Lavengro | Page 3

the men with whom they travel, either as wives or as mistresses,
do they get--none of the chivalry which girls in most other grades of
life experience--and none do they expect. In all disputes between
themselves and the men, their associates, they know that the final
argument is the knock-down blow. With the Romany girl, too, this is
the case, to be sure; but then, while the Romany girl, as a rule, owing to
tribal customs, receives the blow in patience, the English girl is apt to
return it, and with vigour. This condition of things gives the English
road-girl a frank independence of bearing which distinguishes her from
girls of all other classes. There is something of the charm of the savage
about her, even to her odd passion for tattoo. No doubt Isopel is an
idealisation of the class; but the class, with all its drawbacks, has a
certain winsomeness for men of Borrow's temperament.
But, unfortunately, his love of the wonderful, his instinct for
exaggeration, asserts itself even here. I need give only one instance of
what I mean. He makes Isopel Berners speak of herself as being taller
than Lavengro. Now, as Borrow gives Lavengro his own character and
physique in every detail, even to the silvery hair and even to the
somewhat peculiar method of sparring, and as he himself stood six feet
two inches, Isopel must have been better adapted to shine as a giantess
in a show than as a fighting woman capable of cowing the "Flaming
Tinman" himself.
It is a very exceptional woman that can really stand up against a trained
boxer, and it is, I believe, or used to be, an axiom among the nomads
that no fighting woman ought to stand more than about five feet ten
inches at the outside. A handsome young woman never looks so superb
as when boxing; but it is under peculiar disadvantages that she spars
with a man, inasmuch as she has, even when properly padded (as
assuredly every woman ought to be) to guard her chest with even more

care than she guards her face. The truth is, as Borrow must have known,
that women, in order to stand a chance against men, must rely upon
some special and surprising method of attack--such, for instance, as
that of the sudden "left-hand body blow" of the magnificent gypsy girl
of whose exploits I told him that day at "Gypsy Ring"--who, when
travelling in England, was attached to Boswell's boxing-booth, and was
always accompanied by a favourite bantam cock, ornamented with a
gold ring in each wattle, and trained to clap his wings and crow
whenever he saw his mistress putting on the gloves--the most beautiful
girl, gypsy or other, that ever went into East Anglia. This "left-hand
body blow" of hers she delivered so unexpectedly, and with such an
engine-like velocity, that but few boxers could "stop it."
But, with regard to Isopel Berners, neither Lavengro, nor the man she
thrashed when he stole one of her flaxen hairs to conjure with, gives the
reader the faintest idea of Isopel's method of attack or defence, and we
have to take her prowess on trust.
In a word, Borrow was content to give us the Wonderful, without
taking that trouble to find for it a logical basis which a literary master
would have taken. And instances might easily be multiplied of this
exaggeration of Borrow's, which is apt to lend a sense of unreality to
some of the most picturesque pages of "Lavengro."

IV. BORROW'S USE OF PATOIS.
Nor does Borrow take much trouble to give organic life to a dramatic
picture by the aid of patois in dialogue. In every conversation between
Borrow's gypsies, and between them and Lavengro, the illusion is
constantly being disturbed by the vocabulary of the speakers. It is hard
for the reader to believe that characters such as Jasper Petulengro, his
wife, and sister Ursula, between whom so much of the dialogue is
distributed, should make use of the complex sentences and book-words
which Borrow, on occasion, puts into their mouths.
I remember once remarking to him upon the value of patois within

certain limits--not only in imaginative but in biographic art.
His answer came in substance to this, that if the matter of the dialogue
be true to nature, the entire verisimilitude of the form is a secondary
consideration.
"Walter Scott," said he, "has run to death the method of patois
dialogue."
He urged, moreover, that the gypsies really are extremely fond of
uncommon and fine words. And this, no doubt, is true, especially in
regard to the women. There is nothing in which the native superiority
of the illiterate Romany woman over the illiterate English woman of
the road is more clearly seen than in the love