Lavengro | Page 8

the Dingle,
and lived alone--went there not as an experiment in self-education, as
Thoreau went and lived by Walden Pond. He could enjoy living alone,
for the 'horrors' to which he was occasionally subject did not spring
from solitary living. He was never disturbed by passion as was the
nature- worshipper who once played such selfish tricks with Sinfi
Lovell, and as Emily Bronte would certainly have been had she been
placed in such circumstances as Charlotte Bronte placed Shirley."
"But the most damning thing of all," said Hake, "is that umbrella,
gigantic and green: a painful thought that has often occurred to me."
"Passion has certainly never disturbed his nature-worship," said I. "So
devoid of passion is he that to depict a tragic situation is quite beyond
his powers. Picturesque he always is, powerful never. No one reading
an account of the privations of Lavengro during the 'Joseph Sell' period
finds himself able to realise from Borrow's description the misery of a
young man tenderly reared, and with all the pride of an East Anglian
gentleman, living on bread and water in a garret, with starvation staring
him in the face. It is not passion," I said to Hake, "that prevents Borrow
from enjoying the peace of the nature-worshipper. It is Ambition! His
books show that he could never cleanse his stuffed bosom of the
perilous stuff of ambition. To become renowned, judging from many a
peroration in 'Lavengro,' was as great an incentive to Borrow to learn
languages as to Alexander Smith's poet-hero it was an incentive to
write poetry."
"Ambition and the green gamp," said Hake. "But, look, the rainbow is
fading from the sky without the intervention of gypsy sorceries, and see
how the ferns are changing colour with the change in the light."
But I soon found that if Borrow was not a perfect Child of the Open Air,
he was something better: a man of that deep sympathy with human kind,

which the "Child of the Open Air" must needs lack.

IX. THE GYPSIES OF NORMAN CROSS.
Knowing Borrow's extraordinary shyness and his great dislike of
meeting strangers, Dr. Hake, while Borrow was trying to get as close to
the deer as they would allow, expressed to me his surprise at the terms
of cordial friendship that sprang up between us during that walk. But I
was not surprised: there were several reasons why Borrow should at
once take to me--reasons that had nothing whatever to do with any
inherent attractiveness of my own.
By recalling what occurred I can throw a more brilliant light upon
Borrow's character than by any kind of analytical disquisition.
Two herons rose from the Ponds and flew away to where they probably
had their nests. By the expression on Borrow's face as he stood and
gazed at them, I knew that, like myself, he had a passion for herons.
"Were there many herons around Whittlesea Mere before it was
drained?" I said.
"I should think so," said he, dreamily, "and every kind of water bird."
Then, suddenly turning round upon me with a start, he said, "But how
do you know that I knew Whittlesea Mere?"
"You say in 'Lavengro' that you played among the reeds of Whittlesea
Mere when you were a child."
"I don't mention Whittlesea Mere in 'Lavengro,'" he said.
"No," said I, "but you speak of a lake near the old State prison at
Norman Cross, and that was Whittlesea Mere."
"Then you know Whittlesea Mere?" said Borrow, much interested.

"I know the place that was Whittlesea Mere before it was drained," I
said, "and I know the vipers around Norman Cross, and I think I know
the lane where you first met Jasper Petulengro. He was a generation
before my time. Indeed, I never was thrown much across the
Petulengroes in the Eastern Counties, but I knew some of the Hernes
and the Lees and the Lovells."
I then told him what I knew about Romanies and vipers, and also gave
him Marcianus's story about the Moors being invulnerable to the viper's
bite, and about their putting the true breed of a suspected child to the
test by setting it to grasp a viper--as he, Borrow, when a child, grasped
one of the vipers of Norman Cross.
"The gypsies," said Borrow, "always believed me to be a Romany. But
surely you are not a Romany Rye?"
"No," I said, "but I am a student of folk-lore; and besides, as it has been
my fortune to see every kind of life in England, high and low, I could
not entirely neglect the Romanies, could I?"
"I should think not," said Borrow, indignantly. "But I hope you don't
know the literary class among the rest."
"Hake is my only link to that dark world," I said;