Aylwin. Theodore Watts-Dunton
call the diffident period in the life of a writer. And then, again, I had often been told by George Borrow, and also by my friend Francis Groome, the great living authority on Romany matters, that there was in England no interest in Gypsies. Altogether then, had it not been for the unexpected success of The Coming of Love, a story of Gypsy life, it is doubtful whether I should not have delayed the publication of Aylwin until the great warder of the gates of day we call Death should close his portal behind me and shut me off from these dreams. However, I am very glad now that I did publish it; for it has brought around me a number of new friends—brought them at a time when new friends were what I yearned for—a time when, looking back through this vision of my life, I seem to be looking down an Appian way—a street of tombs—the tombs of those I loved. No wonder, then, that I was deeply touched by the kindness with which the Public and the Press received the story.
One critic did me the honour of remarking upon what he called the 'absolute newness of the plot and incidents of Aylwin.' He seems to have forgotten, however, that one incident—the most daring incident in the book—that of the rifling of a grave for treasure—is not new: it will at once remind folk-lorists of certain practices charged against our old Norse invaders. And students of Celtic and Gaelic literature are familiar with the same idea. Quite, lately, indeed, Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his analysis of the Gaelic Agallamh na Senorach, or 'Colloquy of the Elders,' has made some interesting remarks upon the subject.
As far as I remember, the only objection made by the critics to Aylwin was that I had imported into a story written for popular acceptance too many speculations and breedings upon the gravest of all subjects—the subject of love at struggle with death. My answer to this is that although it did win a great popular acceptance I never expected it to do so. I knew the book to be an expression of idiosyncrasy, and no man knows how much or how little his idiosyncrasy is in harmony with the temper of his time, until his book has been given to the world. It was the story of Aylwin that was born of the speculations upon Love and Death; it was not the speculations that were pressed into the story; without these speculations there could have been no story to tell. Indeed the chief fault which myself should find with Aylwin, if my business were to criticise it, would be that it gives not too little but too much prominence to the strong incidents of the story—a story written as a comment on love's warfare with death—written to show that confronted as a man is every moment by signs of the fragility and brevity of human life, the great marvel connected with him is not that his thoughts dwell frequently upon the unknown country beyond Orion where the beloved dead are loving us still, but that he can find time and patience to think upon anything else—a story written further to show how terribly despair becomes intensified when a man has lost—or thinks he has lost—a woman whose love was the only light of his world—when his soul is torn from his body, as it were, and whisked off on the wings of the 'viewless winds' right away beyond the farthest star, till the universe hangs beneath his feet a trembling point of twinkling light, and at last even this dies away and his soul cries out for help in that utter darkness and loneliness.
It was to depict this phase of human emotion that both Aylwin and its sequel, The Coming of Love, were written. They were missives from the lonely watch-tower of the writer's soul, sent out into the strange and busy battle of the world—sent out to find, if possible, another soul or two to whom the watcher was, without knowing it, akin.
And now as to my two Gypsy heroines, the Sinfi Lovell of Aylwin and the Rhona Boswell of The Coming of Love. Although Borrow belonged to a different generation from mine, I enjoyed his intimate friendship in his later years—during the time when he lived in Hereford Square; and since his death I have written a good deal about him—both in prose and in verse—in the Athenæum, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and in other places. When, some seven or eight years ago, I brought out an edition of Lavengro (in Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co.'s Minerva Library), I prefaced that delightful book by a few desultory remarks upon Sorrow's Gypsy characters. On that occasion I gave a slight sketch of the most remarkable 'Romany Chi' that had ever been met with in the part of East Anglia known to Borrow and myself—Sinfi Lovell. I described her playing on the crwth. I discussed her exploits as a boxer, and I contrasted her in many ways with the glorious Anglo-Saxon road-girl Isopel Berners. Since the publication of Aylwin and The Coming of Love I have received very many letters from English and American readers inquiring whether 'the Gypsy girl described in the introduction to Lavenyro is the same as the Sinfi Lovell of Aylwin,' and also whether 'the Rhona Boswell that figures in the prose story is the same as the Rhona of The Coming of Love?' The evidence of the reality of Rhona so impressed itself upon the reader that on the appearance of Rhona's first letter in the Athenæum, where the poem was printed in fragments, I got among other letters one from the sweet poet and adorable woman Jean Ingelow, who was then very ill—near her death indeed—urging me to tell her whether Rhona's love-letter was not a versification of a real letter from a real Gypsy to her lover. As it was obviously impossible for me to answer the queries individually, I take this opportunity of saying that the Sinfi of Aylwin and the Sinfi described in my introduction to Lavengro are one and the same character—except that the story of the child Sinfi's weeping for the 'poor dead Gorgios' in the churchyard, given in the Introduction, is really told by the Gypsies, not of Sinfi, but of Rhona Boswell. Sinfi is the character alluded to in the now famous sonnet describing 'the walking lord of Gypsy lore,' Borrow, by his most intimate friend Dr. Gordon Hake.
'And he, the walking lord of Gypsy lore!
How often 'mid the deer that grazed the Park,
Or in the fields and heath and windy moor,
Made musical with many a soaring lark,
Have we not held brisk commune with him there,
While Lavengro, then towering by your side,
With rose complexion and bright silvery hair,
Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride
To tell the legends of the fading race—.
As at the summons of his piercing glance,
Its story peopling his brown eyes and face,
While you called up that pendant of romance
To Petulengro with his boxing glory
Your Amazonian Sinfi's noble story?'
Now that so many of the griengroes (horse-dealers), who form the aristocracy of the Romany race, have left England for America, it is natural enough that to some readers of Aylwin and The Coming of Love my pictures of Romany life seem a little idealised. The Times, in a kindly notice of The Coming of Love, said that the kind of Gypsies there depicted are a very interesting people, 'unless the author has flattered them unduly.' Those who best knew the Gypsy women of that period will be the first to aver that I have not flattered them unduly. But I have fully discussed this matter, and given a somewhat elaborate account of Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell, in the introduction to the fifth edition of The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswell's Story.
CHAP.
1. THE CYMRIC CHILD 2. THE MOONLIGHT CROSS OF THE GNOSTICS 3. WINIFRED'S DUKKERIPEN 4. THE LEADER OF THE AYLWINIANS 5. HAROUN-AL-RASCHID THE PAINTER 6. THE SONG OF Y WYDDFA 7. SINFI'S DUKKERIPEN 8. ISIS AS HUMOURIST 9. THE PALACE OF NIN-KI-GAL 10. BEHIND THE VEIL 11. THE IRONY OF HEAVEN 12. THE REVOLVING CAGE OF CIRCUMSTANCE 13. THE MAGIC OF SNOWDON 14. SINFI'S COUP DE THÉÂTRE 15. THE DAUGHTER OF SNOWDON'S STORY 16. D'ARCY'S LETTER 17. THE TWO DUKKERIPENS 18. THE WALK TO LLANBERIS APPENDICES
AYLWIN
THE RENASCENCE OF WONDER
I
THE CYMRIC CHILD
I