More on Romany Rye

The Romany Rye takes up the story where Lavengro left off (abruptly, mid-story) with George and the peddler girl Belle camped up in Mumper’s dingle. There are further extensive descriptions of Gypsy life when the Petulengro family stop by to celebrate a wedding but then, when Belle leaves for America, George goes into a horse-dealing partnership with his pal Jasper Petulengro. He sets off across country, working for a while in a coaching inn, until he gets to a famous horse fair where he sells the horse at a good profit.

This simple story is interspersed with numerous narratives within the narrative, as many of the characters he encounters proceed to tell their own stories, often at great length. These include a man who has taught himself to learn Chinese as a cure for melancholy, a jockey with a very checkered past, and an Irish trainee priest whose gambling skills take him to the top of the Catholic hierarchy. We also learn a great deal about horses and the workings of a coaching inn. The tone of the book is often more satirical than its precursor Lavengro (e.g. the tale of a man who uses Wordsworth’s poetry as a cure for insomnia).

The book ends, rather controversially, with a lengthy Appendix, a 70-page rant against the literary critics who failed to appreciate the genius of Lavengro, plus swipes at popery, gentility, radicalism, and Walter Scott.

Not surprisingly, after this pre-emptive attack by Borrow, the critics’ reviews were even more severe than for Lavengro, and the book sold very poorly at first. However, like Lavengro, its reputation rose after his death, especially owing to its detailed descriptions of Gypsy and rural life in the 1820s, just before the railways and industrialism changed the landscape forever.