A nomadic Fortean who traveled—and tested the limits—of Great Britain’s declining empire.
Eustace Guillan Hopper was born in 1905 to Thomas Henry Hopper and Annie (Whitelock) Hopper. They lived in Surrey, England, where Thomas worked as a clerk for the port authority. Eustace had an older sister, Muriel, born some six years before him. Eustace was baptized at Christ Church, New Malden, which was evangelically Anglican. Apparently, as a youth, he became fascinated by Gypsies and made friends with those in Surrey. He was also bitten by the traveling bug.
Hopper was too young for the Great War, and I have no records for him in the 1920s, likely because he was traveling. He started an article in a 1946 issue of The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society: “In 1929 I was on the border between Brazil and Uruguay. Don’t ask me what I was doing. I was following my nose and it had led me from Rio to São Paulo down through Brazil into the State of Rio Grande and then along the frontier through the pleasant little towns where a man could lounge in the shade of a café without worrying about mañana.” He met up with a band of Romani there, who contrasted poorly with those he knew as a youth—they were dirtier, more larcenous—and then traveled along some more, through Paraguay and onto Bolivia. Ran out of cash, he worked a while, slowly making his way back to Montevideo. He may also have been a Latin American correspondent for the BBC.
Eustace Guillan Hopper was born in 1905 to Thomas Henry Hopper and Annie (Whitelock) Hopper. They lived in Surrey, England, where Thomas worked as a clerk for the port authority. Eustace had an older sister, Muriel, born some six years before him. Eustace was baptized at Christ Church, New Malden, which was evangelically Anglican. Apparently, as a youth, he became fascinated by Gypsies and made friends with those in Surrey. He was also bitten by the traveling bug.
Hopper was too young for the Great War, and I have no records for him in the 1920s, likely because he was traveling. He started an article in a 1946 issue of The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society: “In 1929 I was on the border between Brazil and Uruguay. Don’t ask me what I was doing. I was following my nose and it had led me from Rio to São Paulo down through Brazil into the State of Rio Grande and then along the frontier through the pleasant little towns where a man could lounge in the shade of a café without worrying about mañana.” He met up with a band of Romani there, who contrasted poorly with those he knew as a youth—they were dirtier, more larcenous—and then traveled along some more, through Paraguay and onto Bolivia. Ran out of cash, he worked a while, slowly making his way back to Montevideo. He may also have been a Latin American correspondent for the BBC.