Rafael Sabatini - "The Snare"

John Richardson - "Wacousta (Volume III)"

William Shakespeare - "Measure for Measure"

J. S. Fletcher - "The Paradise Mystery"

The Romany Rye

G >> George Borrow >> The Romany Rye




The madness, or rather foolery, of the English for foreign customs,
dresses, and languages, is not an affair of to-day, or yesterday--
it is of very ancient date, and was very properly exposed nearly
three centuries ago by one Andrew Borde, who under the picture of a
"Naked man, with a pair of shears in one hand, and a roll of cloth
in the other," {3} inserted the following lines along with others:-


"I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here,
Musing in my mind what garment I shall weare;
For now I will weare this, and now I will weare that,
Now I will weare, I cannot tell what.
All new fashions be pleasant to mee,
I will have them, whether I thrive or thee;
What do I care if all the world me fail?
I will have a garment reach to my taile;
Then am I a minion, for I wear the new guise.
The next yeare after I hope to be wise,
Not only in wearing my gorgeous array,
For I will go to learning a whole summer's day;
I will learn Latine, Hebrew, Greek, and French,
And I will learn Dutch, sitting on my bench.
I had no peere if to myself I were true,
Because I am not so, divers times do I rue.
Yet I lacke nothing, I have all things at will
If I were wise and would hold myself still,
And meddle with no matters but to me pertaining,
But ever to be true to God and my king.
But I have such matters rowling in my pate,
That I will and do--I cannot tell what," etc.



CHAPTER IV



On Gentility Nonsense--Illustrations of Gentility.


What is gentility? People in different stations in England--
entertain different ideas of what is genteel, {4} but it must be
something gorgeous, glittering, or tawdry, to be considered genteel
by any of them. The beau-ideal of the English aristocracy, of
course with some exceptions, is some young fellow with an imperial
title, a military personage of course, for what is military is so
particularly genteel, with flaming epaulets, a cocked hat and
plume, a prancing charger, and a band of fellows called generals
and colonels, with flaming epaulets, cocked hats and plumes, and
prancing chargers vapouring behind him. It was but lately that the
daughter of an English marquis was heard to say, that the sole
remaining wish of her heart--she had known misfortunes, and was not
far from fifty--was to be introduced to--whom? The Emperor of
Austria! The sole remaining wish of the heart of one who ought to
have been thinking of the grave and judgment, was to be introduced
to the miscreant who had caused the blood of noble Hungarian
females to be whipped out of their shoulders, for no other crime
than devotion to their country, and its tall and heroic sons. The
middle classes--of course there are some exceptions--admire the
aristocracy, and consider them pinks, the aristocracy who admire
the Emperor of Austria, and adored the Emperor of Russia, till he
became old, ugly, and unfortunate, when their adoration instantly
terminated; for what is more ungenteel than age, ugliness, and
misfortune! The beau-ideal with those of the lower classes, with
peasants and mechanics, is some flourishing railroad contractor:
look, for example, how they worship Mr. Flamson. This person makes
his grand debut in the year 'thirty-nine, at a public meeting in
the principal room of a country inn. He has come into the
neighbourhood with the character of a man worth a million pounds,
who is to make everybody's fortune; at this time, however, he is
not worth a shilling of his own, though he flashes about
dexterously three or four thousand pounds, part of which sum he has
obtained by specious pretences, and part from certain individuals
who are his confederates. But in the year 'forty-nine, he is
really in possession of the fortune which he and his agents
pretended to be worth ten years before--he is worth a million
pounds. By what means has he come by them? By railroad contracts,
for which he takes care to be paid in hard cash before he attempts
to perform them, and to carry out which he makes use of the sweat
and blood of wretches who, since their organization, have
introduced crimes and language into England to which it was
previously almost a stranger--by purchasing, with paper, shares by
hundreds in the schemes to execute which he contracts, and which
are his own devising; which shares he sells as soon as they are at
a high premium, to which they are speedily forced by means of
paragraphs, inserted by himself and agents, in newspapers devoted
to his interest, utterly reckless of the terrible depreciation to
which they are almost instantly subjected. But he is worth a
million pounds, there can be no doubt of the fact--he has not made
people's fortunes, at least those whose fortunes it was said he
would make; he has made them away; but his own he has made,
emphatically made it; he is worth a million pounds. Hurrah for the
millionnaire! The clown who views the pandemonium of red brick
which he has built on the estate which he has purchased in the
neighbourhood of the place of his grand debut, in which every
species of architecture, Greek, Indian, and Chinese, is employed in
caricature--who hears of the grand entertainment he gives at
Christmas in the principal dining-room, the hundred wax-candles,
the waggon-load of plate, and the ocean of wine which form parts of
it, and above all the two ostrich poults, one at the head, and the
other at the foot of the table, exclaims, "Well! if he a'n't bang
up, I don't know who be; why he beats my lord hollow!" The
mechanic of the borough town, who sees him dashing through the
streets in an open landau, drawn by four milk-white horses, amidst
his attendant out-riders; his wife, a monster of a woman, by his
side, stout as the wife of Tamerlane, who weighed twenty stone, and
bedizened out like her whose person shone with the jewels of
plundered Persia, stares with silent wonder, and at last exclaims
"That's the man for my vote!" You tell the clown that the man of
the mansion has contributed enormously to corrupt the rural
innocence of England; you point to an incipient branch railroad,
from around which the accents of Gomorrah are sounding, and beg him
to listen for a moment, and then close his ears. Hodge scratches
his head and says, "Well, I have nothing to say to that; all I know
is, that he is bang up, and I wish I were he;" perhaps he will add-
-a Hodge has been known to add--"He has been kind enough to put my
son on that very railroad; 'tis true the company is somewhat queer,
and the work rather killing, but he gets there half-a-crown a day,
whereas from the farmers he would only get eighteen-pence." You
remind the mechanic that the man in the landau has been the ruin of
thousands and you mention people whom he himself knows, people in
various grades of life, widows and orphans amongst them, whose
little all has been dissipated, and whom he has reduced to beggary
by inducing them to become sharers in his delusive schemes. But
the mechanic says, "Well, the more fools they to let themselves be
robbed. But I don't call that kind of thing robbery, I merely call
it out-witting; and everybody in this free country has a right to
outwit others if he can. What a turn-out he has!" One was once
heard to add, "I never saw a more genteel-looking man in all my
life except one, and that was a gentleman's walley, who was much
like him. It is true that he is rather under-sized, but then
madam, you know, makes up for all."



CHAPTER V



Subject of Gentility continued.


In the last chapter have been exhibited specimens of gentility, so
considered by different classes; by one class power, youth, and
epaulets are considered the ne plus ultra of gentility; by another
class pride, stateliness, and title; by another, wealth and flaming
tawdriness. But what constitutes a gentleman? It is easy to say
at once what constitutes a gentleman, and there are no distinctions
in what is gentlemanly, {5} as there are in what is genteel. The
characteristics of a gentleman are high feeling--a determination
never to take a cowardly advantage of another--a liberal education-
-absence of narrow views--generosity and courage, propriety of
behaviour. Now a person may be genteel according to one or another
of the three standards described above, and not possess one of the
characteristics of a gentleman. Is the emperor a gentleman, with
spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble
Hungarian women? Are the aristocracy gentlefolks, who admire him?
Is Mr. Flamson a gentleman, although he has a million pounds? No!
cowardly miscreants, admirers of cowardly miscreants, and people
who make a million pounds by means compared with which those
employed to make fortunes by the getters up of the South Sea Bubble
might be called honest dealing, are decidedly not gentlefolks. Now
as it is clearly demonstrable that a person may be perfectly
genteel according to some standard or other, and yet be no
gentleman, so it is demonstrable that a person may have no
pretensions to gentility, and yet be a gentleman. For example,
there is Lavengro! Would the admirers of the emperor, or the
admirers of those who admire the emperor, or the admirers of Mr.
Flamson, call him genteel? and gentility with them is everything!
Assuredly they would not; and assuredly they would consider him
respectively as a being to be shunned, despised, or hooted.
Genteel! Why at one time he is a hack author--writes reviewals for
eighteenpence a page--edits a Newgate chronicle. At another he
wanders the country with a face grimy from occasionally mending
kettles; and there is no evidence that his clothes are not seedy
and torn, and his shoes down at the heel; but by what process of
reasoning will they prove that he is no gentleman? Is he not
learned? Has he not generosity and courage? Whilst a hack author,
does he pawn the books entrusted to him to review? Does he break
his word to his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he
get clothes or lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a
wanderer, does he insult helpless women on the road with loose
proposals or ribald discourse? Does he take what is not his own
from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in
public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call
for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady,
"Mistress, I have no brass?" In a word, what vice and crime does
he perpetrate--what low acts does he commit? Therefore, with his
endowments, who will venture to say that he is no gentleman?--
unless it be an admirer of Mr. Flamson--a clown--who will, perhaps,
shout--"I say he is no gentleman; for who can be a gentleman who
keeps no gig?"

The indifference exhibited by Lavengro for what is merely genteel,
compared with his solicitude never to infringe the strict laws of
honour, should read a salutary lesson. The generality of his
countrymen are far more careful not to transgress the customs of
what they call gentility, than to violate the laws of honour or
morality. They will shrink from carrying their own carpet-bag, and
from speaking to a person in seedy raiment, whilst to matters of
much higher importance they are shamelessly indifferent. Not so
Lavengro; he will do anything that he deems convenient, or which
strikes his fancy, provided it does not outrage decency, or is
unallied to profligacy; is not ashamed to speak to a beggar in
rags, and will associate with anybody, provided he can gratify a
laudable curiosity. He has no abstract love for what is low, or
what the world calls low. He sees that many things which the world
looks down upon are valuable, so he prizes much which the world
condemns; he sees that many things which the world admires are
contemptible, so he despises much which the world does not; but
when the world prizes what is really excellent, he does not contemn
it, because the world regards it. If he learns Irish, which all
the world scoffs at, he likewise learns Italian, which all the
world melts at. If he learns Gypsy, the language of the tattered
tent, he likewise learns Greek, the language of the college-hall.
If he learns smithery, he also learns--ah! what does he learn to
set against smithery?--the law? No; he does not learn the law,
which, by the way, is not very genteel. Swimming? Yes, he learns
to swim. Swimming, however, is not genteel; and the world--at
least the genteel part of it--acts very wisely in setting its face
against it; for to swim you must be naked, and how would many a
genteel person look without his clothes? Come, he learns
horsemanship; a very genteel accomplishment, which every genteel
person would gladly possess, though not all genteel people do.

Again as to associates: if he holds communion when a boy with
Murtagh, the scarecrow of an Irish academy, he associates in after
life with Francis Ardry, a rich and talented young Irish gentleman
about town. If he accepts an invitation from Mr. Petulengro to his
tent, he has no objection to go home with a rich genius to dinner;
who then will say that he prizes a thing or a person because they
are ungenteel? That he is not ready to take up with everything
that is ungenteel he gives a proof, when he refuses, though on the
brink of starvation, to become bonnet to the thimble-man, an
office, which, though profitable, is positively ungenteel. Ah! but
some sticker-up for gentility will exclaim, "The hero did not
refuse this office from an insurmountable dislike to its
ungentility, but merely from a feeling of principle." Well! the
writer is not fond of argument, and he will admit that such was the
case; he admits that it was a love of principle, rather than an
over-regard for gentility, which prevented the hero from accepting,
when on the brink of starvation, an ungenteel though lucrative
office, an office which, the writer begs leave to observe, many a
person with a great regard for gentility, and no particular regard
for principle, would in a similar strait have accepted; for when
did a mere love for gentility keep a person from being a dirty
scoundrel, when the alternatives were "either be a dirty scoundrel
or starve?" One thing, however, is certain, which is, that
Lavengro did not accept the office, which if a love for what is low
had been his ruling passion he certainly would have done;
consequently, he refuses to do one thing which no genteel person
would willingly do, even as he does many things which every genteel
person would gladly do, for example, speaks Italian, rides on
horseback, associates with a fashionable young man, dines with a
rich genius, et cetera. Yet--and it cannot be minced--he and
gentility with regard to many things are at strange divergency; he
shrinks from many things at which gentility placidly hums a tune,
or approvingly simpers, and does some things at which gentility
positively shrinks. He will not run into debt for clothes or
lodgings, which he might do without any scandal to gentility; he
will not receive money from Francis Ardry, and go to Brighton with
the sister of Annette Le Noir, though there is nothing ungenteel in
borrowing money from a friend, even when you never intend to repay
him, and something poignantly genteel in going to a watering-place
with a gay young Frenchwoman; but he has no objection, after
raising twenty pounds by the sale of that extraordinary work
"Joseph Sell," to set off into the country, mend kettles under
hedge-rows, and make pony and donkey shoes in a dingle. Here,
perhaps, some plain, well-meaning person will cry--and with much
apparent justice--how can the writer justify him in this act? What
motive, save a love for what is low, could induce him to do such a
thing? Would the writer have everybody who is in need of
recreation go into the country, mend kettles under hedges, and make
pony shoes in dingles? To such an observation the writer would
answer, that Lavengro had an excellent motive in doing what he did,
but that the writer is not so unreasonable as to wish everybody to
do the same. It is not everybody who can mend kettles. It is not
everybody who is in similar circumstances to those in which
Lavengro was. Lavengro flies from London and hack authorship, and
takes to the roads from fear of consumption; it is expensive to put
up at inns, and even at public-houses, and Lavengro has not much
money; so he buys a tinker's cart and apparatus, and sets up as
tinker, and subsequently as blacksmith; a person living in a tent,
or in anything else, must do something or go mad; Lavengro had a
mind, as he himself well knew, with some slight tendency to
madness, and had he not employed himself, he must have gone wild;
so to employ himself he drew upon one of his resources, the only
one available at the time. Authorship had nearly killed him, he
was sick of reading, and had besides no books; but he possessed the
rudiments of an art akin to tinkering; he knew something of
smithery, having served a kind of apprenticeship in Ireland to a
fairy smith; so he draws upon his smithery to enable him to acquire
tinkering, he speedily acquires that craft, even as he had speedily
acquired Welsh, owing to its connection with Irish, which language
he possessed; and with tinkering he amuses himself until he lays it
aside to resume smithery. A man who has an innocent resource, has
quite as much right to draw upon it in need, as he has upon a
banker in whose hands he has placed a sum; Lavengro turns to
advantage, under particular circumstances, a certain resource which
he has, but people who are not so forlorn as Lavengro, and have not
served the same apprenticeship which he had, are not advised to
follow his example. Surely he was better employed in plying the
trades of tinker and smith than in having recourse to vice, in
running after milk-maids, for example. Running after milk-maids is
by no means an ungenteel rural diversion; but let any one ask some
respectable casuist (the Bishop of London for example), whether
Lavengro was not far better employed, when in the country, at
tinkering and smithery than he would have been in running after all
the milk-maids in Cheshire, though tinkering is in general
considered a very ungenteel employment, and smithery little better,
notwithstanding that an Orcadian poet, who wrote in Norse about
eight hundred years ago, reckons the latter among nine noble arts
which he possessed, naming it along with playing at chess, on the
harp, and ravelling runes, or as the original has it, "treading
runes"--that is, compressing them into a small compass by mingling
one letter with another, even as the Turkish caligraphists ravel
the Arabic letters, more especially those who write talismans.


"Nine arts have I, all noble;
I play at chess so free,
At ravelling runes I'm ready,
At books and smithery;
I'm skilled o'er ice at skimming
On skates, I shoot and row,
And few at harping match me,
Or minstrelsy, I trow."


But though Lavengro takes up smithery, which, though the Orcadian
ranks it with chess-playing and harping, is certainly somewhat of a
grimy art, there can be no doubt that, had he been wealthy and not
so forlorn as he was, he would have turned to many things,
honourable, of course, in preference. He has no objection to ride
a fine horse when he has the opportunity: he has his day-dream of
making a fortune of two hundred thousand pounds by becoming a
merchant and doing business after the Armenian fashion; and there
can be no doubt that he would have been glad to wear fine clothes,
provided he had had sufficient funds to authorize him in wearing
them. For the sake of wandering the country and plying the hammer
and tongs, he would not have refused a commission in the service of
that illustrious monarch George the Fourth, provided he had thought
that he could live on his pay, and not be forced to run in debt to
tradesmen, without any hope of paying them, for clothes and
luxuries, as many highly genteel officers in that honourable
service were in the habit of doing. For the sake of tinkering, he
would certainly not have refused a secretaryship of an embassy to
Persia, in which he might have turned his acquaintance with
Persian, Arabic, and the Lord only knows what other languages, to
account. He took to tinkering and smithery, because no better
employments were at his command. No war is waged in the book
against rank, wealth, fine clothes, or dignified employments; it is
shown, however, that a person may be a gentleman and a scholar
without them. Rank, wealth, fine clothes, and dignified
employments, are no doubt very fine things, but they are merely
externals, they do not make a gentleman, they add external grace
and dignity to the gentleman and scholar, but they make neither;
and is it not better to be a gentleman without them than not a
gentleman with them? Is not Lavengro, when he leaves London on
foot with twenty pounds in his pocket, entitled to more respect
than Mr. Flamson flaming in his coach with a million? And is not
even the honest jockey at Horncastle, who offers a fair price to
Lavengro for his horse, entitled to more than the scoundrel lord,
who attempts to cheat him of one-fourth of its value?

Millions, however, seem to think otherwise, by their servile
adoration of people whom without rank, wealth, and fine clothes
they would consider infamous, but whom possessed of rank, wealth,
and glittering habiliments they seem to admire all the more for
their profligacy and crimes. Does not a blood-spot, or a lust-
spot, on the clothes of a blooming emperor, give a kind of zest to
the genteel young god? Do not the pride, superciliousness, and
selfishness of a certain aristocracy make it all the more regarded
by its worshippers? and do not the clownish and gutter-blood
admirers of Mr. Flamson like him all the more because they are
conscious that he is a knave? If such is the case --and, alas! is
it not the case?--they cannot be too frequently told that fine
clothes, wealth, and titles adorn a person in proportion as he
adorns them; that if worn by the magnanimous and good they are
ornaments indeed, but if by the vile and profligate they are merely
san benitos, and only serve to make their infamy doubly apparent;
and that a person in seedy raiment and tattered hat, possessed of
courage, kindness, and virtue, is entitled to more respect from
those to whom his virtues are manifested than any cruel profligate
emperor, selfish aristocrat, or knavish millionaire in the world.

The writer has no intention of saying that all in England are
affected with the absurd mania for gentility; nor is such a
statement made in the book; it is shown therein that individuals of
certain classes can prize a gentleman, notwithstanding seedy
raiment, dusty shoes or tattered hat,--for example, the young
Irishman, the rich genius, the postillion, and his employer.
Again, when the life of the hero is given to the world, amidst the
howl about its lowness and vulgarity, raised by the servile crew
whom its independence of sentiment has stung, more than one
powerful voice has been heard testifying approbation of its
learning and the purity of its morality. That there is some salt
in England, minds not swayed by mere externals, he is fully
convinced; if he were not, he would spare himself the trouble of
writing; but to the fact that the generality of his countrymen are
basely grovelling before the shrine of what they are pleased to
call gentility, he cannot shut his eyes.

Oh! what a clever person that Cockney was, who, travelling in the
Aberdeen railroad carriage, after edifying the company with his
remarks on various subjects, gave it as his opinion that Lieutenant
P--- would, in future, be shunned by all respectable society! And
what a simple person that elderly gentleman was, who, abruptly
starting, asked in rather an authoritative voice, "and why should
Lieutenant P--- be shunned by respectable society?" and who, after
entering into what was said to be a masterly analysis of the entire
evidence of the case, concluded by stating, "that having been
accustomed to all kinds of evidence all his life, he had never
known a case in which the accused had obtained a more complete and
triumphant justification than Lieutenant P--- had done in the late
trial."

Now the Cockney, who is said to have been a very foppish Cockney,
was perfectly right in what he said, and therein manifested a
knowledge of the English mind and character, and likewise of the
modern English language, to which his catechist, who, it seems, was
a distinguished member of the Scottish bar, could lay no
pretensions. The Cockney knew what the Lord of Session knew not,
that the British public is gentility crazy, and he knew, moreover,
that gentility and respectability are synonymous. No one in
England is genteel or respectable that is "looked at," who is the
victim of oppression; he may be pitied for a time, but when did not
pity terminate in contempt? A poor, harmless young officer--but
why enter into the details of the infamous case? they are but too
well known, and if ever cruelty, pride, and cowardice, and things
much worse than even cruelty, cowardice, and pride were brought to
light, and, at the same time, countenanced, they were in that case.
What availed the triumphant justification of the poor victim?
There was at first a roar of indignation against his oppressors,
but how long did it last? He had been turned out of the service,
they remained in it with their red coats and epaulets; he was
merely the son of a man who had rendered good service to his
country, they were, for the most part, highly connected--they were
in the extremest degree genteel, he quite the reverse; so the
nation wavered, considered, thought the genteel side was the safest
after all, and then with the cry of, "Oh! there is nothing like
gentility," ratted bodily. Newspaper and public turned against the
victim, scouted him, apologized for the--what should they be
called?--who were not only admitted into the most respectable
society, but courted to come, the spots not merely of wine on their
military clothes, giving them a kind of poignancy. But there is a
God in heaven; the British glories are tarnished--Providence has
never smiled on British arms since that case--oh! Balaklava! thy
name interpreted is net of fishes, and well dost thou deserve that
name. How many a scarlet golden fish has of late perished in the
mud amidst thee, cursing the genteel service, and the genteel
leader which brought him to such a doom.

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