Borrow and his wife and stepdaughter settled at Oulton Cottage before the spring of 1840 was over. This house, the property of Mrs. Borrow, was separated from Oulton Broad only by a slope of lawn, at the foot of which was a private boat. Away from the house, but equally near lawn and water stood Borrow’s library—a little peaked octagonal summer house, with toplights and windows. The cottage is gone, but the summer house, now mantled with ivy, where he wrote “The Bible in Spain” and “Lavengro,” is still to be seen. Here, too, he arranged and completed the book written “at considerable intervals during a period of nearly five years passed in Spain—in moments snatched from more important pursuits—chiefly in ventas and posÁdas (inns), whilst wandering through the country in the arduous and unthankful task of distributing the Gospel among its children,”—“The Zincali: or the Gypsies of Spain.” It was published in April, 1841.

This book is a description of Gypsies in Spain and wherever else he has met them, with some history, and, as Borrow says himself, with “more facts than theories.” It abounds in quotations from out of the way Spanish books, but was by far “less the result of reading than of close observation.” It is patched together from scattered notes with little order or proportion, and cannot be regarded as a whole either in intention or effect. Nor is this wholly due to the odd times and places in which it was written. Borrow had never before written a continuous original work of any length. He had formed no clear idea of himself, his public, or his purpose. Personality was strong in him and it had to be expressed. He was full also of extraordinary observation, and this he could not afford to conceal. It was not easy to satisfy the two needs in one coherent book; he hardly tried, and he certainly did not succeed. Ford described it well in his review of “The Bible in Spain”: {148}

“‘The Gypsies of Spain’ was a Spanish olla—a hotchpotch of the jockey tramper, philologist, and missionary. It was a thing of shreds and patches—a true book of Spain; the chapters, like her bundle of unamalgamating provinces, were just held together, and no more, by the common tie of religion; yet it was strange and richly flavoured with genuine borracha. It was the first work of a diffident, inexperienced man, who, mistrusting his own powers, hoped to conciliate critics by leaning on Spanish historians and Gypsy poets.”

Nevertheless, “The Zincali” is a book that is still valuable for these two separate elements of personality and extraordinary observation. Probably Borrow, his publisher, and the public, regarded it chiefly as a work of information, picturesquely diversified, and this it still is, though the increase and systematization of Gypsy studies are said to have superseded it. A book of spirit cannot be superseded. But pure information does not live long, and the fact that its information is inaccurate or incomplete does not rot a book like “The Compleat Angler” or the “Georgics.” Thus it may happen that the first book on a subject is the best, and its successors mere treatises destined to pave the way for other treatises. “The Gypsies of Spain” is still read as no other book on the Gypsy is read. It is still read, not only by those just infected with Gypsy fever, but by men as men. It does not, indeed, survive as a whole, because it never was a whole, but there is a spirit in the best parts sufficiently strong to carry the reader on over the rest.

To-day very few will do more than smile when Borrow says of the Gypsies, that there can be no doubt “they are human beings and have immortal souls,” and that the chief object of his book is to “draw the attention of the Christian philanthropist towards them, especially that degraded and unhappy portion of them, the Gitanos of Spain.” In 1841 many of the Christian public probably felt a slight glow of satisfaction at starting on a book that brought the then certain millenium, of a Christian and English cast, definitely nearer. Probably they liked to know that this missionary called pugilistic combats “disgraceful and brutalising exhibitions”; and they were almost as certainly, as we are to-day, delighted with the descriptions that followed, because it brought for the first time clearly before them a real prize-fighting scene, and the author, a terrible child of fourteen, looking on—“why should I hide the truth?” says he. This excellent moral tone accompanied the reader of 1841 with satisfaction to the end. For example, Borrow describes the Gypsies at Tarifa swindling a country man and woman out of their donkey. When he sees them being treated and fondled by their intending robbers, he exclaims: “Behold, poor humanity, thought I to myself, in the hands of devils; in this manner are human souls ensnared to destruction by the fiends of the pit.” When he sees them departing penniless and without their donkey, the woman bitterly lamenting it, he comments: “Upon the whole, however, I did not much pity them. The woman was certainly not the man’s wife. The labourer had probably left his village with some strolling harlot, bringing with him the animal which had previously served to support himself and a family.” Borrow was a man who pronounced the Bible to be “the wonderful Book which is capable of resolving every mystery.” He was a man, furthermore, who called sorcery simply “a thing impossible,” and thus addressed a writer on chiromancy: “We . . . believe that the lines of the hand have as little connection with the events of life as with the liver and stomach, notwithstanding Aristotle, who you forget was a heathen and cared as little for the Scriptures as the Gitanos, whether male or female.”

Another satisfactory side to Borrow’s public character, as revealed in “The Zincali,” was his contempt for “other nations,” such as Spain—“a country whose name has long and justly been considered as synonymous with every species of ignorance and barbarism.” His voice rises when he says that “avarice has always been the dominant passion in Spanish minds, their rage for money being only to be compared to the wild hunger of wolves for horseflesh in the time of winter; next to avarice, envy of superior talent and accomplishment is the prevailing passion.” These were the people whom he had gone to convert. His contempt for those who were not middle-class Englishmen seemed unmitigated. Speaking of the Gypsies, to whom the schools were open and the laws kinder, he points out that, nevertheless, they remain jockeys and blacksmiths, though it is true they have in part given up their wandering life. But “much,” he says, “will have been accomplished if, after the lapse of a hundred years, one hundred human beings shall have been evolved from the Gypsy stock who shall prove sober, honest, and useful members of society,” i.e., resembling the Spaniards whom he so condemned.

But if men love a big fellow at the street corner bellowing about sin and the wrath to come, they love him better if he was a black sinner before he became white as the driven snow. Borrow reprimanded Spaniard and Gypsy, but he also knew them: there is even a suspicion that he liked them, though in his public black-coated capacity he had to condemn them and regret that their destiny was perdition. Had he not said, in his preface, that he had known the Gypsies for twenty years and that they treated him well because they thought him a Gypsy? and in another place referred to the time when he lived with the English Gypsies? Had he not, in his introductions, spoken of “my brethren, the Smiths,” a phrase then cryptic and only to be explained by revealing his sworn brotherhood with Ambrose Smith, the Jasper Petulengro of later books? He had said, moreover, in a perfectly genuine tone, with no trace of missionary declamation:

“After the days of the great persecution in England against the Gypsies, there can be little doubt that they lived a right merry and tranquil life, wandering about and pitching their tents wherever inclination led them: indeed, I can scarcely conceive any human condition more enviable than Gypsy life must have been in England during the latter part of the seventeenth, and the whole of the eighteenth century, which were likewise the happy days for Englishmen in general; there was peace and plenty in the land, a contented population, and everything went well.”

If a man wishes to condemn the seven deadly sins we tolerate him if in the process they are sufficiently well described. If Borrow described the tinker family as wretched, and their donkey as miserable, he added, “though life, seemingly so wretched, has its charms for these outcasts, who live without care and anxiety, without a thought beyond the present hour, and who sleep as sound in ruined posadas and ventas, or in ravines amongst rocks and pines, as the proudest grandee in his palace at Seville or Madrid.” If he condemned superstition, he yet thought it possibly “founded on a physical reality”; he regarded the moon as the true “evil eye,” and bade men “not sleep uncovered beneath the smile of the moon, for her glance is poisonous, and produces insupportable itching in the eye, and not infrequently blindness.” If he believed in the immortality of the soul, he did not disdain to know the vendor of poisons who was a Gypsy. If he stayed three weeks in Badajoz because he knew he should never meet any people “more in need of a little Christian exhortation” than the Gypsies, he did not fill his pages with three weeks of Christian exhortation, but told the story of the Gypsy soldier, Antonio—how he recognised as a Gypsy the enemy who was about to kill him, and saved himself from the uplifted bayonet by crying “Zincalo, Zincalo!” and then, having been revived by him, sat for hours with his late enemy, who said: “Let the dogs fight and tear each other’s throats till they are all destroyed, what matters it to the Zincali? they are not of our blood, and shall that be shed for them?” This man who, if he had his way, would have washed his face in the blood of the BusnÉ (those who are not Gypsies), this man called Borrow “brother!” If Borrow distributed Testaments, he knew little more of the recipients than a bolt from the blue, or if he did he cared to tell but little. That little is the story of the Gypsy soldier, ChalÉco, who came to him at Madrid in 1838 with a copy of the Testament. He told his story from his cradle up; he imposed himself on Borrow’s hospitality, eating “like a wolf of the Sierra,” and drinking in proportion. Borrow could only escape from him by dining out. When Borrow was imprisoned the fellow drew his sword at the news and vowed to murder the Prime Minister “for having dared to imprison his brother.” In what follows, Borrow reveals in a consummate manner his power of drawing into his vicinity extraordinary events:

“On my release, I did not revisit my lodgings for some days, but lived at an hotel. I returned late one afternoon, with my servant Francisco, a Basque of HernÁni, who had served me with the utmost fidelity during my imprisonment, which he had voluntarily shared with me. The first person I saw on entering was the Gypsy soldier, seated by the table, whereon were several bottles of wine which he had ordered from the tavern, of course on my account. He was smoking, and looked savage and sullen; perhaps he was not much pleased with the reception he had experienced. He had forced himself in, and the woman of the house sat in a corner looking upon him with dread. I addressed him, but he would scarcely return an answer. At last he commenced discoursing with great volubility in Gypsy and Latin. I did not understand much of what he said. His words were wild and incoherent, but he repeatedly threatened some person. The last bottle was now exhausted—he demanded more. I told him in a gentle manner that he had drunk enough. He looked on the ground for some time, then slowly, and somewhat hesitatingly, drew his sword and laid it on the table. It was become dark. I was not afraid of the fellow, but I wished to avoid any thing unpleasant. I called to Francisco to bring lights, and obeying a sign which I made him, he sat down at the table. The Gypsy glared fiercely upon him—Francisco laughed, and began with great glee to talk in Basque, of which the Gypsy understood not a word. The Basques, like all Tartars, and such they are, are paragons of fidelity and good nature; they are only dangerous when outraged, when they are terrible indeed. Francisco to the strength of a giant joined the disposition of a lamb. He was beloved even in the patio of the prison, where he used to pitch the bar and wrestle with the murderers and felons, always coming off victor. He continued speaking Basque. The Gypsy was incensed; and, forgetting the languages in which, for the last hour, he had been speaking, complained to Francisco of his rudeness in speaking any tongue but Castilian. The Basque replied by a loud carcajÁda, and slightly touched the Gypsy on the knee. The latter sprang up like a mine discharged, seized his sword, and, retreating a few steps, made a desperate lunge at Francisco.

“The Basques, next to the Pasiegos, are the best cudgel-players in Spain, and in the world. Francisco held in his hand part of a broomstick, which he had broken in the stable, whence he had just ascended. With the swiftness of lightning he foiled the stroke of ChalÉco, and, in another moment, with a dexterous blow, struck the sword out of his hand, sending it ringing against the wall.

“The Gypsy resumed his seat and his cigar. He occasionally looked at the Basque. His glances were at first atrocious, but presently changed their expression, and appeared to me to become prying and eagerly curious. He at last arose, picked up his sword, sheathed it, and walked slowly to the door, when there he stopped, turned round, advanced close to Francisco, and looked him steadfastly in the face. ‘My good fellow,’ said he, ‘I am a Gypsy, and can read baji. Do you know where you will be this time to-morrow?’ {154} Then laughing like a hyena, he departed, and I never saw him again.

“At that time on the morrow, Francisco was on his death-bed. He had caught the jail fever, which had long raged in the Carcel de la Corte, where I was imprisoned. In a few days he was buried, a mass of corruption, in the Campo Santo of Madrid.”

Having attracted the event, he recorded it with a vividness well set off by his own nonchalance. Again and again he was to repeat this triumph of depicting the wild, and the wild in a condition of activity and often fury.

His success is all the greater because it is unexpected. He sets out “to direct the attention of the public towards the Gypsies; but he hopes to be able to do so without any romantic appeals on their behalf.” He is far from having a romantic tone. He wields, as a rule, with any amount of dignity the massive style of the early Victorian “Quarterly Review” and Lane’s so-called “Arabian Nights.” Thus, speaking of Gypsy fortune-tellers, he says: “Their practice chiefly lies among females, the portion of the human race most given to curiosity and credulity.” Sentences like this always remind me of Lord Melbourne’s indignation at the thought of religion intruding on private life. His indignation is obviously of the same period as the sentence: “Among the Zingari are not a few who deal in precious stones, and some who vend poisons; and the most remarkable individual whom it has been my fortune to encounter amongst the Gypsies, whether of the Eastern or Western world, was a person who dealt in both these articles.” A style like this resembles a paunchy man who can be relied on not to pick the daisies. At times Borrow writes as if he were translating, as in “The anvil rings beneath the thundering stroke, hour succeeds hour, and still endures the hard sullen toil.” He adds a little vanity of no value by a Biblical echo now and again, as in the clause: “And it came to pass, moreover, that the said Fajardo . . . ” or in “And the chief of that camp, even Mr. Petulengro, stood before the encampment. . . .”

This is a style for information, instruction, edification, and intervals of sleep. It is the style of an age, a class, a sect, not of an individual. Deeds and not words are what count in it. Only by big, wild, or extraordinary things can it be compelled to a semblance of life. Borrow gives it such things a hundred times, and they help one another to be effective. The reader does not forget the Gypsies of Granada:

“Many of them reside in caves scooped in the sides of the ravines which lead to the higher regions of the Alpujarras, on a skirt of which stands Granada. A common occupation of the Gitanos of Granada is working in iron, and it is not infrequent to find these caves tenanted by Gypsy smiths and their families, who ply the hammer and forge in the bowels of the earth. To one standing at the mouth of the cave, especially at night, they afford a picturesque spectacle. Gathered round the forge, their bronzed and naked bodies, illuminated by the flame, appear like figures of demons; while the cave, with its flinty sides and uneven roof, blackened by the charcoal vapours which hover about it in festoons, seems to offer no inadequate representation of fabled purgatory.”

The picture of the Gitana of Seville hands on some of its own power to the quieter pages, and at length, with a score of other achievements of the same solid kind, kindles well-nigh every part of the shapeless book. I shall quote it at length:

“If there be one being in the world who, more than another, deserves the title of sorceress (and where do you find a word of greater romance and more thrilling interest?), it is the Gypsy female in the prime and vigour of her age and ripeness of her understanding—the Gipsy wife, the mother of two or three children. Mention to me a point of devilry with which that woman is not acquainted. She can at any time, when it suits her, show herself as expert a jockey as her husband, and he appears to advantage in no other character, and is only eloquent when descanting on the merits of some particular animal; but she can do much more; she is a prophetess, though she believes not in prophecy; she is a physician, though she will not taste her own philters; she is a procuress, though she is not to be procured; she is a singer of obscene songs, though she will suffer no obscene hands to touch her; and though no one is more tenacious of the little she possesses, she is a cutpurse and a shoplifter whenever opportunity shall offer. . . . Observe, for example, the Gitana, even her of Seville.

“She is standing before the portals of a large house in one of the narrow Moorish streets of the capital of Andalusia; through the grated iron door, she looks in upon the court; it is paved with small marble slabs of almost snowy whiteness; in the middle is a fountain distilling limpid water, and all around there is a profusion of macetas, in which flowering plants and aromatic shrubs are growing, and at each corner there is an orange tree, and the perfume of the azahÁr may be distinguished; you hear the melody of birds from a small aviary beneath the piazza which surrounds the court, which is surrounded by a toldo or linen awning, for it is the commencement of May, and the glorious sun of Andalusia is burning with a splendour too intense for its rays to be borne with impunity. It is a fairy scene such as nowhere meets the eye but at Seville, or perhaps at Fez and Shiraz, in the palaces of the Sultan and the Shah. The Gypsy looks through the iron-grated door, and beholds, seated near the fountain, a richly dressed dame and two lovely delicate maidens; they are busied at their morning’s occupation, intertwining with their sharp needles the gold and silk on the tambour; several female attendants are seated behind. The Gypsy pulls the bell, when is heard the soft cry of ‘Quien es’; the door, unlocked by means of a string, recedes upon its hinges, when in walks the Gitana, the witch-wife of Multan, with a look such as the tiger-cat casts when she stealeth from her jungle into the plain.

“Yes, well may you exclaim, ‘Ave Maria purissima,’ ye dames and maidens of Seville, as she advances towards you; she is not of yourselves, she is not of your blood, she or her fathers have walked to your clime from a distance of three thousand leagues. She has come from the far East, like the three enchanted kings to Cologne; but unlike them she and her race have come with hate and not with love. She comes to flatter, and to deceive, and to rob, for she is a lying prophetess, and a she-Thug; she will greet you with blessings which will make your heart rejoice, but your heart’s blood would freeze, could you hear the curses which to herself she murmurs against you; for she says, that in her children’s veins flows the dark blood of the ‘husbands,’ whilst in those of yours flows the pale tide of the ‘savages,’ and therefore she would gladly set her foot on all your corses first poisoned by her hands. For all her love—and she can love—is for the Romas; and all her hate—and who can hate like her?—is for the Busnees; for she says that the world would be a fair world were there no Busnees, and if the Romamiks could heat their kettles undisturbed at the foot of the olive trees; and therefore she would kill them all if she could and if she dared. She never seeks the houses of the Busnees but for the purpose of prey; for the wild animals of the sierra do not more abhor the sight of man than she abhors the countenances of the Busnees. She now comes to prey upon you and to scoff at you. Will you believe her words? Fools! do you think that the being before ye has any sympathy for the like of you?

“She is of the middle stature, neither strongly nor slightly built, and yet her every movement denotes agility and vigour. As she stands erect before you, she appears like a falcon about to soar, and you are almost tempted to believe that the power of volation is hers; and were you to stretch forth your hand to seize her, she would spring above the house-tops like a bird. Her face is oval, and her features are regular but somewhat hard and coarse, for she was born amongst rocks in a thicket, and she has been wind-beaten and sun-scorched for many a year, even like her parents before her; there is many a speck upon her cheek, and perhaps a scar, but no dimples of love; and her brow is wrinkled over, though she is yet young. Her complexion is more than dark, for it is almost that of a Mulatto; and her hair, which hangs in long locks on either side of her face, is black as coal, and coarse as the tail of a horse, from which it seems to have been gathered.

“There is no female eye in Seville can support the glance of hers, so fierce and penetrating, and yet so artful and sly, is the expression of their dark orbs; her mouth is fine and almost delicate, and there is not a queen on the proudest throne between Madrid and Moscow who might not, and would not, envy the white and even rows of teeth which adorn it, which seem not of pearl but of the purest elephant’s bone of Multan. She comes not alone; a swarthy two-year old bantling clasps her neck with one arm, its naked body half extant from the coarse blanket which, drawn round her shoulders, is secured at her bosom by a skewer. Though tender of age it looks wicked and sly, like a veritable imp of Roma. Huge rings of false gold dangle from wide slits in the lobes of her ears; her nether garments are rags, and her feet are cased in hempen sandals. Such is the wandering Gitana, such is the witch-wife of Multan, who has come to spae the fortune of the Sevillian countess and her daughters.

“‘O may the blessing of Egypt light upon your head, you high-born Lady! (May an evil end overtake your body, daughter of a Busnee harlot!) and may the same blessing await the two fair roses of the Nile here flowering by your side! (May evil Moors seize them and carry them across the water!) O listen to the words of the poor woman who is come from a distant country; she is of a wise people, though it has pleased the God of the sky to punish them for their sins by sending them to wander through the world. They denied shelter to the Majari, whom you call the queen of heaven, and to the Son of God, when they flew to the land of Egypt, before the wrath of the wicked king; it is said that they even refused them a draught of the sweet waters of the great river when the blessed two were athirst. O you will say that it was a heavy crime; and truly so it was, and heavily has the Lord punished the Egyptians. He has sent us a-wandering, poor as you see, with scarcely a blanket to cover us. O blessed lady (accursed be thy dead as many as thou mayest have), we have no money to purchase us bread; we have only our wisdom with which to support ourselves and our poor hungry babes; when God took away their silks from the Egyptians, and their gold from the Egyptians, he left them their wisdom as a resource that they might not starve. O who can read the stars like the Egyptians? and who can read the lines of the palm like the Egyptians? The poor woman read in the stars that there was a rich ventura for all of this goodly house, so she followed the bidding of the stars and came to declare it. O blessed lady (I defile thy dead corse), your husband is at Granada, fighting with King Ferdinand against the wild Corahai! (May an evil ball smite him and split his head!) Within three months he shall return with twenty captive Moors, round the neck of each a chain of gold. (God grant that when he enter the house a beam may fall upon him and crush him!) And within nine months after his return God shall bless you with a fair chabo, the pledge for which you have sighed so long! (Accursed be the salt placed in its mouth in the church when it is baptized!) Your palm, blessed lady, your palm, and the palms of all I see here, that I may tell you all the rich ventura which is hanging over this good house; (May evil lightning fall upon it and consume it!) but first let me sing you a song of Egypt, that the spirit of the Chowahanee may descend more plenteously upon the poor woman.’

“Her demeanour now instantly undergoes a change. Hitherto she has been pouring forth a lying and wild harangue, without much flurry or agitation of manner. Her speech, it is true, has been rapid, but her voice has never been raised to a very high key; but she now stamps on the ground, and placing her hands on her hips, she moves quickly to the right and left, advancing and retreating in a sidelong direction. Her glances become more fierce and fiery, and her coarse hair stands erect on her head, stiff as the prickles of the hedgehog; and now she commences clapping her hands, and uttering words of an unknown tongue, to a strange and uncouth tune. The tawny bantling seems inspired with the same fiend, and, foaming at the mouth, utters wild sounds, in imitation of its dam. Still more rapid become the sidelong movements of the Gitana. Movements! she springs, she bounds, and at every bound she is a yard above the ground. She no longer bears the child in her bosom; she plucks it from thence, and fiercely brandishes it aloft, till at last, with a yell, she tosses it high into the air, like a ball, and then, with neck and head thrown back, receives it, as it falls, on her hands and breast, extracting a cry from the terrified beholders. Is it possible she can be singing? Yes, in the wildest style of her people; and here is a snatch of the song, in the language of Roma, which she occasionally screams:

“En los sastos de yesque plai me diquÉlo,
DoscusaÑas de sonacai terÉlo,—
Corojai diquÉlo abillar,
Y ne asislo chapescar, chapescar.”

“On the top of a mountain I stand,
With a crown of red gold in my hand,—
Wild Moors come trooping o’er the lea,
O how from their fury shall I flee, flee, flee?
O how from their fury shall I flee?

Such was the Gitana in the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, and much the same is she now in the days of Isabel and Christina. . . .”

Here, it is true, there is a substantial richly-coloured and strange subject matter, such as could hardly be set down in any way or by anyone without attracting the attention. Borrow makes it do more than this. The word “extant” may offend a little, but the writer can afford many such blemishes, for he has life in his pen. He is, as it were himself substantial, richly-coloured, strange and with big strokes and splashes he suggests the thing itself. There have been writers since Borrow’s day who have thought to use words so subtly that they are equivalent to things, but in the end their words remain nothing but words. Borrow uses language like a man, and we forget his words on account of the vividness of the things which they do not so much create as evoke. I do not mean that it can be called unconscious art, for it is naively conscious and delighting in itself. The language is that of an orator, a man standing up and addressing a mass in large and emphatic terms. He succeeds not only in evoking things that are very much alive, but in suggesting an artist that is their equal, instead of one, who like so many more refined writers, is a more or less pathetic admirer of living things. In this he resembles Byron. It may not be the highest form of art, but it is the most immediate and disturbing and genial in its effect. Finally, the whole book has body. It can be browsed on. It does not ask a particular mood, being itself the result of no one mood, but of a great part of one man’s life. Turn over half a dozen pages and a story, or a picture, or a bit of costume, or of superstition, will invariably be the reward. It reads already like a book rather older than it really is, but not because it has faded. There was nothing in it to fade, being too hard, massive and unvarnished. It remains alive, capable of surviving the Gypsies except in so far as they live within it and its fellow books.