Although Borrow spent so much time amongst the East Anglian gipsies, it is often difficult to ascertain the exact localities in which he met with them. He seldom condescends to give the date of any incident, and as infrequently does he choose to enlighten us as to his precise whereabouts when it occurred. Then, too, one might conclude that his investigations were almost wholly confined to two families, those of the Smiths or Petulengros, and Hernes. As Mr. Watts has aptly remarked, one would imagine from all that is said about these families in “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” that he knew nothing about the other Romanies of the Eastern Counties. Yet he must have been familiar also with the Bosviles, Grays, and Pinfolds, some descendants of whom still haunt the heaths and greens of Eastern England. According 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?”