12.
CHAPTER XII: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GIPSIES
I FELT lonely after losing my companion,
and I met nobody to take his place. In
fact, for a couple of hours I met nothing
worth mentioning, male or female, with the
exception of a gipsy caravan, which I suppose
was both; but it was a poor show.
Borrow would have blushed for it. In fact,
it is my humble opinion that the gipsies
have been overdone, just as the Alps have
been over-climbed. I have no great desire
to see Switzerland, for I am sure the Alps
must be greasy with being climbed.
Besides, the Alps and the gipsies, in
common with waterfalls and ruined castles,
belong to the ready-made operatic poetry of
the world, from which the last thrill has
long since departed. They are, so to say,
public poetry, the public property of the
emotions, and no longer touch the private
heart or stir the private imagination. Our
fathers felt so much about them that there
is nothing left for us to feel. They are as
a rose whose fragrance has been exhausted
by greedy and indiscriminate smelling. I
would rather find a little Surrey common for
myself and idle about it a summer day, with
the other geese and donkeys, than climb the
tallest Alp.
Most gipsies are merely tenth-rate
provincial companies, travelling with and
villainously travestying Borrow's great pieces
of "Lavengro'' and "Romany Rye.'' Dirty,
ill-looking, scowling men; dirty, slovenly,
and wickedly ugly women; children to match,
snarling, filthy little curs, with a ready
beggar's whine on occasion. A gipsy
encampment to-day is little more than a
moving slum, a scab of squalor on the fair
face of the countryside.
But there was one little trifle of an
incident that touched me as I passed this
particular caravan. Evidently one of the vans
had come to grief, and several men of the
party were making a great show of repairing
it. After I had run the gauntlet of the
begging children, and was just out of ear-shot of the group, I turned round to survey
it from a distance. It was encamped on a
slight rise of the undulating road, and from
where I stood tents and vans and men were
clearly silhouetted against the sky. The
road ran through and a little higher than
the encampment, which occupied both sides
of it. Presently the figure of a young man
separated itself from the rest, stept up on to
the smooth road, and standing in the middle
of it, in an absorbed attitude, began to make
a movement with his hands as though winding
string round a top. That in fact was his
occupation, and for the next five minutes he
kept thus winding the cord, flinging the top
to the ground, and intently bending down
to catch it on his hand, none of the others,
not even the children, taking the slightest
notice of him, — he entirely alone there with
his poor little pleasure. There seemed to
me pathos in his loneliness. Had some one
spun the top with him, it would have
vanished; and presently, no doubt at the
bidding of an oath I could not hear, he
hurriedly thrust the top into his pocket, and
once more joined the straining group of
men. The snatched pleasure must be put
by at the call of reality; the world and its
work must rush in upon his dream. I have
often thought about the top and its spinner,
as I have noted the absorbed faces of other
people's pleasures in the streets, — two
lovers passing along the crowded Strand
with eyes only for each other; a student
deep in his book in the corner of an omnibus;
a young mother glowing over the child
in her arms; the wild-eyed musician dreamily
treading on everybody's toes, and begging
nobody's pardon; the pretty little Gaiety
Girl hurrying to rehearsal with no thought
but of her own sweet self and whether there
will be a letter from Harry at the
stage door, — yes, if we are alone in our griefs, we
are no less alone in our pleasures. We spin
our tops as in an enchanted circle, and no
one sees or heeds save ourselves, — as how
should they with their own tops to spin?
Happy indeed is he, who has his top and
cares still to spin it; for to be tired of our
tops is to be tired of life, saith the
preacher.
As the young gipsy's little holiday came
to an end, I turned with a sigh upon my
way; and here, while still on the subject,
may I remark on the curious fact that probably
Borrow has lived and died without a
single gipsy having heard of him, just as
the expertest anglers know nothing of Izaak
Walton.
Has the British soldier, one wonders, yet
discovered Rudyard Kipling, or is the
Wessex peasant aware of Thomas Hardy?
It is odd to think that the last people to
read such authors are the very people they
most concern. For you might spend your
life, say, in studying the London street boy,
and write never so movingly and humourously
about him, yet would he never know
your name; and though Whitechapel makes
novelists, it does so without knowing it, —
makes them to be read in Mayfair, — just as
it never wears the dainty hats and gowns its
weary little milliners and seamstresses make
through the day and night. It is Capital
and Labour over again, for in literature also
we reap in gladness what others have sown
in tears.
And now, after these admirable reflections,
I am about to make such "art'' as I
can of another man's tragedy, as will appear
in the next chapter.
