The Romany Rye. Borrow George
in 1825 the Greenwich Fair was held on Whit-Monday, May 23.
Not the least interesting corollary from this correction is the discovery that ‘that extraordinary work,’ the ‘Life of Joseph Sell,’ was never written. To me Borrow’s insistent iteration of the bare statement that he wrote such a book is in itself suspicious, and it is not a little strange that a work for which ‘during the last few months (before August, 1825) there has been a prodigious demand’[0m] should have entirely disappeared from the face of the earth. The name ‘Sell,’ which in some curious fashion seems to carry conviction to Professor Knapp’s mind, [0n] seems to me a singularly inauspicious one, especially when coming from a writer who, like Pakomovna, was ‘born not far from the sign of the gammon,’ and who boasts in his appendix of having inserted deliberate misstatements in his books in order to deceive and mislead his critics. [0o] But why should Borrow pretend to have written this book? Chiefly, I think, to emphasize that independence of character of which he so frequently boasts, and which, after his marriage fifteen years later to a well-to-do widow, he is perhaps a little apt to antedate. [0p] However Borrow obtained the money which enabled him to leave London, it is plain that it was not by writing ‘Joseph Sell’ at the time and in the manner described. If he were in as desperate circumstances as he represents, he probably accepted Mr. Petulengro’s offer, [0q] unless we are to suppose that he imitated the methods of Jerry Abershaw, Galloping Dick, or some of the ‘fraternity of vagabonds’ whose lives Borrow had chronicled in his ‘Celebrated Trials.’
Borrow’s narrative after his arrival at Stafford becomes dull, shadowy, and unconvincing—a strong argument against its truth; for while Borrow easily lived the life romantic, he seems to have lacked the power to imagine it. He describes himself as accepting a somewhat nondescript office at the posting-inn on the Great North Road, where he remains for an undefined but considerable period, and meets again with Francis Ardrey and the Rev. Mr. Platitude. On leaving the inn he refuses to accept the landlord’s offer of an honorarium of £10, and sets off with his horse to Horncastle Fair. He meets with an accident a day’s journey from his destination, which confines him for eight days in the house of the old man who could read Chinese crockery, but could not tell what was o’clock. Ultimately he reaches Horncastle before the end of the fair, sells his horse to Jack Dale the jockey, and journeys towards Norwich, where we part with him at Spalding.
These statements are mutually irreconcilable. Horncastle Fair was held from August 10 (the Feast of St. Lawrence) to August 21, and had ‘just begun’ on the day following his accident; but, as his journey lasted six days, this leaves no time at all for his experiences at the inn, where he must have stopped for some weeks, and apparently a much longer period, as ‘a kind of overlooker in the stables.’ If, on the other hand, we allow even a fortnight for his stop at the inn, for which £10 would be handsome payment, then he could not have arrived at Horncastle before the end of the fair. Which part of his story, if any, are we to accept?
The Stafford story is decidedly weak. Borrow, being no fool, would not have journeyed north for two days on his road to Horncastle, nor would Ardrey have taken coach to Stafford en route for a lion fight at Warwick, which had taken place several days before. Mr. Platitude’s reappearance is extremely artificial, and the ostler’s tales of Abershaw and Co. are obviously reminiscences of Borrow’s ‘Celebrated Trials.’ But the Horncastle story is weaker still. The ‘Lord’-Lieutenant, so free and young,’ is pilloried, because eighteen years afterwards he did not see his way to make Borrow a J.P. (Who would?) Murtagh is introduced merely as a lay figure, upon which to drape an inverted account of Borrow’s own travels at a later period; and that very tedious gentleman, the tall Hungarian, is a character, Professor Knapp tells us, whom Borrow met in Hungary or Wallachia in 1884. It is plain that at this point the whole story has become what Borrow calls a ‘fakement.’
But that Borrow did buy a horse with money lent by Petulengro, and sold it at a profit, we have some reason to credit. Nearly ten years before Borrow wrote ‘The Romany Rye,’ in the second edition of his ‘Zincali,’ published in 1843, he quotes a speech of Mr. Petulengro’s ‘on the day after mol-divvus, [0r] 1842.’ ‘I am no hindity mush, [0s] as you well know,’ says Jasper. ‘I suppose you have not forgot, how, fifteen years ago, when you made horse-shoes in the little dingle by the side of the Great North Road, I lent you fifty cottors [0t] to purchase the wonderful trotting cob of the innkeeper with the green Newmarket coat, which three days later you sold for two hundred.’ This earlier version seems more probably the true one, and since three days would find Borrow in Stafford, it seems reasonable to conclude that he sold his horse there and not in Lincolnshire. Personally, however, I must confess to feeling little interest in the fate of the animal—Belle’s donkey were a dearer object.
Mumpers’ Dingle might well become the Mecca of true Borrovians, could we but determine the authentic spot. Somewhere or other—who will find it for us?—in west central Shropshire [0u] is a little roadside inn called the Silent Woman; [0v] a little further to the east is a milestone on the left hand side, and a few yards from the milestone the cross-road where Petulengro parted from Borrow. Ten miles further still is a town, and five miles from the town the famous dingle. Mr. Petulengro describes it as ‘surprisingly dreary’; ‘a deep dingle in the midst of a large field about which there has been a law-suit for some years past; the nearest town five miles distant, and only a few huts and hedge public-houses in the neighbourhood;’ [0w] and Borrow speaks of it as ‘a deep hollow in the midst of a wide field; the shelving sides overgrown with trees and bushes, a belt of sallows surrounding it on the top, and a steep winding path leading down into the depths.’ [0x] It was surrounded by a copse of thorn bushes, [0y] and the mouth of the dingle fronted the east, [0z] while the highroad lay too far distant for the noise of traffic to reach Borrow’s ears. [0z1]
Professor Knapp has located the dingle in Monmer Lane, Willenhall, and a visit to the locality and references to old and new ordnance surveys support this view. Willenhall lies in the coal measures of Staffordshire, and the modern development of its coal and iron industries has transformed the ‘few huts and hedge public-houses’ into a thriving town of about 17,000 inhabitants. The name of ‘Mumpers’ Dingle’ did not seem to be locally recognised, and, indeed, was scornfully repudiated by the oldest inhabitant; but this may have been merely his revenge for my intrusion just about his dinner hour. But Monmer Lane, still pronounced and in the older ordnance surveys written ‘Mumber Lane,’ is known to all. At the top of this lane on the east side of the bridge lies the ‘Monmer Lane Ironworks,’ which Professor Knapp, a little carelessly, assumes to have been the site of the dingle; [0z2] and to the west a large flat, bare, uncultivated piece of land, Borrow’s ‘plain,’ cut in two by the Bentley Canal, which runs through it east and west. A walk of 500 yards along the tow-path brings us to a small bridge crossing the canal. This is known as ‘Dingle Bridge,’ the little hawthorn-girt lane leading to it is called ‘Dingle Lane,’ and a field opposite bears the name of ‘Dingle Piece.’ The dingle itself has disappeared, possibly as a consequence of levelling operations in the construction of the canal, and must not be hastily identified by the pilgrim with the adjoining marl-pit, which has been excavated still more recently. But we can hardly doubt that somewhere hereabouts is the historic spot where Borrow fought and vanquished the Flaming Tinman, that here he lived with Miss Berners ‘in an uncertificated manner,’ that under an adjoining thorn-bush he held his astounding conversation with Ursula, and that from here, wearied of her companion’s frigid regard and strange bantering, poor Isopel turned away with her little donkey-cart and a heavy heart.
The public-house kept by the landlord in the green Newmarket coat, who was ‘the wonder and glory of the neighbourhood,’ and who had fought and beaten ‘Tom of Hopton,’ is still standing, though it is no longer used as an inn, and the pious Borrovian must abandon any hopes he may have cherished of drinking to the Lavengro’s memory in ‘hard old ale.’ A quaint old ‘half-way house,’ it lies, as Borrow describes, about two miles east of the dingle—he saw the setting sun as he returned from his frequent visits there—on the right-hand side of the highroad to Walsall, along which the brewer proposed to establish ‘a stage-coach and three to run across the country’, and a little nearer Willenhall, on the north side of the road, is Bentley Hall, the ‘hall’ from which the postillion