Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic. Douglas James

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      “It was in the late summer, just before the trees were clothed with what Dereham called ‘gypsy gold,’ and the bright green of the foliage showed scarcely a touch of bronze – at that very moment, indeed, when the spirits of all the wild flowers that have left the commons and the hedgerows seem to come back for an hour and mingle their half-forgotten perfumes with the new breath of calamint, ground ivy, and pimpernel. Dereham gave me as hearty a greeting as so shy a man could give. He told me that he was bound for a certain camp of gryengroes, old friends of his in his wandering days. In conversation I reminded him of our previous talk, and I told him I chanced at that very moment to have in my pocket a copy of the volume of Matthew Arnold in which appears ‘The Scholar-Gypsy.’ Dereham said he well remembered my directing his attention to ‘The Scholar-Gypsy.’ After listening attentively to it, Dereham declared that there was scarcely any latter-day poetry worth reading, and also that, whatever the merits of Matthew Arnold’s poem might be, from any supposed artistic point of view, it showed that Arnold had no conception of the Romany temper, and that no gypsy could sympathise with it, or even understand its motive in the least degree. I challenged this, contending that howsoever Arnold’s classic language might soar above a gypsy’s intelligence, the motive was so clearly developed that the most illiterate person could grasp it.

      ‘I wish,’ said Dereham, ‘you would come with me to the camp and try the poem upon the first intelligent gypsy woman we meet at the camp. As to gypsy men,’ said he, ‘they are too prosaic to furnish a fair test.’

      We agreed, and as we were walking across the country Dereham became very communicative, and talked very volubly upon gentility-nonsense, and many other pet subjects of his. I already knew that he was no lover of the aristocracy of England, or, as he called them, the ‘trumpery great,’ although in other regards he was such a John Bull. By this time we had proceeded a good way on our little expedition. As we were walking along, Dereham’s eyes, which were as longsighted as a gypsy’s, perceived a white speck in a twisted old hawthorn-bush some distance off. He stopped and said: ‘At first I thought that white speck in the bush was a piece of paper, but it’s a magpie,’ – next to the water-wagtail, the gypsies’ most famous bird. On going up to the bush we discovered a magpie couched among the leaves. As it did not stir at our approach, I said to him: ‘It is wounded – or else dying – or is it a tamed bird escaped from a cage?’ ‘Hawk!’ said Dereham laconically, and turned up his face and gazed into the sky. ‘The magpie is waiting till the hawk has caught his quarry and made his meal. I fancied he has himself been ‘chivvied’ by the hawk, as the gypsies would say.’

      And there, sure enough, beneath one of the silver clouds that speckled the dazzling blue, a hawk – one of the kind which takes its prey in the open rather than in the thick woodlands – was wheeling up and up, trying its best to get above a poor little lark in order to swoop at and devour it. That the magpie had seen the hawk and had been a witness of the opening of the tragedy of the lark was evident, for in its dread of the common foe of all well-intentioned and honest birds, it had forgotten its fear of all creatures except the hawk. Man, in such a crisis as this, it looked upon as a protecting friend.

      As we were gazing at the bird a woman’s voice at our elbows said, —

      ‘It’s lucky to chivvy the hawk what chivvies a magpie. I shall stop here till the hawk’s flew away.’

      We turned round, and there stood a fine young gypsy woman, carrying, gypsy fashion, a weakly child that in spite of its sallow and wasted cheek proclaimed itself to be hers. By her side stood a young gypsy girl. She was beautiful – quite remarkably so – but her beauty was not of the typical Romany kind. It was, as I afterwards learned, more like the beauty of a Capri girl.

      She was bareheaded – there was not even a gypsy handkerchief on her head – her hair was not plaited, and was not smooth and glossy like a gypsy girl’s hair, but flowed thick and heavy and rippling down the back of her neck and upon her shoulders. In the tumbled tresses glittered certain objects, which at first sight seemed to be jewels. They were small dead dragonflies, of the crimson kind called ‘sylphs.’

      To Dereham these gypsies were evidently well known. The woman with the child was one of the Boswells; I dare not say what was her connection, if any, with ‘Boswell the Great’ – I mean Sylvester Boswell, the grammarian and ‘well-known and popalated gypsy of Codling Gap,’ who, on a memorable occasion, wrote so eloquently about the superiority of the gypsy mode of life to all others, ‘on the accont of health, sweetness of air, and for enjoying the pleasure of Nature’s life.’

      Dereham told me in a whisper that her name was Perpinia, and that the other gypsy, the girl of the dragon-flies, was the famous beauty of the neighbourhood – Rhona Boswell, of whom many stories had reached him with regard to Percy Aylwin, a relative of Rosamond’s father.

      After greeting the two, Dereham looked at the weakling child with the deepest interest, and said to the mother: ‘This chavo ought not to look like that – with such a mother as you, Perpinia.’ ‘And with such a daddy, too,’ said she. ‘Mike’s stronger for a man nor even I am for a woman’ – a glow of wifely pride passing over her face; ‘and as to good looks, it’s him as has got the good looks, not me. But none on us can’t make it out about the chavo. He’s so weak and sick he don’t look as if he belonged to Boswell’s breed at all.’

      ‘How many pipes of tobacco do you smoke in a day?’ said I, looking at the great black cutty pipe protruding from Perpinia’s finely cut lips, and seeming strangely out of place there.

      ‘Can’t say,’ said she, laughing.

      ‘About as many as she can afford to buy,’ interrupted ‘the beauty of the Ouse,’ as Rhona Boswell was called. ‘That’s all. Mike don’t like her a-smokin’. He says it makes her look like a old Londra Irish woman in Common Garding Market.’

      ‘You must not smoke another pipe,’ said I to the mother – ‘not another pipe till the child leaves the breast.’

      ‘What?’ said Perpinia defiantly. ‘As if I could live without my pipe!’

      ‘Fancy Pep a-living without her baccy!’ laughed Rhona.

      ‘Your child can’t live with it,’ said I to Perpinia. ‘That pipe of yours is full of a poison called nicotine.’

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