he remained till the summer of 1843, having reached the fourth cla.s.s, then conducted by the Rev. Mr. Framley.
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