The Gypsy Bride

by Katie Hutton

  ‘Marry me so no one can ever say you mayn’t. Do it for the boys, then. And for the others that come.’

  ‘Everyone knows our story here already, Sam. They’d talk anyway.’

  He shifted his position, putting an arm behind his head.

  ‘Let them. There are seven of us under this roof. Enough to defend ourselves if we do stay on here. And I’m the rai’s favourite performing monkey, remember. But sometimes I’d like to sleep out in the open air – or in something like a shepherd’s hut, a shed on wheels I could roll about a bit. Would I be able to do that, do you think?’

  ‘Of course. But mightn’t you be lonely out there?’

  ‘Not if my rakli came along of me too, and gave me a hand to undo all them buttons of hers!’

  ‘I’ll come! But first I’ll help you find Cecil.’

  ‘You will? You’ll be my lawful wedded, Ellen?’

  ‘Yes. But there’s something you must do for me.’

  ‘Anything!’

  ‘Where’s your old hat?’

  ‘That? It’s in that box of tricks under here.’

  He got out and kneeled by the side of the bed. Ellen traced with her forefinger the ladder of his vertebrae. The little white scars from Caley’s gouging whip gleamed but the longer marks of the cat were fading. He tugged the trunk out and rummaged through it.

  ‘Here it is. A bit the worse for wear but some use in it yet.’

  Ellen took the hat and gently smoothed the nap, then placed it on the head of the kneeling man as though crowning him. She looked at him, head on one side, then pulled the brim forward over his right eye.

  ‘Oh Sam, I’d die for you.’

  ‘Kiss me first.’

  HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

  British Romanies

  The term ‘Gypsy’, derived from the English term ‘Egyptian’, comes from a misappropriation of identity that is three centuries older than the Romani language. In the eighth century, Greek Byzantine fortune-tellers claimed to have received ancient Egyptian wisdom from the Persian Magi, who had been dispersed by the Muslim conquest. It became a general name claimed by fortune-tellers, dancers and entertainers, amongst them probably Dom (Indo-Aryan ethnic group), who arrived from India three centuries before the ancestors of the Roma. The Romani language assumed its modern form, probably as a military command language of a Hindu militia of diverse Indian origins in eleventh-century Turkey, and as its speakers looked and sounded like Dom, were seen by Greeks and Turks as another set of Egyptians. The Romani language is part of the Prakritic group, of which Sanskrit is an ancient example.

  The destruction of any independent military organisation of Roma led to various groups fleeing the Ottoman empire to other parts of Europe. They are first recorded in the British Isles in the early sixteenth century – first in Scotland and subsequently in England. After decades of peaceful trading, the gathering economic depression and unemployment led to foreigners – Jews, Africans and Gypsies – being made scapegoats. In 1530, the Egyptians Act demanded the expulsion of ‘the outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians’; the penalty for staying was execution and hangings simply for the offence of being Romani were recorded at Bury St Edmunds and York. This legislation (along with further acts) was not repealed until 1856 (though meanwhile other legislation was enacted, such as the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which specifically outlawed fortune-telling). Under Cromwell, Romanies were deported as slaves to plantations in the Americas; later, transportations were to Australia.

  In the period in which this novel is set, Romanies who remained nomadic worked as itinerant agricultural labourers, peddlars, horse-dealers, metal-and woodworkers, although many in each generation settled and assimilated. The industrialisation of agriculture, particularly from the 1960s onwards, along with legislation such as the Caravan Sites Act of 1968, severely restricting access to stopping places, has had a major impact on this way of life.

  In nineteenth-century literature, Romani people were represented notably by George Borrow (1803-1881) in his semi-autobiographical novels Lavengro and The Romany Rye, by Matthew Arnold in his pastoral poem The Scholar Gipsy, by Theodore Watts-Dunton in The Coming of Love (epic poem) and Aylwin (a novel), and largely negatively by Charles Dickens, particularly in Barnaby Rudge. The Gypsy Lore Society was founded in England in 1888 to further the study of Romani history and lore, but its membership then and now consists mainly of non-Gypsy scholars rather than actual Romanies; one of its early adherents was Sir Richard Burton. Other prominent members included Lady Sibyl Grant (1879-1955), who set aside some of her land for Gypsies to live on during Epsom Derby week, and the artist Augustus John (1878-1961), the Society’s president for more than twenty years, who spent some time travelling in a vardo with his wife and mistress and their collective children. John spoke Romani well and was a friend of John Sampson, Librarian of Liverpool University, who wrote an important dictionary of the North Welsh Romani dialect, helped by an assistant librarian, Dora Yates (1879-1974). The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society subsequently metamorphosed into the twice-yearly Romani Studies (published by Liverpool University Press) and the Society is now based in the United States. Dora Yates’s historical archive is divided between the University of Liverpool and the McGrigor Phillips collection at the University of Leeds.

  Leading scholars in Romani studies are professors Thomas Acton and Ian Hancock, the latter a Romani. In the UK the University of Hertfordshire Press publishes extensively in the field.

  Primitive Methodism

  Primitive Methodism originated in the early nineteenth century as a breakaway movement from the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Its founders were Hugh Bourne (1772-1852), a wheelwright from Bucknall, Staffordshire, and William Clowes (1780-1851), a potter from Burslem; neither were ever ordained, although at a later stage in the history of the movement the Primitive Methodists did formally train and ordain its ministers. As the name suggests, the ‘Prims’ sought a simpler form of worship – closer, in their view, to the origins of Methodism, with an emphasis on local control, including local non-ordained preachers, spontaneity in worship (earning them early on the offensive name of ‘ranters’) and fidelity to biblical sources. Worship initially took place in the open air (at camp meetings) as well as in adherents’ homes, prior to the acquisition or building of chapels. Until the 1860s a number of preachers were women. Church members tended to be drawn from the poorest strata of society: agricultural labourers, mill-workers and miners. The movement was closely linked to the growth of trade unionism, with a number of Prim preachers also being union leaders (Peter Lee, Joseph Arch, George Edwards amongst them). By the mid-nineteenth century, its adherents exceeded one hundred thousand but its influence extended much further through attendance at Sunday schools (for which membership of the connexion was not a requirement), often the only access to education for the children of the poor prior to the establishment of compulsory state education. In literature the Prims notably figure in Arnold Bennett’s Clayhanger novels. As a boy Darius Clayhanger is rescued from the workhouse by the Prim Sunday school teacher Mr Shushions. This excerpt from These Twain, describing an incident at Edwin Clayhanger’s print-works, encapsulates the sometimes unsophisticated nature of the movement far better than I can describe:

  The programme was not satisfactorily set up. Apart from several mistakes in the spelling of proper names, the thing with its fancy types, curious centring, and superabundance of full-stops, resembled more the libretto of a Primitive Methodist Tea-meeting than a programme of classical music offered to refined dilettanti on a Sunday night. Though Edwin had endeavoured to modernise Big James, he had failed.

  Whilst never a wealthy movement, Primitive Methodism had one major patron: the self-made jam manufacturer, Sir William Hartley, for whom the Prims’ training college in Manchester was named. Over time the differences between the Prims and mainstream Methodism became less marked, and in 1932 Primitive Methodism, along with other Methodist movements, reunited with the Wesleyans to form the Metho
dist Church as it is today.

  The Museum of Primitive Methodist and library at Englesea Brook, Cheshire, is an invaluable source for the study of the movement (http://engleseabrook.org.uk).

  Locations

  Chingestone

  Chingestone is the name given in the Domesday Book to the village now known as Kingston Blount, located on the B4009 on the Oxfordshire side of the Chiltern Hills, about six miles from Thame. The Chingestone of the novel is a partial but not faithful portrait of this village, which did in fact still have four pubs in the 1940s (the last one has closed and is at time of writing up for sale). The three places of worship in Kingston Blount are now private houses, being the Primitive Methodist chapel at the far end of the village, the Congregationalist (not Wesleyan) chapel and the Anglican chapel of ease. There is no Surman’s Wood, although Surman is a local surname.

  Canterbury

  The Cricketers, the Millers, and the Black Griffin are all actual pubs in Canterbury. The sixteenth-century the Flying Horse, just outside the city walls, was sold in 2015 to a restaurateur; it does have bedrooms on the first floor, but I have taken some liberties with the internal layout of the building. Percy Cooper was the landlord in the 1920s.

  The former Primitive Methodist chapel on the Borough is now part of the King’s School, whilst Lenham Heath Primitive Methodist chapel is now a private home.

  Denne’s Mill burned down in 1930. The mill race and part of its machinery can still be seen in the St Radigund’s district of Canterbury; there are plans to reconstruct the mill wheel.

  St Mildred’s Tannery opened in Canterbury in the 1790s and, despite complaints about the smell, did not close until 2002.

  Canterbury Cattle Market was located more or less where the Whitefriars shopping centre is now.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  British Romani history and literature:

  Memoirs written by Gypsies:

  There are others, most notably Damian Le Bas’s The Stopping Places (2018); I have deliberately limited this list to those that most correspond to the period of the novel.

  Ronald Smith, Gipsy Smith: His Life and Work, (London, 1901)

  Dominic Reeve, Smoke in the Lanes (Edinburgh, 1958)

  Silvester Gordon Boswell The Book of Boswell (Harmondsworth: Autobiography of a Gypsy 1970)

  Manfri Frederick Wood, In the Life of a Romany Gypsy (London, 1973)

  Alex Smith (ed. Mícheál Ó hAodha and Thomas Acton), Memoir of a Travelling Showman (2017)

  Memoirs written by non-Gypsies:

  George Hall, The Gypsy’s Parson His Experiences and Adventures (London 1915). (Hall learned Romani and travelled with Romani families.)

  Rupert Croft-Cooke, The Moon in My Pocket: Life With the Romanies (London, 1948)

  Dora E. Yates, My Gypsy Days: Recollections of a Romani Romnie (London, 1952)

  Denis Harvey, The Gypsies: Waggon-time and After (London, 1979)

  Contemporary studies:

  Angus Fraser, The Gypsies (Oxford, 1995)

  Thomas Acton and Gary Mundy (ed.), Romani Culture and Gypsy Identity (Hatfield, 1997)

  Thomas Acton (ed.), Gypsy Politics and Traveller Identity (Hatfield, 1997)

  Simon Evans, Stopping Places: A Gypsy History of South London and Kent (Hatfield, 2004)

  Colin Clark and Margaret Greenfields, Here to Stay: The Gypsies and Travellers of Britain (Hatfield, 2006)

  Becky Taylor, A Minority and the State: Travellers in Britain in the Twentieth Century (Manchester, 2008)

  Janet Keet-Black, Gypsies of Britain (Oxford, 2013)

  Selected fiction:

  George Borrow, Lavengro, (1851), The Romany Rye (1857) and Romano Lavo-Lil: Word-Book of the Romany or English Gypsy Language. The first two of these are novels; the third is an anthology of anecdotes, sayings and memoirs of Romani life in Britain and abroad, and includes a short Romani-English dictionary.

  Francis Wylde Carew (Arthur E. G. Way), No. 747. Being the Autobiography of a Gipsy (Bristol and London, 1891). (Despite its title, a novel.)

  Theodore Watts-Dunton, Aylwin (London, 1898)

  Rupert Croft-Cooke, A Few Gypsies (London, 1950) Harvest Moon (London, 1953)

  Primitive Methodism:

  A. Victor Murray, (ed. Geoffrey Milburn), A Northumbrian Methodist Childhood (Morpeth, 1992)

  Geoffrey Milburn, Primitive Methodism (Peterborough, 2002)

  George Edwards, From Crow-scaring to Westminster: An Autobiography (London, 1922) (Edwards was a farm-labourer, union organiser and ultimately MP for South Norfolk, and a Primitive Methodist preacher)

  J. Jackson Wray, Nestleton Magna, London, n.d. (novel)

  Kate Tiller, ‘The desert begins to blossom: Oxfordshire and Primitive Methodism, 1824–1860’, Oxoniensia (Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society 2016)

  Kenneth Lysons, A Little Primitive, Buxton, 2001

  M.K. Ashby, Joseph Ashby of Tysoe (Cambridge, 1961) (The agricultural trade unionist was in fact a Wesleyan, but this biography gives a vivid account of the link between non-conformism and trade-unionism in the neighbouring county of Warwickshire.)

  Rev. S.S. Henshaw, The Romance of our Sunday Schools (London, 1910)

  Rev. Arthur Peake, Plain Thoughts on Great Subjects (London, n.d.)

  Rev. David G. Sharp, ‘Not Well Understood: Winchester Primitive Methodism 1837–1932 and its Congregational Supporters’, lecture, 2007

  ‘Warden Grey’ (Rev. W. Graham), Heatherfield: A Tale of Country Religious Life (London, 1911)

  Prison conditions in England in this period:

  Gilbert Thomas, Autobiography 1891-1941 (London, 1946) (The experiences of a conscientious objector.)

  Stuart Wood (pseud.), Shades of the Prison House: A Personal Memoir (London, 1932)

  Wilfred Macartney, Walls Have Mouths (London, 1936)

  W.J. Forsythe, Penal Discipline, Reformatory Projects and the English Prison Commission, 1895–1939 (Exeter, 1990)

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Firstly, I would like to thank my agent Annette Green for her unstinting support and commitment to The Gypsy Bride, followed by Claire Johnson-Creek and the team at Bonnier Books UK for making my work as good as it could be, and championing its venture into the world, Laura Gerrard for copyediting and Natalie Braine for proofreading. I owe a great debt to Julie Cohen for her insightful comments on an earlier manuscript; without her input I would never have got this far. I have striven to be as historically accurate as possible, and if I have succeeded it’s because of the many people who helped me. Firstly, I would like to thank Gary, Olby, Esther and Mary Brazil of the South-East Romany Museum at Twin Oaks, Marden, Kent for their warm welcome and their generosity in sharing time, anecdotes and expertise. Through them I also met Thomas Acton, Professor Emeritus of Romani Studies at the University of Greenwich, who fact-checked my manuscript and put me right on many things. On the Primitive Methodist side, I would like to thank my former academic supervisor at Durham University, Dick Watson, Professor Emeritus of English and currently editor of the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. There is nothing he does not know about the history of Methodism, and he pointed me in the direction of many sources that helped me find the ‘voice’ of the Prim community in Chingestone. I owe a great deal to Dr. Jill Barber and the volunteers of the Primitive Methodist Museum at Englesea Brook, Alsager, Cheshire (https://engleseabrook.org.uk/), especially for their kindness in opening the museum for me during their closed season, and to David G. Sharp for sharing with me his research on West Country Primitive Methodism. Tina Machado’s Historic Canterbury site (http://www.machadoink.com/) was invaluable, and I thank her for her quick response to my questions.

  I have dedicated this book to my fellow author Anne Booth. Not only did she persuade me to study for an MA in Creative Writing, but it was she, the gentlest person I know, who finally gave me an ultimatum to stop making excuses and get scribbling (we were sitting in a pub in Kent, of course). Writing can be a lonely business sometimes, and the companionsh
ip of fellow writers, no matter the distance, cannot be underestimated, and so I would also like to acknowledge my Arvon friends. You know why, Lorraine Rogerson, Jane Wallace and Liz Kershaw.

  I also want to remember my Primitive Methodist ancestors, whose footprints are still visible in rural Oxfordshire, and my distant cousin Ernest George Quartermaine, who lies in Bucquoy Cemetery, Ficheux, now under a little earth from his native village. He fell in the second battle of Arras on 2nd October 1918, aged eighteen, and is the original of Charlie Lambourne. His mother asked for this inscription on his gravestone: ‘Jesus whispered Victory is won. Let us pass over to the other side.’

  Lastly I thank my patient husband and best friend, Carmine Mezzacappa. Every time I asked ‘should I do this?’ he said ‘yes!’.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Katie Hutton is Irish but now lives in northern Tuscany, with her Italian husband and two teenage sons. She writes mainly historical fiction on the themes of love and culture clash. The Gypsy Bride is her debut novel in this genre, with a sequel to follow in 2021. Katie is a member of the Historical Novel Society, the Irish Writers Centre, the Society of Authors and the Romantic Novelists’ Association, and reviews for Historical Novel Review. In her spare time she volunteers with a second-hand book charity of which she is a founder member.

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