ording to Borrow, the Petulengros were
continually turning up wherever he might wander. Jasper Petulengro's
nature seems something akin to that of the Wandering Jew; and yet, if we
may believe "Lavengro" and our own knowledge, the Smiths look upon East
Anglia as their native heath. First, he appears in the green lane near
Norman Cross; then at Norwich Fair and on Mousehold Heath; again at
Greenwich Fair, where he tries to persuade Lavengro to take to the gipsy
life; and once more in the neighbourhood of the noted dingle of the
Isopel Berners episode. This, of course, is due to the exigencies of
what Mr. Watts calls a "spiritual biography," and it is evident that
whenever anything particularly striking pertaining to the Romanies occurs
to Borrow the Romanies themselves promptly appear to illustrate it.

Yet we know that Jasper Petulengro was a genuine character, even if he
comes to us under a fictitious name. He was a representative of one of
the oldest of the East Anglian gipsy families, and a personal friend of
Borrow, who found in him much that was in common with his own nature.
Borrow has left a dependable record of a meeting which took place between
them at his Oulton home, during the Christmas of 1842. "He stayed with
me during the greater part of the morning, discoursing on the affairs of
Egypt, the aspect of which, he assured me, was becoming daily worse and
worse. There is no living for the poor people, brother, said he, the
chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are
become either so poor or miserly, that they grudge our cattle a bite of
grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire
upon. Unless times alter, brother, and of that I see no probability,
unless you are made either poknees or mecralliskoe geiro (Justice of the
Peace or Prime Minister), I am afraid the poor persons will have to give
up wandering altogether, and then what will become of them?"

Yet there was much of Borrow's nature that was in common with that of
Jasper Petulengro. Often the swarthy, horse-dealing gipsy was the
mouthpiece through which he breathed forth his own abhorrence of
conventional restraints and the thronging crowds of busy streets. He
loved the open air country life that he lived near the Suffolk coast,
where the fresh salt winds sweep up from the sea across gorse-clad denes
and pleasant pasture-lands. He was happiest when amongst the "summer
saturated heathen" of the