The Romany Rye: a sequel to "Lavengro"Borrow, George
General
The Romany Rye: a sequel to "Lavengro"
Borrow, George
Adventure stories; England -- Fiction; Romanies -- Fiction
"Tawno Chik . . .? I say, young fellow, I don't like your way of
speaking; no, nor your way of looking. You are mad, sir; you are mad;
and what's this? Why, your hair is grey! You won't do for the
Honourable Company--they like red. I'm glad I didn't give you the
shilling. Good day to you."
"I shouldn't wonder," said I, as I proceeded rapidly along a broad
causeway, in the direction of the east, "if Mr. Petulengro and Tawno
Chikno came originally from India. I think I'll go there."
APPENDIX.
CHAPTER I. A WORD FOR LAVENGRO.
Lavengro is the history up to a certain period of one of rather a
peculiar mind and system of nerves, with an exterior shy and cold, under
which lurk much curiosity, especially with regard to what is wild and
extraordinary, a considerable quantity of energy and industry, and an
unconquerable love of independence. It narrates his earliest dreams and
feelings, dwells with minuteness on the ways, words, and characters of
his father, mother, and brother, lingers on the occasional resting-places
of his wandering, half-military childhood, describes the gradual
hardening of his bodily frame by robust exercises, his successive
struggles, after his family and himself have settled down in a small
local capital, to obtain knowledge of every kind, but more particularly
philological lore; his visits to the tent of the Romany chal, and the
parlour of the Anglo-German philosopher; the effect produced upon his
character by his flinging himself into contact with people all widely
differing from each other, but all extraordinary; his reluctance to
settle down to the ordinary pursuits of life; his struggles after moral
truth; his glimpses of God and the obscuration of the Divine Being to his
mind's eye; and his being cast upon the world of London by the death of
his father, at the age of nineteen. In the world within a world, the
world of London, it shows him playing his part for some time as he best
can, in the capacity of a writer for reviews and magazines, and describes
what he saw and underwent whilst labouring in that capacity; it
represents him, however, as never forgetting that he is the son of a
brave but poor gentleman, and that if he is a hack author, he is likewise
a scholar. It shows him doing no dishonourable jobs, and proves that if
he occasionally associates with low characters, he does so chiefly to
gratify the curiosity of a scholar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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