Chapter XXV: Gorgios and Romanies

THE publication of 'The Coming of Love' in book form preceded that of 'Aylwin' by about a year, but it had been appearing piecemeal in the 'Athenaeum' since 1882.

"So far as regards Rhona Boswell's story," says Mr. Watts-Dunton,
"'The Coming of Love' is a sequel to 'Aylwin.' If the allusions to
Rhona's lover, Percy Aylwin, in the prose story have been, in some
degree, misunderstood by some readers--if there is any danger of
Henry Aylwin, the hero of the novel, being confounded with Percy
Aylwin, the hero of this poem--it only shows how difficult it is for
the poet or the novelist (who must needs see his characters from the
concave side only) to realize that it is the convex side only which
he can present to his reader.

The fact is that the motive of 'Aylwin'--dealing only as it does with
that which is elemental and unchangeable in man--is of so entirely
poetic a nature that I began to write it in verse. After a while,
however, I found that a story of so many incidents and complications
as the one that was growing under my hand could only be told in
prose. This was before I had written any prose at all--yes, it is so
long ago as that. And when, afterwards, I began to write criticism,
I had (for certain reasons--important then, but of no importance now)
abandoned the idea of offering the novel to the outside public at
all. Among my friends it had been widely read, both in manuscript
and in type.

But with regard to Romany women, Henry Aylwin's feeling towards them
was the very opposite of Percy's. When, in speaking of George Borrow
some years ago, I made the remark that between Englishmen of a
certain type and gypsy women there is an extraordinary physical
attraction--an attraction which did not exist between Borrow and the
gypsy women with whom he was brought into contact--I was thinking
specially of the character depicted here under the name of Percy
Aylwin. And I asked then the question--Supposing Borrow to have been
physically drawn with much power towards any woman, could she
possibly have been Romany? Would she not rather have been of the
Scandinavian type?--would she not have been what he used to call a
'Brynhild'? From many conversations with him on this subject, I
think she must necessarily have been a tall blonde of the type of
Isopel Berners--who, by-the-by, was much more a portrait of a
splendid East-Anglian road-girl than is generally imagined. And I
think, besides, that Borrow's sympathy with the Anglo-Saxon type may
account for the fact that, notwithstanding his love of the free and
easy economies of life among the better class of Gryengroes, his
gypsy women are all what have been called 'scenic characters.'

When he comes to delineate a heroine, she is the superb Isopel
Berners--that is to say, she is physically (and indeed mentally,
too), the very opposite of the Romany chi. It was here, as I happen
to know, that Borrow's sympathies were with Henry Aylwin far more
than with Percy Aylwin.

The type of the Romany chi, though very delightful to Henry Aylwin as
regards companionship, had no physical attractions for him, otherwise
the witchery of the girl here called Rhona Boswell, whom he knew as a
child long before Percy Aylwin knew her, must surely have eclipsed
such charms as Winifred Wynne or any other winsome 'Gorgie' could
possess. On the other hand, it would, I believe, have been
impossible for Percy Aylwin to be brought closely and long in contact
with a Romany girl like Sinfi Lovell and remain untouched by those
unique physical attractions of hers--attractions that made her
universally admired by the best judges of female beauty as being the
most splendid 'face-model' of her time, and as being in form the
grandest woman ever seen in the studios--attractions that upon Henry
Aylwin seem to have made almost no impression.

There is no accounting for this, as there is no accounting for
anything connected with the mysterious witchery of sex. And again,
the strong inscrutable way in which some gypsy girls are drawn
towards a 'Tarno Rye' (as a young English gentleman is called), is
quite inexplicable. Some have thought--and Borrow was one of
them--that it may arise from that infirmity of the Romany Chal which
causes the girls to 'take their own part' without appealing to their
men-companions for aid--that lack of masculine chivalry among the men
of their own race.

And now for a word or two upon a matter in connection with 'Aylwin'
and 'The Coming of Love' which interests me more deeply. Some of
those who have been specially attracted towards Sinfi Lovell have had
misgivings, I find, as to whether she is not an idealization, an
impossible Romany chi, and some of those who have been specially
attracted towards Rhona Boswell have had the same misgivings as to
her.

One of the great racial specialities of the Romany is the superiority
of the women to the men. For it is not merely in intelligence, in
imagination, in command over language, in comparative breadth of view
regarding the Gorgio world that the Romany women (in Great Britain,
at least) leave the men far behind. In everything that goes to make
nobility of character this superiority is equally noticeable. To
imagine a gypsy hero is, I will confess, rather difficult. Not that
the average male gypsy is without a certain amount of courage, but it
soon gives way, and, in a conflict between a gypsy and an Englishman,
it always seems as though ages of oppression have damped the virility
of Romany stamina.

Although some of our most notable prize-fighters have been gypsies,
it used to be well known, in times when the ring was fashionable,
that a gypsy could not always be relied upon to 'take punishment'
with the stolid indifference of an Englishman or a negro, partly,
perhaps, because his more highly-strung nervous system makes him more
sensitive to pain.

The courage of a gypsy woman, on the other hand, has passed into a
proverb; nothing seems to daunt it. This superiority of the women to
the men extends to everything, unless, perhaps, we except that gift
of music for which the gypsies as a race are noticeable. With regard
to music, however, even in Eastern Europe (Russia alone excepted),
where gypsy music is so universal that, according to some writers,
every Hungarian musician is of Romany extraction, it is the men, and
not, in general, the women, who excel. Those, however, who knew
Sinfi Lovell may think with me that this state of things may simply
be the result of opportunity and training."