Lavengro | Page 6

the "crwth," or
cruth. I told Borrow her story at Gypsy Ring. Having become, through
the good nature of an eminent Welsh antiquary, the possessor of a
crwth, and having discovered the unique capabilities of that rarely-seen
instrument, she soon taught herself to play upon it with extraordinary

effect, fascinating her Welsh patrons by the ravishing strains she could
draw from it. This obsolete instrument is six-stringed, with two of the
strings reaching beyond the key-board, and a bridge placed, not at right
angles to the sides of the instrument, but in an oblique direction.
Though in some respects inferior to the violin, it is in other respects
superior to it. Sinfi's performances on this remarkable instrument
showed her to be a musical genius of a high order.

VII. MY FIRST MEETING WITH BORROW.
But I am not leaving myself much room for personal reminiscences of
Borrow after all--though these are what I sat down to write.
Dr. Hake, in his memoirs of "Eighty Years," records thus the first
meeting between Borrow and myself at Roehampton, at the doctor's
own delightful house, whose windows at the back looked over
Richmond Park, and in front over the wildest part of Wimbledon
Common.
"Later on, George Borrow turned up while Watts was there, and we
went through a pleasant trio, in which Borrow, as was his wont, took
the first fiddle. The reader must not here take metaphor for music.
Borrow made himself very agreeable to Watts, recited a fairy tale in the
best style to him, and liked him."
There is, however, no doubt that Borrow would have run away from me
had I been associated in his mind with the literary calling. But at that
time I had written nothing at all save poems, and a prose story or two of
a romantic kind, and even these, though some of the poems have since
appeared, were then known only through private circulation.
About me there was nothing of the literary flavour: no need to flee
away from me as he fled from the writing fraternity. He had not long
before this refused to allow Dr. Hake to introduce the late W. R. S.
Ralston to him, simply because the Russian scholar moved in the
literary world.

With regard to newspaper critiques of books his axiom was that
"whatever is praised by the press is of necessity bad," and he refused to
read anything that was so praised.
After the "fairy tale" mentioned by Dr. Hake was over, we went, at
Borrow's suggestion, for a ramble through Richmond Park, calling on
the way at the "Bald-Faced Stag" in Kingston Vale, in order that
Borrow should introduce me to Jerry Abershaw's sword, which was one
of the special glories of that once famous hostelry. A divine summer
day it was I remember--a day whose heat would have been oppressive
had it not been tempered every now and then by a playful silvery
shower falling from an occasional wandering cloud, whose
slate-coloured body thinned at the edges to a fringe of lace brighter
than any silver.
These showers, however, seemed, as Borrow remarked, merely to give
a rich colour to the sunshine, and to make the wild flowers in the
meadows on the left breathe more freely. In a word, it was one of those
uncertain summer days whose peculiarly English charm was Borrow's
special delight. He liked rain, but he liked it falling on the green
umbrella (enormous, shaggy, like a gypsy-tent after a summer storm)
he generally carried. As we entered the Robin Hood Gate we were
confronted by a sudden weird yellow radiance, magical and mysterious,
which showed clearly enough that in the sky behind us there was
gleaming over the fields and over Wimbledon Common a rainbow of
exceptional brilliance, while the raindrops sparkling on the ferns
seemed answering every hue in the magic arch far away. Borrow told
us some interesting stories of Romany superstitions in connection with
the rainbow--how, by making a "trus'hul" (cross) of two sticks, the
Romany chi who "pens the dukkerin can wipe the rainbow out of the
sky," etc. Whereupon Hake, quite as original a man as Borrow, and a
humourist of a still rarer temper, launched out into a strain of wit and
whim, which it is not my business here to record, upon the subject of
the "Spirit of the Rainbow" which a certain child went out to find.
Borrow loved Richmond Park, and he seemed to know every tree. I
found also that he was extremely learned in deer, and seemed familiar

with every dappled coat which, washed and burnished by the showers,
seemed to shine in the sun like metal. Of course, I observed him closely,
and I began to wonder whether I had encountered, in the silvery-haired
giant striding by